Honkai: Man(Sludge) From Future

Bronya was handling a dispute.

The person involved was a young girl named Yui Yuigahama. She had been brought in by her mother, who claimed she had been tricked by some small research institute in the Academy City into taking some special hallucinogenic mushrooms.

After a thorough investigation by Bronya and Seele, it was discovered that the girl hadn't been tricked. Such a thing really existed.

"I told you, this is a special mushroom I developed independently. It can effectively put people in a state between conscious and unconscious. At this time, people seem to be awake but can also dig up memories they've forgotten."

"It can help people perform better on exams!"

The researcher looked proud, extremely proud of her creation.

"Not only that, but if set up correctly, it can put people in a highly efficient working state. Simply put, it's a bit like a one-click complete task, or a one-click skip life button. It can make people perfectly recall past training and learning memories in a daze, and complete the tasks they are required to do while in a trance."

"I've already contacted many bosses. They said they need this kind of good stuff for their workers. The workers also think it's great. They just want this kind of product that lets them skip working hours with one click."

Bronya listened with a (ᗜ˰ᗜ) expression on her face, as if she had been mentally attacked but also hadn't been.

Her first thought was whether this thing could be used in "hentai."

But the researcher had clearly thought of more than her. She could tell what the girl was thinking just by looking at her expression.

"What you're thinking is impossible. I can be sure even without experimenting on anyone. The budding of hormones happens through interaction between people. And this state between conscious and unconscious can only make people draw out memories and experiences, it won't bring about any interaction. It's more for handling repetitive work, or specifically for answering exam papers."

"That little girl thought I sold her some kind of brain-booster drug. She even contacted me twice afterward."

"But that girl is a bit dumb. I don't know if it's because she's lucky. The effect of her doing the questions herself is actually not as good as the effect of repeatedly using the item. From the looks of it, when she does the questions herself, she'll just randomly think of things and add unnecessary steps, and then think what she wrote is very good. Pfft—"

The researcher really couldn't hold it in anymore and burst out laughing.

Seele looked silently at the body camera in her hand. Beside her was a transcript of the voice recording. Seele was trying hard not to laugh; she didn't want her laughter to be recorded.

Bronya was already used to it. What kind of storms hadn't she seen in the Academy City? This little problem was nothing to her.

The researcher had been punished many times, and her sentence had even been extended to over thirty years. This person had tricked people into being her test subjects, and after an incident, the Academy City's protection over her was revoked. There were many similar cases. These researchers would even experiment on each other internally.

But many people in the Academy City couldn't do anything about them. Even if the protection rules for researchers conducting human experiments were stripped away, others couldn't think of how to deal with them.

These people were very smart. They never conducted experiments that were unacceptable to the public, nor did they conduct dangerous experiments involving life. They mostly used false advertising-like behavior to lure people in, but the result was that most of it wasn't just false advertising; the things they produced actually had some effect.

This led to a strange result: in order to retaliate against a researcher with equal power, you had to have the same level of technical skill as the researcher. When you gave someone a drug, it had to produce side effects but not cause too much pain or affect their life.

And only other researchers had the technical ability to do this. But these people were already doing this to each other internally, so the same behavior was painless to these radical researchers.

Based on the Academy City's principle of punishment with equal rights and responsibilities, Bronya stripped the researcher of her human experiment protection and added another ten years to her sentence. Because Yui Yuigahama wasn't the only one who had bought this drug.

Yui Yuigahama was still not convinced. She stared in shock as the person was just let go like that.

The girl asked in astonishment, "Is that it? She can illegally sell bad drugs!"

Bronya was also speechless at this little girl. "It was only advertised as an exam optimization drug. Did your score improve or not?"

"I... Is that okay?" Yui Yuigahama was dumbfounded. She didn't expect to have bought a genuine product. But in that case, she didn't know if her behavior counted as cheating on an exam. She had never heard of a rule against taking drugs while writing an exam.

"Ah, of course. If you're not convinced, you can also make some drugs for her to try. We'll do a risk assessment. She won't run away or anything. But how much of your hurt feelings you can get back depends on how much you've learned yourself."

"However, considering that this principle of equal rights and responsibilities isn't fully applicable to civil disputes, we will further improve our work in the future."

Bronya then consoled and explained, "You don't have to worry for too long. There should be results soon. We've already dispatched a large number of staff who are gradually adapting to the new AI system mixed with androids for third-party work processing. The kind of corruption that existed in the old Far East will definitely not happen again."

The girl was still a little confused, but when she thought that she could do the same thing to the researcher and not even be punished by law, she realized she didn't have the ability to do it.

Bronya then handed Yui Yuigahama a business card with a website on it. "Here, this is a relevant law firm. They will help you contact people who can do these things for you. You just need to pay the agency fee."

"We will also consider reducing her sentence based on the intensity of your actions. Of course, if you negotiate a private compensation, we can also use that to redraft the researcher's sentence."

"You can just choose for yourself."

Yui Yuigahama left in a daze. Her case was a bit sensitive.

Who would have thought that the person who developed this drug would just use it to make people take exams and work?

Yui Yuigahama, who had only been in the Academy City for a few days, suddenly realized a problem. Why did the laws here seem a bit off? It was like something out of a talionic law, but not quite.