Doctor Ingenious

Kraft Lee, male, about fourteen years old.

Seven years ago, he had been kidnapped by the Magia Gang from some unknown place. The Magia Gang had conducted multiple human experiments on him and a large group of others who had been captured alongside him. After one particular experiment, Kraft began dreaming constantly. Every dream involved unfamiliar people, and even other creatures, creating various inventions.

At first, those dreams were not only fragmented and chaotic but also unending. As a result, Kraft remained in a dazed state for a long time, and with such an enormous amount of information flooding into his young mind, he had even come down with a high fever.

Then, while he drifted between sleep and wakefulness, some unforeseen change occurred within the Magia Gang. The captives found an opportunity to escape from the gang’s experimental base. During one of his rare lucid moments, he clung tightly to someone with the same yellow skin, and was luckily brought out with him.

The person he had clung to was Kraft’s current adoptive father, Martin Lee.

Perhaps because of the experiments, or perhaps because too much information had been poured into him through those dreams, when Kraft finally emerged from his dazed state, all his memories from before the Magia Gang had taken him were gone. He could not even remember his own name, because as an experimental subject in the Magia Gang, he had only possessed a simple numerical designation.

So Kraft took Martin’s surname and named himself Kraft, based on the contents of his dreams. The first name that had entered his mind had actually been Lovecraft, but for some reason, he had felt that there was something wrong with that name. In the end, he removed the "Love" from the front.

When Martin Lee and Kraft first escaped from the Magia Gang, neither of them even had identification. While a fake driver’s license could fool most inspections in America, their Asian identities always drew extra trouble. In the end, they fled to Chinatown in New York and gradually found their footing with the help of other Chinese Americans.

After they settled down, it felt as though someone had been helping them, because their lives suddenly improved. Martin Lee had even been personally awarded the Medal of Freedom by the president, giving both him and Kraft legitimate identities.

Even so, Kraft still did not have the slightest favorable impression of white or black people, nor did he care much for his status as an American citizen. His greatest wish was to save enough money someday and return across the ocean.

So when Martin Lee spent a large sum of money to buy the clothing store where he had once worked and transform it into the FEAST Homeless Shelter, Kraft had a huge argument with him.

But as Kraft gradually grew older, his extreme personality softened somewhat. Especially after meeting several kind-hearted white and black people, he still found it difficult to feel favorably toward people of other races, but at least he no longer condemned everyone with the same brush.

Once their lives gradually improved, Kraft began trying to recreate the inventions from his dreams. Though the dreams had initially been fragmented and impossible to make sense of, after Kraft emerged from his dazed state, they gradually became coherent and complete. However, when he dreamed and what he dreamed about remained completely beyond his control.

Moreover, limited by his own knowledge and skills, there were many things he could not understand, let alone copy by imitation.

On top of that, Martin kept a tight grip on his allowance, so even if Kraft wanted to try reproducing the inventions from his dreams, he did not have enough money.

Until one day, Kraft dreamed of an old Chinese man in ancient clothing. The man claimed to be a disciple of the Mohist school. In the dream, the old man crafted all kinds of strange little contraptions from piles of wood while teaching a group of children a technique called mechanism arts.

After waking up, Kraft took out his meager savings, bought some basic carving tools, gathered discarded wood, and tried making the simplest mechanism lock. Then he took it to school and bet people that they could not solve it, earning his first pot of gold.

Although it was not enough to cover the cost of his tools, Kraft was still delighted.

Later, he specifically looked up records concerning the Mohist school, but America had no relevant books at all. After wandering around Chinatown and asking an old doctor at a traditional Chinese medicine shop, he finally learned what the Mohist school actually was.

Unfortunately, he only dreamed about the Mohist school twice before his dreams changed once again into things he could not make heads or tails of…

A phoenix folded out of paper could actually breathe fire! Were you serious?!

No matter how lacking Kraft’s knowledge was, he could understand that some dreams simply did not take place in his own world… How could anyone be made entirely of paper? And everything in that world was made of paper too…

This was fucking unscientific!

Later, Kraft dreamed sporadically of Mohist mechanism arts a few more times, but the protagonist was no longer that old man. Even the world might not have been the same one.

Kraft could still understand making a wooden mechanical puppet capable of repeating motions, but making a wooden mechanical tiger, carving a few glowing runes into it, and having it move freely and even speak—wasn’t that a bit too much?

Still, although he often encountered dreams he could not understand, he earned quite a bit of money from other little gadgets he could reproduce. Later, Fatty Liao even came to him seeking cooperation. Kraft was responsible for making things, while Fatty Liao handled sales.

Fatty Liao truly lived up to his identity as the young master of a shady shop. Kraft’s income immediately increased by quite a lot.

Later, Kraft dreamed of a long-haired man who called himself Shou Gong Geng. Inspired by him, Kraft began filming the production process for some of his creations and posting the videos online. He also gave himself the ID "Doctor Ingenious."

With the help of Fatty Liao, a self-proclaimed business genius, Kraft’s Clever Hands Channel had become somewhat well-known. His products were not only wildly popular in nearby schools, but he also received quite a few online orders. Recently, he had specifically rented a warehouse in Chinatown and planned to turn it into his private workshop. Now he was just waiting for the equipment he had ordered to arrive.

Chatting and laughing along the way, the school bus arrived at Vantas Public Middle School, where Kraft attended. Kraft and Fatty Liao got off the bus with their arms around each other’s shoulders and headed toward the seventh-grade classroom.

Public school coursework in America was not particularly demanding, and most teachers here were not in the habit of forcing students to study. They placed greater emphasis on developing students’ independence. Academic matters were something students’ parents should be worrying about.

However, Martin did not need to worry about Kraft’s studies, since Kraft wanted to better understand the contents of his dreams.

Though much of what he learned at school was completely useless in those dreams…

The kind of technique that could casually ignite flames to melt metal, then summon lightning from thin air to forge it into a flying sword, was something Kraft could never accomplish even if he mastered every piece of knowledge in the Library of Congress.

Looks like I’m destined for the technology route in this life…

Kraft did not know why that thought had suddenly appeared in his mind, but he felt that it was remarkably fitting.

As for inventions involving mysterious methods like immortal arts or magic, he could only treat them like animated CGI for now—something to feast his eyes on. If he truly wanted to make anything worthwhile, he still had to rely on dreams related to pure technology.

Like Professor Agasa, whose real name was simply "Doctor." Whether it was the Anesthetic Watch or the Power-Enhancing Shoes, both were excellent inventions.

Thinking of that, Kraft touched the watch on his wrist. He had not yet managed to make the Power-Enhancing Shoes, but the Anesthetic Watch was not difficult to manufacture. Its core technology was actually the fast-acting, harmless anesthetic, but that only needed to be mixed according to a specific ratio. There was no real difficulty in making it.

The only thing that puzzled Kraft was that many people in dreams involving pure technology were Japanese, while Americans, who stood at the forefront of technology in reality, appeared far less often.

Was Japanese technology in other worlds really that advanced?

To be honest, Kraft was extremely curious about that.

After dreaming for so many years, Kraft had also summarized a few patterns.

Dreams whose protagonists were Chinese generally involved things that could not be imitated without special abilities, such as alchemy or artifact refinement. Otherwise, they involved forging divine weapons that were of little use to him. Although those treasured blades and swords that could slice through hair and cut iron like mud were indeed incredibly badass, in this era, no matter how strong a cold weapon was, it could not beat a gun. Their materials were also far too demanding, so Kraft simply could not afford to play around with them.

Then there were the Japanese big shots on the technology side, though most of them made all kinds of robots. With Kraft’s wallet, he likewise could not afford that sort of heavy industrial manufacturing. He had dreamed of too few scientists like Professor Agasa, who kept inventing practical, down-to-earth products.

There were also Americans at the forefront of technology in reality, but most of them were conducting human experiments and following biochemical routes. Kraft would absolutely never touch that cursed stuff. Not only was he himself a victim of human experimentation, but merely recalling the overwhelming zombie hordes in those dreams still filled him with lingering fear.

The rest were more chaotic dreams. Races that existed only in fantasy literature, such as elves, dwarves, and goblins, made things that basically all involved magical elements—frustrating stuff that only made Kraft jealous because he could not learn it. There was also alien technology, most of which Kraft could not understand at all, and much of it was completely useless. For example, one alien species had its buttocks on the backs of its heads, so the equipment they made for themselves was simply not suitable for humans.

However, thanks to those bizarre dreams, Kraft was now proficient in many languages. He could even spout a few lines in languages he would never possibly need, like Elvish and alien languages. It was pretty fun to use them to fool his classmates or pretend to be a linguist online.

I posted a new-book announcement on my old book, but it showed as completed, so I couldn’t use the VIP chapter function… But I fucking posted it as a public chapter!

I finally managed to post it through the mobile app, but it appeared at the end of the public chapters. No idea how many people will see it…

I kind of regret not making a group earlier…