The colonial state invested a lot of funding and resources to enable the DUT to output a lot of research and excellent graduates. Davute needed both of them to gain an edge in the upcoming war against Karlach!
However, the plan initiated by Elder Yistrach Clive did not concern the Davute University of Technology.
Instead, the focus lay on the institution that sat adjacent to the campus of the DUT.
The Davute Biotechnology University was almost just as old. Throughout its young history, it has quickly risen and secured its place as the region's most premier academic institution in the field of biotechnology and biosciences!
The government may not invest as much money into the DBU, but the level of funding was sufficient to fund a number of massive research initiatives.
The directors of the biotechnology institutions had chosen to pursue a strategy of specialization. By concentrating a large share of resources into specific departments and research projects, the DBU would quickly be able to stand out and become a famed and prestigious biotechnology university in Krakatoa and the neighboring middle zones.
One of the departments of the Davute Biotechnology University that had been selected for this strategy was the Olena Volkova School of Genetics and Exobiology, or OVS for short.
As a university department that was specifically set up to study the wonderful diversity of alien organisms of a brand-new galaxy, the OVS played a crucial role in figuring out how alien exobeasts and exoplants worked.
By understanding the unique and wonderful products of nature in the Red Ocean, biotech researchers could subsequently use this knowledge to develop many difficult applications.
While this kind of work was most often used to develop powerful new genetic modification templates for the purpose of human augmentation, the goals were different in the new frontier.
Institutions such as the OVS primarily studied and experimented with the organic systems of native exobeasts to decipher and make use of their biological relationship with phasewater!
As phasewater was an exotic that was prevalent on many different planets, including lifebearing ones, it was rare but not completely unheard of for organisms to evolve that somehow incorporated phasewater into their bodies without getting torn apart.
This was extremely special as there were many intelligent species in the Red Ocean that tried and failed to accomplish the same result through artificial means.
A small proportion of rare phasewater exobeasts even grew so formidable that they had become absolute apex predators that could demolish plenty of mechs with the help of their remarkable abilities!
The existence of these creatures spurred frantic research projects throughout the Red Ocean.
Davute did not want to be left out of the party, so it invested a lot of resources and other forms of support to get the Olena Volkova School of Genetics and Exobiology off the ground as soon as possible.
Right now, many schools in the Academic District closed their doors due to the start of the founding ceremony.
Many students either traveled to one of the more central and dynamic city districts or chose to gather and celebrate at the few local establishments that continued to operate on this important day.
Only a small number of guards and caretakers could still be found inside the nearly emptied school buildings.
Although many scientists preferred to witness the founding ceremony in downtown Kotor City, a lot of sensitive, dangerous and complicated laboratories needed more than a bunch of uneducated guards to control the situation.
Only the scientists who worked in these facilities themselves possessed the deep knowledge and expertise to respond to any accidents and prevent ongoing experiments from escalating into calamities.
By far, most of the scientists and researchers would rather be elsewhere than remaining stuck in their labs. They would rather join the soirées organized by their distinguished colleagues or gather with a number of other professors and industry magnates in order to expand their networks and secure additional funding for their pet projects.
Since a few of the scientists absolutely had to be left behind, the universities and schools all employed lotteries to decide who had to undertake this undesirable duty.
In rare cases, a few of the researchers chose to volunteer for this duty, either because they could gain a valuable favor which they could cash in at a later date, or because they wanted to grant their other colleagues the time of their life.
Professor Murmillian Granse of the Olena Volkova School of Genetics and Exobiology happened to be among the volunteers.
The only difference was that he had no use of favors and he did not accept this boring assignment because he wanted to sacrifice himself for his fellow researchers.
His motivations were entirely different from everyone else, because he did not possess much of an attachment towards Davute at all. He could care less about attending the founding ceremony.
The truth was that Professor Murmillian Granse was a traitor all along.