Chapter 248
Chapter 248
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 248
Chapter Title: Crystal Spiral Energy Release Device
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“Stop. What the hell are you doing right now?”
“Oh?”
Yi Ha-seo stared at me with her eyes wide open.
“Uh, um… No, this is just… No, it’s not like that!”
I had no idea what “that” was or what it wasn’t, but Yi Ha-seo hurriedly tossed the wriggling thing dangling from the tongs into the glass case and slammed the lid shut.
Clatter. Clunk.
She seemed pretty flustered.
It took her several shaky attempts, each producing that rattling noise, before she finally managed to close the lid.
“I-I swear, it’s absolutely not like that. My favorite thing is— No, that’s not it. Um, what I mean is!”
For some reason, her face flushed bright red as she covered her mouth and fidgeted.
‘What the hell…’
I already knew she was pretty crazy, but why was she making that face like she’d been caught ogling another guy by her crush, of all situations?
“I get it, so you don’t have to explain.”
“Oh, you understand!”
“Yeah.”
“Aaah— Thank goodness—”
Yi Ha-seo wiped at the corners of her eyes with both hands, looking relieved. …Had she been crying?
“But how did you even show up? Teleportation?”
“No. Invisibility.”
“Wooow— Really? Wait, does that mean—?”
“I’ve been watching since the meeting earlier.”
“Eeeek— I-I, ummm!”
“No! Whether Teacher eats earthworms or dirt, it has nothing to do with me, so just stop!”
It took a while of her repeating the same nonsense before we could finally have a proper conversation.
“About the new patients who came in this time.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s troubling, right?”
“Yeah, exactly. I thought cosmic radiation using crystal spiral energy might help, but it got banned.”
“But that device hasn’t produced any of the intended results so far, has it?”
“Right! The structure and design seem solid, but weird stuff keeps happening—”
“Do you remember the contract terms?”
“Huh? What contract?”
“We made a contract. Once a month, you get to examine my body, or—”
“Ah! R-Right, you agreed to help with my experiments!”
“Yeah. The crystal spiral energy experiment. For this month, I’d like to fulfill the contract by helping with that. What do you say?”
“Help with the experiment? How?”
“Let’s take a look at the device first.”
* * *
“This is it.”
“Yes. Its name is the [Crystal Spiral Energy Release Device].”
I looked at the wires connected to the base and the spiral coils as I spoke.
“Does it run on electricity?”
“Uh, that’s just auxiliary power. Look, there’s a magic stone in that case.”
“Ah, I see.”
It runs on a magic stone. The structure is exactly like the one I saw in the game. Which means…
‘This is utterly absurd.’
The massive thing filled an entire room, looking less like medical equipment and more like one of those medieval celestial globes or armillary spheres humans used to gauge the positions of the heavens.
Rings of various sizes intertwined complexly around a central axis, and dull-looking crystals rotated alongside them in some mysterious pattern.
“How did you even come up with this?”
“Did you see the gift I put in your bag when you ‘checked out’ of our hospital?”
When I ‘escaped’ this hospital, for some reason, a [Ancient Blueprint] had been in my bag. And the message window marked it as a reward for an achievement.
“…Did you put that in there, Teacher?”
“Yes, that’s right. While I was preparing it to help you check out, inspiration suddenly struck. I thought, since Shin-hwa is an alien, if you saw the blueprint, you’d complete this for me.”
‘Inspiration, huh.’
Did the thing behind the message window pass off Yi Ha-seo’s idea as an achievement reward? Or did it implant that inspiration in her to create an achievement reward?
“Ah?”
“This is something I made from that blueprint a while back. What do you think? What did you make after seeing the blueprint, Shin-hwa?”
Unfortunately, rather than making something from the blueprint, I’ve been using it to decipher the language of the ancient ones. I did make something, but what I created with it was a weapon.
Yi Ha-seo let out a disappointed sigh after hearing my explanation.
“A weapon? So like we analyzed, that blueprint really can make… anything?”
“Probably. But.”
“Yeah?”
“Regardless of the blueprint, I can improve the device you made.”
“Eeeeeh? Really?”
I didn’t know what function Yi Ha-seo wanted this machine to have, but I could repurpose it into actual medical equipment instead of whatever it was that only turned sane humans into lunatics.
When I elaborated, Yi Ha-seo responded not with one of her usual bizarre expressions, but with a serious one.
“I don’t want any other functions. I want to complete this machine to save people—people hurt by surreal disasters, people suffering from surreal diseases. And…”
This was the desire—or wish—I’d heard several times while playing [Cthulhu World].
‘Sure, up to here, it’s the noble wish of a good doctor trapped in a cosmic horror world…’
Just like in the game, Yi Ha-seo continued with the latter half of her wish.
“And… ultimately, I want to eradicate even the ‘disease’ called death. A world where no one dies, where no one is unhappy, where everyone can live happily forever. I want to create that world… Can you, who came from Andromeda—Shin-hwa—make my wish come true?”
In one sense, it could be a positive wish, but in another, it was the twisted desire of a classic supervillain.
The Yi Ha-seo I saw in the game usually went completely mad obsessing over that wish.
And after contracting with a transcendent being from another world, she became a madman who brings ruin to this world—the final boss of the [Re-Animator] route.
‘Classic zombie apocalypse stuff, which is genuinely horrifying.’
Once that route starts, the game turns into a full-on zombie and creature fest.
Endless waves of grotesquely designed zombies, no holds barred. I died a ton in that route.
‘But since I’m managing her this closely… it shouldn’t go that far, right?’
Plus, this would solve the Bong Il-cheon faction issue, and it’s a recovery device I can use ongoing. Limited, but it could even restore sanity stats.
“Alright. Let’s get started then.”
* * *
In the game, you just piled magic stones and expensive materials into a mountain and hit the [Modify] button for a 5% chance of incremental improvement.
‘Honestly, that was easier in some ways.’
But now, I had to figure out the structure myself and fix it by hand.
‘Fortunately, it’s less a machine and more a kind of magic ritual.’
These rings substitute for a magic circle, and the crystals act as runes imparting specific properties.
Like the magic stone gun and other artifacts, this is something I can improve or modify.
“Ahh—”
Yi Ha-seo’s lament.
I’d just ripped out the ‘unnecessary parts’ of the [Crystal Spiral Energy Release Device].
“This isn’t needed.”
I’d stripped it down to basically just the frame.
Craaack— Crasssh—
Yi Ha-seo looked on the verge of tears as most of the machine was dismantled, but we’d wasted too much time getting here. Ignoring her concerns, I pressed on.
“It’d be nice if it had more versatile functions, but let’s tackle the immediate issue first.”
“The immediate issue?”
“Yeah, you’re using it to treat people with worms burrowing into their bodies, right?”
“Y-Yeah.”
This device—no, magic circle? Whatever—this magic circle’s problem was the lack of a core to produce clear effects.
‘And there are problems beyond just the missing core.’
To even partially achieve what Yi Ha-seo wanted, it needed a more special core. If it could be done with ordinary means, I could’ve just used recovery magic.
This game has plenty of destructive magic, but healing and restoration magic is insanely difficult and demands disproportionately high costs.
“Wh-What’s that?”
“A magic stone.”
“That’s a magic stone?”
What I’d embedded in the core position was a 20-sided polyhedron magic stone glowing an indescribable color. It had taken quite some effort last night to make it.
“But—those impurities inside?”
Hmm, as expected of a doctor dealing with surreal diseases, sharp question.
I manipulated the device’s form with mana and telekinesis, inscribed new rituals, and answered.
“An artifact I got lucky with yesterday. Probably Black-grade for this hospital.”
“A divine body?”
“Not quite. A fragment extracted from a symbol infused with an avatar’s power.”
“You got something like that… by luck?”
“Yeah.”
Yi Ha-seo’s eyes went wide as she started babbling: You’re really something else. As expected of an Andromeda alien, the best. So cool—
To be precise, this was from the same thing I used yesterday to make the wrigglers and the galleon: the [Egg Sac] infused with the power of the [Fear Drinker].
The [Fear Drinker] couldn’t hold back and tried to descend through the [Egg Sac], and I disrupted its descent at the perfect timing.
The key to that trick is interrupting the descent to forcibly drain the abyssal entities’ power, but you also snag the artifact that’s elevated to a [Symbol of an Abyssal Entity] from the power they poured in.
‘Mana recovery is only 10-30% due to losses, but it’s an absurd amount no genius human could gather even after ten lifetimes.’
Anyway, this magic stone was made by mixing part of that [Egg Sac] with the [Purified Water] I recovered from Paju Samneung before.
It was beyond what could be called a magic stone. The tooltip even displayed a different name.
[Incarnation Stone: An item created by mixing the hunger of the ‘Mountain Predator’ and the thirst of the ‘Fear Drinker’. It can manifest their powers or be used as an offering for their descent.]
“There. Done.”
“Done?”
“Ah, not completely. Step back a bit, please.”
I reached toward the door and cast spells.
[Lock]
[Wall of Force]
From here on, it’s trade secret. Yi Ha-seo… she wouldn’t leave even if I told her to. Bound by the contract, she won’t interfere uselessly or leak info.
But I put up a barrier around her too, to keep her from approaching further.
“If you force your way in, I’ll consider it hostile and attack.”
“Got it.”
After adding more spells and safety measures for unexpected situations, I began the final step.
[Perception]
Zzzzap—
Light burst in all directions. Massive sparks.
I hadn’t wanted to use [Perception] if possible, but you can’t control something powered by an [Incarnation Stone] with ordinary-level magic.
[Perception] grants me the power to understand the structure and laws of this world.
An overwhelming sense of omnipotence, euphoria, and pleasure rose from my toes.
Sensory input beyond human cognition flooded me with info on everything around. Yi Ha-seo’s face, twisted in cultist-like religious ecstasy. People moving beyond the wall. Patients lying down. Lunatics instinctively sensing something and wailing. Even the monsters in the closed ward beyond the building rampaging. And the gaze of the headless ball python looking right at me—I could feel it—no, in that instant, I saw, heard, smelled, touched, and tasted everything from every angle all at once.
At the same time, I understood how—and why—this thing existed here of all places.
That understanding granted the authority and power to reorganize the target’s form and mode of existence.
[L-grade accessory ‘Mask of Carcosa’ unique function, ‘Madman’s Handiwork’ activates.
// Madman’s Handiwork: Attempt to unlock hidden abilities of an artifact or bestow new ones.]
Golden radiance flooded the room.
Yes, forget your previous form.
From now on, exist in a form for me, live in the way I desire.
Soon, the modification was perfectly complete.
“Ow, my head hurts.”
Now I could treat the Bong Il-cheon faction patients.
I shook my head a few times and turned to Yi Ha-seo.
“All done. Now it should function exactly as you wanted…”
“Aaah— Aaaaaah—”
Yi Ha-seo was crying.
“I love you. I love you. I’ll devote this body, this soul, my entire past, future, and present to loving you.”
As she said it, she approached me. Her small red lips parted, slender white fingers raised, her face mad with hunger and thirst. Like she’d grab my body and shove it into her mouth right then.
“Huh? Wait—Teacher, stop!”
The barrier I’d set up to block Yi Ha-seo’s interference was still there.
Zzzzap—
The lightning rigged to the barrier auto-triggered, shoving her back.
“Ugh, stop! Calm down!”
I hurriedly dispelled it, but a bit too late. Yi Ha-seo slammed into the corner and passed out.
“Ugh… Teacher, you okay…? At least she’s not dead.”
Fortunately, since I dispelled it quickly, no life-threatening damage. Just knocked out.
“God, Yi Ha-seo’s impulsive bullshit…”
Even if I just completed her long-cherished dream machine, that was over the top.
Shaking my head, I laid her out properly and looked at the newly completed [Crystal Spiral Energy Release Device].
“Well, now I’ve got a recovery base.”