The Sinner's and Human-Defiling Sanctum (1)
Elze Constanze, who had met me again in the monastery in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England, seemed filled with expectations unlike her usual self.
That expectation was, of course, the varied biological weapons showcased in the research facility I had established underground beneath the monastery.
Elze appeared to have taken a profound interest in the biological weapons I had created by manipulating the bodies and minds of Benjamin Ashford's cultured slimes.
By delicately balancing the equilibrium between flesh and soul, I allowed the regenerative magic engraved in the flesh to continue dividing like cancer cells, while at the same time guiding them so that souls could settle properly within the swollen flesh.
In the natural growth process of ordinary humans, there was no need to consider such things.
The speed of flesh growth was so slow that souls could naturally expand in perfect synchronization.
But the body of Benjamin Ashford, whom the world could call a master of regenerative magic, was quite different.
Because the expansion of the soul could not keep up with the regeneration of the body, it inevitably created holes here and there where the soul was empty, and only parts moved by pure inertia remained.
This was also something I had to consider during combat.
Even if I restored flesh and blood with regenerative magic, there was no way to repair the holes in the soul.
Therefore, during combat, I had to pay attention so that regeneration itself did not occur excessively and cause indiscriminate cell division, while also checking whether the density of the soul was not lower than I thought.
'If my calculations were wrong, only violent inertia would remain.'
The inertia here was not the word Newton meant, but rather the inertia of bodily tissues that could not be controlled by the soul, meaning they only moved through instinct and cellular reflex action.
Originally, the soul should have penetrated deeply between them and firmly secured its dominance over the body, but because it failed to do so, only the instinct to divide cells remained in those bodily tissues.
These were, in a sense, the same as cancer or tumors.
Spiritually — or rather, magically — they were not connected, but because they were physically connected, they were grotesque tumors that devoured the victim's entire nutrients.
If this had been something I could not control, Benjamin Ashford's cultured slimes would have long since been disposed of.
It was not that I could not find a way to weaponize them, but that I meant the uncontrolled flesh chunks had spread so wildly across the underground of the monastery that they could no longer be contained.
If even one fragment remained, it would resume its exponential self-replication.
It would begin to expand to a level where it inverted mass by reversing mass and struck the law of conservation of mass head-on in sheer absurdity.
In that case, all I could do was seal the entire underground of the monastery, reinforce the ground, and then burn it all to ash.
Even then, I would not have full confidence and would have had to focus on neutralizing the remaining scraps for months.
But fortunately, this was a reaction I could control to some extent.
If the cultured slimes were about to grow out of control in any way by causing an overreaction, I would simply tear through the deteriorated copies of Baramil with my claws and cut them to pieces.
As I had once thought of the Golden Retriever from Florida meeting an American, and as I had continued to chew on it ever since falling to this world without showing my true feelings.
I was a fairly competent mage just with the ability to handle artifacts. Then, when I met Yerina's imperfectly possessed Charm, it had amplified the synergy even more.
Instead of remaking from scratch, if a complete blueprint already existed, I could create deteriorated versions of artifacts in no time at all — even mediocre ones — with just the time I put in.
I had occasionally made deteriorated versions of Baramil that my subordinate research organization members could use and scattered them.
Performance-wise, they were hopelessly insufficient for actual combat use.
Of course, compared to the delicately tuned original Baramil, their performance was far too low, and they even lacked the function of temporarily boosting the user's skill by drawing blood from the wrist.
Of course, there was no need for that function. Had anyone ever considered whether diamond industrial cutters were "pretty" as a consideration?
Therefore, I — more accurately, my subordinates — could use this to encourage stable flesh-soul bonding in the cultured slimes.
What we obtained were cultured slimes containing intact souls, averaging about 120 kilograms each.
Elze walked beside me, passing through the neatly packaged human extraction warehouses, and asked.
"How is magic bestowed upon these things?"
"Have your subordinates do it instead. Even if it weren't me, it's an easy task to cast defensive magic on a mage who draws at least a certain level of ma-do."
I had my subordinates cast the defensive magic on all the cultured slimes that had been produced this way.
On the day of the final battle, the slimes to be deployed in actual combat would have the ability to realize destruction just by themselves.
It might be possible to express human spiritual power in numbers, but a grotesque scene of 120-kilogram flesh chunks dividing and merging would cut the mental fortitude of everyone facing them.
The muscle and fat layers formed at a higher density than ordinary humans would also provide some protection against kinetic energy bullets.
In other words, even if they somehow endured the terrifying sight and pulled the trigger of a coiled rifle, the aftermath would be a landscape where the slimes were still crawling and moving.
Those slimes would be crawling around the Moscow streets on the day of the final battle in the thousands. Why should I be satisfied with only 120 kilograms a day.
Elze hummed a satisfied tune and continued asking.
"Now that I think about it, there's no reason to give defensive magic at all, is there? These are the bio-magic launchers, aren't they?"
"Exactly as you observed. If you want, you can put any other magic in, and there's no need to limit it to magic."
The internal space of a human is not as narrow as one might think.
In the case of the slime that is fundamentally human, the structure is filled with flesh all the way inside, but if I pulled it all out, I could secure approximately 200 liters in the current state.
That would be enough to store almost anything, including firearms, grenades, and even bombs that would explode with the entire body as the condition.
Researchers recruited from Porton Down and the technical department of the Northern Covenant Syndicate had been trying to teach the use of firearms to these brainless flesh slimes.
There was no need to fully understand it. There was no reason to.
The method of teaching firearm use to the cultured slimes was similar to Pavlov's dog experiment with the primitive reward of mission completion.
First, throw a gun, and when the trigger is somehow pulled and bullets spray out, provide additional nutrition as a reward.
Since the cultured slimes had no brains, they only had instinct without intelligence.
Because of this, the current technical department organization members had been developing signal devices that would fire the desired action at the desired time by subdividing the types of stimuli.
Press the first button, and the flesh chunk would pull out a gun and shoot until the magazine ran empty; press the second button, and it would merge with a nearby kin, and so on.
Rather than relying on mere chance, it would be better to say it was closer to a 'weapon' if I could sometimes intervene directly.
Of course, I would only intervene, not control. On the battlefield, it was already difficult just to take care of my own body, so how could I share commands in detail while receiving thousands of situations.
Moreover, if the truth was that the slimes in human form would have difficulty hitting the trigger they pulled randomly, that was just the truth.
I was not expecting high accuracy.
I was focusing more on spreading the very perception across the entire battlefield that no matter where they moved, they might be hit by blind bullets at any time.
Elze, who had silently listened to the above story, chuckled with amusement.
"It's a good idea. Sometimes it might even choose self-destruction."
"Do you know, Elze? Some of them might be able to self-destruct in a slightly more complicated way."
"Now that you mention it, it would connect with where my nephew visited today as well?"
By subtly dropping a hint like this, you quickly understood the meaning.
I thought they were only playing pinball on the desktop in Greenwich's house, but it seemed they had been wandering the intranet and searching.
"Exactly. There's no need for a high-explosive bomb as a self-destruction mechanism inside the body."
I had intended to embed special self-destruction mechanisms inside the cultured slimes at a specific ratio. The mechanism was, of course, a nuclear bomb.
Of course, I had already understood the complications arising from critical mass and nuclear weapon structures. I had even consulted whether they could be miniaturized and sold the prime minister's name to related agencies.
At the very least, I had received confirmation that it would reach a level usable in actual combat before the new millennium.
If I could infuse magic to refine them without relying solely on the power of pure science and technology, that time would be even shorter.
"Understood what your intent is. Like a flare, mixing nuclear ones among the ordinary cultured slimes so that communists can't touch them rashly, yes?"
"Exactly. There's no need to worry about morality or anything like that, right?"
"Hah, witches really are quite twisted after all. It seems Lin has finally crossed that line too."
"People draw arbitrary lines. There's no reason for me to protect them."
Elze smiled with a smile dotted with approval at my answer.
If one took even a slightly more rebellious path than the line of depravity and reached for the weapons filled with human defilement, the number of choices available would increase considerably.
But who would judge me.
Survival of the fittest — the survivors would become justice and fulfill their own definitions in the world.