Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum (2)
When Yerina Bronska, the leader of the Northern Covenant Syndicate, first entrusted the human-shaped Cultured Slime to her subordinates, she had issued this warning.
"If used correctly, this could become a biological weapon that operates in a completely different way from anything existing before. Difficult to detect, difficult to analyze."
That statement had been profoundly accurate. It would be a biological weapon attack mediated through the human form itself.
Attacks using bacteria or viruses, which possess almost no mobility of their own, pose little threat if one is properly equipped with gas masks and protective suits. The greater concern would be the damage inflicted upon ordinary citizens and other social infrastructure lacking such protection. Against an army where every soldier is equipped with some form of defense, a biological weapon attack in the classical sense was unlikely to cause significant harm.
Of course, that isn't the purpose of deploying biological weapons.
The most similar case Elze remembered was the Western Front during the First World War. A period of madness where various chemical weapons, including mustard gas, were sprayed across the front lines. At that time, the primary target had been the soldiers on the front line. Chemical weapons were not yet an effective means in themselves, but merely "Method 1" for breaking through trenches.
However, in the changed era of today, the priority of chemical and biological weapons had shifted toward targeting civilians in the rear. Direct attacks on the army were of little utility for the reasons previously mentioned, so causing chaos in the rear—which sustains the army—could inflict far greater damage. An army is, fundamentally, a group that consumes without producing. While news occasionally surfaced of North Korean soldiers farming near the 39th parallel along the Amnok River to scrape by, excluding such rare exceptions, an army was indeed a consuming group.
Therefore, an attack on the rear was an action that would intensify the army's consumption and cause tremendous disruptions to future supply lines. It could be seen as executing a scorched-earth tactic against the opposing camp.
Of course, if the goal were simply to load biological weapons into ICBMs and strike the Soviet rear, the owner of this facility wouldn't have bothered retrofitting an old underground monastery. Elze Constanze added her own deductions to the facts she had casually learned from her niece.
Perhaps... they are also targeting the army itself?
To the witch, this was the only conceivable option. Yerina Bronska would be planning to personally march on Moscow on the day of the final decisive battle. She would mobilize all the relics, magic, and connections gathered and drawn in from all over the world to deliver the final and greatest attack upon the heart of the relic theorists. This biological weapon was likely included as part of that attack.
The slimes, growing recklessly while receiving unlimited nutrition in test tubes filled with swaying culture fluid, were a significant threat to those who were not mages, both physically and magically. Gas masks and protective suits would be useless. A biological weapon cultivated recklessly, capable of the bizarre behavior of merging and separating among themselves, would tear apart the gas masks and protective suits of enemy soldiers appearing before them. Against those enemy soldiers left defenseless, the Cultured Slime itself would penetrate through every orifice of the body, or allow separately sprayed chemical agents or biological hazards to infiltrate.
In this case, the Cultured Slime served the role of enabling chemical and biological weapons, which would be wiser to spray in the rear, to be sprayed directly onto the front line.
Elze asked with interest. Not to the Syndicate guide, but to the facility researcher who had attached themselves separately upon entering the facility.
"What's the production volume? I mean... not just those cultivated through simple reproduction, but the production volume of true mass-produced weapons capable of magical attacks as well."
"If I remember correctly... about 265 pounds per day. It's not a large amount, but you have to consider the fact that they are all entities capable of emitting reflexive magic at a level comparable to mages."
Damn those pounds. Roughly 120 kilograms.
"About the mass of one and a half adult males. Right, about 1.5 people per day is indeed a lot."
Elze slowly followed the path toward the warehouse where the cultivated slimes were stored. Upon seeing the sight of hundreds of kilograms of grotesque flesh chunks squirming inside sealed containers, she let out a slight hiss of disgust.
God, someone with a weak stomach wouldn't even be able to enter here.
The average density of a human is similar to or slightly less than the density of water. That meant, in other words, that a daily mass production of 120 kilograms would yield a volume roughly equivalent to a bathtub if compressed. However, from Elze's rough scan, most of the human-turned-cultures gathered in this warehouse did not reach that volume.
"This... seems to have a higher density?"
"You are exactly right. On average, about 156 pounds per cubic foot, so it fits almost perfectly into a cubic container with sides of 1 foot 3 inches!"
"For fuck's sake... You're not originally a Syndicate member, you're a local British recruit, aren't you?"
"Ah... yes. I was originally affiliated with the Ministry of Magic and handled magical bioengineering at Porton Down."
Of course. The air had grown cold enough to freeze, yet he hadn't noticed. I knew he was British. Elze thought. She didn't care what others were like, but the way he immediately poured out his words when a beautiful woman like herself asked about research results was truly stereotypical of an engineer.
Even so, seeing him deliberately use feet and pounds made her blood boil.
The freezing cold aura was not particularly an illusion. Elze's mental image was on the verge of manifesting in reality. Black seawater rising from the floor, dark clouds and thunder rumbling in the distance, dark red eyes piercing the sky, and so on. The Syndicate guide attached to her side was trembling, watching Elze, instinctively worried that something terrible might happen.
However, the British researcher, being from the Ministry of Magic, should not have failed to feel the swirling magic traces, yet he stood there as if he knew nothing. It was truly infuriating.
Elze exerted superhuman patience and withdrew the silver chains that were about to extend.
The atmosphere around them returned to normal, and the guide finally let out a sigh of relief.
The witch glared at the British researcher one more time before she could hear the figures of 2,500 kilograms per cubic meter and 37 centimeters per side.
Elze thought. On the day of the decisive battle, a spectacle would unfold over the sky of Moscow. Cubic boxes about 40 centimeters per side would be scattered from the sky, opening one by one with clattering sounds, and the flesh chunks sloshing inside would fall wildly. The 120-kilogram flesh chunks that landed with a thud on the ground would begin to walk the streets of Moscow, seeking out victims.
To those who could not use magic, they would approach ignoring all physical impact. Then, they would be eaten, or they would eat.
Right, the subject is the slime. Of course, being eaten meant burrowing into the mouth against the victim's will and falling into the stomach.
Either way, only a terrifying end awaited the victims. If eaten by the Cultured Slime, the victim's biological mass would become components of the slime with high efficiency; if they ate the Cultured Slime, it would explode immediately inside their body, scattering their own components onto the street.
Hmm... Does Rin have that kind of taste...?
Well, of course, her niece didn't choose this method because she liked it.
That aside, Elze recalled one more fact from what the researcher had said.
He said Porton Down, right?
Porton Down was a military facility operated directly by the British Army, where a research institute with BSL-4 (Biosafety Level 4) certification was located. It had been a place researching poison gas and chemical substances since the time of trench warfare on the Western Front, and as time passed, it underwent modernization and renovation to become a research institute capable of receiving the highest level of biosafety certification.
Elze knew that attempts to artificially implant magic into living organisms to create relics or golems had been quite common in the past. The difference from the process of creating existing relics or golems was merely the presence or absence of a soul. Because the soul existed separately, engraving magic was difficult, and there was the clear disadvantage that it was not easily controlled. However, if successful once, the performance would be on a different level from existing golems, which was the common opinion among mages.
And what her niece was trying to do here was precisely the mass production of golems with souls.
The Cultured Slime, each possessing a mass of 120 kilograms and functioning autonomously and independently, perfectly satisfied the definition of a magical golem.
Yerina Bronska had likely thought that the personnel at Porton Down were the most suitable personnel to research the slimes created from Benjamin Ashford. So, when taking over the country of Britain, she wouldn't have missed out on taking over such confidential facilities either. Especially since there was collaboration with the Ministry of Magic.
The personnel, research results, and know-how embedded in such facilities were indeed assets that could not be bought with money.
Speaking of taking over confidential facilities, something else came to mind.
Come to think of it... we have nukes now too?
To be more precise, not yet. It was correct to view them as a future model that would take some time.
The identity of the nukes was the British Royal Navy's nuclear submarines. They were still outside the organization's grasp, but nuclear submarines that could be recalled at any time through the Prime Minister. She had heard that after recalling the submarines roaming the oceans, the relevant personnel would immediately be subdued and incorporated under the organization.
That was because, if things went wrong, it was the only means to threaten the communists holed up in Moscow. Especially the nuclear submarines, being Britain's only nuclear strike force, needed to be managed more specially.
Elze Constanze, having toured the underground monastery factory in Southend-on-Sea—more accurately, the "human" factory—was amazed and proud that her niece was proceeding with such preparations step by step.
The claim to topple the relic theorists was by no means empty words.
She was mobilizing all the capabilities of the organization and herself, and even the capabilities of the nation she had gathered under her command, with the sincere determination to topple the Soviet Union.
On the other hand, it also felt like a determination that only witches with somewhat twisted minds could make.
As immortal witches who had to live their entire lives with a cursed bloodline that forced them to activate magic halfway forcibly every time they met someone's eyes, it was natural for their sociality to be shattered.
There were ways to suppress it, but even those were not perfect.
Yerina seemed to have found her own method. A way to spend peaceful and tranquil days without going through the trouble of dividing Charm into eight branches or similar.
That was the extremely violent and simple solution of placing the entire world beneath her feet.
Even if Charm activated forcibly, so what? There would be nothing but humans trembling beneath the feet of Yerina Bronska.
In other words, peace derived from strength.
And if you want such peace—
Elze thought.
—You must prepare for war.