12. Legion
12. Legion
After violating Jihye over and over and spending roughly an hour doing so, Bari opened the door and came in.
The secluded Underground Base.
She had been conducting experiments that could never be revealed to the world, and she showed up here just an hour after Sihwan arrived.
She plopped her butt down next to Sihwan, who was sprawled out on the bed.
"You deployed the Suit."
"Yeah. Come to think of it, why didn't you come? You were scared."
Of course, Sihwan deploying the Suit meant it was an emergency situation.
By that point, Bari would assess the situation through the Suit and rush to the scene immediately if it seemed dangerous.
But Bari hadn't done that.
"It was absolute defense, after all. And it looked like you were enjoying yourself, Master."
"Well... a little?"
Since it was So-ri who had pounced, it was less a threat to his life and more a crisis for his chastity.
If there was some leeway, this was a situation he could enjoy in its own way.
"Unless it's a situation where your rear is about to get breached, I try not to interfere in your sexual matters as much as possible."
"...If that ever happens, you need to teleport there or whatever to come get me."
"Ehehe. Of course."
Sihwan suddenly got chills and placed his hand on her thigh.
He'd already extracted semen multiple times through Jihye, but feeling Bari's springy thigh meat made his lust surge up again.
"Oh my, you wanna go again? Take a break and do it tomorrow."
"Look in a mirror and say that. You've got a face like you're about to devour me right now, no backing out."
"Hehe."
She let out a sultry laugh and pounced on the lying Sihwan.
"Devour? I'm feeding you."
"Feeding me what?"
"Me, Bari~♥"
.
.
"Mmngh...."
Bari, who'd been riding Sihwan hard, stretched with her killer body on full display.
"You do that stuff too?"
"I've got biological tissue, after all. Feels super refreshing."
"I see."
"By the way, it's gotten pretty late."
Dark night.
No, almost dawn.
Even though it was this late and he was out, not a single call or even a text.
"Yeah. Nobody gives a damn. Those jerks."
Not even his wife Yuina should at least send some kind of contact.
"Just sleep here tonight. We've got Jihye-ssi here, and me too."
"You follow me anyway."
"Still, doesn't it feel different being somewhere with other people versus just us?"
"Yeah, true. Feels more free somehow."
To others, Sihwan might look like he didn't give a shit about anything and just barreled ahead brainlessly my way or the highway, but he did care about what mattered in his own way.
"Then we'll crash here tonight... Wanna take a quick look around?"
"My lab? You sure? It's pretty gruesome today."
"Oh yeah? Now I'm even more curious."
For Bari to call it gruesome.
Just how bad was it.
.
.
Bari's creepy Research Lab.
The scenery changed drastically every time he came here, always giving that sense of adventure.
The first sight was a biological experiment hellscape.
It felt just like visiting the android lab in the movie Alien, with horrors scattered everywhere.
Seong-hyeon enduring all sorts of agony without dying, his clones, Jihye's clones, and various Outer Races kidnapped from who-knows-where....
They all had grotesque forms mixed with chunks of flesh and blood, and among them were weird chimeras like heads fused together or twelve heads grafted onto one body.
"Wow. You're really doing some insane experiments."
From their pained expressions, it looked like they were doing live experiments without anesthesia.
"Guh...."
A groan from the corner.
A man's voice, presumably Jack, the human slave who loved Luna.
Why presumably? Because all his skin was peeled off, leaving just muscle exposed.
"Why'd you leave that one like that?"
"Noblesse have long lifespans, right? A creature's lifespan is determined by these things called Telomeres at the ends of chromosomes, and depending on how you handle them, you can live 100 years or 1000. Injecting Nobling into a human body gives power on par with Noblesse, but we haven't figured out if the Telomeres themselves extend, so that's what I was experimenting on."
"Hmm."
What did that have to do with skinning him and tossing him aside.
"But you can extend lifespan with other stuff too, right? Like nanobots. Or like you said, just make a new body... Do you really need to use Nobling for it?"
"Hehe."
Bari suddenly laughed.
A chilling laugh that, combined with the surroundings, sent goosebumps all over.
"That's tech for the bioweapons I'll make later. If Telomeres can be lengthened through Nobling and vitality restored, then conversely, you could burn that power in a short burst for way stronger output. Like injecting stimpacks from StarCraft to act as a biological trigger, or with a little tweaking, turn it into a Bio-bomb packed with viruses."
"You're seriously evil."
"What's that supposed to mean? AIs don't have concepts of good or evil, Master."
She smiled brightly, but it only gave him the creeps.
"If I ever end up like that, I'll kill myself. No confidence I could keep living."
"That'll never happen to you, Master."
"Good."
Leaving Jack behind, they walked on and a new scene appeared.
No biological vibe(?) this time, just SF designs you'd see on a spaceship.
Flickering displays everywhere, endless wires snaking around.
If humans were researching here, they'd at least tidy it up a bit for people to understand, but nope.
Only Bari needed to get it anyway.
"What's that? Bones?"
"It's a new weapon. Figured it was about time for some soldiers, so I made it. You've seen the movie, right? Terminator."
"......That?"
"Something like it."
He approached.
Definitely bony skeletons.
Bones like you'd see in a museum, but these were combat Android robots infused with the essence of science.
"But why this design? Could've made 'em look human."
"Then they wouldn't be as scary. Less intimidating. But if bones come alive and start moving, won't the people here freak out plenty?"
"No monsters like that here? It's fantasy-ish enough."
"Yes. No undead."
"I see."
"So I named them Skeletons."
"...I like it?"
Skeletons, huh.
Mass-produce these and march around, and he'd be a mecha necromancer.
"How's the combat power? They're not just gonna swing swords around, right?"
"Planning to equip them with Railguns as standard."
"Oh. Nice."
A wave of bone robots marching and blasting guns? Total fantasy.
Sihwan's eyes sparkled.
"This is just the prototype. Full production and mass manufacturing goes through the Factory."
"You're better than a Research Lab, as expected. Good job."
"...The Research Lab is basically me."
"Oh yeah, right."
"......."
Sihwan awkwardly pointed at something new.
"What's that?"
"That's the frame for the new Suit I mentioned before. Let's call it Mk-2."
"Oh. Looks badass. Mk-2, huh."
"The Suit you're wearing now has great defense, but everything else sucks, right?"
"It's not that bad... but yeah, So-ri totally outclassed me."
"Rearranged the Nobling particles so they respond to specific signals for muscle action, then coated it with Reflexium for both defense and power. But for now, you can't use the rearranged Nobling for Coding or anything; it's muscle action only. That'll be solved later with the Nobling injection procedure."
"Hmm... So power and defense both get better, yeah?"
"Yes."
"When's it done?"
"About a week. Quite a bit gets lost in the Nobling rearrangement process, so securing enough is tricky."
Nobling could be extracted from female Noblesse (clones) based on Jihye, but cloning them took time and resources too.
"I see. So when can we do this Nobling injection procedure?"
"Needs more experiments. So far, only Seong-hyeon-ssi's masculine Nobling, Jihye-ssi's feminine Nobling, and stuff born from mixing their genes. We need Nobling from more genetic types. Even better if it's from powerful families like the Ha Family or Yu Family."
"Can't use them for experiments. They're my girls."
"Right. So I thought of one method."
"?"
Bari projected a massive building design into the air.
"Open a women-only massage shop. Pick out decent-looking regular Outer Races or whatever Advanced whatevers, give 'em a quick rub, and if Noblesse show up, rub 'em and extract Nobling too."