Chapter 451 – Eugenics in the New World (18)
That was more than 3 years ago.
It was a minor happening around the time when her beloved husband was recognized for her ability and came in as a person in the lab room, and about a year later, he and Dana, who had a good heart, began to talk little by little.
After going out to a distant site to explore the ruins, his arm was brushed against a tree in the jungle, and something like light lacquer was on it.
Unsatisfied with the way his friend endured the pain without showing off, Dana called him during a break and gave him a simple treatment.
─Isn’t this a problem with cellular aging or lifespan? Slave Hassan is a fucking concern.
While still a slave, he wondered if Dana’s magic was strange, and he trembled as if he were joking, then suddenly asked something like that.
It was Dana, who had gotten used to saying things he didn’t understand since then, but she didn’t know what ‘cell aging’ meant. It was because she was an archaeologist, as would a professional wizard.
Dana had never been very curious about how the healing magic she learned from her mother worked. In response to her unsure, he tilted her head from side to side.
─Well, Master Master, what are you trying to do if you don’t know the principle of magic that you use? Would you like to use that magic for a while? I’m fucking curious to see what effect it will have on fungal cell growth.
The place she was exploring at that time wasn’t a ruin that had been converted into a dungeon, so she didn’t have to save mana. Dana willingly poured magic on the mushroom pieces he had collected. As for her curiosity, she was also on the side of not losing to her others.
He couldn’t stop laughing as he wondered why such a trivial experiment was so fun.
─Isn’t the aging problem caused by healing magic? Fucking magic expediency is gone. Let’s do another experiment for a while. Aren’t you curious what would happen if you gave him enough nutrients to multiply and let him over-recover?
Dana stopped laughing at his excited eyes saying that.
Helping plants grow with healing magic.
There were many similar attempts, but I heard that most of them ended in failure. This is because it was not possible to reduce costs enough to commercialize or failed to grow in the right form. There is no particular reason why the Church of Pomona has influence all over the world.
But she nodded her head obediently at the words of a young man with her strange knowledge and brains equal to her own.
I’m saying this now, but——perhaps she, from that time onwards, had already fallen in love with him.
***
Tuquaaang——!!
“… Chit!”
Reflecting on her memories, Dana made a displeased impression of her, avoiding the sharp wind.
She deserved it. She was disturbed from recalling pleasant memories, but she must be having a hard time enjoying it. But it is also true that she is in a very bad situation to think about anything else. Sipping her dust, Dana threw herself on the right side.
“You dodged well! Is it the art of self-defense your father taught you? It’s clumsy, but the beauty’s ugliness is worth watching!”
Could it be that I was really displeased with the fact that I had been pushed back in my speech a while ago? Conand continued to fire magic and seemed more obsessed with verbally harassing Dana than killing her.
He is truly a narrow-minded man. A wad of black cloth flew at Dana, who had a genuinely displeased expression on her face. It was the overcoat that Fran had thrown.
“Dana!! I’ll lend you that!!”
Embarrassment preceded gratitude. Dana was a nun or a priest, if you had to.
He learned a few self-defense moves and was able to strengthen his body with mana, but he wouldn’t be able to dodge magic forever, even if he looked around his cloak. He doesn’t spread his shields to conserve mana, but if Conand increases the density of his barrage a little more, a layer of his coat is meaningless.
“… Awesome!”
However, Dana swallowed her breath when she found an object that functioned as a weight inside the overcoat that had flown without fluttering.
It was the seal of an ogre that their husbands entrusted as insurance. Dana wrapped her cloak and hid her scepter behind her.
“You are playing tricks! Do you think you will miss it!”
Conand summoned a bolt of fire in the troll’s hand. He didn’t know the seal’s power and existence, but he didn’t feel the dense mana rising from Dana’s body.
Then again the hammer stretched out the chain and wrapped around his neck. Quickly judging by slipping his hand through the chain and securing his breath, Conand let out a disparaging laugh at his enemy.
“You are also a master of tricks. Well, what else do you want from a shoplifting half-blood dwarf——Kuh?!”
─Parr! Ignoring the words of contempt, Konand’s eyes trembled as he almost popped out of the chain that tightened him. It was much stronger than before.
“I don’t want to hear from someone who got into trouble with Nord because he doesn’t have that little hair!”
Shirona placed his hand on the shoulder of Fran, who was holding the body of the hammer and wrapped the chain around it.
A tattoo of her witchcraft glowed from her neck. It was magic that strengthened her physical abilities. However, that was magic that could not be applied to others. It was definitely like that when Conand learned.
Is it an application unique to Sirona? Conand was surprised and changed the target he was about to throw at the woman who was his mentor.
“The old witch is arrogant!!”
“Be angry at yourself for giving up on being human!!”
Fran spawned a golem with a knife she threw at the ceiling before her chain, before the fire could turn.
─Kurrureung!
The knife stuck in the well-hewn ceiling of the building vibrates wildly.
The incantation is omitted, and the core does not exist.
The golem collapsed without even taking shape. A natural result.
However, the knife collapsed the ceiling in the process. With the eyes of a dwarf, he identified a point that would not be buried alive, and collapsed the bedrock there.
─Quaang!!
The ceiling of the underground dungeon was heavily pinned to the ground.
The place where the bedrock fell was a chain that was tied tight around Conand’s neck. Fran let go of her hand the moment she felt the weight of the bedrock, and Conand was the only one who was detained as if an iron stake had been driven into her leash.
“Aaaaa!!”
Conand, half of his body turned into a troll, was no heavier than a house-sized rock.
Falling backwards, he didn’t even try to get up, but his hurriedly inserted hand prevented suffocation and his throat screamed out. It is perfect. Dana smiled and thanked Fran for the wonderful time.
“Baby, it suits you so damn well. A dog that bites its owner should be lined up.”
Activate the magic
Dana unstoppably poured the remaining mana into her scepter into her gauntlet and her own spell.
This gauntlet received from the Ulsterians of Gorgalia had no magic for attack. It was enchanted with nothing but magic, such as tying the enemy’s feet, healing wounds, or spreading a shield.
Perhaps it was a relic that helped an ignorant warrior to overcome a predicament that he could not overcome by force.
The truth was pretty good. It was enough to activate similar magic twice and increase the output efficiently.
“The Sword of Light (Claiomh Solais).”
-Chaeeng!
Like a sword coming out of a scabbard, a sword of light rose into the sky.
It was a sword that exterminated the undead with the power of healing mana. Since he even infused the healing magic into the gauntlet, he would have the ability to heal seriously injured people at once.
“What?”
Conand, who was about to break his chains, stopped even doing the unexpected magic.
‘Why [Sword of Light]? No, if the target is not undead, it is possible to generate a healing effect, but——’
Why is she trying to cast healing magic on him?
Are you trying to turn the troll’s body back into a human? It is pointless. His trollization is a phenomenon of mutagenic magic. Magic that heals wounds won’t have any effect.
Or are you trying to stop the pace of trolling by clearing the wounds?
No, it’s not. It was too much mana to spend on pouring water into such a bottomless poison, and it was a perfect timing.
“That, stop!!”
Rather, goosebumps rose up at the completely unpredictable attack. The fear that concealed his identity with the mask of the unknown added to the pressure of the sword he hadn’t even learned that it would be useless and made Conand tremble.
‘Defense—- Damn it, it’s too late!’
Whee ae ae ae liquid—!! Puck!!
Confused, Conand couldn’t block the light sword in time. He missed his neck, which he dodged late, when the blade containing the mana of light was thrust into his shoulder.
If this was an offensive magic, he would have easily blocked it with the shield that Dana and his teacher also use. However, the cause was that the defense was delayed as much as the time when it was rigid without a sense of crisis due to an incomprehensible act.
However, as expected, there was no pain.
[Sword of Light] Is a magic that does not have a spell that converts mana into destructive power. It was only natural that it wouldn’t hurt even if it penetrated the skin.
“Haha!! What a stupid thing!! A golden opportunity wasted… ?!”
Rumble… !!
Conand, who tried to suppress his confusion and laugh, turned his eyes to his own shoulder at the strange sound. The moss-colored skin swelled like a distorted mass of meat, growing larger than his head.
“Oh, haaaaagh?!”
In an instant, the swollen flesh also fused with his trapezius muscle and the skin on his neck, trying to block his airway.
─Bubble!! His over-recovered shoulders protruded like ugly boils, covering the chain of mana around his neck and even his fingers. The wrong expression of regenerative powers crushed the organs inside the body, causing terrible pain.
“Kyaaaaagh!! My body, what have you done to my body!!!”
Conand struggled in pain and strained his hand that blocked the chain of mana.
─Kaching!! The magic that froze the floor disturbed the chain’s mana. When the chains around his neck disappeared, he got up. However, his other hand was already caught in the fusion of his neck and shoulder, and there was no sign of it coming off.
“Gyaheuk?! Aaaaa!!
The slightest movement of his hand sent a sharp pain from his shoulder to his neck.
Conand shuddered at the terrifying sensation of stitching the affected part with his hand stuck in his stomach. As much as the senses of his human days remained, the rejection of his own body, which had become a heteromorph that he could not bear to open his eyes and see, stopped even his movement.
‘Ash, did you over-heal my body by adding magic recovery to your regenerative ability?’
Conand identified the cause with the knowledge he had acquired so far. Unfortunately, his prediction was correct.
Making the body recover excessively, confusing cells, and inducing abnormal proliferation.
That was the number of turnarounds that Dana was aiming for.
“It worked!”
Dana shook her sweaty hair in delight.
It was once when Nord was conducting a simple experiment with a mushroom fungus with a few drops of a recovery potion.
It was a playful experiment, but the mushroom’s spores had swollen disgustingly out of their original shape. It was a common failure example of an experiment to induce plant reproduction with healing mana.
It was a result that would have been absolutely impossible if it were a human, but Dana thought that this attack would work if it was Conand, who had the troll’s regenerative power disproportionately spread throughout his body.
“Stay still, you damn bastard! I’ll make you a snowman!!”
Dana roared and activated an additional sword of light. Conand’s eyes widened at the premonition of death.
The flesh buried in his hand multiplied, choking his breath. Is it because the upper body is out of balance? Even after breaking the chain of mana, it was difficult to get up properly.
“Uh, uh…”
If I endure the burning pain up to the neck and pull out my hand, will this affected area go back to normal?
Or will it regenerate into these hideous boil-like shapes?
If this hideous form remains forever, is there any meaning in killing them and surviving?
“… Ugh!!! Aaaaa!!!”
Throwing away all thoughts, Conand summoned the scattered fireballs and fired them.
Ulster’s ancestors, who misunderstood natural lightning strikes as flames, recreated the phenomenon with mana. The magic that was far faster than the arrows shot by the adventurer, and heavier than the fists that Conand wielded, rushed as if it were about to explode the defenseless Dana’s head.
─Right!!!
With less than a second left before Dana, who had won the odds, carelessly forgot her defenses and turned into charred flesh——right then.
“Phoenix Wing.”
The man jumped up from the top of the bedrock and struck the thunderbolt with his hand wrapped in blue flame.
─Quarreung!! A red bolt of lightning bounced off the ceiling and covered the man’s face, bursting with dust. He swung his arm away from the dirt in the way and in an instant swept it away. Blue flames and green mana drove away the darkness.
Dana shuddered down her spine at the thought of her near-death, then burst into laughter at the sight of her husband, who radiated a radiant glow even in this dark basement.
“It’s so damn late, damn it. Even if you were just one second behind, it would have been reduced to three wives. Know?”
“No, I know, but I’m sorry. My husband cut 10 kings of the Four Heavenly Kings in 10 minutes, but why is my sister trailing 3 to 1?”
“You fight. That bastard is fucking strong.”
“I think we are almost at the end stage for that kind of thing? Haha. Good night. Just tell me Let me do the tanking for you.”
He stood in front of Dana with a broad back and stared at Conand, who was furiously twisting his eyes.
“What is that like? A hint at a sequel to District 9?”
– Hwareuk.
The flames of the Blood Magic Gong drew a circle, reminiscent of a rat fire game.
