Chapter 56: “An Army Corps of Living Objects”
First was to make another living something with the usual metal and Knight’s Grudge. She had already made a ton of armor and swords, so now she’d try with bones. It was full-blown blasphemy, but sacrifices were necessary for the sake of technological advancement; Rare did not fear criticism. From a certain viewpoint, bones should house far more resentment than armor or swords did. She had a feeling that she would end up producing undead from this, but even if she did, it would be a brand new discovery in the field of alchemy. Based on Rare’s sensibilities, “living mail” and such already qualified as undead, but the system didn’t classify them that way; it grouped them together with homunculi and golems.
“Time to get started. [Philosopher’s Egg].”
The crystalline egg that appeared swallowed up the lump of metal and the knights’ remains. She decided to splurge and threw in more metal than usual; she found this out when making the Kenzakis, but when too many materials were put in, any excess would be left over. She originally tried putting in a bit more than she needed, but, while the egg accepted the extra, activating it would only use what was necessary. Incidentally, if there weren’t enough materials, the skill would fail, and while the ingredients wouldn’t be consumed, the egg would break and her MP would be used up. Since it would be difficult to procure more remains, Rare only put in a single rib in order to preserve as much of them as she could.
After she activated [Athanor], the inside of the egg turned a marbled rainbow as usual. Which meant that some kind of monster would be born from this.
“Next, activate [Magnum Opus].”
That reminded her, in one of the announcements, there was something about being able to change the activation keyword for skills. Maybe she should change it to something cooler. Right now, there was no need to change the name of any of these production skills, but there was strategic value in changing the names of spells cast in battle. When enemies were in hearing range, if they could guess the type of spell from the activation keyword, they would have a chance to prepare a defense.
As she thought about all that, the light coming from the egg faded. Inside the egg stood a black skeleton wearing armor of the same color.
“Is this a… skeletal knight, perhaps?”
It was really black. Since bones had such a strong association with the color white, the sight of black bones caused a sense of wrongness that was hard to articulate. When the skeleton broke open the egg to emerge, Rare immediately cast [Subordinate] on it. She had gotten used to this process and knew that monsters she produced would never resist her [Subordinate]. It was probably similar to how Sugaru could immediately command any ants that she birthed.