Kumo desu ga, Nani ka? 279

Dr Shiro has some good news… and some bad news.

279 – Dundun Dun Dundun

I was able to introduce imouto-chan and Natsume-kun to each other. As for what I can do next, that would be the analysis the body of Cyborg Potimas. I left vampire girl with Waldo-kun, and I’ll have them capture the fort together. I’d already returned Felmina-chan to the demon territories, and set her to work on the arrangements for countermeasures.

Once I’d placed those two in their posts, I entered the other dimension where I’d left Potimas’s body for storage. There I began to dismantle the Poti Body that was laid out. I feel like a doctor about to start an operation. “Scalpel!”, as it were.

I don’t need a scalpel though and carefully begin the dismantling using my hands. But, just what is this body? It was beyond my expectations for it to be a full-body cyborg though. My rough expectation was that it would use the elf’s flesh body as a base, with various machine parts embedded here and there, but in fact it’s all machine parts except for the brain and some critical organs. Hey, this is practically a Terminator.

Even for me, machines are outside my area of expertise, so I can’t determine what the various functions are. Somehow or other, I can tell that this bit is life support, and these are motors and so on, but regarding the details such as the theory behind it’s operation I have no idea.

However! That only applies to the machine parts. The workings of the magecraft-like features engraved into the machine parts is something that I do understand. Since I’m a god after all. If these were straightforward machines like what would be produced on Earth then I would have to study mechanical engineering from the basics, but for something produced by the elves to have no magecraft elements at all would feel like an absolute fraud you know. If this hadn’t had any of that then I’d seriously cry.

While taking apart the machines, I analyse the magecraft carved into them. For now I will ignore the purely mechanical machine parts. I can’t understand what I don’t understand after all. Well, the completely mechanical parts with no magecraft are not actually important anyway. At worst they could have nuclear weapons, right? … Actually, maybe I shouldn’t joke about that huh. W, well, maybe possibly probably it’ll be okay. It doesn’t have a small nuke installed for power, or so I hope.

I continue with the dismantling even more carefully than before. The disassembly is almost completed.

Hrm. The results of the analysis shows that this body does not have significant magecraft applied to it.

Firstly, there is magecraft applied to enhance the hardness of the entire body. In status value terms this would be a defensive ability boost. Likewise, there’s magecraft to raise the maneuverability. In status value terms this would offensive ability or speed. There’s various other things built in as well, but they’re only either there to assist the above two magecrafts, or things that are designed to be able to quickly activate simple offensive magecrafts. The only one which seems to have a high offensive ability is the one installed into the arm that wounded vampire girl which fired something like a laser beam, but it seems to be a combination of machine and magecraft so unfortunately I don’t understand the details.

To put it plainly, the magecraft used within this body, is nothing more than an imitation of the magecraft used by the System to give status values to the inhabitants of this world as if it was natural. This isn’t certain, but I think that this body operates outside of the System’s assistance, and doesn’t receive the benefits of the status values. That is why the exterior was specifically strengthened.

However, the degree of that strengthening is pretty decent. Putting aside the offensive ability, wouldn’t the defensive ability reach something like 10,000 in status value terms? I myself don’t receive the benefits of status values anymore, so this is nothing more than a guess though. It sure is inconvenient not be able to use Appraisal huh. Well, considering the time when it was able contend with vampire girl in melee combat, it can be clearly seen that it has a considerable amount of combat ability though.

Even with that level of combat ability, it won’t become a threat from my point of view. If they have many of these, then it would probably be tough for vampire girl and oni-kun for instance, and for an ordinary soldier just to take them on one-on-one it would be pretty hopeless though. The Demon King or I would be entirely out of reach. If you wanted to defeat the Demon King with these, then it’d be impossible unless you prepared more than 10,000 of them. Against me, no matter how many there are, it’d be a completely pointlessly futile waste of time!

Ahem. However, that’s only assuming that these are the elves’ trump card. Considering the technological level of this body, from my perspective, it seems to be ancient. What served to kickstart my apotheosis, was the underground ruins from the old world. In comparison to the technology applied to the robot army I saw there, there’s almost no difference in the technology level applied to this Poti Body.

Then the elves haven’t developed beyond the technological level of the old world? No, I don’t think that’s the case. The proof of that, is that this Poti Body, was manufactured long ago. When I performed an analysis on the activated magecraft, the period of activation is easily more than 800 years. In other words, it means that this body has been in existence for at least 800 years. The brain might well have been replaced though, as it’s practically the only living tissue within the body.

It’s better to think of this as an old model body. I don’t know the significance of it being used in this situation though, but it’s not a recent model. It was probably considered that this old world body would be able to manage I guess. In practice, this would be quite a difficult opponent for anyone other than the Demon King. While vampire girl and oni-kun can beat it, I guess it’s at the level where it’s hard to say whether or not Mera could beat it. I’m sure that Kuro has subordinates who could beat it, but I’m not including them in my calculations.

Hmm. Conclusion: the elves might be bad news.

It’s completely unknown how much they’ve progressed their technology since this body, but at the very least this is the absolute minimum. If I get serious then I don’t think I could lose, but it might become a situation where I’m forced to consume more energy than expected. I want to avoid that as much as possible though. Just one more thing to worry about.

Translation notes:

“Dundun Dun Dundun” – This is referencing the Terminator theme.

Cyborg Poti, Poti Body – Shiro seems to be having trouble coming up with a nickname for this thing.