Chapter 183 - Conversion Surgery

Returning to her room, Shiro sat down on the chair and started to think about what she was going to do.

'For all my talk earlier, I really don't have the confidence. I do know that the pill is the demon possession pill but it should be affecting the conscience along with the body. It might even have something to do with the spirit, I don't know.' Shiro thought to herself in seriousness.

She was lacking in the understanding of the pills and the effects they caused so the first thing she needed to do was to conduct some research.

Of course, she couldn't just kidnap a soldier and experiment on them so she had to get someone else. After all, the research that she'll be conducting would most definitely kill the person in order to obtain more information.

'I should probably get a pill from the king and use it on a death row prisoner or something. I might need more pills though for multiple chances of research.'

Shaking her head, Shiro made her way back to the king and collected a few pills.

Since the king only gave her 5 pills, that mean she had 5 chances to find a cure.

"Hm, a little on the short side but it should be fine." Shiro muttered.

"I'm sure you can do it mum." Yin encouraged.

"Thanks Yin." Shiro smiled and patted Yin on the head.

"Go hang out with Lisa for now and help her hand out the drinks. You can help speed up the spread of the bots." Shiro suggested.

"Hmm… fine." Yin replied after a short moment of thought. While she did want to stay with Shiro for longer, she understood that she couldn't help much and that Shiro needed to figure out a way to cure the pill.

Watching Yin walk away, Shiro started to walk towards the prison cells. The prison had several layers and the one at the very bottom were those who were fated to die without any exceptions.

Since the king had already given her permission for the prisoners since she said that she needed some subjects to test out her new magic.

Greeting the prison warden, Shiro smiled lightly as she asked him to bring her to the healthiest death row prisoner.

Bringing her to the cell, the warden went back to his post.

"Garrick Drev, convicted of several cases of murder and r*pe." Shiro said as she looked at the young man in front of her.

"Heh, to be able to see such a babe before death, what a fortune." He grinned.

"Mn. Tell me, why did you do it?" Shiro asked.

"Why wouldn't I do it? It's not like the kingdom is gonna survive anyways." He laughed out.

"Mn, very well then." Shiro sighed and opened the door to his cell.

"Oh? You're coming in? Why not have some fun with me?" Garrick raised an eyebrow and licked his lips.

"First of all, you clearly don't need this tongue of yours." Shiro replied coldly as her eyes showed no emotion.

*PUCHI!!!!

"AHHHH!!!!" Crying out in pain, Garrick widened his eyes as he saw his tongue pinched between Shiro's fingers.

"You don't need your d*ck either."

Flexing her fingers, an ice dagger shot towards his crotch and cut it off.

Before he could scream, Shiro grabbed his throat and entered the rift.

The warden, who had left earlier, hear a scream and quickly made his way back to the cell. Looking at the tongue and pen*s that was left on the floor, he stayed silent and pretended he didn't see anything. The man was going to die anyways. It doesn't matter how he died.

Meanwhile, Shiro brought the man back to her room.

Creating a small separate testing area from ice, so that the actual room wouldn't get bloody, Shiro locked the man down on a makeshift ice table.

"MNNN!!! MNN!!!!" The man struggled as much as he could but Shiro had already sealed his mouth shut.

"Shh… Don't distract me when I'm experimenting." Shiro narrowed her eyes and smiled slightly.

Creating a scanner, she wired it up to the man's body so that she could see everything that was happening. Forcing the pill into his mouth, she made sure he ingested it before looking towards her tablet.

"Hmm… nothing is unusual right now." She muttered as she watched the pill slowly dissolve into his stomach.

However, just as the entire pill dissolved itself, Shiro noticed a change occurring inside Garrick's body.

"Hou? The cells are being infected by demon cells." Shiro muttered. She noticed how his cells were being empowered and converting into stronger, more powerful demon cells.

'But so far it's just changing the body to express more power. A body that's closer suited to the demon's physiques. I can't see how the maker of these pills could make the demon's possess the humans…' Shiro thought in confusion.

Making herself a chair to sit on, she looked over at Garrick and saw that he was trying to escape. His body was expanding as he was forcing as much power as he could to break out of the chains.

"Hmm… you're speeding up the 'corruption' by forcing out more potential from yourself. Interesting…" Shiro muttered in interest.

Flexing her fingers, several metal nails materialised over Garrick and stabbed into his limbs, forcing him down on the table.

Creating a face mask for herself, Shiro proceeded to make a scalpel and walked next to the table.

"Now Garrick, I don't have any anaesthetic on me so the next part may hurt a 'little' bit okay? But don't worry, I can definitely guarantee that you won't survive." Shiro chuckled with some mirth in her voice.

The first experiment was going to be what happens if she forced the demon cells into a dangerous situation. Would they speed up their corruption progress on the host or would they just die out? If it was the first option, her task would speed up much more since there's at least a guarantee for a reaction. If not, she would have basically wasted a test subject.

*PUSHIII!!!!!!

Tearing into his body, Shiro released several hundred of nanobots inside his body and allowed them to consume their way to the corrupted cells. That way, she'll be able to give the cell's a warning to their impending doom and force them to react.

Frowning at the lack of reaction, she wondered if it was linked to the kind of fear or mental change the host experienced. Since his sped up their corruption in the search of power, that meant his thought process was definitely linked.

Snapping her finger, she put him in an illusion where he was currently fighting for his freedom. While he was winning, it wasn't by a large margin and would encourage him to seek out more power.

Looking at the disgusting grin on his face, Shiro had the urge to just end him here and now but restrained herself.

Checking his full body scan, she saw how the chemicals released by his brain was stimulating the demon cells and encouraged them to corrode his body more.

Making herself a pair of glasses, Shiro zoomed in on to his flesh and started to carve her way towards the infected area. Her glasses were basically microscopes that allowed her to see what the demon cells were doing.

'Hmm, they're kind of like a factory. When he first ingests the pill, a host cell would be created and a link would be formed towards his brain. When he desires power, the host cell would send out 'scouts' to the other cells and convert them over through consumption. It's literally killing him and powering him up at the same time. But why?' She thought to herself.

It's empowering him and weakening him at the same time which seemed a little unnecessary. If it had the power to convert him into a mindless demon, surely it wouldn't need to go out of its way to weaken the host right?

Hence the reason why it was confusion Shiro.

It was as if the cells were making sure he couldn't fight bac-…

'Could that be it?!' Shiro widened her eyes.

Bringing up all the information she stored in her database about spirit type demons, she noticed that they had to possess a dead or unresisting body in order to take over the person without fail. Generally, they would weaken their target and make sure that their spirit is broken before going in for the possession.

The cells were doing something similar.

They were deliberately preparing the host like he was the ingredients to create the main course.

"Which means that if I stopped them from weakening him, it should reduce the chances of the demon possessing his body. But since the cells are consuming him while producing more 'flesh' in a way, I can't kill the cells."

Pausing for a second, Shiro understood that it was probably best to investigate the 'scout' that the main cell would send out before anything.

Carving off a small piece of his flesh, she set it aside and started to mend it back together. But instead of using healing magic, she used nanobots to heal him. She was basically converting a part of him into machinery to support his life. For now.

Making herself a new workstation, Shiro placed the piece of flesh in the centre and started to experiment on it.

After few minutes let her nanobots devour the flesh since the cells died.

"Since it's demon cells, could my fire of life affect it?" She muttered.

Carving away more pieces of flesh, Shiro turned back to her workbench and created a small flicker of green fire.

Making it so that the fire tried to heal a small portion of the flesh, Shiro noticed how the demon cells started to die out. But, at the same time, the cells release this chemical that started to eat away at the flesh.

"Seems like when the cells die, they die along with the host." Shiro muttered.

This was a little troublesome since it meant that she couldn't just on an arsenic rampage in the army in the name of healing. It would literally kill all the soldiers.

"Hais… annoying." She muttered whilst massaging her eyes.

She could kill the corrupted cells but that also meant killing the soldiers. If she left it be, it would be giving more soldiers to the traitor.

She needed a way for her to put the cells under her control so that they won't kill the human nor weaken them.

"I can't heal the soldiers either since my skill would kill them. But if I get a normal healer to heal them, it would just give the cells more food."

"Control… Control…" She muttered while leaning back in her chair.

Of course, anyone who saw the scene right now would be freaked out since Shiro was relaxing like it was a summer day (Winter since Shiro is a snow girl right now). But in the background, Garrick was now screaming once more since Shiro had stopped the illusion.

"Wait, why can't I do the same." Shiro muttered in realisation.

Since the cells were already converting the person over, what Shiro needed to do was to infect the demon cells with her nanobots.

It was basically doing the Nanomancer class conversion on the soldiers but not following it all the way through. The end result would be for her to create an army of cybernetic soldiers that were empowered by nanotech.

Thinking of this point, Shiro narrowed her eyes slightly since it was similar to what the scientists did. She was experimenting with the prisoners before exposing more people to the Nanomancer conversation surgery.

"Tsk, this is literally the meaning of the path to hell is paved with good intentions." Shiro clicked her tongue at this hypocrisy. She hated the scientists for what they had done to her but now she had become the same as them.

Shaking her head, Shiro stood up and walked towards Garrick.

"You know how lucky you are? You're going to be the first person that I attempt to make into a Nanomancer. Well, a quarter of one." Shiro chuckled.

Garrick didn't respond since all of his energy had been spent on screaming for the past few minutes.

Pinching her fingers together, Shiro focused her mind as she had to make sure she didn't convert him into a full Nanomancer. She only wanted to take over the demon cells and at the same time, make sure that the soldiers would survive.

*TZZZ!!!

Lightning flickered rampantly around her hand as she was constructing the most important item in the surgery.

The Nano Tech Core.

"SSS!" Taking a sharp breath in, Shiro flinched as she felt her links strain from creating the core.

However, after a short moment, she smiled seeing the item in between her fingers.

[Nano Tech Core – Black]

The core required in the surgery to gift a person the SSS class Nanomancer, the living war machine that can create anything and everything they think of.

A black grade item, one that was two ranks higher than her Ataraxia which was Orange Grade and is also the second highest grade of items

(Quick reminder of item grades: White, Green, Blue, Purple, Orange, Red, Black and Rainbow.)

Taking a deep breath, Shiro looked at Garrick before shifting her gaze to his chest.

Narrowing her eyes, she plunged the core through his torso and into his heart.

"ARGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!"