Chapter 184 - Converting An Army

Inserting an ample amount of mana into the core, Shiro watched as the core started to convert Garrick into a Pseudo Nanomancer.

Metal Tendrils started to wrap around the heart as it slowly spread outwards towards the rest of the body.

She needed to be careful about how she controlled this conversion since she had to stop at the 25% mark. Just enough so that his body was no longer under the demon cell's control.

Stopping the conversion at roughly 25%, Shiro widened her eyes as she quickly retreated backwards.

"GAHHH!!!!" Crying out in pain, Garrick could feel his body literally break apart. The nanobots started to turn berserk as Shiro realised that her control over them was slipping.

Frowning in annoyance, she summoned her swords and dashed towards the struggling Garrick.

Slashing a few times with her swords, she killed him before the nanobots turn him into something else entirely.

"Hmm… Seems like I'm lacking something to increase the success rate of the conversion." Shiro muttered seeing the dead corpse that was still pulsing a little.

Sending over a strand of nanobots, she let them consume the body entirely before going back to the prison for more death row prisoners.

On her way there, she was contemplating about what had gone wrong.

'When activating the core inside the host, it would slowly convert their body into that of a Nanomancer's. If the compatibility is low, the host will die. But since the core I created is a 'child' core of my own, it wouldn't be as powerful as my own thus meaning the success is definitely high. Failing like that is definitely abnormal. How did the scientists do it?' Shiro thought in confusion.

Back then, she understood that she was the first successful test subject and was also the most powerful. But this meant that future corrections were also based off of her data. Meaning everything after her was just mass produced frauds that couldn't compare to her. While the description of the item said that it created the SSS rank class, it was still much weaker than what a normal triple S ranked class would be.

If she had to give it a grade herself, it would be SS++. Something more powerful than double S but not good enough to be classed as triple S.

'Since they could mass produce from my data, why can't I convert him over?'

Shaking her head, she grabbed another death row prisoner and made her way back to her room.

Repeating the experiment once more, Shiro made sure that she examined the prisoner carefully for any changes that may occur during the operation.

However, even after moving onto the third prisoner, Shiro couldn't see what went wrong.

Gritting her teeth in frustration, she sat on her chair and glared at the empty space.

"Why isn't it working? My calculations aren't wrong. The procedure is also correct since I f*cking experienced it myself. I know what they do to create more copies so what am I lacking?" She muttered.

Shaking her head, she decided to review what she had learned so far.

During the conversion surgery, the core is planted. Following which, she would imbed it with mana and encourage it to convert the host into a Nanomancer before stopping at 25% conversion.

But it was at this point that the nanobots would suddenly go berserk.

"Hmm… could it be that it cannot stop at 25%?"

Theoretically, the surgery could be stopped midway due to the fact that she could limit the amount of nanobots that are created inside the body. But the reality proved different since the moment she did that, the nanobots revolted in a way and would start to convert the host into something else entirely in order to preserve themselves in a way.

'Maybe because the main objective was to completely transform the host? Since the nanobots are created for the sole purpose by the core during the surgery, stopping it would be denying them of their purpose in life if one was to look at it from another angle.

'Then what if the sole purpose was to just protect the host from demon cells? Rather than giving them the main goal of converting them into a Nanomancer at the start then stopping that process midway, I can make it so that it would only turn them into mechanized soldiers.' She thought to herself as she started to test her hypothesis out.

Grabbing the 4th death row prisoner, she fed him the demon pill before creating a new Nano Tech Core.

Rewriting the purpose of the core, Shiro smiled seeing some decent progress.

[Weakened Nano Tech Core – Red]

A core that is used to create the S ranked class – Nanotech Gunman.

"Hmm… Nanotech Gunman." She muttered in interest. She didn't know that this class even existed. Plus, the only classes that were related to Nanotech was her Nanomancer Class, the branch classes that the scientists made after her and the Nanotech War Machine.

She doesn't remember running into a Nanotech Gunman back in her old life so there was a big chance that this was a branch class that she created herself.

However, that didn't matter since the most important matter was still to see if the conversion surgery is successful.

Implanting the weakened nano tech core, Shiro sat back and observed the changes to the prisoner's body.

The reaction wasn't as explosive as the previous experiments and the nanobots were quite tame in taking over the body. They only latched a small part of themselves to each cell, including the demon cells, and continued to spread all over the body. If she had to describe it, it would be like a parasite.

She was the controller of the parasites that would take over the host's body and prevent the demon from weakening it. This also prevented the demon from possession since it wasn't able to replace the original host of the body.

While her original goal was only to heal the soldiers to stop them from being taken over, she had actually stumbled into a way to fully convert the whole army into S ranked class war machines.

As the nanobots spread all over his body, Shiro waited patiently for his class to change.

[Terim LVL 37 – Nanotech Gunman]

Smiling at the success, she also discovered a hidden perk. She had an innate connection to his nanobots. Not only that, she could give him orders that he would follow.

Flexing her fingers slightly, she saw a layer of nanotech armour form around the prisoner.

The suit itself was that of a matt black with neon blue highlights. In addition to this, there were coils on the back that would gather the ambient mana to help power the suit.

And the best part is that she wasn't strained at all. She was the one giving the command and not the one executing the command meaning that her broken mana links wouldn't be a problem if they're not the one to make the weapon.

Grinning slightly, Shiro 'uploaded' the blueprint of the sniper into the soldier's mind and had him create it.

Lightning and metal sparked a little as a simplified version of her sniper appeared in the man's hands.

"Mn, not bad." Shiro smiled in satisfaction. Since this man was a successful experiment, she wasn't going to kill him but instead make the most out of him.

Walking towards the window, Shiro looked around and saw Lisandra distributing the drinks in the distance.

Since she had already made her into the carrier, nanobots were currently infecting everyone in the army.

The next stage would naturally be to convert them into Nanotech Soldiers but she had to do that manually unless she was able to have the nanobots inside each soldier convert themselves into weakened Nano Tech Cores.

Looking at the newly transformed Terim, Shiro smiled ambiguously before flickering away from her spot. Of course, she made sure that Terim couldn't run away since he's a valuable resource after all.

Returning with the fifth and final prisoner, she fed him the pill before converting him. She wanted to make sure that it was safe in case anything goes wrong.

With two Nanotech Gunmans by her side, she was going to let them be her controllers.

Placing her hand on their heads, she sent shocks through their brain to make them braindead. Linking up both the nanobot network, Shiro set it up so that they would be the first 'batteries'.

Once everything was prepared, she closed her eyes and linked her connection to the nanobots that Lisandra had infected everyone with and redirected their link to the two 'batteries' in her hands.

She set down instructions for the nanobots inside both of their bodies and watched as they slowly converted each of the soldier's nanobots into a Highly Weakened Nano Tech Core. This was due to the fact that they were technically the 'source' now which meant the classes they make were inferior to them.

Of course, she made sure that the core didn't convert them just yet since she was going to keep it a surprise for the spy.

Sure she may not have the power she had hoped to get from the army, however, it was better than straining herself for a huge army. Plus, she wasn't going to get through them all in time. She was just going to focus her attention on the high level soldiers and make them into generals of sorts where their combat power would be much bigger than the average soldier.

Setting up a few devices on the two battery's bodies to make sure that they didn't run out of mana while converting the army, all Shiro had to do now was to plant the core in the high level soldiers herself to ensure that their combat potential improved.

Making her way over to the training area, she started to wonder about the time she had left in this quest.

'So far I've been here for almost a month which is around 30 hours in the outside world. The Recruitment Demonstration was set to be a week from before so I still have a little more than 5 days outside which is around 4 months or so in this place. But that's the upper limit so I'd say around 3 months is a safe bet.' She thought to herself.

Depending on what happened, 3 months should be more than enough time for her to class up. But that was only if she got lucky with the items. But, seeing as though there were items that she couldn't get from this place, that was very unlikely.

"Well if a reward like the wish bag is given as the lowest tier reward, surely I'll be able to get it inside the dungeon as well right?" She muttered to herself.

Dismissing that thought for now, Shiro arrived at the main camp.

"Miss Shiro, what brings you here?" One of the generals asked. He was level 47 and was by far one of the higher level people she's seen in the kingdom.

"Can you bring me all of the people who are higher than level 40 and have the rank of commander or higher?" Shiro asked with a smile.

"Of course, but is there any particular reason to this?"

"Hmm, think of it this way, what I'm going to do may seem like nothing but it will play a big part in the war to come. I can't tell you what it is since the effects would be diminished." Shiro replied.

"Understood." The general replied.

Not too long after, he returned with all of the commander rank and above soldiers waiting outside of the tent.

Looking at their numbers, Shiro couldn't help but feel the corner of her mouth twitch a little.

'F*ck me, even if you give me a week, I don't think I can go through all of these people.' She thought to herself.

Quickly making a mental note in her mind, Shiro decided to make all the generals have cores that would convert around 30% of their body. This will allow them to then give the captains weakened cores that will only convert around 25% and then the commanders will have the highly weakened core which will only convert 15 to 20% of their body.

This way, she would only need to focus on the few generals that were in front of her and didn't need to worry about straining her links too much.

"Generals stand to one side with Captains behind them and Commanders behind the Captains." Shiro instructed as they did as they were told.

Walking up to the first general, Shiro placed a palm on his chest and sent mana into his body.

"Don't resist, allow the mana to flow through you." She said while planting the seed that would become the core once the time is right.

"Now I want you to store a little bit of your mana into the captain's bodies. As for the captains, once the generals store a bit of their mana into you, you will then store some into the commanders." She called out while moving onto the next general.

Nodding at her instructions, they did as they were told. After all, the king did pass down an order saying that they should follow the royal tutors' instructions where possible.

Repeating the process with the other generals, she then had some small chat with them before leaving.

"Now that the seeds are sown, the moment the generals are converted, the captains will follow right behind them along with the commanders." She muttered in satisfaction.

All that was left for her to do was for her to wait.