"Adam, is it?"
On the deck of the Dawn warship, Tsugikuni Yoriichi slowly lowered the long blade resting against the artificial human Adam's neck. Lowering his head slightly, he looked at the somewhat slight "boy" before him and asked.
Something was wrong with Adam's condition. His originally wheat-colored skin had turned red, and white vapor rose from his body as though he were boiling water.
Tsugikuni Yoriichi did not regard Adam as a tool. Instead, he spoke to him as he would to any normal human being.
However, it seemed Dr. Vegapunk had not given Adam language capabilities. Faced with Yoriichi's question, the artificial human merely raised his head slightly in response.
Seeing this, Yoriichi was briefly stunned. Then Dr. Vegapunk's voice came from the badge on Adam's chest:
"Yoriichi, Adam's ability to comprehend language is still rather limited."
"His destructive power is simply too great. To avoid causing trouble for ourselves, he can only understand the most basic commands."
"Although he looks no different from a human, Adam is not human in essence. He is a cyborg."
"His ability to think only functions during battle."
"He cannot understand what you are saying."
When a powerful "new weapon" was born, the most important thing for its inventor, Dr. Vegapunk, was not to make a cyborg like Adam indistinguishable from a human.
Independent thought was not necessarily a good thing for a "weapon."
A weapon's power was certainly important, but to its user, whether it could be controlled was what mattered most.
Just like Adam, standing before Tsugikuni Yoriichi now—an Adam without thoughts who obeyed only commands—was a qualified weapon.
It was inhumane, but it was indeed Dr. Vegapunk's best way of protecting himself and the researchers on the island.
"No thoughts of his own? So he's just a weapon?"
"A