"Is this your trump card?"
"Overloading your output, cramming everything left in your Spirit Origin into your Noble Phantasm, then firing it off without a care for your life?"
Before setting out, Norla had once had a conversation like this with Napoleon.
"If that's the kind of move you mean, don't you have one too?"
"I recall you telling me about it, young Norla."
The Emperor of France stood before the young monster. There was not the slightest trace of pain or regret on his face; instead, he wore a proud smile.
"Mine."
Norla's body trembled instinctively upon hearing those words.
He knew what he meant, and he knew what Napoleon was referring to.
Collapse.
Serim's experimental concept back then had actually been extraordinarily bold and comprehensive. If everything had gone smoothly, he might truly have created the perfect artificial humanoid familiar for the Zolgen Family. But he had overlooked one thing.
That was—the resistance inherent in life itself.
Life would instinctively find the way it was meant to exist. If it could not, then it would cease to propagate—perhaps to preserve itself, or perhaps... to destroy both sides together.
Preserve resources. Preserve life. Preserve what it wished to keep.
Serim Zolgen had overlooked that instinct.
And so, the test subjects underwent [collapse].
Life did not wish to survive in that form, so it rejected his alterations. That was all there was to it.
When the early Einzbern homunculi collapsed, the effects had not been particularly powerful. Their cell membranes simply ruptured on their own, turning their entire bodies into pools of pus—but even that was horrifying enough. Aside from Ruslan, who had gone into hiding within history, Serim's other two assistants had chosen to withdraw from the experiment because they could not endure such an inhumane sight.
Even though,