Tales of the Old World Demon Lord

Chapter 7 – Advancement of human destiny

[2079 C.E]

“If you really needed to call me out all the way to the middle of nowhere you could’ve at least timed it better. Suffice it to say, it was not a pleasant experience getting up at 3AM just to catch a flight half way across the world.”

Moaned an elderly man adorned with the pure white intellectual coat of a scientist. Despite his age he seemed to be in near perfect shape, which was odd considering that he was a man dedicated to his art of science, only doing the bare minimum to maintain his physique.

“My apologies professor, but I thought you would’ve wanted to be one of the first to see this.”

Replied another man dressed in equally lavishing, white lab coat. He was quite a lot younger but nowhere in his being was in the least inferior to the elderly man. As if on cue, finishing their usual banter greetings their tone of voice and expressions shifted immediately to a more serious one.

“You couldn’t be talking about ‘that’ could you?”

The elderly man asked as his eyes widened in surprise. Several thoughts were going through his head as to what the younger man was talking about, of which one immediately came to his attention. Trying to confirm his suspicions the younger man returned a wordless but malignantly intended, intellectual smile.

“Quite so professor, ‘Test Sample 01’ has been prepped for immediate surgery. All other procedures and precautions have been taken, thus all that’s left for the project to go ahead is our direct presence.”

At this moment the elderly man thought he was looking into the eyes of the devil himself. The younger man was the type of person who was willing to do anything, even going so far as to desecrate the providence of god, if it was for the sake of accomplishing his objectives. However the elderly man couldn’t exactly blame him, after all he was from the same kind of strain.

A haunting smile etched across the dry mouth of the elderly man; he too felt exhilarated at what was about to take place. Defiling the domain of god and controlling the destiny of humanity through their own strength. Could there be a more poetic expression of human ingenuity?

“So we’re finally starting it… the Kinesis Enhancement Project.”

The younger man wordlessly nodded.

***

A young woman in her late twenties lay unconscious and stark naked on top of a cold and plain operating table. Her arms and legs bound by advanced heavy metal locks that could never be opened without the operator’s permission. Intense beams of bright light flashed on her face, waking her up only to have her desperately closer her eyes once more from the brightness.

The light pierced through her eyelids causing her irritation to no end but she couldn’t do anything about it as her limbs were bound. She tried to struggle but she couldn’t break free and in the end she gave up and accepted the painful irritation. She knew where she was and she wasn’t there against her will, in fact she had volunteered to be in this position. However it would be within acceptable parameters for her to struggle from the blinding light.

Her charcoal black hair had turned amber brown from the pure intensity of the light. The back of her spine aligned with the flat metal table caused even more irritation from how chilled the table was.

“Ugh…!”

Several men and women paced around the operating table preparing everything for the surgery she was about to undergo. This wasn’t any sort of operation to cure her of any ailment; if one had to put it that way then it was to cure her of the weakness of humanity. She was here to undergo a procedure to become the next step in human advancement; both a great honor and horror.

All of the doctors were masked causing their existence to fade into the back of her mind. However there was one figure in the room that had caught her attention to the fullest, a man in a white coat whose perfectly chiseled face was hidden behind thin framed glasses.

“Sovereign…”

She called out the name of the person who overlooked the preparations through his cold and calculating eyes. Perhaps it was some sort of fleeting affection for the man that she was here now volunteering on this absurd operation. Yet she did not hate this feeling, she embraced it; if she could become of any use to him, be it alive or dead, ‘then so be it’, she thought.

The arrogant and all-important seeming man walked slowly over to her and gently caressed her face with a tender touch. He whispered into ears to reassure her.

“You do not have my permission to die yet; you’re of much more use to me alive than you are dead. To me who has such high expectations of you, do not fail me.”

She could feel the sincerity behind his words relish within her very essence. Of course she wasn’t by any means daft; she understood the exact kind of calculative character that this man was. Yet still, through those words she found the strength to continue living and everything that she was, was for the sake of this man alone. His words were selfish but it was through that selfishness that he showed a touch of kindness; he really did not wish for her to die. That alone was enough.

She would live, to fulfill his design.

“All signatures normal, environmental conditions are all stable. Director, the project can begin on your command.”

One of the doctors spoke out as she checked out the several high tech and complicated looking machinery that was hooked up to the patient. There were two men in the room that had absolute authority, ‘Sovereign’ and his closest confidante. They both glanced at each other and gave a firm nod to suggest that they were both ready.

“Understood doctor, then begin the operation.”

Sovereign gave the command.

With a soft ringing sound all background noise started to fade away as the anesthetic was introduced into the patient’s body. Her consciousness started to fade away and all that could be felt was the slow embrace of the darkness that could overcome the even the blinding torment od the operating lights.

***

“What do you honestly think is the likelihood of success for this operation?”

The elderly man, Sovereign’s closest confidante asked in a whispered murmur behind the operating table. In his mind he had estimated the success rate to only be hovering around the 45 ~ 46 %, but he knew that often times Sovereign had a different view, thus the question.

Sovereign smiled maliciously as he answered.

“Objectively speaking I’m probably with you that it’s around 45 ~ 46 %, however taking into consideration the test subject’s personality… no, the maximum potential of the human will, I’d have to say it’s around 92 ~ 93 %.”

Hearing that absurdly high success rate the elderly man raised his eyebrows with a somewhat minute concern about his sanity. As a man of science they tried their best to take out irrelevant external factors, but here he was, the greatest scientist embracing those irrelevant factors.

“A- are you…”

“Serious? Of course; have I ever been wrong?”

Before the elderly man could even finish his sentence Sovereign had finished it for him. He gave a defeated sigh as he nodded his head, ‘For the sake of the project, I hope he’s not mistaken,’ he thought to himself as he continued to observe the experiment.

A few hours into the operation and with it almost being complete the patient started to get violent. Still being unconscious and mechanically restrained she began twitching and convulsing erratically. The doctors who were unable to continue the operation in this manner stepped back for a bit to wait for her to finish.

However it never did stop, the patient opened her eyes to see her body covered in blood. Her openings were not sealed yet thus even more blood started to spew, creating a rather horrific imagery of a surgery gone wrong in the operating room. Watching back in disbelief the doctors started to pace back to give room as the patient continued to struggle vigorously to escape from the mechanical clutches.

“AAHHHHHH!!”

Screamed the patient, as she let out the ghastly wailing of a banshee everything around her started to tremble. The more she struggled the more blood would come out, thus causing her more pain but then she would continue to struggle creating an endless scene of a literal blood bath.

“Abort! Abort! Abort the surgery!”

It was then something even more miraculous happened. The open surgical wounds on the patient’s body started to heal at a visual pace. All the doctors and even Sovereign’s closest confidante couldn’t believe what they were seeing. The rate of self-repair was beyond anything physically possible but they couldn’t deny their own visions.

“W- what’s… what?!”

The elderly man looked towards Sovereign to try to find any clues.

“Hah… it seems like the operation was a resounding success.”

Sovereign scoffed as his usual cruel smile returned to his face.

“What are you talking about?”

The elderly man asked.

“I took some extra precautions before the surgery began.”

“What are you talking about?!”

“Just a little pet project of mine. [Subdermal Nanite Armor] – Nanomachines that imbue the host with several extraordinary abilities. High speed tissue regeneration is one of them. Of course those nanomachines would only come online if the surgery was a success. After all the entire purpose of this project was to push the limit of biotechnological synthesis.”

Sovereign answered the elderly man’s question.

The elderly man asked back in shock and awe.

“Then… that means we’ve finally done it? She’s a true [Psychokinetic]?”

Sovereign once again smiled maliciously; with this humanity could take another step in its own destiny.

“Yes.”

However not everyone in the room was sharing the same level of exhilaration as the two top level madmen. The nanomachines in her body combined with her newly awakened psychokinetic powers gave her superhuman strength; enough to destroy the titanium clutches on her limbs and set herself free.

“AHHHHHHHH!!!”

With her new found freedom she screamed harrowingly as she unleashed a deadly wave of psychokinetic pulse. One that pushed away everything to the walls and even having enough force to destroy very ground in which she stood on. Everyone in the room had at least minor injuries as the stench of blood started filling up the place.

However Sovereign stood perfectly unhurt with a immovable posture of a formidable foe. This caught the berserking patient’s attention as she slowly made her way over to him. She stared him angrily direly into his eyes for a few seconds before screaming at him once more.

Sovereign stared her down without even a shred of hesitation or fear in his eyes. As though he was looking down at a while beast and despite being considerably weaker he had the aura of a much larger monster.

This mellowed the woman’s rage as she lowered her head. She took a deep breath to regain her posture and mental state. It took a bit of time but she was soon able to reclaim dominion over her own corrupted mind and realized what she had just done. She immediately knelt down to Sovereign and tried to apologize but was stopped at the last second by him.

There was a brief moment of tension even greater than when she was running berserk in the operating room. Everyone had their eyes on Sovereign and wondered what his next actions were going to be.

He offered a hand to help her up.

“Good, you pass. Welcome Yui Kirisaki, to the [Upper Echelon]. From this day you will hence be known as… [Nemesis]; the agent of despair for all those who stand in my way.”

“I hear and obey…”

***

[Eternum Calendar 1971]

The [Kinesis Enhancement Project], the name of that file had verily caught the attention of the curious child. Without hesitation or confusion Morgant easily navigated through the computer terminal as though it was the most natural thing in the world. Doing so he managed the open the intriguingly title file to read its contents.

Unfortunately a lot of the contents of the file were corrupted and thus unable to be loaded correctly due to the aforementioned damage to the physical database server. From what he had manage to make out through the corrupted keys of the file this ‘project’ was to be the next grand step in Sovereign’s design for old humanity.

“[… To bypass human limitations through the employment of ‘Psychokinetic Augmentation’… testing phase 3; use in conjunction with the Mk 7 Gigandoll Power Frame…]”

Morgant started to mumble the words he could read through the article. Though most of it had been obscured he was able to get a mostly clear understanding of what it was trying to say. That being said, he had only minute knowledge from the old world and thus some words could not be properly understood. ‘Psychokinetic Augmentation’ was one of them. However there was one thing that happened to him recently that could be used to gain some insight.

It was during when he and Ren were trying to construct the right arm of the power frame. After its completion a voice had spoken directly into his head, ‘[Gigandoll Power Frame Mark VII, online. Error, Missing core component].’ It had told him that there was a missing ‘core component’ and there was definitely a possibility that the ‘core component’ was this ‘Psychokinetic Augmentation’.

Of course there was no real basis for this other than that one time evidence, but Morgant had felt that his speculation wasn’t wrong. He turned to look at his own hands, they weren’t the same hands that had the capability of creating something of this level, but somewhere deep inside was that power.

“[Psychokinesis… If I had that ability then I could get stronger…]”

Morgant whispered contemplatively, but ‘for what purpose do I need power?’ he asked himself. He never truly had any lifelong goals he wanted to accomplish that would require vast amounts of power. Even if he was ‘Sovereign’ in a different life, that was just it; it was a different life, right now he was ‘Morgant’.

“[Ingrid would it be too far into the realm of fiction for me to obtain such an ability?]”

Morgant asked, remembering that he had someone who could give him some answers. It took a while for Ingrid to answer him, as he waited he could hear the subtle workings of mechanical processors in the background. She was trying desperately to access her database in order answer Morgant’s questions.

“[My apologies for the wait, Director. To answer your question; it is entirely possible. Would you like to partake in the operation?]”

Morgant flashed a smirk. He didn’t need power, he just wanted it.