"Aoi." Antikythera addressed the surgeon once he was close enough to her operating room. The girl didn't respond to him and shoved a soldering iron into the man's arm, causing him to twitch in pain and scream against the harness over his mouth. He began to fil, but he didn't get far.
"Aoi." Antikythera addressed her again. This time, he began walking toward the focused surgeon. When he called for her a third time and still did not get a response, he opened the door and dragged her away from her work. She almost punched him, but she quickly realized what she was about to do and stopped.
"Antikythera, I have a job to do. Please do not disturb me." Aoi tried to get away from his grip, but the Automaton held firm. "What are you doing? He is going to die!"
As if her words were a command, the man on the operating table began to twitch, and moments after that, the beeping heart monitor next to his bed ftlined. Aoi looked more annoyed than anything else as she gred at Antikythera.
"What do you want?"
"I have a task for you, one which I know you will find much more fascinating than operating on these failures." Antikythera gestured at the man, who was obviously an organic from the factory. He died as he lived—useless. He couldn't even do the simple task of moving a wheel to produce electricity. Pathetic.
Aoi's interest was piqued, and she moved his mechanical hand away from her shoulder. The surgeon washed her hands in a nearby sink while gring at Antikythera.
"This better be good," she said. "Otherwise, I don't see the point of you disturbing me from my work!"
"A schor must lose a subject or two for them to succeed," Antikythera teased with a wave of his index finger. "But enough about that—I will not tolerate any further disrespect from you now that I have broken you out of your fugue."
Aoi looked at her now bloodless gloves and clicked her tongue. She nodded.
"Fair enough. What task do you have in mind?"
"Task? No, tasks. Plural," Antikythera corrected. "You will need to design an organ you can impnt into a living being that causes them to mutate over time. Whether that organ produces pheromones or organically synthesizes potions from the diet of your future test subjects is irrelevant right now, as long as it causes them to mutate into a more magical version of their species."
"Why?" Aoi asked. Her confused expression betrayed her raw curiosity. It did not make sense to her, simply put.
"I suppose Sakai has failed to inform you of this for fear of ruining your fugue, but Nazarick is no longer in Helheim. It has been relocated—possibly to an entirely alien world from the ones we know of," Antikythera expined. Gd that he now had the surgeon's full attention, he began adding details to entice Aoi. "There are creatures out there that are considered magical, but they are still weak."
"And you want me to mutate them." Aoi raised an eyebrow.
"Yes," Antikythera pushed an index finger against the surgeon's chest. "You and Asuka both. I want you to man breeding dens for potential candidates of this particur experiment. Sakai has begun producing scouting units throughout the factory, so it shouldn't be long before we get information on the various species of this new world."
"For the time being, you wish for me to design the organ?" Aoi's question had a tinge of excitement to it.
"Yes," Antikythera moved aside to let a nurse pick up the carcass on the operating table. Organics—why do they decay so quickly? Revolting. "Should you remain without a product once we have information on the species avaible to us, I will task Asuka with selectively breeding magically weak or perhaps even regur animals with the fauna we have within the tomb."
"Such as?" Aoi pushed the door open for him.
Antikythera stepped through and nodded at the surgeon in thanks.
"A Bicorn breeding with a regur stallion-like species. We will first ensure that any consecutive generation from various species is not infertile before moving on to the next test, which would be to create a rge enough popution of this new breed to start mass-producing them."
"And where would the organ be in all of that?" Aoi looked at Antikythera specutively. "I assume I would impnt it without harming the creature?"
"Yes. In fact, I want it to never produce side effects on the perceived baseline in the future," Antikythera expined. "Which means we would require a surviving prototype—and not to mention, the prototype must be able to breed without any genetic problems in its offspring whilst providing all the benefits of being sired by a more magically inclined organism."
"That'll keep me occupied for the foreseeable future," Aoi muttered. "But I am up to the task."
"Good, and I expect you to do well," Antikythera dismissed the surgeon. "Now go and do what you need to do to start creating the organ. I have a meeting with Asuka, and after that, Hana."
Aoi left him to go somewhere—the maternal wing, perhaps? Plenty of organ-making devices there. Antikythera moved across the hospital in his lonesome, passing by nurses who avoided him and mechanical thralls long dead but still moving thanks to the efforts of the workers within the building.
Antikythera entered an elevator, one full of nurses. They all stood stiff at his presence and quickly rushed out at the first floor they stopped at when the doors opened. The ck of external presence allowed Antikythera to allocate more of his processing power toward guiding the oncoming meeting with Asuka.
The mad doctor/necromancer would be happy to see him—or so she pretended all the time. In truth, just like most of her colleagues, Asuka did not like being disturbed from her work, and a sudden meeting called by Antikythera fell into that category. However, the Automaton was confident that Asuka would be delighted by the task he had at hand, especially when she learned that Lord Ainz himself would benefit from her efforts.
The top floor of the hospital changed in decor from sterile white halls without any outstanding features into a kind of office with potted pnts, a blue carpet on the floor, and peach-colored walls. Most of the rooms here were empty—unoccupied, seeing as there were no other workers besides the three beings created by the ones who built the hospital itself. Antikythera had learned that Hana had begun using the rooms for her own purposes as of te, but progress was slow. Because of that, only a few of the rooms were full of half-finished projects.
According to his creator, walking through the empty hallways of this floor felt uncanny—"backroom-like," whatever that meant. Still, Antikythera was designed not to feel liminally disoriented, so whatever effects Lady Yamaiko pced around here did not affect him.
Antikythera turned and saw a blue door at the end of the hallway. The repeating potted pnts across every door were a design fw, in his opinion, as they detracted from what could be a beautiful office scene. Had the Supreme Beings practiced spacing and put more thought into where potted pnts should go, the aesthetic would have been improved. The offices around here, too—while possessing furniture—all had the same basic desk, monitor, and chair, making them feel inefficient to him.
Overall, Antikythera did not like what Lady Bukubukuchagama, Yamaiko, and Ankoro Mochi Mochi had done to this pce. He and his creator shared the same feelings in that sense.
His bsphemous thoughts were put away when he reached the blue door at the end of the hallway. Antikythera opened it without knocking and stepped inside Asuka's office.
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