Ch.5555. Nano-Virus

After Seri killed the Orc Lord, the morale of the orcs who witnessed their ruler being slaughtered before their eyes naturally plummeted.

With Seri standing before them—the one who had killed such a powerful Orc Lord without sustaining major injuries—the orcs couldn’t overcome their fear that she might attack them next and kill them on the spot.

So the orcs began fleeing the fortress without looking back, but…

‘Order them to handle this, Seri.’

[Yes, Captain!]

The orcs, scattered into fragments and fleeing without looking back, were being methodically hunted down by a thousand lizardmen wyvern cavalry mounted on 6th-grade wyvern beasts.

Thanks to their minds (souls) being connected to the hive mind, they could share information in real-time, going beyond simply sharing orc positions to borrowing each other’s line of sight during combat.

Moreover, their equipment was far from ordinary.

Though they appeared to be primitive gear made of roughly processed leather and bones, they were actually cutting-edge weapons created using nanomachine-transformed bone and leather particles.

Naturally, the scattered orc remnants were no match for these forces, and fewer than ten orcs managed to survive from those who fled the fortress.

After dealing with all the orcs in the fortress, I formally reorganized my army’s structure to clean up the remaining orcs.

First, I divided the Drakemen riding Gallimimus (provisional name) and Raptor (provisional name) into squads of roughly ten each and deployed them to hunt down the dispersing orcs.

I also assigned two lizardmen wyvern cavalry to each squad as reconnaissance and air support, thus completing the hunting teams for pursuing the scattered orcs.

Then I separated the Drakemen riding Triceratops (provisional name) and Ankylosaurus (provisional name) into what I called demolition teams, also divided into squads of six.

The demolition teams’ role was to directly attack orc villages, primarily destroying buildings and scorching the settlements, while the fleeing orcs would be handled by the faster hunting teams.

This orc hunt operated with factory-like division of labor, but I had prepared something extra just in case it wasn’t enough.

This special nanomachine developed in the hidden secret laboratory of nano-tech is essentially a special virus made by possessing nano-spirits with nanomachines.

Normally, it exists as mere nanometer-sized particles floating in the air, with enough penetrative power to enter the body not only through the respiratory system but also through the skin.

Once inside the body, this nano-virus gradually accumulates, cunningly mimicking bodily organelles like red blood cells, making it difficult to detect through examinations.

And if more than 5g of this nano-virus accumulates in a living organism’s body, it begins its full-scale activity.

First, the nano-virus attaches to nearby cells, destroys their membranes, and invades.

Once inside, the nano-virus devours cellular organelles, replicates itself to replace those parts, and through this chain reaction, the infected person’s body gradually transforms into nanomachines.

After about a minute of this process, between 50% and 70% of the infected person’s body transforms into something mechanical.

Mechanical arms with 3-8 sharp hunter claws emerge, legs typically become reverse-jointed and transform into bird-like feet suitable for perching.

The heart, lungs, and internal organs are reduced to only the parts necessary for minimal life support, with the digestive system completely transforming into a degraded bio-core that supplies energy needed for survival.

The mouth and respiratory system, naturally becoming unnecessary, remain only as parts to supply external oxygen, while one eyeball completely transforms into a camera-like structure.

Finally, the spine transforms. It resembles the implant with thought acceleration functionality that I often use, but it actually contains a semi-artificial intelligence designed for combat.

Ultimately, those infected by the virus are reborn as monsters—outwardly a horrific hybrid of machine and flesh, but mostly machine inside—who, despite retaining their consciousness, eliminate all living beings they see.

Of course, this virus has clear limitations.

The machine-monsters born from infected individuals are at least 8th-grade beast level but at best 7th-grade, and while they don’t attack each other, they attack everything else, even me.

They cannot survive inside psychic users above a certain level or intermediate-grade beasts due to the flow of psychic energy or force fields, and even if infected, one dose of the easily developed nanomachine treatment cures them.

Additionally, since the virus’s lifespan is only a few minutes at most, it can never be used as an ordinary biological weapon, but there’s nothing better for use as a poison gas.

And now, I’m thinking of using this nano-virus on an orc village on the outskirts of the plains.

By dispersing it and turning all the orcs on the outer plains into machine-monsters, I aim to create a kind of dead zone (inaccessible area) to prevent orcs from leaving the plains.

‘Tetra, for a moment… No. I’ll do it myself.’

I initially thought of entrusting the control of the Hive Flight for dispersal to Tetra, but upon reconsideration, I decided it would be better to move it myself.

[Activating Parallel Thought (A).]

[Activating Psychic Concealment (A).]

[Activating Psychic Concealment (A).]

[Activating Psychic Concealment (A).]

[Activating Psychic Concealment (A).]

[Activating Psychic Concealment (A).]

After developing the Hive Flight concealed by Psychic Concealment (A) at a secret airfield somewhere in North Hamgyong Province, I quickly dispatched the Hive Flight to each target location.

It didn’t take long for this beast, carrying capsules on its underbelly, to reach the airspace above the orc villages located at the edge of the plains.

Within just a few minutes of reaching the target locations, the Hive Flight dropped one of the capsules from its underbelly into the center of each orc village.

Crack—Pssshhhhhhhhh…

These rugby ball-sized capsules broke upon impact, and the nano-virus compressed tightly inside spread rapidly like expanding gas.

Keck! Keurk! Kegek!

Keeee… Thud!

Orcs exposed to the high concentration of nano-virus fell to the ground choking, and soon began convulsing violently, presumably from the terrible pain of their bodies mutating.

During their convulsions, waste matter flowed out as foam from mouths that gaped wide with no sign of closing, and at almost the same moment, visible changes began in the orcs’ bodies.

The first to change was the skin. The green skin, mainly on the torso and head, was torn apart as metal fragments took its place, naturally replacing parts of the skin as if they had always belonged there.

Next to change, surprisingly, was the lower body. The original legs either fell off and regrew, or a new pair grew from the pelvis—the forms varied, but the newly formed legs all had a reverse-joint structure.

The arm changes, meanwhile, were even more irregular.

Except for the fact that a part of the body would suddenly swell and a mechanical arm would burst through the flesh, everything else varied.

The transformation form, number, size, number of joints, shape, presence and number of fingers, presence and shape of attached blades, and various other aspects differed as arms emerged.

Finally, with the head becoming cyborgized, all orcs and beasts present, regardless of age or gender, transformed into machine-monsters.

Ch, chee… cheeee?

With one exception—the only intermediate-grade orc remaining in the village.

Naturally, machine-monsters that were at best 7th-grade couldn’t possibly match an intermediate-grade orc, but the same was true for the intermediate orc whose family and brothers had become machine-monsters.

Cheeee… Puweeeeee!!!!

Unable to bring himself to harm his family members who had grotesquely transformed, the intermediate-grade orc couldn’t even pick up his weapon, and though he should have deployed a force field for self-protection…?

‘Oh? Could it be that shocking?’

Perhaps the sight was too traumatic for the intermediate-grade orc, as he remained frozen in place and died at the hands of what had once been his family.

‘Ah, so I can’t test it…’

I had originally planned to snipe the intermediate-grade orc from the air, but due to his unexpected family attachment, he just stood there blankly until he died.

And as I was quietly preparing to leave after confirming that the same phenomenon was occurring in other villages.

Psuk!

Suddenly, there was a sound of flesh tearing from the orc, and changes occurred in his body, instantly transforming the intermediate-grade orc into a machine-monster.

‘Oh? …Could it be?’

After a moment of surprise, I realized that the nano-virus, while unable to infect an intermediate-grade beast while alive, could apparently infect and mutate the corpse.

‘Well, then I don’t need to deploy separate forces for intermediate-grade beasts. That’s fortunate.’

Of course, I was simply pleased that with intermediate-level machine-monsters present, I wouldn’t need to deploy separate beasts to stop fleeing intermediate-grade orcs.