Chapter 292: Meeting Willheim Again, Learning About The Next Stage Of Technology

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"Riven! To think I’d see you again so soon."

Riven’s eyes widened. For a second he thought this had to be some kind of nightmare or a hallucination brought on by the fighting. He took an involuntary step back, staring at the large screen mounted on the wall. On the floor near the base of the console lay what little remained of Elias — a torso with one arm still attached and half a face that was somehow still twitching.

That voice was unmistakable. The face on the screen, the smile that always looked like it belonged to the craziest man on the planet. Willheim. The same man obsessed with pushing humanity into what he called "the next stage of evolution."

"Willheim?! What the hell are you doing here?!" Riven demanded. "Wait... a screen? You’re watching from HQ?"

"Precisely," Willheim answered, sounding almost pleased. "I’m connected to most of the Mana Reactors in this city and a few other key areas. Whenever something major happens, I’m usually the first one notified."

"That’s impossible. We blew up the tower that was linked to this place!"

"Oh yes, you did. I’m connecting through the Psionic Network established by the computer behind me."

Riven frowned and looked past the screen. Behind Willheim’s image stood a massive, pulsing brain sealed inside a tall glass tube filled with cloudy liquid. The brain itself was at least fifteen meters tall. A small humanoid body hung from the underside of it, one oversized eye blinking slowly. Thin tentacles dangled from the brain’s surface, and more eyes kept opening and closing across its surface, each one giving off a sharp, uncomfortable pressure that made the air feel heavy.

"It is one of my greatest creations," Willheim said with clear pride. "I call it Genesis-BRAIN. We managed to grow a fully biological computer by letting a small cluster of Genesis brain cells regenerate into a complete organ. Of course, we needed a few vessels to get the process started — brave volunteers who wanted to help us reach the next step of human evolution. And the results? Psychic power turns out to be a cleaner and more flexible energy source than even spirit energy. It can also reach across dimensions without much trouble."

"What are you even talking about?" Riven snapped. "And why are you here? You can’t do anything from a screen!" He raised his sword. "I’m going to destroy this place!"

Willheim’s smile widened. "Hoho. And then what? Perhaps take the dungeon as well?"

Riven clicked his tongue in irritation. The more he thought about it, the more the pieces refused to fit. Could it be that Willheim had already figured out the connection between him and the recent disappearances? If that was the case, why had the old man kept quiet? Riven had taken down an entire branch of the yakuza, and yet he hadn’t heard a single complaint from his family.

Willheim clearly had his own agenda. Whatever goals he was chasing, they required that the rest of the Claymore family never learn the identity of the person responsible for all this chaos.

Somehow, as strange as it sounded, Willheim almost felt like an accomplice.

"Why are you not telling my father about this?" Riven asked, his eyes narrowing. "Or my family? Or anyone else for that matter? What exactly are you planning, Willheim?"

Willheim chuckled, the sound of his wicked laughter was low and almost delighted. His eyes gleamed with a kind of mad fascination that made Riven’s skin crawl.

"Oh, Riven... you’re the specimen I’ve always been waiting for. The offspring of someone very, very dear to me. Although she might be gone now, you remain as the closest thing to the perfection I’ve spent decades searching for."

"...What?" Riven’s voice dropped. "What does that even mean—"

"S-So you’re Riven... Claymore...!" Elias groaned from the floor. His body was already beginning to regenerate. New limbs pushed outward, long and thin like spider legs made of jagged bone. "T-To think a Claymore himself would... do this... t-this insane... hahaha...! I will...! I don’t have anything to do with this, so let me go... okay? I...!"

CRAAASH!

Before Elias could crawl another inch, Vladimir dropped through the broken ceiling like a literal wrecking ball. His claws tore through Elias’s regenerating body without hesitation, ripping him apart piece by piece until nothing solid remained. The final blow shattered Elias’s Blood Core completely.

"G y y a a a a a e e r g g h h!"

Elias’s scream cut off as he died in pure agony and despair, torn apart by something that treated him like meat. It was a miserable way to go, and Riven didn’t spare him a second glance.

Vladimir turned toward Riven, breathing hard. "What’s wrong?! Didn’t you say we had to do this quickly?! And who the fuck is that?!"

"Oho?" Willheim’s attention shifted immediately. He studied Vladimir with open curiosity. "Now, now, what do we have here? A werewolf... with a... dragon? Reptilian? No, wait—kobold arm? You have dragon blood in you! How fascinating! Did you graft that arm onto yourself? No way! Hahahaha! May I take a sample from you?"

"What the hell is this ugly old man even—"

Vladimir’s words died as a tiny fly-shaped machine shot forward and pierced the skin of his arm. It extracted a small amount of blood in less than a second.

"Wait! What the hell?!" Vladimir roared, swinging his claw at the machine, but it vanished into thin air before he could touch it. "Huh?! It’s gone?!"

Riven’s expression darkened. Whatever Willheim was after, it clearly involved more than simple curiosity. The old man had come prepared, and he had already gotten what he wanted.

"Hohoho..." Willheim chuckled, and the fly appeared by his side, flickering as it moved through space itself. "Psionic Energy is truly fascinating, isn’t it? We’re still in the working processes of it all, so not even your father knows well how to apply this technology yet!"

"Tsk!" Vladimir roared. He grabbed one of his axes and fired it straight at the screen, shattering it into pieces.

CRAASH!

BOOOOM!

"Vladimir!" Riven shouted. "Why did you do that?! He was saying something I needed to know!"

"Riven, you’re wasting your time with that useless old fart. We’ve got shit to do here! Concentrate!" Vladimir yelled back.

"!!!" Riven’s eyes widened, then he forced himself to nod. "You’re... you’re right. Let’s—"

"Huhuhuh! Hahahaha!"

Willheim’s laughter kept echoing even after the screen was gone. The walls to their left suddenly filled with cracks, spreading fast before the whole section exploded outward.

BOOOOM!

A massive machine stepped through the rubble. It was humanoid and looked a lot like Elias’ own machine, only bulkier in the shoulders and arms. Dust and broken concrete fell off its frame as it straightened up.

"Elias had a spare machine here, so I’ve decided to control it remotely," Willheim’s voice came from the machine’s speakers. "It hasn’t been that long, but I must see how strong you’ve grown, Riven! After all, you’re one of my most precious specimens—the culmination of my hard work!"

"What the hell are you talking about?!" Riven shouted. "And why do you know so much about me...?!"

"That I cannot elaborate. It would get in the way of my testing," Willheim answered. The machine raised a pair of drill-like arms that started charging with both psionic energy and mana. Sparks jumped between the spinning tips. "For the time being, would you humor me with a test? I want to run a few fighting simulations with you and your friend. It’ll provide useful and valuable data for what I am working on! That little serum your father wanted is more than ready to ship, and unlike the thing that vampire brat drank, it’s truly perfected thanks to you! But I want to run some simulations first, if you would."

"What...?!" Riven stared at the machine. "Serum? There’s a perfected form of what you gave to this brat?!"

"Huhuh... something much better! And once it ships out... Claymore will finally get the invincible army they’ve wanted for so long. World domination won’t be a dream anymore once we can just mass-produce S, SS, SSS, even L-Rank Hunters!" Willheim laughed through the speakers. "Isn’t it fascinating? This is real human evolution, Riven! Relying on Authorities? The System? Skills? HAH! That’s outdated garbage. This is what humans are actually good at. Our tools. Our technology. Our brains."

He smiled with clear insanity from the screen embedded inside the machine. "Now... let’s dance, son!"

The walls to their left suddenly exploded outward. Twisted metal panels and sparking conduits flew across the reactor chamber in a messy shower of debris. Smoke and dust filled the air for a few seconds before something massive started rising out of the wreckage.

It stood about twelve meters tall. The chassis was humanoid, built from matte-black composite alloys layered over a skeleton of synthetic orichalcum and thick living neural cabling that pulsed faintly under the surface.

Unlike Elias’s bright red and overly flashy Exterminator, this one looked cleaner and more practical. The plating was angular, covered in thin violet circuit-lines that glowed and dimmed in time with the distant rhythm of Genesis-BRAIN’s powers.

Two large drill-arms hung at its sides, slowly rotating. Each drill-head was made of nested spiraling blades mixed with mana-conductive crystals and tiny psionic emitters. The chest had a big transparent core filled with swirling indigo liquid, a mix of stabilized decayed mana and refined psychic essence. The head was just a long, featureless helm with a single vertical slit of white light serving as its main optical sensor.

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