Darius was naturally pleased with his creation over the past few days. After learning a perfected version of the Soul Curse, he could now benefit from the Supreme System's help and inject Skill Points into it to further power it up.
However, Darius did not rush into this. Rather, he moved on to draft another spell, this one of the Blood Element with the same effect. This one was simpler to research and took far shorter thanks to the great variety of Queens available to him.
He dissected them, took blood samples, and observed their DNA makeup with the help of Miranda. It took the father-daughter duo only 3 days to record all the information they could about the now 7 Queens Darius had as well as the differences between them.
With this crucial information, the two of them began working on the Blood element spell with these parameters in mind. This was even smoother and easier than with the Spirit Element version, and took Darius a total of 2 days to achieve it despite him being more attuned with the other element
With a smile, he tested it on a random bug and watched as a pale red light entered its body silently and imperceptibly. Immediately, the bug began to show signs of discomfort and thrashed about greatly.
Its thrashing became worse and worse until it eventually stopped, then after 5 more minutes, its entire body melted into a puddle of mucus.
Nodding his head, Darius penned down the spell under the name of Insect Blood Curse before Statically Transmuting and learning it.
[Insect Blood Curse - Level 1 Spell
Grade: Intermediate
Cost: 50 MP
Description: Send a blood curse into the body of a member of the Insect race which deconstructs their DNA and destroys their blood cells from the genetic level. This is fatal to all Insects at the Amateur and Journeyman stage.]
This spell was more direct than the soul version, but it was a single target and could not infect others. Both spells had their advantages and disadvantages over the other, but what was important was the fact that Darius possessed both options at his whim.
If he wanted to slowly weaken a powerful hive before swooping in for the kill, he could use the Insect Soul Curse. If he wanted to take down a specific insect without being detected, he could use the Insect Blood Curse.
However, this was not the end of his work. He and Miranda were now left to work on a specific method to kill the bugs using materials and items that were not magical in nature, but scientific.
With all the information, they already had all they needed to begin work. In fact, with the DNA and soul data of the Insects, Miranda was able to quickly program a special group of nanobots to dissect an Insect in both body and soul.
However, this required a heavy dosage of them, and the effectiveness varied per bug. Unlike the spells which had hard parameters but absolute effects, the nanobots could even theoretically work on Grandmasters and True Lords.
However, it could also fail to work on even the simplest Amateur bug. After all, once injected, Miranda had no control over their programming, and they could encounter a different issue that conflicted with their work that rendered them useless.
As such, Darius took a vial of the specially programmed nanobots and Static Transmuted it to see how much more powerful it would become. The nanobots within glowed brightly for a second before subsiding, and Darius could see no changes.
When he asked Miranda to check on them, she explained that their effectiveness was only slightly better than before.
Darius was then left to sigh as he realized the one weakness of Transmutations - although one might call it a realistic effect- which was the fact that if something was already close to perfection, Transmutation could not add much.
Transmutation, as it was, could not take a normal iron sword and turn it into a god weapon. It would take a normal iron sword and recreate it with the best possible technique that was used to make iron swords.
So within the same category/parameter, Transmutation would take a thing's effectiveness to the pinnacle. Obviously, if Darius tried to static transmute a sword made by a Dwarven Grandmaster Blacksmith, there would not be much change as such techniques were already reaching the pinnacle.
The nanobots Miranda had made had been extracted from the Medipod Darius had transmuted, which already had pinnacle-tier nanobots in terms of quality. Miranda was also a transmuted AI which had the best programming and computing capacity in all of Faust, even able to help Darius make spells.
While the programming itself was not perfect, it was the best that could be done with the information at hand. Its only weakness was external factors, and Transmutation could fix that.
Darius accepted this and had Miranda program a large volume of them into different vials. He originally planned to have only one made and Transmute the rest into existence himself, but since Miranda's work was close to perfection already, he decided he would save the CP.
Now that Darius was done with his work, he pocketed the various Bug Queens that were leftover. They might have another use later on.
He then had a Guard Android rush underground to send a message that he, Darius, was heading to Elysium to clear out the remainder of the restricted archives of God Krona's library.
Before beginning the actual operation, it was best to fill up his knowledge bank as best as he could. There could be some special information in there that might prevent him from creating a disaster for himself or might make his objective easier to achieve.
As such, Darius created a cross-continental teleportation formation before placing it on the ground and selecting Elysium as his target. Naturally, he didn't choose to appear in the City of Divinity itself, but rather on the outskirts of the continent.
After all, it was much more sensible to appear as if he was coming for a stroll from afar rather than show off that he could bypass the spatial blockades of the city directly.
