Kyle wasn't the least bit surprised by Fred's words.
Given the twins' current level of alchemy, trying to build a mech suit capable of actual combat was still a bit beyond them.
"Bigger isn't always better when it comes to mechs." George pushed the dinner plates on the table aside and unrolled a sheet of parchment roughly the size of an A2 paper across the surface.
The parchment was densely covered with drawings and annotations; it was the blueprint for the entire mech suit.
"This thing looks menacing, but it has zero practical use in real combat. In front of a wizard, it's nothing more than a sitting duck."
Fred pointed at the size specifications labeled on the armor design. "To even get this thing moving, the energy consumption per minute would be astronomical."
Spreading his hands, George's tone was filled with utter helplessness. "And that's just for a twenty-meter-tall mech. If we went with an eighty-meter version, even if we found an Obscurial to act as the energy core, it would only be able to sustain full combat for ten minutes."
Kyle nodded. This kind of energy consumption was indeed a fatal flaw.
If they had that much energy to squander on a mech, they would be better off building a magitech cannon.
If the entire magical power of an Obscurial could be compressed into a single artillery shell, just one shot would be enough to wipe London off the map.
With ten Obscurials, the destructive power would be comparable to the Soviets' Tsar Bomba. Who would even need a mech at that point?
The twins had finally come to see the light: the bigger they built this thing, the deeper the money pit and technical nightmare became.
Before, they had been completely blinded by how cool the concept of a mech was, which caused them to overlook this glaringly fatal issue.
Fortunately, their mech project had only just begun, and they hadn't invested too heavily into it yet. Calling it quits now was a timely cut of their losses.
Tapping his fingers on the tabletop, Kyle narrowed his eyes as he looked at the twins, who were currently rolling back up their blueprints.
"I say... why don't you two consider shifting your research direction?"
The twins stopped mid-discussion and turned to look at Kyle, their eyes filled with confusion.
Kyle snapped his fingers, and a lifelike image of the Two-Tails cat demon materialized over the unrolled blueprint on the table.
Generating holographic images in midair using smoke and light manipulation was a trick he had learned from Grindelwald.
Kyle couldn't quite manage a massive-scale hologram like the one Grindelwald had conjured during his rally at the Père Lachaise Cemetery just yet.
But manifesting a twenty-centimeter-tall projection of Matatabi, the Two-Tails? That was a piece of cake.
Looking at the utterly bewildered twins, Kyle flashed a slight smile.
"I previously attempted to gigantify a Wampus Cat—a beast with a Ministry rating of XXXXX—and then subject it to Dark Arts modifications, trying to turn it into a biological weapon."
"But in the end, the project resulted in a failure." Kyle spread his hands with a look of regret. "Because of the unyielding, untamable nature of the Wampus Cat, it was fundamentally impossible for the plan to succeed."
Cedric assumed a thoughtful expression. "But what does that have to do with the mech project?"
Staring intently at the phantom projection of Matatabi, Kyle reached out and tapped its head.
"What if we combine bio-modification with alchemy?"
Kyle remembered reading in Secrets of the Darkest Art back in Dumbledore's office that there were methods to transform a wizard into an Inferius while still preserving their ability to cast magic.
Calling it an Inferius might not be entirely accurate, because in that state, the modified wizard was actually still alive.
It was just that their intellect and consciousness were completely wiped out, reducing them to nothing more than a controlled, walking corpse.
Just like an Edo Tensei reanimation whose consciousness was erased by inserting a command talisman.
No, to be more precise, it was exactly like a Human Puppet.
This modification method wasn't just applicable to wizards; it worked on magical creatures as well.
Therefore, Kyle could use this method to control his previously conceptualized artificial Tailed Beast—namely, the Wampus Cat that had been modified into the Two-Tails, Matatabi.
However, there was one problem: in this state, the controlled target possessed no self-awareness.
When fighting independently without the caster's direct intervention, it could only act on pure instinct, unleashing at most fifty percent of its true combat potential.
Even at fifty percent capability, a Wampus Cat modified by Dark Arts would still be a terrifyingly fierce entity.
Slaughtering a dragon would be child's play for it.
However, Kyle was far from satisfied with that.
According to his standards, a Wampus Cat that couldn't exert its full combat strength wasn't even worthy of being his Summoning Beast.
He had also considered controlling the beast the same way the Six Paths of Pain were endowed with distinct personas. But Black Zetsu already had his hands full dragging around six borderline-braindead Paths of Pain; if they saddled him with nine Tailed Beasts on top of that...
Even the most ruthless capitalist would weep tears of sympathy.
It wasn't that Kyle hadn't tried using a reverse Patronus Charm to create another Black Zetsu, but no matter how hard he tried, Black Zetsu seemed to possess an absolute irreplicability.
The only thing he ever harvested from those attempts was a massive pile of utterly repulsive maggots.
Not only did he burn the maggots, but he also threw the very wand that had spewed them out into a blaze of Fiendfyre and replaced it with a brand-new one.
As a result, the Artificial Tailed Beast Project had been shelved indefinitely.
But now, a fresh idea had struck him.
What if, instead of using the Imperius Curse or other spells to control the Wampus Cat, they replaced its brain entirely with an alchemical creation?
The Ten Puppets of Chikamatsu that George had crafted were all controlled via a puppet core, highly similar to Sasori of the Red Sand's Core of Living Flesh.
This puppet core functioned essentially as a magical version of a computer.
Without the assistance of this "computer," relying solely on the chakra threads from George's hands would make it completely impossible to execute the intricate maneuvers required for the Ten Puppets of Chikamatsu. At best, he could only make them salute.
As for deploying them into actual combat? Utterly out of the question.
Kyle's current concept was to swap the Wampus Cat's brain for a puppet core crafted by George, using that very core to dictate all of its movements.
Granted, the computer George had built—the puppet core—was still at a rather primitive stage, currently only capable of directing simple creations like alchemical golems.
But if they continued to push their research further, using it to replace a Wampus Cat's brain would not be out of the question.
Through Muggle means, building a computer capable of replacing a biological brain would have been impossible, even with the scientific advancements of the era Kyle had transmigrated from.
But magic was precisely the kind of absurd, logic-defying force that made the impossible possible.
The puppet core George had put together already possessed the faint, rudimentary beginnings of an Artificial Intelligence.
If they delved deeper into its development, Kyle wouldn't even blink if George walked up to him one day, holding a device and introducing it with: "This is Jarvis, the Weasley family's AI butler."
With a puppet core substituting for the Wampus Cat's original brain, the Tailed-Beast-modified creature would be capable of unleashing one hundred percent of its combat efficacy.
Of course, if they actually went through with this, and the Muggle animal rights organizations somehow found out, they would absolutely show up at their doorstep brandishing banners and protest signs.
Hearing Kyle's suggestion, the twins' eyes instantly lit up.
George smacked his fist into his palm. "If we do that, we'll end up with a bio-mech!"
"Eh, 'bio-mech' isn't quite right," Fred pointed out, correcting his brother. "Calling it a 'combat partner' fits a lot better."
Kyle looked at George and nodded slowly.
"I'll handle the biological modification side of things. As for the research on the puppet core, I'll leave that to you two."
Cedric's eyes were also sparkling. "Can I join the project? To be completely honest, I've always wanted to raise a dragon as a pet, but because of... well, you guys know how it is."
Kyle's lips twitched slightly. What was so great about dragons anyway? They were just big, dumb, clumsy, black brutes.
Among the nine Tailed Beasts, the ones with decent aesthetics—like Shukaku the One-Tail, Matatabi the Two-Tails, Kokuo the Five-Tails, and Kurama the Nine-Tails—weren't every single one of them vastly superior to the wizarding world's foolish dragons, which were essentially just green iguanas with a pair of wings slapped on them?
One only had to look at Hermione and Hannah to see the proof; both girls were completely captivated by the mini Tailed Beasts that Kyle had gifted them.
Hannah, in particular, had to carry the One-Tail in her arms wherever she went.
If it weren't for the fact that pets were banned in the vast majority of classrooms, Hannah would have happily brought the One-Tail straight into Professor McGonagall's class.
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