"Let me out! I am a noble vampire duke and the vice president of the David Group, you filthy commoners! I'll make you wish you were dead! You will pay dearly for your insolence tonight!"
The man had been bound to a frame, and his entire body was coated in silver powder.
It left his limbs weak and prevented him from using his innate vampiric abilities.
The vice president glared furiously at the green-haired female scientist seated in the armchair, wishing he could tear her apart with his fangs and drink her life's blood.
Amid rows of green experimental tanks, Dr. Mobius paid no attention to the man's curses disturbing her rest.
The squeaking of lab rats all sounded more or less the same.
"Klein, recalculate whether the gene sequence fragments in Groups 8 through 19 still contain defects. Bring me the newly synthesized Meta-Morph formula while you're at it, along with some bubble wrap..."
No one in the laboratory answered. Only hollow echoes responded to her voice.
"...Oh. I must still be half asleep. Klein didn't come with me. It has been a long time since I had to worry about everything myself."
Dr. Mobius casually gathered her disheveled long hair and tied it high with a hairband, revealing the faint dark circles beneath her eyes. Then, looking slightly weary, she carried the swaying vial and syringe she had just removed from the testing slot and approached the man.
As she drew near, a sinister smile appeared on the man's face.
Blood seeped from his skin and condensed into a sharp crimson spike that shot directly toward Mobius' temple!
Although the silver powder restricted him to controlling only a small quantity of blood, his abilities as a Duke of Blood allowed the spike to penetrate a twenty-millimeter ballistic shield! Mobius wore no protection. This strike would undoubtedly kill her.
The woman's stupidity lay in approaching a noble vampire such as him without wearing any protective equipment.
"Die!"
The blood spike shot forward at astonishing speed, transforming into a streak of crimson light.
Yet just before it touched Mobius, the streak of light abruptly froze before her.
"What is happening?"
The man's blood was still connected to the spike, yet he could feel that his own blood had been immobilized.
No, it had not been immobilized. His blood was trembling. His blood was submitting!
The man's pupils shook as he stared at the incomprehensible sight before him.
The shadow beneath the woman's feet caressed the blood spike once. It became as obedient as a dog and dropped into a container nearby.
The man looked as though his entire body had been drained dry. His face turned deathly pale, utterly devoid of blood.
"I have always been fair." Dr. Mobius inserted the syringe into her own wrist and slowly drew out a tube of scarlet blood.
"Any experiment I perform on another person must first be performed on myself."
"The original blood used to create lab rats like you, who can manipulate blood, was naturally extracted from my body."
Her voice contained no warmth whatsoever, like a cruel scientist describing a colony of laboratory mice...
No. That was exactly what she was!
And she had even included herself among them!
A chill spread throughout the man's entire body. This woman was utterly insane.
Although he had lost in a struggle for power, anyone who had once risen to the position of corporate vice president was naturally intelligent. He understood the meaning behind Mobius' words.
In other words, the woman standing before him was the origin of every so-called "vampire."
"You... pro... genitor!"
The man had once proudly believed that he stood at the peak of the pyramid of power and strength. Yet now he was prostrate at this woman's feet. The blood spike in her grasp seemed to hold his very life. Whenever she wished, she could strip every drop of blood from his body and kill him instantly through blood loss.
"You're the pig!"
Smack! She forcefully pressed a button. The silver collar around the man's neck erupted with a loud electrical crackle, and the intense pain sent his entire body into convulsions. "You will regret... Aaaaaagh!"
After Dr. Mobius used the silver collar around the duke's neck to stop his struggling and silence his nonsense, she mixed her freshly collected blood with another vial of Meta-Morph formula, then injected it into the man's body through the silver collar.
The Meta-Morph formula was the foundation of the Project MANTIS, jointly developed by Dr. Mobius, Dr. Mei, and Vill-V.
Its full name was Meta-Morphose, meaning transformation. It was what the gangs called the Awakening Formula.
It could transform a person's entire body, including the spinal cord, allowing them to adapt to and contain Honkai energy.
Its advantage was that the mortality rate after injection was not especially high, only 7.31 percent. With careful screening for suitable subjects, the mortality rate could be reduced to around three percent. For human experimentation, that was already nearly perfect data.
Even that survival rate had been achieved only by using the diluted Honkai Beast genes within Mobius' own body for a secondary fusion.
The man before her began to react under the infusion of Honkai energy.
He felt the muscles throughout his body begin to writhe uncontrollably as disgusting purple-and-white crystals emerged across his skin.
He opened eyes that had been stained black. No!
Then, in the next second...
Crack.
The man shattered. His entire body broke apart like a glass vessel subjected to sudden thermal expansion and contraction, then drifted lightly away and vanished from the world.
He had not even been given the chance to transform into a Honkai Beast.
A cold breeze swept past, carrying a faint scent of blood.
"Fragile."
Mobius delivered her judgment coldly, her voice filled with disdain for such a feeble life.
For an experimental subject incapable of enduring even the toxicity of her diluted Honkai energy, Dr. Mobius could offer no other evaluation.
She walked elegantly to the table, her pale fingers gently brushing across the new experimental report while cold disappointment covered her face.
Even after the mortality rate had been reduced to this level, people capable of awakening through the Meta-Morph formula alone remained exceedingly rare, occurring in roughly one out of every eleven thousand two hundred and eighty-four subjects.
The exact factors determining compatibility remained unknown. Even resolute soldiers of MOTH usually ended in failure.
After an injection of her serum, however, the probability of awakening increased dramatically.
Even then, only one percent awakened useful abilities, while one in a thousand awakened powerful abilities.
So-called powerful abilities were not actually all that powerful.
That one in a thousand referred to vampires like the man before her, who could manipulate blood. They were currently the strongest ability users produced by the Meta-Morph formula.
Of course, this was more than sufficient for the mass production of MANTIS troops. Given the population base of the Previous Era, even a rate of one in a thousand would be enough to produce thousands of MANTISes.
However, Mobius had not invested so much effort into this research merely to manufacture disposable toy soldiers.
Besides, what use was the superior physical ability of such cannon fodder?
Could they outperform a subatomic cannon?
Could they defeat automated soulium mechs?
They might be effective against humans, but using them against Honkai Beasts would probably amount to little more than scratching an itch.
Moreover, Dr. Mobius' purpose in researching the Project MANTIS had run contrary to Dr. Mei's from the very beginning.
Dr. Mei wished to create hope for humanity.
Dr. Mobius, meanwhile, sought within the Honkai the possibility of humanity's ascension into godhood.
Yet now, those vampires who boasted of their strength merely showed Mobius how weak and pathetic humanity was.
They made Dr. Mobius wonder whether this path was truly viable.
"Could there be another method of becoming a 'god'? I need to find a way to witness a true 'god' with my own eyes."
At that thought, Mobius could not help but scoff. Could a god that one was capable of seeing truly still be considered a god?
"Still, the only thing that could theoretically be called a 'god' right now is the 'Honkai.' Perhaps I need to become a Herrscher? That would not be impossible, assuming it finds me worthy."