The devil was shocked by what was going on. It was pretty clear to the devil that Adam planned to keep him locked up, like he was just a lab rat. Adam tried to comfort him, saying he was just trying to fix a problem, but the devil didn't buy it. Adam, acting all nice? The devil found that hard to believe. But he didn't have the power to fight back. When he figured out that Adam wasn't going to let him go, he gave up, sinking into sadness in his cage and wishing for a miracle that couldn't happen in this world.
Once the devil was calm, Adam left the cave where he kept the cage. He started to sort out his gear, keeping everything organized. Right now, his goal was to study the stuff he'd grabbed, getting ready for his big task of making a virus out of the devil's flesh and blood.
Ceylon Island was a hotspot for antimages, but a lot of normal people lived there too. To put it another way, every antimage was surrounded by regular folks. In this world, super special beings had huge powers, doing stuff that regular folks couldn't understand. Regular folks were often ignored. But Adam was different from other mages. He saw the huge number of regular folks as a power to be used. If he used them right, they could help him solve a lot of his problems.
Adam decided to use them to make up for his lack of information.
The trick was to control them. The usual ways took too much time and work. Plus, making sure they'd stay loyal was a big deal. And their weak bodies couldn't handle even a little bit of tough work. So, Adam needed a way to solve all these problems at once.
The flesh and blood of the devil gave him a brilliant idea.
If he could use these super aggressive cells to make regular folks stronger, and plant his ideas into their brains with code, he could fix the problems he had once and for all.
But to do this, Adam needed to make a bio-weapon, a virus that could spread fast, pass easily, and change the host's genetic information accurately.
This would be almost impossible on Earth, but it wasn't so hard in this world.
The apprentice's potion class had briefly touched on making infectious toxins. But most of the follow-up was banned. Adam guessed that there must have been times in this world when research on bio-weapons led to a lot of people dying, which was why the rest of it was forbidden. But since Priscilla said that Adam could do whatever he wanted to get the tasks done, Adam could do whatever he wanted on Ceylon Island.
Adam didn't know everything, but he had a handle on the basics of taking things out. The Hill family's work on making mutant monsters, the Lance family's cursed poisons, and the School of Immortality's studies on necromancers, they all kind of helped him in his virus research. With the first sample of the virus from the devil's flesh and blood, Adam was sure he could make it.
Three months zipped by super fast. In the underground lab, Adam had set up a force field around himself and was holding a needle filled with a purple goo. He stood in front of a test subject who was tied up and floating in front of him, slowly injecting the virus into the subject's body.
With plenty of samples and test subjects, the virus research went smoothly. Adam spent two months getting the hang of it, and making the first batch of the virus only took a month. Now it was time to test it on a real subject.
The test subject was in a kind of sleep, his face still showing the fear from before Adam took control. As the virus was injected, the subject's muscles twisted weirdly, skin splitting bit by bit. Flesh grew all over the place, bones shot out, spikes pushed through the body, fangs came out through his lips. His eyes popped open, pupils getting bigger and then breaking apart. The whole body shook violently, unconscious, and looked like he was about to fall apart.
Adam didn't flinch at this terrifying scene. He calmly injected the last drop of the original virus juice, then used a probe to go into the subject's head. While he was focused on watching the changes in the subject, he was also listening to what the machine was saying.
"Virus injection done, starting first live test data collection," the machine said in a cold, robotic voice, keeping track of everything down to the millisecond.
"Immune system has failed."
"Metabolic cycle is speeding up, cells are super excited, cells dividing and multiplying super fast, subject will die in five minutes."
Adam put an ether crystal into the energy converter, and put a probe into the subject's heart.
"New energy added, cells falling apart slowed down."
"Body is totally changing, getting stronger non-stop, knight level, commander level, beyond level."
Adam named the power level above Commander 'beyond level.' When the test subject hit this level, he didn't look human anymore. The weird power coming from his body let it break out of Adam's magic and wake up with a terrible scream.
"Hit critical point, subject at top level."
Adam watched the creature in front of him without any feelings. He didn't want to make a mindless monster driven by instincts, but 'mutants' who could work for him. But looking at the state of the test subject, it seemed like the first live test had already failed.
"Cells falling apart, genes falling apart, lasted seven minutes, test subject dead."
The machine had already called death, but the gross monster in front of Adam started changing again. It had barely held onto a human shape, but now its whole body fell apart like it didn't have any bones. Big chunks of dark purple flesh started to clump together, move around, and spit out tissue, changing into a new kind of thing.
But this fleshy blob only lasted for less than half a minute before it totally fell apart.
"Sick tissues start to multiply. Multiplying failed."
When the machine announced the first test was a total fail, Adam didn't look upset. He used ice magic to freeze the leftover tissue, then put all the test records and video clips into the file marked 'number one.' Then, he left the lab and went to the room where the devil was.
The devil had given up, looking bored, nibbling on an energy stone now and then, and totally ignoring the pile of monster flesh next to it.
"Why aren't you eating?" Adam asked.
The devil looked annoyed at his question, glanced at the pile of flesh, and said, "Master, I'm really not an animal. Eating this stuff makes me feel sick. I can't keep my instincts under control."
"Control? So you can choose when to change?" Adam asked.
The devil hesitated, not sure why Adam was asking, but it still answered honestly, "I guess I can, but once I change, I can't make it go back to the way it was."