"That’s a better look on your face. Kids shouldn’t be so serious all the time."
Oswald blushed slightly at Jason’s words, and Cerci finally spoke up again as he brought up the final person in the room.
"And finally, this here is the subject Oswald and Devon had been working on for the past few hours."
On a chair in the middle of the room was a Machina soldier. The soldier was strapped to what looked like a dentist’s chair with strong ropes that glowed with a golden hue. Jason used [Appraisal] on the rope, and he was surprised by what he read.
——
Goldenbelly Spider Thread
Rank: SSS
Durability: 80%
Boosts: Nil
Description: An elaborate rope woven from the thread of the Goldenbelly Spider. The Goldenbelly Spider possesses the special attribute [Force Divider], which allows it to reduce the strength of whatever is trapped within its threads to make capturing prey easier. This special attribute can also be found within this rope.
——
’Oh, that’s really useful.’
This thought suddenly went through Jason’s mind, and Jason couldn’t help but look at the rope in a different light. If the rope was an SSS Rank artefact, then Jason was sure the Goldenbelly spider would’ve also been at least an SSS Rank. Jason could only wonder how Gaia managed to defeat the spider to get this artefact. Jason finally looked away from the rope and turned to the Machina. The Machina’s eyes were closed, but Jason watched as the Machina muttered something unintelligible before his head rolled to one side. The Machina’s eyes opened slightly, and he looked like he was about to try to break free, but he couldn’t do anything as his eyes closed heavily and his breath evened out again. The Machina was still alive, but he was completely delirious. It looked like he was high on drugs or something.
"What did you do to him?"
"Mana intoxication."
"What?"
Jason turned to Cerci when he heard this, and Cerci smirked as he explained. Mana intoxication was a process of finding the exact opposite magic frequency of a certain species and pumping the species full of mana with that frequency in order to throw their whole body into a confused state. By doing this, it would almost look like the mage was intoxicated, and it would be impossible for that mage to use magic!
"This entire room is filled with mana that is the exact opposite of the frequency of the Machina’s mana. We can’t feel any difference in our own magic since our frequency is different, but the Machina won’t be able to do anything until he gets out of here."
Jason hummed, and he looked back at the Machina with a newfound respect for the Gaia scientists. These guys were really resourceful. To be able to put down a TITAN Rank Machina using nothing but science was something they could definitely be proud of! Cerci turned toward Devon, and he told her to get off the floor with a small frown. Devon sniffled one last time before she stumbled to her feet and moved towards them miserably. Cerci asked Devon to explain what they had found, and Devon took in a calming breath before she finally got into a professional mode as she began explaining.
"A group of Machina was brought in last night for mental probing, and Oswald and I took turns trying to get what we could from their minds. But just like Mister Jason said, the Machina seemed to immediately lose all mental functions once our mana entered their minds. It was like their brain was wiped clean of all the information, and no matter how much we tried to avoid this outcome, it just wasn’t possible."
Jason narrowed his eyes as Devon clicked a button, and various projected images appeared on the east wall. The images were of various Machina soldiers strapped to this same dentist’s chair, and they all had a droopy, senseless look on their faces! It was obvious that they had been turned into vegetables!
"So, what’s different about this one?"
Jason looked towards the Machina strapped to the chair as he asked this, and Oswald nodded.
"There’s nothing different about him exactly. We know that going into his head is going to end up with the same result, so we’ve been performing tests on him without using any mana. We’re trying to find out if a gift could cause something like this, but through our tests, we ended up finding something completely different."
Jason raised a brow at this, and he turned as Devon brought her clipboard towards him and showed him some charts that were drawn there. The chart was a graph of various energy levels tested against time and Jason looked from the chart over to Devon before asking.
"What exactly am I looking at here?"
"What you’re looking at now is the energy density chart of this Machina. We used various materials to see just how much magic was present within the Machina, and the results we got were... unexpected. You see, everything in the world has a certain amount of mana present in it. Whether it’s a rock on the street or a giant tree, there is mana within everything. Even the regular humans with no gifts possess some level of mana that they can’t utilize. We have a device called the Magicule Calibrator that we can use to see how dense a material’s magic energy is. The denser a material’s energy, the higher the amount of mana within it."
Jason nodded as he easily got the full explanation, but Jason still didn’t know what exactly this was meant to tell him about what was going on with the Machina. Cerci could tell that Jason was growing slightly impatient, and Cerci spoke up.
"Devon, skip the explanations. Just get to the point."
"Uhm, right, right. Sorry. Well, you see, when we used the device to test how much energy was in the Machina’s head, we got a Null value."
Jason frowned.
"Null? As in nothing?"
"Yes, nothing."
"Didn’t you say that was impossible?"
"Yes, I did! I know it’s impossible, that’s why this is just as shocking for me! But I’m sure of it! I tested this bastard more than twenty times overnight, and I got my findings spot on! We even changed the fucking machine five times to make sure we weren’t messing up somehow! I don’t know what exactly was done to the Machina’s mind, but the one thing I’m certain of is that whoever did this managed to do it without using any magic at all."
Jason’s face immediately squeezed into a frown as he looked towards the Machina’s body again. This just didn’t make any sense. How would someone manage to carry out such an intricate mental manipulation without any mana? Jason’s mind ran at insane speeds as he tried to come up with an explanation that made sense for this, but no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t figure out what this was. But Jason blinked, and he asked the scientists if they had checked for other types of energy. There was Qi and spiritual energy in the world as well, so maybe they got a Null reading because they were searching for the wrong type of energy. But Devon shook her head.
"No, that won’t be possible. There’s a difference between reading the wrong type of energy and reading something that has no energy at all. If we were reading the wrong energy type, then the Calibrator would’ve moved erratically and warned us that the energy was unreadable, but the calibrator didn’t react at all when we took our readings. There wasn’t even a shift. The only way something like that can happen is if we are measuring something that has no energy at all."