Daneel recorded the expressions of the three a.s.sa.s.sins so that he could play it back later for his sovereigns to enjoy.
As they saw the mosquitoes bursting out of the skin of the 20 members from the church, their eyes went as round as the moon, while the breath left their lungs from the mouths that were wide open.
The looked like people who had been told that everything they had believed up until that point was false, in such a startling way that it brought questions about the very essence of existence to the forefront of their minds.
Daneel wished that he could just stand there and continue to bask in the feeling of being someone who had brought about shock and awe even in those who had been born in a place much more advanced than Angaria.
However… It was sad that he was still a Champion, as otherwise, this would have been enough to kill all the members of the Church, even if their level was also higher than the Peak Hero level of the continent.
With his present power, though, all the mosquitoes were capable of doing was climb out of the skin of those in which they had been incubated.
It was a horrifying thing, and it would definitely result in trauma that might never heal, but regretfully, in the case of individuals who were this powerful, only physical damage was possible, which could easily be healed even though the eggs were designed in such a way that they would explode when they hatched.
And as for the method in which they had invaded the bodies of the members of the Church… Daneel had been secretly spreading them into the air so that his own body, and even the bodies of the three a.s.sa.s.sins were now filled with dormant bombs which would explode as soon as he gave the command.
This was one of the new weapons in his a.r.s.enal that he had created with the upgraded system. Before, it would have been impossible to both minimize the size of the eggs as much as he needed, and design them so that they would absorb sustenance from the faint levels of Energy that were eliminated by all high-Energy objects or beings such as heroes.
He had had to think of a lot of things when creating this weapon. For example, it would have been easier to have them absorb whatever they needed from the flesh and blood that they would come into contact with, but because Heroes were constantly monitoring everything around them, this would have been detected right away. As for the Energy that he was targeting now, it was always being constantly let go as it was fundamentally an unstable element, but because the amount was so minuscule when compared to the total amount present in one"s body, it was disregarded by everyone.
The other, and primary concern, of course, was disguising them so that they would not be detected when being inhaled. For this, he had had to delve deep into the records of the Order. The system had not found anything which would directly help him, but after studying all relevant texts, he had come up with an idea: mosquito eggs always were extremely tiny objects which went unnoticed a lot of times, even on earth. After minimizing them, he had succeeded in achieving a size that was even smaller than the tiny particles of dust that existed everywhere, so what he did was inject each mote with an egg, so that for all intents and purposes, the outer layer of dust would make it seem as if it was completely normal.
It was as exhausting as it sounded. There were millions of dust motes in just a puff of air, so anyone who wanted to do this would have to use at least a second for each mote, and because it was so tiny, the highest level of concentration would be needed for each successful injection.
Such a task…would definitely make anyone go mad due to its monotonousness and the high risk of failure that came with engaging in such a delicate process.
This was where the system came in. It was able to process thousands of eggs each second, so not even a day later, Daneel had stocked up enough so that he could constantly push them into the air and make them mix with what was present around him continuously for an entire hour.
Daneel quite liked this weapon, but it had one fatal weakness: the moment it was exposed, it could be guarded against, so all those who knew about it… Had to die.
When one knew that something harmful was in the air, it was the simplest thing to completely block all the pathways inside the body for as long as was needed. Even a Champion could go without breathing for a few hours, if necessary, and even if they didn"t want to do so, there were many spells that could block everything and even teleport air from somewhere else for mages to breathe.
Originally, he had decided not to expose it, but circ.u.mstances were such that he had been forced to do so. Even the system had found out that there were a lot of functions of the Artefact that he had gotten from Vohler, so there was no way that he would give it up, especially when there was a chance that by acting, he might be able to strike a devastating blow to the Church even if it meant that he would be giving up the secret to the TriCobra sect.
The mosquitoes began to eat through the skin that was around them even after coming out, but around this time, the members of the Church began to snap out of it. They were trained to be calm in even the most dangerous situations, so if it weren"t for one last trick that Daneel had added to this particular strain of his "hearties", they would have acted to kill them all long ago.
Paralysis. All of the mosquitoes were equipped with a potent paralyzing venom that was ineffective in small doses, but in large quant.i.ties, even Hero"s would be dazed for at least a few seconds.
Combine this with the feeling of being eaten inside out, and what Daneel had was a perfect tool… for distraction.
And the moment anyone became distracted in front of him… Their fates were pretty much sealed.