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The pickings turned out to be more lucrative than expected, and some of the elves were still rummaging around for anything made of metal.

If memory served, the elves didn’t own any mines and relied almost entirely on imports for mineral resources.

Their metallurgical skill should have been on par with the Kingdom of Canaan, so as long as they had metal, they could melt it down and rework it.

Elves scavenging for junk—now that was a rare sight.

Number Six’s instruction—“Keep it reasonable”—snapped them out of it, but it was clearly hard to leave a treasure trove sitting right in front of them.

Even aside from Imperial technology, the raw materials you could pull from a single research facility were evidently tempting.

Time passed, and the team sent to fetch the spider-man failure returned, dragging the specimen with a rope looped around it.

They clearly didn’t want to touch it directly, but I wished they’d treat something this valuable a bit more carefully.

And so everyone came face-to-face with the spider-man failure.

It looked even more grotesque than the ones I knew.

The human upper half was obviously different, but like before, there was no body hair at all, and the dried, shriveled flesh resembled a mummy.

The spider portion hadn’t changed much; only the junction with the human part felt slightly off.

According to the elves who’d brought it, some versions had the junction reinforced with metal—textbook “test subject” aesthetics.

I stroked my chin, stepped closer, and examined the thing from several angles.

I still balked at the idea of eating it, but it was something I had to try.

(If this solves the problem, I’ll have to cut ties with the elves… but life comes first.)

I doubted I could resist the drowsiness that followed eating.

And as for what they might do to me if I kept eating this in front of them—I didn’t even want to imagine it.

“This is why it’s ‘forbidden.’ Do you understand? Human–monster fusion… I don’t know what possessed anyone to conceive such cruelty, but leaving this—”

Her speech froze as I snapped off a spider leg and popped it into my mouth.

Number Six stared at me with an unprintable expression, speechless; the surrounding elves recoiled in disgust.

As for me—I’d braced myself, chewed… and, as expected, there was no reaction.

Which only strengthened the likelihood that my hypothesis was correct: if the specimen wasn’t alive, eating it did nothing.

(So I really do have to find the third one.)

My shoulders slumped, and I spat the spider leg out.

“What… are you doing?”

Number Six ventured a cautious question. I held up a note with a single word: “Bad.”

“Seeing that, why did you think you should eat it?”

One of the elves pointed at the failure, trembling, and asked. I wrote with a straight face: “Rare item. Miss this chance and I’d never know the taste.”

“Is that truly the only reason?”

Number Six pressed, uneasy.

Apparently I now had a reputation for eating anything.

Not wanting trouble the next time food appeared, I wrote something more reassuring.

“You know I’ve been more careful about meals lately. You also know—because of the books I read—that I’ve been trying new ingredients. Insects are food in some cultures; I read that too. It’s a bug-type monster. I just tried it.”

She read the note and looked up at me.

I gave a simple nod.

Watching her exhale in relief, I felt a pang of guilt for worrying her.

“In any case, please avoid such sudden actions. You’ll startle us.”

I nodded meekly at the cute, mildly scolding Number Six.

Then my eyes drifted to the junction on the spider-man’s body, and something clicked.

(Come to think of it—the predecessor to the Genetically Enhanced Soldier Project was the Chimera Project, wasn’t it? The name suggests the spider-man was created by that. Which means he was a test subject enrolled before me. If those were experimental stages, then his criminal personality… no—perhaps he was a death-row inmate. That would explain it.)

That line of thought fits.

A vicious criminal, used as a test subject—one of the few accidental successes—awakened in this era from cryo-sleep.

(For my fellow enhanced soldiers, I assume the recruits were military. But if other Chimera Project prisoners emerge into the world, the damage could be serious.)

I wondered if that situation could be turned to our advantage—but shook my head. Convenient scenarios like that didn’t just present themselves.

At any rate, we were ready to destroy the underground facility.

I had achieved my goal; it was time to say goodbye to this base.

The location was excellent, which made it painful to leave, but what we were gaining in exchange wasn’t small either.

We made a final check of the devices, and the elves filed out from underground.

It took time for everyone to reach the surface, likely out of consideration for me as I gazed around the base one last time.

After Number Six emerged, I followed her up, then sat down and quietly awaited the farewell.

“Begin.”

At her signal, the casters focused their minds to activate the device.

Before I could sense mana, I would’ve had nothing more to say than a vague impression.

But now, I clearly felt the dense, tightly compressed mana pouring from their joined hands—so heavy that my own refined mana felt flimsy by comparison.

And yet, nothing happened.

I was about to wonder if something had failed—when I noticed the change.

A vibration.

The earth was shaking.

Yes, this was—

(An earthquake!? And a big one! They’re going to collapse the underground by reproducing a localized quake!)

If this could be scaled up, capturing cities would be easy.

The devices were probably single-use and costly—but even so, I had glimpsed one facet of the elves’ weaponry.

It wasn’t a direct attack, but strategically—paired with elven magic—it would be devastating for infrastructure.

On the other hand, against a single powerful individual like me, it wasn’t effective.

This wouldn’t be their only option; they must have judged that this fell below the threshold that would make me feel threatened.

Sitting solidly on the trembling ground, I offered a silent prayer for those sleeping below, who were surely being buried at this very moment.

Criminals or not, they had been citizens of the Empire.

A prayer for their rest was the least I could offer.

The quake subsided at last. Someone used magic to check below and reported that the underground had collapsed successfully.

Nothing would disturb their sleep now.

I stood and hefted my backpack.

I couldn’t carry anything as bulky as the bedding, so I left it behind.

I needed to find a new base quickly. I exhaled—when Number Six said something unexpected.

“If you don’t mind, could you stop by our settlement once more?”

The surrounding elves stared, wide-eyed.

“With all that gear… can you carry it by yourselves?” I asked.

She pointed at the piles of spoils—plenty of it metal.

(Right… it did take them a long time to haul it up from below.)

So that’s what that was, I realized with a far-off look.

When she suggested “We’ll give up on some of it,” I vetoed it and smiled. “You got permission—so take responsibility and bring everything back.”

My suggestion to make multiple trips earned a practical rejection:

“We won’t provide an escort.”

And so, I ended up carrying part of the haul.

The payment was a single meal—hardly a fair trade—but given my earlier act as the gluttonous type, I couldn’t exactly refuse now.

Truly, this elf missed nothing.