Museum Core Chapter 104: Mad Scientist

Aquatic monsters … now, how exactly would he create them?

It generally hadn’t been a big concern of his. For starters, everyone hated water levels; putting too many water-heavy areas into his dungeon would negatively affect visitation.

And there were limits as to how much water he could put between his core and the entrance, lest it eventually count as a “blockade,” which would seriously impede not only his ability to shape his dungeon but also to fix the problem.

In other words, crossing that invisible line even slightly would cause serious issues, even if they were fixable, given time.

Plus, he didn’t have access to too many cool aquatic monsters, and many of those he did have were ill-suited to the target destination. The deep ocean was a very different place from the much shallower waters most of the animals he had access to lived in.

Not to mention that he needed creatures that were fully aquatic, and capable of actually breathing underwater. Growing in rank would largely compensate for greater than usual pressure, but if he wanted to make one of his plesiosaurs not need to surface every few hours to suck down air, he’d have to waste a power slot for that.

That ruled out whales, most of his prehistoric creatures, and the hippos and crocodiles that had already been in widespread use thus far. Granted, there were several creatures, such as sperm whales, that could dive that deep, but staying was an entirely different ballgame.

Which just left him with his beloved pajama catsharks. They were cute, tough, and already had a solid power in the Void Bite he’d given them.

It was the power with the greatest ability to jump rank that he’d ever found, as demonstrated by the void wolves he’d originally gotten it from, who’d been able to smash his D-Rank Marble Hoplites even at F-Rank … but only by biting down and triggering the effect.

The whole thing had been shockingly effective.

Thomas had also summoned an E-Rank void wolf to test the skill against a copy of the Belfast’s armor, incidentally, the one and only time he’d ever used that monster as anything other than a material for crafting. Destroying C-Rank material as an E-Rank should have been utterly impossible, but the wolf managed it. Barely. It had to seriously latch on and channel the power over the course of several seconds, but eventually, the metal twisted, warped, and vanished down the wolf’s gullet.

Granted, metal was tougher than hide unless there was a power in play, but that still meant that there’d have to be careful in how he used them against anything sufficiently powerful.

Well, they were still “only” peak F-Rank, he’d be able to rank them up the moment he knew what power he wanted to give them, but in what possible circumstances would any of the anchor beasts be anything less than C-Rank, likely closer to B than D?

But either way, the catsharks were tiny, and would under no circumstances be his primary attacking force. Good for swarming enemies, especially with their power, but he wanted something big. To be specific, a heavy hitter that wasn’t the Belfast, he needed something he could summon multiple of.

So, what were the biggest and most powerful aquatic animals that he had?

Wales, duh, a whole lot of the things, every single one up to and including the blue whale, the biggest animal to live, ever. Well, there were a couple of dinosaurs who were longer, but that extra length came from an incredibly long and thin tail, but the whale was more than twice the weight of most of them.

But the whale’s strength was almost exclusively a product of its bulk. Granted, anything it struck with its fluke would have a truly terrible day even if it survived, but that wasn’t exactly a weapon that was easy to put on target, and it had a fairly tiny area of opperations, which would have been bad even if it had been employable anywhere save directly behind the creature.

Yes, throw on the right powers and the blue whale would become one hell of a battering ram or tank, but overall, not a good option.

What about a sperm whale? Its “song” was so loud that it could kill a human who was too close, but that was a physiological ability that he could easily take and tack onto whatever creature he actually wound up choosing; he didn’t need to pick the whale for that.

Besides, they were both mammals, which obviously wouldn’t really work for deep-sea operations.

A megalodon would have been cool, but he did not have access to one.

Hm, Kraken, maybe? As in, take an octopus or squid, toss on the Titan’s Physique, and a couple of supplementary powers to fill out the roster?

Perhaps he was going at this the wrong way, starting from the wrong end of the process. Look through his powers first, then choose a proper “platform” to “mount” them on.

So, powers.

He had lightning, ice, and kinetic elemental abilities from the Russian mercenaries, but of those, only lightning would really work underwater with how he imagined things going. It came part and parcel with a resistance against itself, while it should allow for an incredibly powerful AOE attack.

Although he could likely have just drawn that power from an electric eel.

Then there was the sperm whale’s sound “attack,” though it’d serve a similar function as lightning in the end. Not that ranged attacks were particularly easy underwater, at least those incapable of moving under their own power.

Torpedoes worked, bullets or thrown objects … not so much. Water provided a lot of resistance to movement, but at the same time, it was perfect for transmitting all sorts of shockwaves, including sound waves, which was in part why sperm whales could be so inadvertently dangerous.

So, sound powers, and maybe a self-destruct?

Another thing that worked was toxins, which would easily spread and not fall down to the ground, and so on, but they’d rapidly be dispersed by the water.

But that had two big problems: the ethical considerations of dumping toxins into the water, and the fact that anyone who found out about it would probably whop his ass.

What about killer whales, though? They had an interesting way of using water, namely, by creating waves to knock seals off ice floes and the like. That seemed like an interesting concept to create a power around, by controlling and/or amplifying the way one’s movementswer e transmitted through the ocean.

All very interesting … and how much closer had that brought him to figuring out what to upgrade? Not very.

Ergo … flip it again, go at it from the other, original, side. Best “generic” animal to upgrade. What was the best in both the speed and agility departments?

Makos were fast, several species of cephalopod could use spurts of water for bursts of rapid movement, and … and the best options he had weren’t waterbreathers.

No, he’d found them within some dino-era beasts.

Nowadays, most aquatic creatures, fish and whales, primarily, used their tails for propulsion, and the rest of their body, as well as other fins were used for steering, mostly. And most of their “weapons” were all aimed forward, that being the mouth and maybe some extendable the way trigger fish did.

There were also plenty of smaller nasties with venom-covered spikes and so on, but they were, well, small. Even Titan’s Physique scaled off the original size, which meant he couldn’t easily create his own leviathans.

But he’d gotten off track. This was about mobility. Even the most agile fish had propulsion in the rear, steering in the front. Perfectly servicable, if it hadn’t been, it wouldn’t have persisted, but the meteor that had killed the dinosaurs had outright erased another form of movement that was yet to re-evolve.

Four massive, fleshy, fins that could be moved independently as was needed to provide both propulsion and steering, allowing for ridiculously quick and agile movement and rapidly bringing the mouth into chomping range.

Most creatures in the ocean didn’t really have a serious need to fight much smaller opponents, so being able to twist in place to kill a small monster attacking their flank, so very few creatures could pull it off. And even those that could, like moray eels, usually used their flexibility to bend to reach the spot in question, rather than via agile movement.

Which left Thomas with the Kronosaurus, a truly massive Pliosaur named after the father of gods in Greek mythology.

Twelve meters long, a jaw that could crush just about anything, and, most importantly, the “four flippers and stubby tail without a fluke” configuration that made even the prehistoric titan so damn agile, if not particularly fast. But speed in a straight line wasn’t what he really needed.

Although if he had, he knew what he’d have picked, a Mosasaur. They had a similar “four fins” setup, but swam more like modern-day monitor lizards, by using their entire bodies to accelerate and the fins to steer.

But regardless of which he picked, Thomas still needed to go ahead and give them a water-breathing power. Which would take up a power-slot, a full third, in fact, considering how that he was unlikely to be able to push them to past D-Rank in the time he had remaining.

Was that worth it … that depended on just how far he could stretch the concept of “water breathing.” Or rather, how flexible he could make a power primarily intended to let its bearer, you know, survive without having to surface for air.

So, out of all the countless aquatic monsters he had, which had the best way to get oxygen from water?

Thomas spent a good ten minutes looking before realizing something: he didn’t need to focus his power around breathing beneath the waves, but rather, general living underwater.

And from there, he began to go through his catalog anew until he’d finally managed to settle on the great white shark. It could breathe underwater, had senses that could detect prey from downright ludicrous distances, and sharkskin had properties that could actually reduce water resistance.

Now all that was left to do was select two more powers. Well, earmark them for when he actually managed to increase it in rank. One that could channel the spirit of the orca to manipulate how the Kronosaurus’ movements sent shockwaves through the surrounding water, and the second was simply Titan’s Physique, which would turn the pliosaur into his own personal kaiju and also tremendously enhance the strength of the other power, allowing for the projection of massive shockwaves every time the ‘saur so much as moved.

And now that he had that, he actually needed to level it up … something for later, once he’d settled on the other creatures.

The void catsharks now had a big buddy to accompany, something to draw attention and hold the enemy down.

He had every monkey in the dungeon facepalm at once. Small, powerful when undetected, likely fragile compared to their enemy, despite actually being rather tough little fish … they were assassins, they needed a stealth power, simple as that.

And for the third power, once he got to that, some kind of extra aggression and durability power. If they’d be fighting “around the feet of titans,” they might get squished. What about the power of a honey badger? Extra aggression for the normally rather “placid” fish, and a boost to durability they’d hopefully not be needing thanks to their stealth.

That should do for the moment … now, it was time to build an arena.