Industrial Cthulhu, starting from the island lord

Chapter 688 This is too bizarre!
Hughes understood the value of this without needing further explanation.

The superhumans gradually declined, and some even left the battlefield before Castel rose to power. Was it because they were weak?
Of course not. Superhumans each have their own strengths, and even when facing steel machines, they always have their own unique advantages.

The problem is that there are too few extraordinary individuals.

It takes at least a decade to cultivate an extraordinary individual, and there are strict requirements for talent.

This means there must be a complete system to select talented individuals, nurture them, and instill in them a sense of identity and loyalty to the organization.

This is too inefficient.

Castells' school can complete literacy classes in a few months and train a group of engineers with basic literacy in a few years. However, if each engineer can exert only one percent of the power of a superhuman, then training superhumans is a losing proposition.

Just as muskets are far inferior to bows and arrows in both range and accuracy, the Empire successfully overwhelmed its enemies with muskets because the cost of training a qualified archer was enough to produce a squad of musketeers.

Scaling up and standardization are what truly change the times.

Hughes nodded in agreement only now.

Even if Tata messes up everything else, the fact that he perfected the modular ritual setup and handed over the extraordinary rituals to mortals is enough of an achievement.

But Tata's introduction didn't end there.

He rubbed his hands together and walked towards a ritual module that was noticeably larger.

“My lord, our previous rituals required the use of coyotes, but I have made improvements in that regard.”

"That's good. The coyote farm's output has been consistently low, which is a problem. What did you use as a substitute?"

Hughes looked over with interest, but Tata didn't bring any animal. Instead, a priest from the Silent Church, whose face was blackened by electric shocks, grinned and stepped forward.

Hughes: "."

No, no way! ?

Amidst Hughes's gaze, a mixture of shock, confusion, and disbelief, the priest entered the coyote's original position. The ritual module detected the carrier's entry and began to slowly operate.

"Ahem, my lord, didn't I previously research how to use people to generate electricity by converting pollutants within the human body? And since it's already being converted into electricity, I thought, why not put it to good use?"

"Wait a minute!" Hughes raised his hand and rubbed his temples. "I seem to remember that the principle of this storm generator is to offer sacrifices to the sea god and receive blessings. The coyote was just a formality in the process. It's actually something like a fully automatic merit machine?"

What is a fully automatic merit-making machine?

"Never mind that. What I'm asking is, what does this have to do with polluting power generation?"

"Oh, I made a slight improvement later. By replacing the coyotes with humans, the offerings become humans, which is the same as the coyotes. However, the humans are different when they receive the gifts."

"The human body can store pollutants, while animals, although they may mutate due to pollution, cannot retain pollutants in their bodies."

So I thought...

"Since receiving a gift can be corrupted, why not use that corruption to generate electricity?"

Bilibili!

A flash of lightning streaked across the priest in the silent sanctuary. Within the ritual module, the priest spun like a coyote, but unlike the others, the aura of contamination emanating from her grew increasingly intense, and lightning began to crackle around her.

"Wouldn't this be dangerous?"

“Yes, yes.”

The electric light did not spare the priest just because he created it; Hughes could clearly see that the priest's skin was red from the electric shock.

If you can see electric light, there must be tens of thousands of volts involved, right?
Hughes hadn't seen many people get tens of thousands of volts of electricity, but he had taken off and put on sweaters at night when the lights were off.

Static electricity can easily cause sparks on sweaters, and the voltage can be tens of thousands of volts.

However, the current of static electricity is so small that it is almost negligible, and the one on the priest's body is clearly not.

And because of the requirements of the ritual, she is still spinning.
"Hahaha, I feel full of power!" the priest of the Silent Sanctuary said with a hearty laugh, pointing forward.

boom!
A bolt of lightning struck down from the sky, and in an instant, silver dragons darted all over the ground. The targets in the test field were bombarded and emitted a plume of black smoke.

Hughes was dumbfounded.

"How, how did you do that?"

“Similar to controlling supernatural powers, the ritual granted me the power of electricity, and there was enough lightning gathered in the air. With just a little guidance, I can make the lightning strike to land,” the priest said as he spun around in the ritual module.

Her voice sounded very strange due to the Doppler effect.

Hughes scratched his head in anguish, feeling that the high-voltage electric arc generated by the ritual must have broken through the air, drawing down the energy from the thunderstorm outside. That was probably it.

As for the details, who knows how Tata's ritual was accomplished? It might have been done through some kind of bug.

After the demonstration, the ceremony gradually came to a halt. The priest, who had been spinning around while emitting electric shocks, also stopped; her face, now even darker from the shocks, remained motionless.
Hughes spent a long time trying to figure it out before recognizing Helena, Ignati's second-in-command, who seemed to hold a high position in the [Buried Ones]. Why was she personally coming up to conduct the experiment?

And it's also, well, a biological battery?
"How is it, my lord? This storm generator can now precisely control the direction of attack, and in terms of power, it's no less powerful than the Dragon Breath Cannon!" Tata exclaimed excitedly.

"It has power and good accuracy, but aren't you going backwards?"

"Uh"

"How many superhumans do we have? And how many of them can withstand this kind of ordeal?" Hughes glanced at Helena. Her clothes might have some superhuman power enhancement, so there wasn't much of a problem, but the skin on her arms exposed from the cuffs was cracked, and her fingertips were even somewhat carbonized.

However, Helena didn't care at all. To the [Buried One], it was no different from a scrape—no head was going to fall off, it was all just minor injuries.

Hughes suddenly remembered that she had just been spinning during the ceremony. At that speed, wouldn't anyone else's brains have been shaken to their core?
"In short, this thing of yours is not very useful. It might improve the abilities of superhumans, but this ritual takes up such a large area that it cannot be moved at all. It can only be used for defense."

Hughes said nothing more. He felt that the ritual might be useful for the Silent Sanctuary, but not for Castel.

“I have an idea about this,” Helena suddenly said.

"Since these steel plates can be used to form a ritual, could I weld them into a frame, put myself inside, and figure out a way to make it move, so that I can strike people with lightning while moving around?"

Hughes: "???"

(End of this chapter)