Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Biohacker Chapter5 (section)

===Part 5===

A two-story log cabin stood in the mountains.

There must not have been any appropriate standard for the garage because it looked like boxes of metal and concrete forcibly linked together.

“Kraken, take the girl.”

With a wet sound from the back of the car, the trunk popped open and a 10-legged monster crawled out. Sucker-covered tentacles entered through the window instead of the door to drag limp Mitsuari Ayu out like a piece of luggage.

(Nothing stopped us from arriving.)

“Griffin, Karkinos, Fenrir, Hydra, Omukade, Hræsvelgr, Wendigo. I shall thaw them all out and dispatch them immediately. Welcome, my friends, to the witch’s forest.”

That building was a storeroom. Nature was now under the Biohacker’s control. Modern mountains were paved with concrete and asphalt and laid out with power lines, optical fibers, and water pipes, but this one was quickly transformed into a deadly hunting ground where people were squashed like mere bugs.

Of course, he did not actually control the legendary monsters; these were only biological monsters given those codenames. As a Biohacker, Matsuo Ryuusuke had toyed with the DNA of several animals, shut down the immune system, and patched them together for his own cruel purposes.

There was no need for them to have taken this form.

He did not have an optimal set of pieces, like on a chess or shogi board.

This was nowhere near maximum efficiency.

These were failures that had been unable to fulfill their original purpose of using fear to awaken the Beginning Child, the very first esper who not even the Board Chairman could control. Still, his personal tastes had played a role in choosing the exact forms they had been given in that initial testing phase.

However.

Was patching together different animal bodies really more twisted than Academy City that experimented on humans to mass-produce espers?

“I have toyed with life to the point of creating so many unique forms of it.”

They moved from the garage to the actual villa.

The young man smiled and spoke while passing through the door into his fortress.

“But I cannot create anything like you people from scratch. That is why I unfortunately had to invite you to my home like this.”

“…?”

Mitsuari expressed confusion while the slimy monster carried her. She could not resist, but she could wrinkle her brow.

(''You people''?)

Was she not the only one who had been abducted?

Had he been abducting everyone he could find with psychological powers.

But the truth turned out to be even crueler?

“I really would have liked to get my hands on Mental Out, but she is the #5. I am in no position to lay a hand on one of the seven Level 5s. I so wanted the greatest quality available when preparing my experiment equipment, but I couldn’t have that desire leading the entire plan to failure before it even began. Anyone who could get the job done would do, so I decided not to set my sights too high.”

She felt a stirring in her heart.

She did not really want to hear nice words from a kidnapper.

But.

On the other hand.

Was this the real reason she had been targeted?

“You have a similar power to ''her'' and you were conveniently unguarded, so I figured you would make do as a ''replacement''.”