Mikoto Misaka did not answer Rei Ao's question.
That silence alone was enough to convey the issue at hand.
Things had reached this point.
Rei Ao decided to be completely honest with her.
Rei Ao: "Mikoto, you must already know whose hands your d DNA ended up in."
Rei Ao: "And what I want to tell you is that the person you saw is, in fact, your clone."
Mikoto Misaka: "How can that be...? They told me that my DNA map was for developing a treatment for muscular dystrophy!"
Yukinoshita Yukino: "It seems you were deceived. Rei Ao is talking about 'mad scientists using your DNA to create clones.'"
Mikoto Misaka: "But... but... why?"
She clenched her teeth, unable to comprehend their motive.
Rei Ao: "Why? That's precisely what I'm about to explain."
Rei Ao: "Next, let me tell you about the 'Railgun Mass Production Plan.'"
The Railgun Mass Production Plan.
Its essence was to analyze and replicate the genetic sequence formula of an esper.
The goal was to reliably produce espers, which under normal circumstances appear only by chance—perhaps one in a million.
The Higuchi Pharmacology Laboratory 7, which carried out the Railgun Mass Production Plan, used the DNA of 'Railgun,' Mikoto Misaka, to mass-produce the "Sisters."
Every Misaka Sister is a clone of Mikoto Misaka.
To speed up their physical and mental development, the experiment used drugs such as Zid-02, Riz-13, and Hel-03, enabling a body identical to Railgun's to develop in just fourteen days.
Basic knowledge of speech, movement, ethics, and so on was forcibly imprinted via a learning device.
Each Misaka Sister cost a mere 180,000 yen.
In the final phase of the experiment:
According to calculations by the "Tree Diagram Designer," the mass-produced Sisters had less than 1% of Railgun's power.
Their abilities averaged only Level 2.
No amount of genetic engineering or postnatal training could produce a Level 5 clone of an esper.
Hence, the plan to mass-produce Railguns was permanently shelved.
Yotsuya Miko: "Ugh... I've got goosebumps. How terrifying... So these really are mad scientists?"
She wasn't the only one; many others were shaken. The mere idea of mass-producing Mikoto Misaka was chilling in itself.
Yukinoshita Yukino: "What's even more frightening is the way they've put a price on human life."
Especially after Rei Ao emphasized that a single mature Misaka Sister cost 180,000 yen and explained the purchasing power of that amount, Yukinoshita Yukino felt a cold chill rise from her feet to her head.
The fact that it cost so little to create a life was horrifying, as was the notion of valuing life in monetary terms.
Accepting that kind of setup—one could only imagine the depths people might sink to.
Hiiragi Shinoa: "Humans always love to dabble in forbidden territory."
In her own world, the humans researching Seraph of the End were no different.
"So that's what this is all about..."
Having come to believe Rei Ao's explanation, Mikoto Misaka sank weakly to the ground.
Fear, dread, anger, guilt...all sorts of emotions churned inside her.
For the first time, she truly hated those mad scientists—and she hated her own ignorance as well.
Frieren: "Wait, there's a problem. If the project was stopped and the Sisters were all frozen, then who is the one Mikoto Misaka saw?"
Kasuga Hijiri: "Could she have escaped in secret?"
Hiiragi Shinoa: "I don't think those mad scientists would overlook something like that."
Rei Ao: "You're right—it's not some simple oversight. It has to do with a new project called the 'Absolute Power Evolution (Level 6 Shift).'"
Following that thread, Rei Ao went on to explain the project in detail.
Academy City places the highest priority on developing special abilities.
And the ultimate goal of ability development is known as 'SYSTEM'—becoming an existence akin to the will of a god descended upon the mortal world.
To further approach godhood, they needed to create something beyond human—a Level 6, Shift.
By surpassing human limits, they hoped to understand the will of a god.
Thus, the 'Absolute Power Evolution Plan' came into being.
Through precise calculations by the Tree Diagram Designer, only one of the seven Level 5 espers in Academy City—Accelerator, who ranks first—had the potential to evolve into a Level 6.
But even he would need over 250 years of standard training to achieve that.
Because there was no reliable way to extend a person's life to 250 years, the Tree Diagram Designer identified a different method: actual combat to hasten ability growth.
In other words, creating specific battlefields and letting battles play out in a controlled way to guide the escalation of his power.
According to the Tree Diagram Designer's calculations, if they set up 128 battlefields on which they would kill Railgun (Mikoto Misaka) 128 times, Accelerator would be able to evolve into Shift.
But there was only one Railgun.
That was when they refocused on the Sisters produced under the concurrent Railgun Mass Production Plan.
Because each Sister only possessed about 1% of the original's power—roughly Level 2—calculations indicated that preparing 20,000 battlefields and 20,000 Sisters would yield the same result.
If the Railgun Mass Production Plan was merely terrifying, then the Absolute Power Evolution (Level 6 Shift) was outright cruel.
Shiba Miyuki: "Oh my goodness! Killing twenty thousand Sisters... Even if they're clones, they're still human beings!"
Busujima Saeko: "They see these 180,000-yen clones as tools, or expendables."
Hiiragi Shinoa: "These people truly are beyond saving."
Kato Megumi: "Mikoto, are you alright?"
Alright? Far from it.
Just imagining how twenty thousand Sisters were going to be slaughtered made Mikoto Misaka fall to her knees and retch.
It was all her fault; if she hadn't provided her DNA map, they never would have been born doomed to die.
"I'm... a monster..."
In that moment, Mikoto Misaka saw herself as an accomplice, loathing her own existence.
900 Powerstone Bonus Chapter!
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