Became a Failed Experimental Subject-Chapter 81: Tool

After inspecting the production plant, Meister took another nap.

While she was once again using her ability in her sleep to move through the facility, the heroes of W-City held an awkward conversation in hushed voices—just quiet enough that the soldiers wouldn't hear.

“About Meister’s ability...”

“It’s... not as amazing as I thought, right?”

“Yeah. I really expected her to be some insane genius or something.”

When Meister had announced she would inspect W-City’s facilities, the heroes had been filled with a sense of excitement—expecting some dramatic change.

But in reality, all she did was blankly look around and then fall asleep.

And when she woke up, what she said was downright underwhelming.

“Not much has changed... Ah, for some reason, meat consumption has risen significantly. Is the city’s market economy unbalanced? You might want to take corrective measures...”

“Thank you for your hard work, Meister-nim!”

“Yaaawn... What’s next againnn...?”

“Server connection check and Black Cat observation are all that’s left.”

Even after checking the server, all she said was that she wanted to sleep a little more.

When she briefly got up again, she just muttered that nothing seemed to have changed—and went back to sleep.

This time, it wasn’t her ability—it was actual rest.

While Meister slept, the heroes effectively had free time while pretending to be on guard duty inside the base.

“So this is it? Once we check in on Black Cat, we’re done?”

“Kinda anticlimactic.”

“I thought every time she showed up, things changed drastically—at least that’s what the data said.”

“She’s... not really doing anything.”

“She’s not a genius, just a psychic.”

Looking closely, Meister never actually did anything herself.

Even during surgery, it was just “try this,” or “adjust that.”

At other facilities, it was “tweak this,” “be mindful of that.”

With all that, was there really any need for her to come all the way to W-City?

They could’ve just reviewed the recorded footage afterward.

“Meister’s ability is just... really weird.”

“Ah, senior.”

Yu Anna approached the group of heroes who were casually munching on hot dogs and sipping drinks.

“Even just maintaining the facilities is a big deal. The point is... she can quickly identify if something’s gone wrong.”

“But can she really know just by glancing around? Honestly, it feels like she’s just pretending to look.”

“She can tell even from a glance—that’s the kind of ability it is.”

Yu Anna looked over the B- and C-Class heroes and hesitated.

Was it okay to explain Meister’s ability in more detail?

Judging by the current mood, it was probably best to clarify.

“...Does anyone know about Meister’s ability, Dimensional Archive?”

“It’s classified. We don’t have clearance.”

“I skimmed some files before the info lock. Isn’t it something like a hyper-enhanced future sense—like an advanced precognition?”

“No. That’s not it.”

Yu Anna let out a sigh at the confidently wrong answer and began speaking as she sipped coffee from the machine.

“To put it simply, it’s ‘something that answers questions.’ If Meister falls asleep while using her ability, she connects with something unknown in her dreams—and it tells her things that humans normally can’t know.”

“Huh? Something unknown... like a god?”

“Some interpret it that way, but according to Meister, it’s not a god.”

“How would she—oh.”

All the heroes came to the same conclusion at once.

She must’ve asked. Are you a god?

“So... you’re saying that even if it looks like she’s barely glancing at a place, she can just ask, ‘Is there a problem with this facility?’ and immediately find out if there’s something wrong?”

“Exactly.”

“Wait—that’s actually amazing.”

“It means you don’t need a whole team to inspect things anymore.”

“Just have Meister walk by, ask the question, and that’s that...”

“Actually, she doesn’t even need to look, right? Couldn’t she just ask, ‘Is there a problem in any city humans are currently living in?’”

“No, it doesn’t work like that... Meister’s ability... has a lot of issues.”

If she did it that way, she'd end up responsible for checking everything by herself.

Yu Anna spoke with a bitter tone and began listing the critical flaws in Meister’s ability.

“I can’t explain everything in detail, but... okay. Can any of you give me an answer about this coffee I’m holding?”

“Um... Synth-coffee manufactured at the W-City production plant?”

“Lightly sour beans, warm, comes from a vending machine?”

“Sure, that’s enough of an answer. But this coffee is specifically the one in my hand, from W-City, from that vending machine. Unless the question contains all of that specificity, the response goes haywire.”

“Huh?”

“For example, if you ask, ‘What coffee do W-City heroes drink?’ you’ll get everything—all coffee types consumed in the city, their bean origins, why people drink them, taste profiles, chemical components, sales numbers—just all of it.”

“That’s... kind of... too much information?”

“Exactly. So if Meister wants a proper answer, she has to see it for herself and then ask, ‘Is there a problem with this exact thing I saw with my own eyes?’”

“So if she asks, ‘Is there a problem with W-City’s production facility?’ it won’t just tell her if there’s an issue now—it’ll also tell her past problems and even hypothetical future ones?”

“Right. And what matters most is that the thing she’s asking isn’t a god. If Meister doesn’t feed it new information with her question, it answers based only on old data.”

“Got it... Damn, that’s a seriously frustrating ability.”

If she doesn’t precisely limit the scope of the question, the answer becomes bloated and unusable.

If she doesn’t observe something personally, she can’t phrase the question as “is there a problem with this specific thing I’ve seen.”

And if she needs an updated answer, she has to see it again or else the response is based on outdated information.

“The biggest problem... is that Meister’s not actually a genius.”

Meister is only a D-Class psychic.

Because her power output is so low, the number of times she can use her ability—or ask questions—is also severely limited.

This is also why Meister is almost addicted to the exhaustion that follows each excessive use of her power.

“Meister can’t remember everything she learns from a single answer. She doesn’t instantly understand it all either. She has to re-read the answer multiple times, and ask new questions just to grasp what it meant in the first place.”

“She needs a question to understand the previous answer...?”

“And only Meister herself can see the answer. Each time there’s something she needs, she has to wake up and immediately jot down whatever she remembers from the dream. But for parts she forgot, she has to sleep again, use her ability again, and ask again.”

Meister’s ability only gives the answer.

It doesn’t force her to understand it.

And she’s not even skilled enough to fabricate the items described in the answers herself.

When Meister wants to create something, she writes detailed specs—what it is, what materials it needs, and how to make those materials.

Then companies use that information to actualize and produce the item.

Meister is a human search engine... and a human printer.

And not even a high-performance one—just something that barely works.

“If the answer is too long, Meister can’t take it all in... If she phrases the question wrong, the mental overload could actually kill her.”

“Wait a sec—so she’s doing all the computation for the ability herself?”

“It’s her ability, after all.”

The energy and computational load required for humans to use psychic abilities—the processing to produce a response—was automatically consumed by her heart and brain.

If she asked a question that generated too many answers, her own ability could very well kill her.

With that realization, the image of the utterly exhausted Meister flashed through the heroes’ minds.

“...Isn’t that ability kind of... ambiguous?”

“The more I hear, the more I feel like she’s not the heroic genius savior of humanity I imagined.”

“Exactly. Meister isn’t a genius—she’s just a psychic. And yet that vague ability is what kept humanity alive.”

At that moment, Iron Might approached with a giant sandwich in one hand, chewing.

“The shelters built from new materials capable of withstanding monsters, the food production that sustained daily life, the construction drones that rapidly rebuilt homes—Meister made all of those through her ability. If not for her, every normal person without powers would already be dead.”

“We get that.”

“It’s just... her ability is kind of a mess.”

“It’s not just a mess. It’s a garbage-tier ability, dumbasses.”

And right then, Electrice came up behind Iron Might and tore off a chunk of his sandwich by hand—

specifically the part he’d bitten into, packed with meat and cheese.

W-City’s heroes all turned to look at her as she shamelessly stuffed it into her mouth.

“What? I’m hungry too. I’m an energy-type with acceleration. Do these W-City idiots not get how inefficient my ability’s fuel consumption is?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Or what, you mad because I butted into your convo? I’m just saying what needs to be said—those dumbasses put way too much faith in Meister. I don’t like that bitch either.”

As the W-City heroes glanced at Iron Might, he changed the subject with his usual blank expression.

“Even if Meister’s ability is limited and imprecise, she’s still a real hero... ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) She keeps asking questions, even when they might kill her, just to gather information that could help humanity. Everything we eat, this entire building—we owe it all to her. Especially in the early days of the monster outbreaks, when no one knew how to respond... she was an enormous help.”

“Yeah, and now she’s more like used-up gum, or fruit peel after the flesh’s been eaten.”

Something you could keep chewing or boil into tea, but whose main value was already long gone.

Electrice’s cold, unsparing assessment of Meister made the W-City heroes exchange glances uneasily.

“Can you really talk about her like that?”

“No matter what, she’s the hero who made it possible for humans to survive the monster era.”

“This is that whole psychic supremacy thing, huh...”

“She came here to guard Meister and now she’s shit-talking her?”

Clicking her tongue, Electrice snatched Iron Might’s drink and took a long sip.

“You think I wanted to guard her? If I didn’t, those government pigs would’ve pulled something shady. I had no choice. And I have no plans to come back to this idiot-infested city again either.”

She handed the drink back to Iron Might with an irritated sigh.

“Sure, she was helpful at first. But now she’s just a burden... All she does is cause confusion or fatten up those government pigs.”

Fuu.

Meister causes chaos.

Yu Anna silently agreed with that statement as a memory resurfaced—

A long-ago event, from the early monster era, when government higher-ups and research departments across all cities spent endless hours in discussion, eventually settling on a so-called solution:

The Monster Weaponization Project.

As S-Class heroes, both she and Electrice had been able to read the full transcript of questions and records related to Meister from that time.

The questions those government officials demanded Meister ask were:

[Can monsters exist that do not antagonize humanity?]

[Can humans create such monsters?]

And the answer to both... was yes.

Just that single word—possible—was enough to drive humans to try taming monsters.

The monsters, seemingly subdued with drugs and machines—or just pretending to be tame—

began to rampage.

Countless heroes and civilians died.

The Monster Weaponization Project became a waking nightmare and failed catastrophically.

The cause of the failure? Lack of data. Lack of time.

And most of all... the fact that they tried at all.

If there had been no hope, they wouldn’t have tried.

“That bitch’s biggest flaw is that she answers yes even to nearly impossible problems. Or no... maybe...”

Even now, there are people who refuse to let go of the dream of weaponizing monsters.

People who push forward with the Artificial Psychic Project.

All those who lived through that daymarish failure say the same thing.

If only Meister’s ability had been a little stronger.

If only she’d been able to ask more questions.

Meister, arriving at the same conclusion, had driven herself into the ground trying to extract more information.

Even when her ability overclocked and left her spewing blood,

Even while suffering from malnutrition,

She kept going.

Meister had no time to grow as a psychic.

“The problem is she’s weak.”

A weak psychic is nothing more than a tool,

used up by the government, ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com

and sacrificed for humanity.