"Experiment seems to still take a toll," she murmured, and bit her lip as she stood, feeling the drain crawl through her own mana channels. A notable cost. A real cost. Two bodies, held, animated, sustained by her craft.
But her eyes went over her work, and behind them the ledger of a researcher made a tidy note: weaponization confirmed. Scaleable. Costly, but scaleable. She did not much care whether the kingdom would find her helpful in the coming war. It was simply that now, with the civil war underway, there was nothing left to hold back for. She would never, in the old world, have used the technique on men. But that was the old world, and the old world had just arrived at her gate demanding her property at spearpoint.
She looked at her two red-eyed messengers.
"Go," she ordered. "Give my reply to the ministers."
