#after the arcane was the downfall of his dream and parasitizing his body

[binomech]

In Viktor's S2A1 design, I noticed the parts of his back brace and leg brace that survived the Hexcore-induced assimilation were inorganic, all the leather had seemed to fuse into his musculature. I think the Hexcore as a learning matrix, having been primarily exposed to organic subjects that it was supposed to heal, is familiar with organic cells of plants and animals (including humans in the latter) but is at loss when encountering metal. It can't perform the same changes on inorganic materials, such as the screws attached to Viktor's spine which are part of the "mechanism" but aren't animal cells.

I've been wondering if it was a specific metal that was affected and not others. It turns out that in Jayce's journal from the Council Archives minigame (thanks for the tip, @hexhomos), he mentions that copper is one the materials he is taking into consideration to build the prismatic platform for the crystal. It is, in fact, the one that is used in the final experiment in Heimerdinger's office. But it seems part of the appeal is that its cheap extraction makes it a popular material in the Undercity.

Assuming most of Viktor's surgeries took place there and not in his adulthood in Piltover, it's likely that copper or an alloy of it has been used in his prosthetics that are osseointegrated (see: his spine). Copper has antifungal and antibacterial properties that make it suitable for various surgical procedures. And copper's oxidation process is generally quite useful because it protects the integrity of the very structure.

I've mentioned before as well that I believe the point of this season is to understand science as a human endeavor with the mistakes that inevitably spring from humans and not mediated by the arcane as something transcendental (in the philosophical sense of something extrinsic from the conditions that produce it, not immanent) and how I am hoping that Viktor's machine-herald-ification comes from a place of reclaiming agency through removing the hexcore's presence on his organic body, using metal to stave off its takeover.

Copper was the first metallurgical boom in the history of humanity that was possible only because we had harnessed fire with enough precisions to build forges, to smelt it. It's also a highly malleable metal (easy to shape) also that makes it a very easily recyclable scrap (easy to melt it and use it to make something else without damaging it).

Assuming all hextech devices use the same copper frame as that original experiment to amplify the gem's power, I am considering the possibility that they could be used as scrap metal should anyone want to build prosthetics out of them to protect them from the Hexcore's presence. And I have previously theorized about a certain something being the base for Arcane's machine herald's staff.

Anyway. Some food for thought about how human problems require human solutions.