SBTS 03

Chapter : 03

Black Magic Experiment Subject

“Wake up.”

I regained consciousness as I felt cold water pouring all over my body.

Judging by the bucket Alkan was holding, he must have splashed the water on me.

I wanted to sleep a little longer. Was it time for another experiment already?

I sluggishly pushed myself up and sat down.

The floor of the laboratory, which never received even a single ray of sunlight, felt especially cold now that it was wet.

“You fainted after receiving only a few injections of a mana enhancer. Tsk. What a useless girl.”

A useless girl? Even though you’re making such good use of me as an experimental tool?

I argued back in my head, but I didn’t bother saying those thoughts out loud.

By now, I had become somewhat accustomed to living here.

Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I had at least begun to understand my situation a little better.

I was the experimental subject of that black magician named Alkan.

Until now, Alkan had been using me to test strange substances by injecting them into my body or making me experience all sorts of bizarre devices.

Judging by the nature of these experiments, I probably wasn’t on Earth anymore.

There was no way such crude and unscientific black magic experiments could exist on twenty-first-century Earth.

I glanced over my body.

There were several scratches scattered across it, but since my complexion hadn’t turned deathly blue or yellow, I guessed the previous experiment hadn’t been particularly painful.

Ah. Should I even call this my body?

This wasn’t my original body.

It was mine, yet somehow not mine. A body that felt like mine but wasn’t really mine.

I had never seen myself in a mirror, but my body was definitely smaller than before. None of the scars or moles from my original body remained.

With black magic existing in this world, I vaguely suspected that I had somehow experienced dimensional travel, possession, or reincarnation.

Even though I loved fantasy stories so much, I had never expected to actually end up inside a fantasy world.

And the first person I encountered wasn’t a handsome crown prince or a noble and dignified duke, but a crazy black magician like that.

I had no idea what genre this world belonged to, but it certainly wasn’t going to be a world that worked in my favor.

“Go to the magic circle.”

Alkan, the black magician, was conducting some kind of important experiment using my body, yet he didn’t care about my physical condition in the slightest. Whenever I disobeyed him, he simply resorted to violence.

I struggled to my feet to obey his command.

“Ugh…”

As soon as gravity pressed down on my body, pain seemed to creep into every joint and bone.

When I staggered slightly, a scrawny boy hurried over and supported me, looking completely flustered.

This boy was… well, something like my fellow experimental subject.

He looked about seventeen years old. He had silver hair and mysterious violet eyes. His features were quite striking, making him a rather handsome boy, but his clothes were ragged, and he appeared malnourished, as though he hadn’t been eating properly.

When I had finally come to my senses and looked around, I discovered that he was being experimented on by Alkan just like me.

I felt a sense of camaraderie with him. He also seemed to like me, so I felt rather close to him.

Once, when Alkan was away, I had tried talking to the boy, hoping to get some clues about our situation from my kind fellow prisoner…

But this boy was mute.

“Ab…”

Whenever I tried to say something, the boy would quickly cover my mouth and gesture with his hand.

Shh. Be quiet.

Was covering one’s lips with a finger a universal gesture even in this world?

I couldn’t be sure, but the boy clearly didn’t want me to speak in front of Alkan.

For some reason, I felt a strong sense of trust toward the boy’s violet eyes.

So I decided to remain silent, just as he wanted.

It wasn’t because I was weak to handsome faces or anything. He was certainly more trustworthy than that man named Alkan, at the very least.

Don’t worry. I’ll stay quiet.

I gave the boy, who was supporting me, a small nod to reassure him.

“Let’s see what kind of results we get this time.”

After grumbling to himself, Alkan approached me with a suspicious-looking sack. He took some unidentified powder out of it and scattered it over my body.

“Cough! Cough! Khh…!”

Since I was already in poor condition, suddenly inhaling the powder made me burst into a coughing fit.

That unpleasant metallic taste of blood still lingered in my mouth.

At that moment, a dark reddish light erupted from the magic circle drawn on the floor, almost like an explosion.

Startled, I looked down.

The magic circle flickered ominously and seemed to glow faintly for a moment, but the light soon faded away.

“Another failure. Damn it… Why isn’t it working? Why?! WHY?! I’m a genius of the century!!!!!!”

Alkan flew into a rage and tried to kick me.

But the silver-haired boy threw himself over my body and took the blow in my place.

I stared at the boy and Alkan in shock, looking back and forth between them.

Alkan let out a malicious laugh.

“Tsk. Do you think that girl will thank you just because you take the beating for her? You’re nothing but a useless scrap overflowing with mana.”

As though venting all his frustration, the man began beating the boy repeatedly.

I wanted to scream at him to stop, but the boy kept holding up one finger and gesturing for me to remain quiet.

I watched in horror.

Why was this boy going so far to protect me?

“Count Pasha won’t let this slide if he finds out I’ve failed again.”

Even while declaring the experiment a failure, Alkan showed no intention of stopping.

Honestly, he was a man who simply didn’t know when to give up.

His enthusiasm was astonishing. I had to endure endless torture, lying on the magic circle without even being allowed to fall asleep.

Every time this happened, the silver-haired boy would roll his eyes back and convulse violently.

Whenever the boy had a seizure, Alkan would become irritated.

“He always makes a damn fuss whenever I extract his mana.”

Apparently, Alkan was extracting mana from the boy and injecting the mana he had extracted into my body.

I wanted to help the boy, who was suffering so terribly, but whenever those experiments took place, I was vomiting blood myself. I couldn’t even move a finger, let alone help him.

The pain from cutting my wrist had been nothing compared to this.

The agony was so unbearable that I sometimes wondered whether I should have died from it.

Yet, strangely enough, I never did.

Every day, I found myself wishing that someone would just kill me already.

Well, I had always thought about wanting to die as though it were part of my daily routine, but now… I suppose I wanted it a little more desperately.

When Alkan went out, I moved my dry lips and asked the boy,

“Um… Where are we? Why are we being kept here?”

“Ab…”

The boy tried to explain through gestures, moving his hands and feet as he attempted to communicate with me. Eventually, he began writing something on the ground.

But the characters were completely unfamiliar to me.

They weren’t anything I had ever seen in my entire life. Rather than letters, they looked like an endless series of shapes made up of circles, triangles, and squares of different sizes.

At first glance, they reminded me of Picasso’s paintings.

There was no country on Earth that used a writing system like that.

The moment I realized that, all the tears I had been holding back finally spilled over.

“I’m sorry. I can’t understand any of it… Where am I…? Sob… I’m so, so scared. Aren’t you scared, too?”

I felt utterly helpless and terrified.

What on earth had happened to me? What kind of situation was I trapped in?

When I finally burst into tears for the first time, the boy looked flustered. He gently patted my back to comfort me.

Then he opened his hand and created a pure white light, like a little lantern.

“Is this… some kind of magic?”

The boy smiled and nodded.

When he noticed my interest, the light began to shimmer and gradually transformed into the shape of a flower.

I stopped crying and reached out to touch the flower made of light.

My fingers passed straight through it.

I couldn’t actually feel anything, but somehow, it seemed warm.

“It’s pretty. Thank you.”

The boy shook his head.

What a kind fellow.

For someone trembling with fear like me, the comfort of this terribly skinny boy was the only thing that felt even remotely like a refuge.

Thanks to him, I was somehow managing to endure a hell that was even worse than my previous reality.

If only I had had even one person like this boy to rely on in my old world, I probably wouldn’t have wished so desperately to escape.

I wish I could at least know your name.

Alkan never properly called either the boy or me by our names.

To him, I was nothing more than an experimental subject or that girl. As for the boy, he was simply this bastard or that bastard.

Several days passed like this.

Eventually, I reached the point where I had almost resigned myself to wondering how much longer I would have to endure this absurd abuse.

Then, one day…

BOOM!

A tremendous crash echoed through the laboratory, followed by a sound that seemed to crack the very walls of this hell.

“Damn it! Alkan, you bastard!!!”

Count Pasha had burst into Alkan’s laboratory.

“Why is the Silver Candle Knights Order here? How many people have you killed besides the orphans I secretly smuggled out for you?!”

“Ah… The Silver Candle Knights have come all the way here?”

Alkan responded calmly.

At that, Count Pasha’s forehead veins bulged with anger. He grabbed Alkan by the collar.

“I should never have supported a black magician like you!”

“Hehehe…”

Until now, Alkan had always bowed and scraped before Count Pasha. But unlike usual, he began glaring at the count and laughing mockingly.

“You worthless insect. You dare lay a hand on a genius like me?”

A bluish flame flickered in Alkan’s eyes.

With a sudden BOOM!, Count Pasha was sent flying backward and slammed into the wall.

“Ugh!”

“I was getting tired of pretending to cater to your whims anyway.”

Alkan pulled a bottle containing a suspicious liquid from inside his robe and casually hurled it toward the count.

The bottle shattered with a loud crash.

The black liquid inside writhed grotesquely before instantly swallowing Count Pasha whole.

And that was it.

The count disappeared in an instant without even managing to scream.

The black liquid was then absorbed directly into the floor.

Alkan brushed the dust off his body as though he had touched something filthy, then called out to the silver-haired boy.

“The Silver Candle bastards have found their way here. Release the golems and gather the experimental subjects.”

Experimental subject probably meant me.

The boy took several small wooden figurines, resembling little carved dolls, from a drawer and handed them to Alkan.

Alkan muttered a short incantation, and the wooden figurines soon transformed into enormous golems.

I was secretly astonished.

I had thought he was nothing more than a torture technician, but he really was a magician after all.

Why hadn’t Count Pasha simply used golems like those? What had he wanted to accomplish by using me as experimental material?

For a moment, I remembered all the bizarre monsters made from human beings that I had encountered in fantasy novels and movies.

Had they been trying to turn me into a monster?

“Hurry up. Once they begin recognizing movement, they’ll start rampaging immediately.”

After saying that, Alkan carefully removed a brick from a corner of the laboratory.

As the brick came loose with a creaking sound, a hidden door leading underground opened.

It seemed to be a secret escape route.

He handled everything so efficiently, as though he had always made sure to prepare an escape route wherever he went.

While I stood there blankly watching him, the silver-haired boy approached me.

I didn’t know where we were going, but somehow, I felt that as long as I was with this boy, everything would be all right.

However, just as I thought he was about to help me, he suddenly turned around while Alkan wasn’t looking and shoved me into the middle of the golems.

“Wha…?”

I stumbled backward and bumped into one of the golems with a thud.

At that very instant, fierce yellow lights ignited in the eyes of more than a dozen golems.

Then, all of them charged toward me at once.

What?! Boy! Did I just get stabbed in the back by him?! So that means I can scream now, right?!

“KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!”

Each wooden golem was about twice my height, and its body looked at least five times bigger than mine.

Their movements were slow, but they were still incredibly threatening.

If I got crushed beneath one of those massive bodies, wouldn’t at least a few of my vertebrae break?

Alkan noticed me screaming and running around desperately to escape the golems.

His brows furrowed for a moment before he raised his hand and delivered a sharp slap across the boy’s cheek.

“Useless thing!!! You can’t even secure a single experimental subject?!”

At the same time as Alkan’s furious shout, a tremendous crash rang out.

KWA-GWANG!

The wall collapsed, and a thick cloud of dust and smoke filled the room.

Clang!

The sound of wood and metal clashing rang through the laboratory.

And the golem that had seemed ready to trample me was suddenly sliced cleanly in half.

“Huh?”

Before my eyes was the back of a man holding a sword.

He turned his head and looked at me.

A fierce black flame seemed to flicker along the blade of his pure white sword.

What is this now?

At this point, I didn’t think there was anything left that could surprise me.

With exhausted eyes, I simply stared at the man.

Perhaps noticing the anxiety in my gaze, he greeted me with a gentle smile.

“Hello, young lady. My name is Einhar Rues.”