(Warning: This chapter will have quite a bit of described gore. If you are not comfortable with that, skip this chapter.)

When Villin sat on the chair and was properly bound the two guards sheathed their wands and went to stand on opposite sides of the room, looking at Villin. The three golems all moved behind Villin, moving out of his sight.

Just as Villin was about to ask the scientist what was going to happen next, he saw the man had his wand pointed at him “Crashtin”.

Villin could see a transparent bubble appear around his head. It was quite a familiar sight to him. It would make it so that any sound within the bubble would not move outside of the bubble. In other words, it would make it so that Villin’s pleads or screams wouldn’t reach the researcher’s ears.

“Alright boy, so my name is Candil and I will be the one doing experiments on you for the foreseeable future.” saying this, Candil looked Villin in the eyes, it seemed he rather liked talking to his subjects.

“Today will be pretty simple. I’ll be taking some blood and bone marrow from you and do a couple of tests to see how suitable you are for different sorts of experiments. Afterward, you might be subject to the test of a new spell or pill we have, but we shall think about that when the time comes.”

While talking about today’s plan, Candil closed the remaining distance and inspected Villin’s body from closeby.

He began casting unknown spells on Villin that didn’t seem to do anything and simply kept looking at his chest and stomach, it seemed that the spells were used to observe the body properly.

But the situation soon changed for the worse. 

“Alright, your organs seem to be healthy, no sign of raptin or greacell either. So far everything is looking good.” 

After speaking to Villin who was incapable of responding, Candil pointed his wand toward Villin’s stomach, after casting one more spell, he put his wand directly onto Villin’s skin, causing him to feel a sting.

Then, Candil began moving his wand to the side and Villin began screaming. Wherever the wand passed a cut would be made, his stomach was being cut open from side to side.

After mere seconds, Villin could feel his intestines leaving his body. Grey tubes of flesh fell onto the floor but strangely not much blood accompanied them.

Villin felt as if his body was being ripped to shreds, he felt incapable of focussing and he could feel his outermost mental defense was trembling. He gritted his teeth but every time Candil touched one of the grey intestines a massive amount of pain assaulted him.

And he didn’t stop, it got even worse. Soon the researcher used his wand to cut open part of his intestines to see the situation inside, releasing all kinds of unfamiliar fluids.

It was at this point, Villin began puking blood, after the first bit landed on the researcher’s head, he cast a shielding spell so that the blood could no longer reach him.

With a flick of the wand, the intestines once more moved into Villin’s body causing him to scream out in pain loudly and nearly faint.

Before Candil were now three orbs of blood, two were bright red and one was darker, they were samples coming from different parts of the body.

“I am happy to announce that your blood is in excellent condition!” Candil said in a jovial tone. “So then now, let us proceed with the bone marrow!”

“No! Stop!” Villin tried pleading but the sounds coming from his mouth never reached Candil who was now using his wand to stitch the cut on his stomach back up after which he used a long-term healing spell.

Villin’s courage had already disappeared, ten minutes was all it took to break him. The things that had happened were beyond painful and now it was about to get even worse.

In order to extract bone marrow, the researcher took out a drill from one of the cabinets. It was a magic-powered drill that could easily get through bone.

Soon, the drilling began. First was the hip, the drill made its way through easily causing Villin heaps of pain, something that became even worse as red bone marrow was being extracted. Then came the legs, three of the bones in the legs were drilled into releasing red and pink bone marrow.

After this came the worst one, the skull. Villin could feel and hear his skull being pierced and pried open causing pain unlike what he had ever felt before. 

Lastly came the arms as more red and yellow bone marrow was extracted.

In total Candil had extracted bone marrow from twelve different locations and they were each floating in front of him awaiting inspection. After casting spells and looking at the bone marrow for around ten minutes, Candil addressed Villin again.

“Oh my, you truly are in prime condition! You will be perfect for the testing of pills!'' Then he looked at Villin’s pained expression, red and green puke covered the ground in front of him and he looked extremely pale “But let us leave that for the next session! You will be extremely useful to me!”

Afterward, he was escorted back to his cell. Sadly he wasn’t capable of walking due to the loss of so much blood and bone marrow and one of the golems carried him. The two guards also didn’t see it necessary to take out their wands as they were simply talking to each other about various things.

Soon, Villin was once more thrown into the cell. His cuffs were taken off and his body was cleaned of blood and puke using a basic spell. He felt exhausted and empty. The pain was still ravaging his mind and for a bit, he felt hopeless, in this weak state of his he couldn’t keep his mind in check and he recalled professor Crumb’s death again and again. He didn’t even notice Elinoire had approached him and put a hand on his shoulder.

Looking at Villin’s wounds Elinoire felt her heart beat faster. Even though she also got wounded badly, not like this. The first time she went she had bonemarrow taken from two areas, the hip and one of her legs. But on Villin she saw a dozen holes caused by drills, the large cut on his stomach was clearly also so large that his intestines no doubt fell out, just thinking about it gave her the chills. It was only now that she realized that Villin would go through pain much, much worse than hers, it seemed her identity as the headmaster’s daughter still protected her somewhat.

Like this Villin cried himself to sleep, unaware of his surroundings and barely capable of moving.

After six hours he woke up again. Day and night were impossible to differentiate so he could only guess the time. Elinoire had fallen asleep a distance away from him a few hours ago.

Even though his wounds were still pretty severe, Villin was at least capable of thinking clearly again. He pulled his mind away from the memory that terrorized it and began processing all the information he got the previous day. He could recall everything in quite a bit of detail for the most part. The exception being the end of the bone marrow procedure. At that point, he had nearly fainted and he couldn’t recall what happened then exactly.

Villin was also surprised to notice he had some magical power currently. Usually, he should be suffering from mana exhaustion today but he didn’t have that problem as severely. He quickly found the cause, it was because his web was two grades above those of regular people. The nodes constantly making new magic power stopped the cuffs from ever completely draining his body from magical power, it was just too little for him to use any spells at that time.

Now, even though his magic power wasn’t regenerating as fast as usual, he was still capable of using certain spells.

After taking a few deep breaths, Villin used a pillar to try and pull himself up. After unwillingly donating a large amount of bone marrow the previous day standing should be impossible, yet, at this point, the strength gene solution he had taken so long ago, assisted him and he managed to rise onto his two feet.

He knew his priority was not losing hope. If he lost hope in his survival and escape, he would get depressed, something that could lead to his death in this kind of place.

After this, he began walking slowly and unsteadily, no matter what he had to be prepared to escape when the opportunity arrived, he couldn’t sit down and let his body degrade.

While walking he also checked on his mental defenses, the outer layer had taken a bit of damage due to the pain but everything else seemed to be safe, his mind was completely intact as it stood. He quickly began repairing the defenses.

He recalled a book he once read in The Academy’s library. It stated that severe pain would generally harm the mind, it could go to the point where the web would become crippled. Insanity was the same thing, it could also be caused by pain.

So, as long as the mind was properly protected the risk of becoming insane was much lower, still, Villin knew it wasn’t all. He knew that when they would come back he would probably shake a little due to fear, these were things he would have to force himself through.

But now, now it was time to begin working on a plan of escape.