And so came the second month. 

The second month changed a lot. Elinoire began getting more and more depressed, her mind was unable to take all the experiments and she got regular mental breakdowns. Villin also began learning transfiguration properly.

Whenever Villin used transfiguration, he made sure the ground he transfigured couldn’t be seen by any of the statues to avoid getting into trouble. 

Transfiguration was a combination of a few spells, the two most necessary ones would be used to shape the objects around you according to your magical power. He found his splendid control of his magical power was of great assistance to him. 

Villin’s enchantments on the wall were nearly finished as well, thanks to this the experiments didn’t have much of an effect on him at this point in time. He felt determined to escape and knew it wasn’t far away at this point.

At the end of the month, he could tell he was only a week away from completion at most, he made sure not to rush it and knew he probably only had once chance,

He also managed to minimize the risk of not being discovered, he managed to tell Ruby he would send out a signal in a week’s time and even managed to give her a general frequency to look for. The Academy would be looking for the signal all over the continent, it was unlikely they wouldn’t be able to catch it.

And then, the worst thing possible happened.

Since it was the end of the month and Villin once more survived, he could once more let loose on spells and practice his offensive magic a bit. He didn’t think about it too much and welcomed the chance to get familiar with these spells a bit more again. 

This time the scientist hadn’t come to get him for the practice, some guards came to get Villin and Elinoire instead. Both of them were sent a different way to a different training ground.

This let Villin know that there were ten guards at the very least but fifteen to twenty was a more realistic estimate. It was likely there was some other facility connected to this, perhaps other types of cells, it was most likely there would be magical beasts around that were also of high research value.

Still, Villin was excited. If everything went well, he would be out of here in a week’s time.

One hour later, he was returned to the cell. But this time, there were people inside they didn’t expect. In the back of the room stood Candil, talking to two men that seemed to be looking at the wall. When Villin was escorted to Candil, the scientist let out a long sigh.

“Oh my, I have to admit I really didn’t expect the guards to find something so severe when searching your cell. To think you were planning to contact The Academy!” the scientist sighed once more before looking slightly eager again.

“Now that the gig is up, why don’t you tell me how long it would’ve been until your enchantment was finished?”

Villin inwardly cursed, but he knew he couldn’t do anything about it. Dispirited he replied “One week. One week and I would’ve escaped this place.”

Hearing this, the scientist seemed impressed “I have to say, I can admire a good escape attempt. I truly didn’t have the slightest idea you would try something like this, creating enchantments without an enchanting pen is hard stuff I heard!”

The scientist looked jovial, Villin didn’t say a word, right now he could only hope Candil would let him live despite the escape attempt.

After waiting for a bit, Candil continued, “Look boy, I won’t kill you, alright? The research value of your blood and bone marrow is much higher than we initially expected. And well, at this point I’ve already spent a whole bunch of effort on you, it would be a shame if large parts of my recent research went to waste.”

Villin let out a breath of relief.

“But, punishment is naturally in order. Since you wish for an enchantment in your cell, I shall give you one. You mess with it and the experiments will get much, much worse. This is the only warning you’ll get.”

After saying his words, the scientist and guards left the cell, soon after Elinoire was brought back to the cell as well.

It wasn’t surprising they knew it was him. After all, him being a young runemaster was probably the reason he was put in this cell.

When Elinoire got back, it became time to tell her what happened. He showed her the enchantment that now got ruined by the two men that came with the scientist and explained the situation. 

He also told her Candil’s words, that the cell would be getting some sort of enchantment.

The following day, the two men Villin saw in the cell the previous day entered once more. Under the protection of the guards, they seemed to be working on a magic array encompassing the entirety of the cell. Villin didn’t know the key runes of the magic array and so he had no idea what sort of magic array it was.

The following couple of days, things went mostly as normal. Villin and Elinoire continued going to the experiments. The only exception was that the two people came for about four hours a day, working on the magic array.

After two full weeks, the magic array was finally finished. The two men left the cell alongside the guards, a few minutes later, the magic array seemed to be getting powered and activated.

Villin and Elinoire, who were looking at the magic array with some worry, immediately felt a heavy weight pulling them down. Both of them hadn’t expected this and immediately fell to their knees.

The magic array created a gravity field. Any movement either Villin or Elinoire tried to make became much much harder as their bodies were continuously being pulled down.

At first, Villin thought that maybe they would activate the array a few hours every day as the punishment, but after turning on, it never turned off again.

In the beginning, the gravity field was a somewhat painful restriction, but the pain soon became worse and worse. 

Neither of them could sleep, it felt as if the back of their head was being drilled into the ground. As for sleeping while sitting, they were afraid it would cause their necks to break if they moved it the wrong way in their sleep.

The gravitational pull managed to suck most of the energy out of the two prisoners. If they could walk for an hour in a day they would’ve had a very productive day.

Their only release was when they headed to the experiments. Villin felt so light then, it truly felt great, and then the experiments would begin. 

As always, the experiments were horrible, it was even worse now that Villin no longer had a potential escape to look out for.

As for Ruby, due to how much duress he was going under due to the gravitational field, communicating became a lot harder. Villin would only be able to receive a few words from Ruby every couple of days.

Another week later, while Villin was thinking back to his time in The Academy, he suddenly perked up. He stood up with vigor he didn’t have moments before.

Villin looked at the statues that were standing against the walls of the cell. Then, he looked at the space within the cell as a whole.

“Elinoire,” he said, causing the currently crying girl to look up at him.

“I think, I might have an escape plan.”

After this day, Villin became more active again. He forced his body to endure training even under the current circumstances and learned from Elinoire with more vigor. 

When Candil saw Villin was starting to look a bit better, they searched the cell again, this time with the two inhabitants still inside.

Looking at the two people search the room, Villin felt that his plan might just have a shot of working. For the five hours, the cell got searched, the duo also got some much-needed respite from the gravity field since it had been temporarily turned off.

During what Villin considered the nights, he got up and focused on the air before him, drawing in the air with his finger. It didn’t do anything, but that was only to be expected. He would do this for hours and hours. The gravity would constantly try to pull his arm down but he persevered, he had to keep doing this.

As for Elinoire, even though the fact that they had a bit of a plan helped her a little bit, she still looked at the future with a grim sight. She didn’t believe they would survive for long enough.

In response to this, Villin forced Elinoire to train her body a bit. If there was one thing they weren’t lacking here, it was nutrients. Before every experiment, they would each get a pill that would keep them fed. Generally, the pill worked for a week but since their bodies were under so much duress, they got one every three days.

Listening to Villin, Elinoire also began getting up a bit more, doing some exercises that were supposed to be easy but became extraordinarily hard in the current climate.