After a few moments, a massive amalgamation of mantis and gorilla parts lumbered out of the forest. All hands and arms and eyes, V was not even sure how the beast functioned, it was hard to even get a good read on what part of its body was functioning as its head. It was not trying to attack V however, it simply lumbered around the area, waiting. Shortly, the individual it was waiting for appeared. A tall slim elven man walked confidently out of the trees. His clothes were pristine, they looked somewhat like a lab coat from his old world, although much longer and heavier, sort of like a cross between a lab coat and a bath robe. The man’s eyes were bright green, his hair was blond and short. He pet one of the monster’s gorilla arms for a moment "You like her? She is the third most useful of my thralls. Although, I am ashamed to admit, I don’t really even know how this one works!" The man spoke in an unconcerned, haughty manner. "You know, I was unsure I would be able to capture another one of our kind. Most of them moved on quickly. I was concerned my work here was starting to reach the limit of what it could offer me. He waved happily to V, "Anyway, I would suggest you don’t try to run or anything stupid like that. She will run you down faster than you could even imagine. Also, the tricks you used before will not work. When I can command them, they are not so stupid." He went over to the counterweight holding the net, and pressed a hidden button, detaching the steel wire. The abomination grabbed V and the net as it fell. "Seriously though, I need you to not try running or anything. I need you mostly intact."

The abomination and the man carried V through the forest, heading further south west. "I’m E by the way. Divine Thrallmaster." He tipped his head, as if he was casually greeting a friend. V had tried to look at the man’s status, but he had it entirely hidden. "You might be wondering why I have my status hidden, while I’m willing to share my name and class. Well, you see, I don’t want anyone accidentally discovering me, but you’re a valuable companion of mine now, so I need you to be brought up to speed." V spoke dryly "I don’t feel like your valuable companion." Even without being able to see the abominations status, V could feel the strength in its arms, and despite its mangled form, it held him steady the entire time, never tripping over the forest floor or bumping into anything, he suspected it had multiple S rank attributes. There was no way he was getting out of this as long as this monster was here, especially if the whole "low intelligence" thing wasn't exploitable. "Well, I suppose you are technically correct. You are not my companion yet, but you will be!" The man cheerily walked next to the abomination. For some time, quiet reigned.

"Your new home!" The man announced proudly, sweeping his arms wide. They had come out into a sort of hidden grove. It was a strange sight, there was a simple bed, made out of sticks and hay by the look of things, but right next to it was what V could only explain as a chemistry set. The rest of the place was just as strange. A shelf made out of poorly smashed together wood, next to a set of extremely clean and advanced medical tools, a stump served as a chair, next to a device that frankly, V could not determine the purpose of. "Nice, isn't it? Nothing extra, just the essentials!" The man gestured to what amounted to a stone slab with leather straps that was setting in the shade. "Until I can properly oversee your transformation, you will be staying over there." The abomination held V down on the stone slab while E strapped him down. Despite the primitive nature of the restraints, V noted that he felt no weakness or slack in them. "So, you may be wondering, what is all this about!?" The man clasped his hands and he spoke. V tried to shrug "I sort of have an idea. You’re going to try to turn me into a thrall or mind control me or some such." It's not that V had no fear, it was that he had almost died, or worse, so many times in his old life that at some point he decided that being afraid and acting afraid need not be connected. It was pointless to act out of fear or panic. "Well, you are not entirely wrong, however your view is somewhat limited. You see, as you might already have realized. Or rather, I hope you realized, I am the one behind the New Type "Mantillas" that have been harassing the forest. I named them myself. I hope you like it." At this point it was obvious that E was the one using them, although V had waited until that moment to confirm that he was indeed the reason for their existence, and was not just using them. "A mantis, a gorilla, when combined using my Blessing, can become something greater than the sum of its parts. I am hoping I can fuse you as well! A Divine Gorilla Champion. Or perhaps my greatest desire will come to pass, and I will capture your little samurai ally, maybe I will be able to fuse you two together!" The man's voice had grown sort of manic sounding, and he was breathing heavily. "Can you imagine? Two Divine Champions fused into one great being! Who knows what will happen to your blessings? I must know!" The man licked his lips and wrung his hands, after a few moments however, he coughed and bowed "Ah, sorry. Sometimes I get ahead of myself. "There is much work to be done before any of that comes to pass."

The man spent the rest of the day tinkering with the instruments scattered around, mostly ignoring V. At one point, the abomination fed V some type of cooked meat. V hoped it was not mantis gorilla meat. As the forest started to get dark, the man walked over and examined V, taking measurements, removing most of V's clothes and equipment. "In the morning we will start our work! Also, I thought you would be happy to know that your rabbit friend made it back to the Samurai. I was also glad, otherwise the Samurai would have trouble knowing where to find you! Having her come to me is such a load off my shoulders."

As light filtered through the grove, E picked up a syringe and removed blood from V's arm. "I want to pre-apologize for the next few days, or maybe weeks if we are unlucky. I can't just fuse you right away, my blessing is not all powerful after all! Everything has limits, but with the power of science, I will surpass those limits!" The man started to sound sort of crazed and manic again as he continued "In this world, I’ve been given a new chance! If my old peers could see me now..." Another few moments passed before the man regained his composure. "Sorry, where was I? Oh right! You see, in order to use my blessing, or rather, use it correctly, I have to know everything about my subjects! From simple things like blood type, to more advanced things, like rate of metabolism. Otherwise, the fusion will be all wrong, and you will almost certainly perish. Like some malformed baby born only to die!" The man walked back over to V after placing his blood inside one of the tubes near the chemistry tools. "I’ll be sure to keep you alive though. I cannot afford to accidentally kill another Divine Champion! What a waste that was..." For the first time since V had seen him, the man looked sad and regretful. "Most of this will hurt terrible, but I’ll make sure you survive with no real damage. Would not want to scar up and hinder my best creation to date!" E had a scalpel in his hand, examining the cutting edge.

While the man spoke, V had considered his situation. There was no realistic way to escape. Even if he freed himself from the restraints, he had never seen the abomination sleep or eat, did it even have a mouth? V wondered, although ultimately an irrelevant question. The man seemed to genuinely think of V as his friend in some sort of twisted way, a failed escape might change that, and make the situation altogether worse. If escape was off the table, the only other options were to try and kill himself, V had no desire to be some kind of horrible monster mind slave, or hope that L and Eika figure out a way to rescue him. He was fairly confident that L would attempt to rescue him, although she was not so highly attached to her own life, he doubted that "letting what equates to her liege lord die in a forest" was honorable. If he was going to try and hope for a rescue, he would have to endure what, by the sound of it, was going to be something equivalent to torture. There was one think working in his favor, the man clearly did not want to do actual harm to V, at-least not the physical kind. With this in mind, V decided that before E's work on him started, he was set his Constitution to B, and when the man slept, or was otherwise busy, he would set his Constitution to A, to lessen the pain or other aftereffects. He did not wish to change classes back and forth, as he was concerned E would notice a change that big, E's abilities and skills were unknown after all.

At the end of the first day, nothing particularly bad had occurred. E took samples of all sorts of things, hair, skin, blood, saliva, sweat. However, it was extremely clear he intended to cut V open, as he had marked parts of his body with lines. When morning came V spoke up "I don't suppose you have a way to put me to sleep or something?" Even if not exactly "Fearful" V still did not want to be awake while a madman was cutting him up. E looked a bit sad "Ah, no sorry. I have yet to acquire or create anything that can safely anesthetize someone. Trust me I have tried though!" The man’s voice sounded like he was pleading with V to believe him. "It’s much safer and easier to do this type of work when the patient is unconscious!" V grimaced. Well. This was sure to suck immensely, to put it lightly. "It’s ok though, you can make as much noise as you want. No monster will come near this place. We are safe!" He stuck something that tasted like tree bark crossed with animal fur between his teeth. "Careful not to bite yourself!" he said friendly as he caressed V's head. Then came pain. So much pain, the tool functioning as a scalpel cut into stomach. What happened next, V was not entirely sure, nor was he sure how long it lasted.

"You handled that very well!" E stood there, wiping down V's face. "The first time is always the worst, although I do have some bad news. Due to all of us having these "Dual races" thing going on, it is much harder for me to uncover all the knowledge I need then it would be for a simple human or elf. I fear we will be in for many experiments and tests. We might even be at this for a month before I am ready for the first test. The next few days were much of the same treatment. It was difficult for V to keep track of time, but he thought it had been somewhere around four of five days when E next spoke to him. "Well, I’m happy to report that for now, the cutting is over. Also! thanks to something I learned from the first Divine Champion, the one I accidentally killed, you have no scars or leftover damage! It does not always happen like that, but you are just as an amazing a specimen as I had hoped!" E stood there looking at V proudly, like a father watching his child graduate. "You know, your friends have been wandering around the edges of the forest the last two days. I’m not sure what they are up to. Most of their time has been spent in town." V's consciousness tried to focus, it sounded like L realized that V was not in danger of dying quickly, and was taking her time to fully heal and assess the situation. Good, that was good... V passed out again.

The next morning, E stood above V once again. "This next part is also going to be really bad. However, probably not as bad as the cutting. I am going to need to feed you some different substances, and see how your body reacts. V had no idea what information this was providing the man, but this had to be better than being cut into. He hoped. E prepared various samples, some looked chemical in nature, while others were actual foods, like berries. While he was measuring a greenish liquid, E suddenly let out a pathetic noise, a gruntish squealing noise before simple collapsing as if his knees had given out. V strained against the restraints, trying to turn his head to see what had happened. E was simply laying on the ground jerking slightly. After a few more seconds however, he seemed to regain himself, slowly standing up. "Well, that was...new" E gasped for breath as he spoke "I.... That is the first.... the first time I’ve ever been connected to a Thrall that died so suddenly like that..." He rubbed his eyes and splashed water on his face. "Wow jeeze. I think I need to lay down for a few minutes."

Over the next week, V was subjected to all sorts of "tests" from being fed chemicals that caused him to feel like he was on fire, to chemicals that made him giddy. He ingested all manner of things, after that, E ran topical tests, rubbing various chemicals and substances on V. He suspected that during the times he had passed out, E had also been cutting into him again. Small mercies V supposed. By the end of the week E had a gleam in his eyes as he reported to V "I think in a day or two we will be ready for the first trial run! Don't worry, I will do much more work before we try a major attempt at fusion, but I think with the information I have gathered so far we can try a minor fusion!" The man looked like he was about to jump out of his own skin. A wild grin on his face. V weakly spoke "What of the girls?" V's ability to think clearly had been severely impaired over two weeks of what amounted to torture. "What? Oh! You mean the rabbit and Samurai?" E smiled "They have been wandering around the forest, I suspect we shall have them as guests as well fairly shortly!" Something was wrong with E's tone of voice, but impaired as he was, V could not figure out what.

"I am so excited! I hope you are as well! This is your first step to becoming something so much greater than you already are. Don't worry, I’ve gotten so practiced at minor fusions, you probably will not even feel any negative effects! E brought out a small container, inside was a bug that looked somewhat like a Dragonfly, "This is my last one. In-fact, this is the last one of these on this whole planet! See, I brought some of these over from my world. One of the various things that the God of Knowledge allowed me to bring along. I did extensive work with these things, hoping to adapt their natural immunities to help my people deal with the poisonous regions of our planet. Unfortunately, they did not approve my methods, but here, with my blessing, I’ve discovered the perfect fusion!" E took the bug out, holding it by the wings. "Are you ready? I can't know for sure, because most of my subjects are too animalistic to talk to me, but I think this might feel very strange." V did not really even have the presence of mind to say anything, not that it would have mattered.

V was unsure what was even going on, however all he knew was that his body felt like it was on fire. Like every single cell in his body was burning at the same time. However, for some reason, it hurt in the same way a massage hurts, it was not entirely a fire of pain, but of pleasure as well. V's awareness faded in and out, unaware of how long he was in this state of being. The next thing V could remember was E's voice "AMAZING! You are the most perfect patient; your race and body are perfectly suited to fusion. I suspected you might be like this, but I never dare hoped you would be so flawless. Tell me! Quick! Has your status changed?" As V's head cleared, he found that he had a renewed sense of strength. He was not 100% but this was the most clear-headed he had felt since the first day of cutting. Still strapped down, he looked at his status. He figured he should cooperate, and he was curious himself. 

┌——————┐
Name: V
Age: 20
Race: Human | Other
Class: Divine Champion Lv 2   4322/200000
Skills: "Swordsmanship Lv 1", "Athletic Lv 1", "Poison Immunity Lv ∞"
Blessings: Blessing of the Mother Goddess.
└——————┘

Well, that was actually sort of amazing, if he was not slighted to be this crazy man's next thrall, this would be an event worth celebrating. V's thoughts switched to his body. However, looking down as much as his restraints allowed displayed no bug parts. E noticed V straining to examine his body "Nothing! No minor aberrations. A perfect minor fusion! I would love to take all the credit but you have to be given half: at-least!" E excitedly scurried around the grove, taking notes and preparing more samples. "In a week, one more week and we can try a major fusion. Then you can join me and finally get off that slab!"