Goblins with beady black eyes, scared, misshapen appendages, and gleaming sharp teeth eyed him like a juicy rare steak. There wasn’t much separating them except some iron bars, and runes etched into them to link the bars to their collars. It was like the barrier line for a dog’s shock collar, but that didn’t stop the goblins from reaching their hands through the bars separating them to try and snatch him up. By the desperation in their eyes, they hadn’t eaten for quite some time. The good alchemist had fed them what looked like dog food and hadn’t paid them any attention since. The goblins had ignored the pebbles in favor of fresh meat.

Zacharia was busy looking through a microscope at a sample of Silas’s blood and must have already become immune to the sounds of rampaging goblins. One of the little green bastards tried to force his head through but got stuck at his ears. He tried to pull away, then started panicking. That had been a mistake. The other goblins noticed, and Silas looked away as he heard grunts and yells, then screaming. The alchemist hadn’t risen from his microscope; the plight of useless goblins didn’t matter to the indifferent man. It showed how little he thought of goblins.

Silas focused on the pebble of dog food he managed to swipe after it scattered on the ground and tried lifting it. His mana drained quickly as he pushed against the pebble. It wobbled and tumbled from side to side on his palm. When he widened his geyser, the pressure was only enough to make the pebble wobble, and when he narrowed down the stream, the pebble tumbled to the side. Once the mana left his body, he lost control of it immediately. Without the skill mana manipulation controlling mana outside his body felt like a pipe dream; it was too light after it left him. He could only put any force into it when it just left his body.

He worked for what felt like hours until Elizabeth took one of the goblins out of its pen. “Don’t try to escape,” Elizabeth said, and his brain rattled as he tried to keep her out. It still wasn’t telepathy; he was sure of it. Telepathy didn’t feel invasive when his friend did it’s what Elizabeth did was more dominating and demanding. It was the chainsaw to telepathy’s scalpel. He had an incentive not to escape anyway.

Profession Quest

Prize Fighter – Endure the lab experiments of the desperate Alchemist Zachery Archimedes and learn a new way to fight.

Rewards

Initiate Explorer

Identity In Tar Port Society

Inventory Upgrade

$50,000

Success opened a new world for him, and he was curious. “I thought you wanted to get me to lvl100,” Silas said.

“Father needs to make sure you won’t explode when he injects you with the serum,” Elizabeth said and gave him a pensive look. “If you promise not to run away, I’ll let you out. Run, and you won’t get far, and I might throw you in the same cell as the goblins.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not an idiot. I won’t get far with this thing on my neck.” I said.

She gave him an odd look. “Do you know how to read?” She asked

“What,” Silas said.

“Reading can make being alone easier, and it taught me about the outside world. You seem to know more words than I expected a monster to know. A rank 1 leech is never intelligent. I read a book once about someone who used a mutated rank-1 rabbit monster in their fights. They didn’t reveal their intelligence, and it gave them a large advantage against their competitors. Once its intelligence was revealed, the owner was in danger. A monster intelligent in the early ranks is a sign of a monster lord. If you knew how to read, you would have known the signs of a monster lord and never revealed your intelligence to me. So, when we’re in public, play dumb.” Elizabeth said.

Zacharia stood up from his microscope and looked over with manic glee in his eyes. “The serum bonds well to your cells Silas. If this isn’t Revelation’s handiwork, I don’t know what is. Praise him, oh god, of truths, the scientific method, and sarcasm. This won’t hurt a bit.” Zacharia said after pulling out a thick needle. “Don’t look so glum; you’ll be much stronger after this raises your potential.”

The door to his cage opened the goblins moved to the opposite end of their own, trying to get as far away from the alchemist as possible. Silas watched the man approach without fear and knew the man had nothing to worry about. Silas was rank 1 while the man was rank 3. The power difference was too great, and escape was impossible with the collar around his neck.

He held up his arm and waited for the jab. Silas felt a sharp pain as the needle stabbed into him, and then what felt like molten glass poured into his veins, and he shook. When he fell over, the alchemist started monologuing.

“The reason my past experiments failed to perform was simple the strength of their bones dropped to their base state while their muscles erupted in advancement. It takes time for my serum to settle into bones compared to muscles and skin. So naturally, the muscles grow too strong and snap the bones they're attached to. But what if the subject uses mana unaffected by the serum instead of bones. Well, that illuminates the problem without a breakthrough. In a sense, Silas was the perfect recipient of my serum.” Zacharia said.

As the serum coursed through him, he watched his strength plummet down to 5. The burning pain continued through his body as it filled his heart and infected every cell. A change was occurring throughout his body, unshackling a limit he didn’t know he had. He gained so much more at the loss of a mere 25 strength. His potential growth had multiplied by 5 instead of 4 as he felt the serum complete the change.

His eyes opened, and he felt weaker than he had been since he arrived. Silas slowly made his way to his feet and saw a cow in the cell with him. Elizabeth yawned and wrote something on a clipboard outside his cell. There was a new wooden wall separating his cage from the goblins.  

“Once you passed out, they started throwing feces at you. We got tired cleaning your cell, so we added the wall.”

“Why the cow?”

“No one wants them with all the serums dad pumped into them. We know that leeches gain most of their stats no matter the rank from stat drain through feeding. This cow has an estimated 45 strength from the scanner but compared to you, it might as well have 450. The weight difference is rather extreme. We want to see if you gain 45 strength from draining it less than that number or hundreds. This experiment will determine what resources we will provide going forward.” Elizabeth said.

Silas stared at the big cow with his three eyes and blasted it with charm. The big dumb cow fell for it without hardly any resistance. It didn’t have high mana at all, while he was 150 with a 120% effectiveness. Instead of 150, he had more like 180 effective stats. That’s why he wasn’t shocked when the cow remained charmed while he stumbled closer to the beast.

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