I Became a Human-Experiment Teaching Aid at the Academy (2)
I Became a Human-Experiment Teaching Aid at the Academy (2)
#4
"If it's just an injection, does he really have to take off his pants?"
"Yes. B-because I need to administer it to Mr. Do-yun's pillar!"
The girl's face flushed crimson as she answered.
Absolutely not.
Inject some unknown drug into my junior with a syringe? I'd sooner let that red-eyed apprentice witch at the infirmary information desk fry my brain.
"Absolutely not. I'd rather die.
Please, show mercy and kill me painlessly."
"Hmm, this ruins the experiment... I was raised in the House Florentia to cherish even the smallest life, you know!"
"Did you just say you cherish life? Or does the word 'life' mean something different in Arcanum?"
"No, it means exactly the same thing. Anyway, I have a dinner appointment with my foster mother later this evening. I'm sorry, but could you just let me do this quickly?"
Spare me the nonsense.
Before I knew it, this silver-haired girl had slipped her right hand into my pants, taken hold of my pillar, and was now beside me, gazing up at me.
"I'll make sure it doesn't hurt!"
No, that isn't the problem... but the words I meant to say never made it past my lips.
Ah, this again.
Dammit, my body wouldn't move.
My robust body didn't so much as twitch.
"Uh— is it normally supposed to look like this?"
My enormous junior, led by Elysia's hand, hung slack now, caught in the shallow warmth of the sunlight slanting through the laboratory window.
It was warm.
Was it the sunlight that was warm, or Elysia's hand?
Or perhaps both.
"Uh, well— it's much larger than what I read about in the books. Just wait one minute. I think I need to increase the reagent dosage!"
The unknown force binding my body suddenly released. The girl turned around and returned to her desk, drawing more reagent into the syringe.
This was a chance. A chance to escape this room.
"Sorry! I don't think this is for me!"
I squeezed my eyes shut and flung my body toward the window. Even though we were only on the second floor, a head-first fall could be fatal.
If I were lucky, maybe I'd end up crippled and get banished from Arcanum. Either outcome beat an injection in my junior.
If my dick melted and killed me, a death by falling would be far preferable. What would they even write as the cause of death for the former?
Testicular dissolution?
No. Since it was my pillar that melted, would that be corpus cavernosum dissolution?
It was an item I'd never once gotten to use,
but at the very least, I would meet a dignified death with it preserved intact.
Unfortunately, my hopes were in vain.
"Excuse me."
I opened my eyes. By all rights, I should have crashed straight into the window.
Instead, my body had struck the laboratory window and then dropped to the floor, where I now lay curled in a heap.
"The thing is... all of the Academy's facilities are under protective and preservation magic. You can't escape, you see.
Can't you just calmly take part in the experiment? It's a really important one for me."
I was screwed.
I was already screwed, so I might as well speak my mind and then die.
"Would you believe that if you were me, Miss Mage?!"
Eek!
I saw the girl's deer-like eyes widen.
"Why in the world are you sticking a needle into my genitals in the first place?"
"Dammit, if you're going to inject something like that, shouldn't it be the forearm, or the thigh? Hell, even the butt? Do I look like a dick to you? If you're going to kill me anyway, just kill me now. Dead is dead either way...."
Perhaps because I thought they were my last words.
I let out everything I wanted to say.
Now I would meet my death.
It was a life full of shitty things, but all in all, it wasn't so bad—
The moment that thought crossed my mind, a calm voice replied.
"Mr. Do-yun, please calm down and listen to me."
"..."
"You've already agreed to participate in my experiment. You have nothing to lose by hearing me out."
She wasn't going to kill me?
The hopeful thought—no, the delusion—that perhaps not all mages were terrifying crossed my mind.
"The purpose of the experiment I'm conducting this time is to create a new mana practitioner—in other words, to give birth to a new mage."
But this woman really only said what she wanted to say.
She looked rather adorable, all excited on her own. I was in this mess anyway, so I might as well hear her out.
"People of the present age like you, Mr. Do-yun, widely believe that we are witches who live for eternity, but the truth is, we are merely mortal beings who live out the stories recorded in the Book of Fate."
Mortal beings... so it was possible to kill them, then.
With those useless thoughts in my head, I looked at the silver-haired girl sitting by the window, and the spot where she sat seemed quite warm.
Of course, I didn't believe that warmth was any kind of comfort.
The place where the sunlight fell was as distinct as a marker, and the moment someone stepped into it, they could no longer hide themselves.
The sunlight seemed to reveal the silver-haired girl exactly as she was, chattering away in excitement, without draping itself around her to conceal a thing.
"But. Unique Magic is inherited across generations. When a mage's lifespan reaches its end and they die, a child bearing that same Unique Magic is born into the world in the not-so-distant future. I, too, inherited my Unique Magic—Equivalent Exchange—in that way."
So not all mages used the same... magic, it seemed.
The laboratory window didn't feel like an opening that showed the outside.
It appeared to be a passage to the outside that led to freedom, but in reality, it was nothing more than a pane of glass that revealed what was inside more clearly. The glass surface bore very fine scratches and dust, and the grain of the glass twisted the light once before letting it into the room.
Because of that, the light didn't fall straight; it broke and slid in at an angle, as if guided by some intent. Whether it touched a place or left it untouched.
Of course, either way, the sunlight poured into every corner of the laboratory—a structure that allowed no dark thoughts to escape.
So perhaps it was only natural that I couldn't escape from here.
Well, in any case, those were the meaningless, idle thoughts drifting through my mind.
"Mr. Do-yun, are you listening to me properly?"
"Yes, of course. Please, continue explaining."
That startled me awake.
It occurred to me that it would be best to stop daydreaming and focus on what she was saying.
"Anyway, because mages are incomplete beings that can never be perfected alone, our mage society is structured so that two people with different Unique Magics pair up and form a family."
"So all mages are adopted daughters, then."
"That's right, exactly as you said. My Unique Magic stems from my grandmother, who passed away before I was born."
"Likewise, my foster mother's Unique Magic is different from mine, but when she passes away, it will be passed on to a newly born child. Then, just as my foster mother did for me—"
"You'll adopt that child, born somewhere in the world, and continue your mage's family line, is what you're saying."
When I said that, the woman who had introduced herself as Elysia answered with a bright smile.
"Exactly! You understood it in one go. It's quite a complex story, though. Hehe."
It was complex, but I grasped the overall structure. However, I felt there were quite a few parts that couldn't be explained by that alone.
"But why exactly did you say that mages are dying out? The Unique Magic will be inherited once a child is born eventually, so the number of mages should be maintained."
"..."
"No, if anything, if a mage with a new Unique Magic were to be born, the number of mages would increase, wouldn't it? By my understanding, the number of mages should gradually increase over time."
A quiet voice answered.
"Without external intervention, that would be true. We are mortal beings, but there are mages who reject that fate."
"Who exactly are they?"
"They are Hunters, who kill other mages outside of Arcanum and extort their power and lifespan. They are those who reject the story recorded in the Book of Fate and desire to live an immortal life."
Hunters, huh...
"It is said that once, there were as many mages born with new Unique Magics as there are stars in the sky. It's a story from the Age of Cradle, over a thousand years ago. In that era, they say mages maintained a fair balance of peace among themselves."
"But as time passed, as a result of the Hunters engaging in excessive duels to extend their own lives, we judged that it was no longer possible to hide the mystery of magic from the people of the present age."
Indeed, if they kept killing each other, the only conclusion would be everyone's death. In that process, countless ordinary people like me would have inevitably been swept up.
"So, about a hundred years ago, a small number of Great Mages with grand titles shed the veil of mystery and began actively intervening in the present world to protect young mages and control the Hunters."
"I don't know exactly what effect that event had on the world, but after Arcanum settled into the present age, no more children have been born with new, original Unique Magic."
So that was the story.
But the most important part was clearly missing here.
"So, what exactly does any of that have to do with sticking a needle in my dick? It seems completely unrelated to me."
"A mage's magic is an act of creating a being that does not exist in the world. We call this act Conception. The principle by which a mage performs the miracle of magic is very simple. You take mana, which originates from the beating heart of life, connect it to the womb that should have originally conceived a life, and exercise the Unique Magic imprinted upon that womb."
"Is that why there are no mages among men?"
"That's right, because the womb must function as the Imprint to exercise the Unique Magic. That's why men, who have no womb, cannot use magic, and why we mages are beings incapable of bearing children."
"..."
"But I thought of something. If magic can be conceived in the womb instead of a life, wouldn't a similar act be applicable to a man as well?"
At that moment, the silver-haired girl held up a white syringe right before my eyes. The silver needle reflected the sunlight, stinging my eyes as if piercing them.
"The liquid in this syringe is my one and only reagent, completed just yesterday using my Imprint."
"If I inject this into Mr. Do-yun's genita— I mean, pillar, wouldn't Mr. Do-yun be able to perform magic similar to my Unique Magic?"
"If that was possible, why hasn't there been a similar experiment before?"
"Ah, because you'd have to violate about twenty or thirty Arcanum Regulations. And among mages with a deeply ingrained ideology of female superiority, I'm about the only enlightened mage crazy enough to put such a mad idea into action! The world is always changed by lunatics who act, you know. Haven't you seen Melon Musk in the present age?"
So she was a Gen Z mage well-versed in current world affairs. Anyway, it was a relief that she was aware she was a madwoman. At the very least, since she was capable of metacognition, perhaps she would hold back from melting my dick—maybe she wouldn't cross that final line.
"Anyway, do you feel like trying the reagent now? You might just become the first male mage in human history. Even though you'd be a half-baked mage who has to replenish your mana from an external source, it'd be better than living as a slave like this, wouldn't it? How about it, are you a little tempted? Fate is something people carve out for themselves."
Like the fading sunlight beyond the laboratory, a pair of warm amber eyes looked up at me. Honestly, it was an incredibly tempting proposition. It would have been fair to say the scales in my heart had already tipped. As long as my dick didn't melt, I could become a mage, couldn't I?
"Hell, let's give it a shot."
#5
"First, would you take off your pants completely and sit over here? I think it'll be uncomfortable for you like this."
As I sat on the wooden chair with my entire lower half exposed, it occurred to me that the wood's texture was surprisingly not that rough.
It was Academy property, so they had surely used a very expensive hardwood.
Because of that, what I felt was not a chill, but order. The wood grain didn't scratch my skin, and it was smooth enough that my palm would slip if I pressed down on it.
It wasn't worn from long use, but rather, it had been refined for long use.
Elysia pulled a chair from the back of the laboratory that looked similar to the one I sat on but had a subtly different design, and sat down facing me.
"Now, I'll begin the experiment. I have to insert the needle, so the corpus cavernosum needs to be in a firm state. So— would you try getting an erection?"
"?"
A brief silence followed.
"?"
Elysia snatched my dick and said.
"Why aren't you getting an erection?"
"It doesn't just happen instantly like that."
"That's strange. Are you perhaps sexually disabled?"
"Do I look like I am to you?"
"Pfft! Just kidding. I read about it in a book. It said that a male creature needs to be sexually aroused for its— penis to grow. Does just having me look at you like this do nothing to arouse you?"
"I suppose not."
At that moment, the girl who looked like a baby deer with her pair of amber eyes leaned against my shoulder and spoke.
"You're so greedy... Then how about I— give this d-dick a liiiittle shake... think you can put some effort into it?"
Oh— this might actually get a reaction.