Private 211
When I opened my eyes, I was lying on a hospital bed.
I'd expected as much, so there was no shock, no panic. While I'd been out cold, the Freesel Kingdom's military had clearly come and collected me.
I pushed myself upright and took stock of my body. Aside from a mild tightness in my chest, I felt fine. An IV needle was buried in the back of my right hand, and the bracelet Lexy had given me was gone—someone had taken it.
My Astral, now at 2-Class, was in perfect condition without a single flaw. Of the twelve Mana Roads, half of which had been completely unusable, most had recovered to a usable degree.
This isn't saline. It's a recovery potion.
If they were using recovery potion in place of an IV drip, it was probably only 1-Class grade.
Having roughly pieced the situation together, I dug back through my memories, replaying the fight against Neros. Experiences like that didn't come around often. Sooner or later, it would pay off.
I awakened a new ability—Charna—and learned I can use magic above my own rank by exploiting the environment.
The biggest prize was Charna.
Charna was an ability that pushed my thinking speed to an extreme. It didn't exist in the original game of Dark Moon.
A system window popped up when I used Charna. Some kind of privilege granted for coming into this world?
Whatever its origin, Charna was power that worked in my favor.
Using Charna locks out my Mana Roads, but calculating formulas in advance with that accelerated thought is simple enough. And luckily, unlike the Mana Roads, opening my Astral doesn't cut Charna's time short.
A mage's greatest weakness was casting speed. Casting mid-combat demanded intense concentration—which was exactly why so few Battle Mages ever stepped onto the front lines. Most mages stayed in the rear, providing fire support.
In the game you just hit a hotkey and the spell goes off. Reality doesn't work that way.
In that sense, Charna—an ability that accelerated thought—was practically a cheat key for a mage. It shaved more than ninety percent off casting time.
I've also got the electricity-generation ability. I can't pull off a 5-Class lightning spell like Thunderbolt the way I did against Neros, but a few 3-Class lightning spells are still well within reach.
This world was reality, not a game. Rank was not an absolute ceiling.
The real problem is mana. In my current state, could I even fire off a 3-Class lightning spell more than three times?
I gave a small shake of my head. Doubtful. Unless I needed overwhelming firepower, sticking to 2-Class spells would be far more efficient.
Which means I need 2-Class spell knowledge.
Footsteps.
Someone was approaching beyond the door. I shook off my thoughts and looked toward the ward entrance. The door opened, and a familiar face stepped inside—Vinous, the magic instructor. His rank was only Master Sergeant, but the military never sorted people by rank alone if you looked closely enough. Among the instructors, Vinous had the most seniority by far.
"Heard you were awake, so I came. How's the body?"
I saluted and answered, carefully not looking at the CCTV camera mounted in the corner of the room.
"Aside from a little tightness, I'm fine, sir."
"Doctor says three days. Rest up in here for three days."
Vinous dropped heavily into the chair beside the bed. His eyes, sharp and glittering, fixed on me.
"Let's talk about the mission. You and the APC driver are the only ones who made it back. We need your testimony."
I kept my face as blank as I could and started turning the gears. The APC driver had been about two kilometers from the mission zone, so of course he'd survived. What mattered was what he'd reported to the unit.
Did he see me use Thunderbolt? Thunderbolt is as flashy as it is powerful—hard to miss. I'd rather keep my talent under wraps if I can…
Talent that stood out too far invited envy.
Especially since I'd already awakened two abilities. Magical talent plus a naturally awakened power—that alone was more than enough reason to turn me into a lab rat for some other experiment.
"…I remember Instructor Belhaga was recording the mission site on camera."
"Camera's scrap. Radio logs cut out halfway through. Neros—that bandit bastard—happened to awaken as a Lightning Dragon-kin, and every electronic device in the area went dead. We didn't even find you until three hours after communications dropped."
I'd expected that. The lightning mana Neros had scattered everywhere would have acted like a kind of EMP.
What still bothered me was the APC driver.
"The APC driver… what happened to him? Is he all right?"
Vinous didn't answer right away. He stared at me with sunken eyes for a long moment before he spoke.
"The driver's in custody."
"Sir?"
"Caught him trying to desert."
Vinous clicked his tongue hard, as if the whole thing left a bad taste in his mouth.
I had all the pieces now. I reconstructed the sequence.
They found me three hours after communications cut out…. The APC driver probably ran the moment the radio went dead—before Thunderbolt even dropped. High chance he never saw it. And even if he did, he never stuck around to confirm.
The driver hadn't recovered me. He didn't know the full story.
Even if our testimonies don't match… they'll believe me. The driver's a criminal who tried to desert.
A deserter's future was obvious.
Execution.
Or a lifetime as a slave. Or, like me, turned into someone's test subject.
"I'll tell you everything that happened at the mission site."
I called up the traces I'd seen just before blacking out. They rose as vividly as if I were looking at photographs. As Number 211, I never forgot anything I'd seen once—I could summon it back with ease.
"The mission was going smoothly until Neros appeared. …When he showed up, I sniped him. He reflected the bullet. My sniper rifle was wrecked, so I moved to rejoin the others immediately."
"We still have radio logs up through the point Instructor Belhaga engaged. After that?"
I told the truth. Vinous already had a decent grasp of the circumstances. The military was crawling with combat specialists. From the battle traces alone, they would have reconstructed at least seventy percent of what happened.
My job wasn't to lie. It was to leave things out.
Erase my own achievements. Elevate Instructor Belhaga's. The traces of Thunderbolt could be waved off as Neros's doing. Conveniently, the bastard had awakened as a Lightning Dragon-kin.
"…The only reason I survived was pure luck."
"This thing, then."
Vinous pulled a bracelet from his coat—the artifact Lexy had given me. He handed it back.
"Lexy says she gave it to you. It's a serious piece of gear. Keep it safe."
"…Thank you for returning it, sir."
"When did you hit 2-Class?"
"Right before I blacked out, I felt my Astral expand."
"Happens sometimes. Soldiers who grow mid-fight. You sail through mana reverse-flow and come out ahead every time… and this time you survive and make 2-Class on top of it."
"……"
"People like you, they usually say you've got strong bad luck. Not that that kind of luck tends to last all the way to the end. Anyway—congratulations on surviving, and on making 2-Class."
"……Thank you, sir."
"But don't forget your position hasn't changed. Understood, Private Number 211?"
"Private…. I've been given a rank, sir?"
"Everyone who completed the mission got one."
"…What about the ones who failed?"
"They died."
He said it like it was the most ordinary thing in the world, then left the ward.
Vinous had been right. Even with the rank of Private, nothing about my position had changed. I was still a slave. Still a test subject.
Before I was discharged from the ward, the nightmare hour arrived.
Time for the Mana Essence to be pumped into my body. Even if you'd done nothing wrong, as long as you were a test subject of the Battle Mage Project, you received periodic doses of Mana Essence.
I lay on the operating table with all four limbs restrained. Completely naked—not a scrap of cloth on me—and electrodes were stuck with little taktak sounds across my chest, shoulders, neck, and half a dozen other places.
Footsteps. Slow. Measured.
A man in a surgical cap and mask approached with flat, lifeless eyes. In his hand was a syringe filled with blue liquid. Before administering the Mana Essence, he forced a gag between my teeth. Memories of Number 211 thrashing in agony surged up. I clenched down on the gag hard enough to crack it.
The syringe touched my neck. The cold, alien bite of metal made my spine crawl. The man depressed the plunger. Heavy, freezing Mana Essence flooded into my vein.
It rode the bloodstream and spread through my entire body. My Astral and Mana Roads reacted at once.
"……!!"
And with that reaction came the pain.
It felt as if my whole body were being torn apart from the inside out—shredded, strip by strip. The agony would not stop until every drop of Mana Essence had been absorbed into the flesh.
All twelve Mana Roads lit up under the Essence. Through the pain, I forced them open as wide as they would go. It made everything worse, but it was the only way to scrape even a little more benefit out of this.
Gaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
I screamed inside my own skull. If my limbs hadn't been locked down, I would have been writhing on the floor like a crushed insect—filthy, undignified, animal.
The pain lasted a long time. I wasn't even using Charna, and still time crawled. The idea that time was relative had never felt so much like a curse.
"Astral's more stable than last time. Efficiency went up when you hit 2-Class? Administering an additional twenty percent."
The man brought a fresh syringe and drove it into my neck.
Fuuuuuuuuuck!!!!
It was like dumping gasoline onto a fire that had just started to die down. I forced my eyes open against the roll that wanted to take them. Pass out here and, worst case, I could die. I had to hold on to consciousness with everything I had.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!
The badge on the man's collar swam into focus. A red teardrop. Game knowledge from Dark Moon surfaced. That badge belonged to the Alpha Tear pharmaceutical company.
I'll kill them!! Every last bastard tied to this—I'll kill them all!!!
I heaped rage and hatred on top of the roaring pain. The three of them rose as smoke, twisted together, and burned themselves into my mind as pure vengeance.
The Mana Essence injection wasn't the end of it.
They drew my blood for experimental data and ran my body through machines I'd never even heard of back on Earth. The Alpha Tear people looked at the results, nodded among themselves, and looked pleased. I had to crush the murderous intent rising toward them with everything I had.
I tore my gaze away. Staring any longer would only feed the rage.
Through my Astral, I observed my own body.
The Mana Essence had done its work. My mana reserves had increased, and the quality of my Mana Roads had improved a fraction. More mana was good news—I'd been short on it to begin with.
Thinking of it as trading away my lifespan just makes me angrier.
There were no major side effects yet, but I had no guarantee how long that would last. This body had almost no physical talent to match its magical gift.
At the very least, I hope it holds together until I get out of here….