The nightmare did not fade, but it changed. The devastating fear that had frozen Kael to the floor of his cell began to sharpen into a single, pointed thought, just to survive. The world may have reset and change, but his mind had not. Years of serious risk gaming, of planning strikes, of finding weaknesses in unbeatable bosses, had shaped his mind into a weapon. The fear was still there, a cold sensation he feels in his stomach, but he had to let go of them all, forcing himself to think. He was in a cage, yes, but every cage has a lock, and every lock has a key. For him, the key was knowledge.
He closed his glowing silver eyes and forced himself to think. The Blackwood Alchemical Laboratory. He had spent a whole week once, in his old life, reading every piece of knowledge he could find about this place. He was trying to find a hidden quest, a detail other players had missed. He never found the quest, but he had learned about the story. He remembered reading about them, a man named Vorlag, who had become so obsessed with his creations that he feared they would escape. He had built the laboratory like a prison, which was built with heavy iron doors and magically secured walls. The main door to Kael's cell was so strong which made it impossible to escape. He could beat on it for a hundred years without him breaking free.
But he also remembered reading about Vorlag's suspicion. The sorcerer was scared of fires and explosions, common accidents in his line of work. Because of this, the entire laboratory was connected by a complex network of a well-ventilated system, designed to vent smoke and sorcery fumes. They were too small for a normal man to crawl through. But for a test subject? A creature that was meant to be both strong and stretchy? Vorlag might have made a mistake.
Kael's eyes became widely open. He observed the walls of his cell with utmost focus`1, not as a prisoner, but as a man looking for a defect. The stones were fitted together almost perfectly, but in one corner, near the floor, he saw it. A section of the wall where the mortar was collapsing, where a dark crack ran up the stone like a black line. He remembered a footnote in the knowledge book: a minor earthquake had damaged the lab's foundations decades after it was locked up. This had to be the spot.
This was the first true test of his new body. He took a deep breath, the bad, bloody air filling his lungs. He felt a strange power coiling in his muscles, an energy that was completely different to him. He made his hands into a fist and hit the wall. Pain shot up his arm, a real, excruciating pain that made him cry out. But he also heard a deep, satisfying crack. A web of new cracks spread out from where he had hit. The wall was weak.
Hope, fierce and bright, moved through him. He hit it again, and again, ignoring the pain in his knuckles. He put his entire body into it, a desperate hitting which involves precision. The sound was deafening in the small cell. Dust and bits of stone rained down around him. Finally, with a loud groan, a large section of the wall was broken, crumbling inwards and showing a dark, narrow space behind it.
He had created an opening just large enough to make him go through. On the other side was not freedom, but a tight, dark tunnel filled with pipes, cobwebs and dirt's. The air was even more worse here, it smells so bad, but it was the smell of a way out. He squeezed through the hole he had made, the rough stones pressing and gnashing his back.
He was now in the core of the laboratory. Using his memory of the pathway he had studied, he began to move. He kept to the service tunnels, a maze of twisting, a very tight suffocating passage. His new senses were a miracle here. In the absolute darkness, he could see. The world was painted in shades of gray, but it was as clear as day. He could hear the sounds of mutated insects in the walls and the slow drip of some corrosive chemical from a leaking pipe far down the hall. He moved with a silence that scares him, his feet making almost no sound on the stone floor. His body, which had felt so scary and wrong, was now moving with a fluid, dominating grace he had never known.
He knew he couldn't stay in the tunnels forever. He needed to find the main ventilation control room. According to the myth, that room had the largest shaft, one that led directly to the surface. It was on the other side of the laboratory, through the main research chambers. It was a risk. The chambers were where the sorcerer had kept his most dangerous failures, and Kael didn't know if any of them were still alive.
As he crept through a larger hallway, he heard a sound that made him scared and sent shivers through his spine. A wet, dragging noise, accompanied by a low, murmuring moan. He peered around a corner and saw one of the lab's failed experiment. It was a glob of gray, pulsating slime, slowly dragging itself across the floor. A dozen human eyes, all stolen from different victims, floated inside its gel like body, all blinking at different times. It was a low-level monster, but he had no weapons and no armor. He was "Subject Zero," a creature with no stats, no level. A single touch from that thing could be the end of him.
Holding his breath, he waited for the creature to pass, then moved really fast across the open hall and slipped into another doorway. He was close now. He recognized the architecture of this new room. This was Vorlag's private study. It was a place of power, and Kael felt a strange pull, a gamer's instinct telling him there was something important here.
The study was a disaster. Bookshelves had fell off, their pages mashed into a brown mush on the floor. Glass beakers and twisted metal tools were scattered everywhere. In the center of the room was a large, stone desk. And on that desk, lying open as if its owner had just stepped away for a moment, was a single, leather-bound book.
It was a research book. Its pages were old, yellowed and stained with dark, chemical burns. The handwriting inside was a tangled, shaky handwriting that became more and more unstabled with each entry. Kael's glowing eyes scanned the pages, his heart racing really fast. He saw complex diagrams of a creature that was half-wolf, half-bat, a twisted fusion of muscle and bone. He saw his own designation, "Subject Zero," circled again and again.
He didn't have time to read it all, but a few phrases jumped out at him.
"…the Sanguine and Lupine essences are in constant conflict… the body rejects its own nature…"
"…the final component is not of this world. A catalyst of pure chaos. I call it the Genesis Core… it is a source of infinite potential, but it is deeply unstable…"
"…the core is a parasite. It grants immense power, but it consumes the host from within. The subject is a living weapon, a bomb that is waiting to explode…"
A cold dread washed over Kael. This journal was about him. He was the host. The unique, unstable power source was inside his own chest, he was exactly what the sorcerer has been working on. This wasn't just a new body; it was a curse, a ticking clock. He knew, with absolute certainty, that he had to take the book. It was the only clue he had to understanding what he had become. He ripped the book from the desk, his hands shaking, and shoved it into the waistband of his ragged trousers.
A distant, load roar echoed from the halls behind him, shaking the very stones. The other experiments were waking up. Time was up. He fled the study and found the ventilation room just as he remembered. A massive, circular vent covered by a rusted iron grate dominated one wall. It was his way out.
Using his newfound strength, he tore the grate from its hinges with a screech of protesting metal. A wave of cool, clean air washed over his face, smelling of wet earth, pine trees, and rain. It was the most wonderful thing he had ever perceived. He moved really fast into the shaft and began to climb, pulling himself up through the darkness, his body moving with a desperate, animal speed. The roars of the laboratory's monsters faded below him as he climbed towards the single point of little light high above. His escape was almost complete. He was leaving the nightmare behind, but he was taking its darkest secret with him.