After making sure I was secured the doctor disappeared from the room. He took Clarissa with him and I began trying to pull myself free. I had no leverage and was completely stuck to the table. I tried not to look around at the chamber of horrors I was in. There was a body hanging up to the side with entrails spilling out. In another corner a tentacle creature wiggled inside a cage. The walls were covered with what could only be blood stains.

The smell was a mix of piss and fear etched into the stone walls with the screams of forgotten souls. Some of those very screams traveled from other chambers into this one, carrying the pain and agony of their originator. I was trapped in this mad house of horrors. Since I couldn’t move, I began to Meditate in order to recover my MP.

Without my status bars I would have lost all sense of time. It was five hours later that the doctor returned with Clarissa. His grin was creepy as he pulled out a metal rod and began to run it over my naked body. He began to speak in a sing song voice.

“The skull bone is connected to the neck bone. The neck bone is connected to the spine bone. The spine bone is connected to the pelvic bone. The pelvic bone is connected to the leg bone. The leg bone is connected to the…tri-prong bone? Hmm, this requires some consideration.” The doctor was prodding my body with a metal rod as he examined me.

“I never got your name.” I needed to create an opening, and asking him simple questions seemed like something that might work. It also was the only thing I could do. With leather straps holding down each part of my body and individual straps for each finger I was completely immobilized.

“You can call me Doctor Frankenstein.” I blinked at that answer in surprise. “Well that is what all the other people call me. Not like I am going to give you my name in this fun world. You know names hold a certain power. Name magic, what a laugh. I do get to carry on the work of my ancestor so don’t be afraid.” I did not know that, but it didn’t seem like a pressing issue at the moment.

“You know I am an actual doctor, or was anyways.” He kept poking all over my body as he spoke. I had no idea what he was trying to figure out. “Not much need any more with auto docs and nanites. Years of studying washed away with machines.”

“That seems unfortunate, so what are you doing now?” I asked.

“Combining things, it is quite fun actually. Except I am stuck with terrible equipment. No glass beakers either. It amazes me how many idiots out there think a VR world is the same as a regular world. I mean there are no twins here, no cell division, or anything regarding natural laws.”

“I know, I try to use that to my advantage.”

“Hmmm, yes clearly. There is no way to replicate molecules, atoms, and things at the cellular level so it is all an approximation. There are very few diseases here in FEAR. So there is no chance of rejection.”

“Really, what about corruption?”

“Ah, now we are getting into the interesting stuff. But that is my secret. Can’t have you running off and spilling it all. So I am thinking about removing your other foot to try and graft on some tentacles. I haven’t had much luck with tentacles, you got to get the interface just right.”

“I will share information about my bug foot if you let me go.”

“Deal.” I just looked at him. “Hehehehehehehe. I already have that information. Inside a bug with an open wound and some constitution based healing magic.” There went any hope of talking my way out of this somehow.

“So grafting?”

“Yes, you killed a number of my wolf men. Take off a player’s head and put on a wolf’s head. Amazing how long one can keep a head alive here in FEAR. The human blood flows into the wolf brain from the body and you get a smarter wolf with human abilities. I call them…werewolves.” He whispered the last part like it was some big secret.

“You had to kill a lot of them just to be difficult. Oh well. I have to make more anyways. Hmmm. I finally have some idea what is going on with you. The hard part is going to be cutting you open without you bleeding out. I have just the thing.” He walked out of my line of sight and then came back with a slug monster in between two tongs.

“A mana leach. They suck out MP and SP and give back HP as a waste product. Clever little buggers. Also perfect to keeping test subjects alive. Now they are quite painful.” He gave the tongs a slight squeeze and out of the creature appeared thousands of tiny teeth. “They really dig in to whatever they bite.” His eyes stopped at my mid-section.

“No-“

“Oh yes.” He cut me off and his grin grew even more. “Can’t have you trying anything. The pain alone should burn out most of your higher brain functions. I normally attach this to the forehead, but you already have a waiting shaft.” I struggled against the restraints uselessly. “Here we go!”

It placed the monster on me. I felt it wiggling against me but the teeth did not dig into me. “Huh.” He gave it a squeeze but it still didn’t latch on. I was mentally thinking, ‘Thank you Tafe, thank you Tafe.’ The teeth kept wiggling against me but none of them penetrated.

“That is interesting.” The doctor took the leech away and came back. “You really are special. Well I will just have to resort to more barbaric methods.” The doctor let out a long sigh as if he was the one suffering. He put a tourniquet around my right leg just above the knee.

“Blood loss equates to HP loss. Simple but effective in most cases. There is also no chance of your leg necrotizing because there is no oxygen. With the blood flow cut off I can get to work. The weird thing is pain is not linked to blood flow or even your body really.”

“WhaaaAAHHHHHH!” I screamed as I felt him cut into my leg. It was like someone was taking raw glass and rubbing it into the wound. I trashed against the restraints to no avail.

“I coat all my tools with poison, an extract of a particularly vicious monster. Otherwise things might get boring. It also prevents blood flow by melting the flesh together, have to keep you alive you know.” He kept cutting and cutting. Each new slice brought another level of pain. I felt him finally reach my bone. I liked my leg, no, no, NO!

“Yes, yes, YES!” He shouted back in my face. “Hehehehehehe. You know you can feel your whole body. Like this.” He reached into my cut open flesh and grabbed my leg bone. He began to squeeze it and run his hands along it. “I can’t even begin to work out how your brain is interpreting this.” I barely noticed pissing myself between my screams.

“Not what I was expecting, but good science. Hehehehehe. I was expecting the bone to be different this high up, but I was wrong. Oh well, time to try again below the knee.” He began cutting into me again. “See why I wanted that leech, I could have just gone in quick like. Now I have to take all these extra steps. I wonder…if I remove your genitals and place them on a monster can it impregnate a human. Ooooh, so many fun ideas.”

The smell of my flesh reached me. Like a decaying corpse, my flesh smelled just as bad. I heard a plop on the floor, part of it must have slid off my leg and the table. “This is exciting. Look Clarissa, there is a merging of sorts. There is no clear interface which is how rejection was prevented. But look, the changeover is very quick rather than gradual. A clear sign of corruption. Amateur work.”

“A bug is quite a large jump. It uses ichor compared to blood…maybe a correlation between meta-magic functions. Hmmmm. You really are an interesting one. How is it remaining stable…the blood. You are part demon! Of course, now it all makes sense. So many options…”

“I will need to extract large amounts of your blood. You really are putting my research way ahead. Why just your blood alone will unlock new combinations. I can graft wings onto my werewolves and who knows what else. Well enough fun for today and you need to be patched up before I run more tests. Come Clarissa.” The doctor and his silent female companion left the room.

I lay there panting, trying to work through the pain. An hour later five people entered the room. They began cleaning up my melted flesh and taking away the bloody instruments. They were all silent and moved with an efficiency speaking to many hours of practice. They finally stopped and gathered around me.

“Let me out of here. I will free you all and end this madness.” Their blank faces and dead eyes showed they had lost all hope. They reached out and placed their hands on me. The pain disappeared and I felt my leg regenerate and the puncture wounds on my body close up. “Thanks.” They didn’t say anything and left the room. I needed to escape now, waiting was incredibly dangerous.

“Kek, you still there?” I whispered. I felt a pull from inside my gut. Thank goodness the doctor never noticed the puncture wounds weren’t bleeding out and that I had some of Kek inside of me. “You need to come out and get me free.” My MP bar was only a quarter full, but my HP and SP were maxed out. With all my wounds healed, Kek began to slowly bleed out of my eyeballs. Each drop that forced its way out felt like a ball bearing being squeezed past my eyes.

The pain was nothing compared to before. My MP dropped into the negative and all my HP and SP were reduced by a third. “Can you break the restraints off my arm and fingers?” Kek moved over to my arm and got to work cutting through. Only a small portion of him was a high enough level to become hard enough to cut through the letter. It was slow but there was definite progress.

One by one, my fingers were freed. A couple minutes later Kek had cut enough into the wrist strap for me to pull my hand free. With some effort I began unstrapping myself from the table. I still felt woozy from the drugs but they had started to fade from my system. I could move at least. I bit down on my cheek and Kek went back into my blood stream.

No sense in revealing his presence if I was caught. I carefully made my way across the slick stones to the large wooden door. There were a number of small crystals providing light, but the gloom and the darkness only added to the horror of the chamber. I opened the door and peered out into a corridor with more doors and crystals.

I was in some sort of catacombs, probably beneath Str Mountain itself. I left the room and closed the door behind me. Both directions looked the same and there was a slight curve to the tunnel. If I designed this place, it would lead in a circle and only one door would lead to the surface. Each of the lighting crystals was a slightly different color above each door which was probably how the doctor and his assistants told them apart.

I began working my way down the passage opening each door as I passed. The first one I looked into had two people sewn together. Their hands and feet had been removed and sewn together with the person opposite them. There were cages on one side of the room where it was the darkest. I couldn’t help myself and peered closely. I wish I hadn’t looked.

People were sewn together in all combinations. Two women were sewn together with their breasts. A man and a woman were sewn together at their sides. There was one cage with five children, I didn’t know how they could still be alive. I shut the door and tried the room across the hall way.

This one had parts of monsters sewn into and onto various people. The one that stuck in my mind as I shut the door was the man who had his dick removed and replaced with a spike that looked eerily reminiscent of the bulb spikes. The way it was leaking purple fluid was even more confirmation than I needed.

I tried a third door. It was jam packed full of corpses stuffed into the room. A putrid smell of decay came from inside of it, making me gag. I closed the door and made my way to the next one.

Behind the door was a boy strapped to a chair. A device kept sending a hammer to hit him on the head. His eyes were red and he was frothing at the mouth. Each time the hammer struck he shook slightly. His eyes flickered to me for a second and then kept staring straight ahead. I closed the door and move on.

I took a deep breath to steady myself. There were lots of doors down here and I needed to find the right one to escape. The fifth room contained cages filled with wolves. There was a pile of discarded corpses off to the side. I heard the thwack of a meat cleaver and mumbling. Looking around the doorway I saw a large burly man cutting the heads off wolves and people and exchanging them. I snuck into the room and began opening up the cages for the wolves.

They managed to wait until I got five of them open and then they rushed out snarling. The butcher turned and managed to kill two of the wolves before the other three began ripping chunks off his body in a bloody frenzy. I freed the rest of the wolves and the people cried out to be saved. I left them and exited the room with a pack of wolves, meat cleaver in hand.

“Tut, tut. The experiments aren’t over. So much more science to do. Hehehehehe.” The wolves growled but backed slowly away. “I guess I will have to remove a leg to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Clarissa subdue the test subjects.” I looked at the mountain of a woman. Her plain clothes hid her bearish physique which became evident when she pulled a massive two handed sword from her back.

With Kek back inside of me I had MP to use. I thought out the commands, Conceal Movement two seconds, Burst Speed. I darted forward to kill the doctor and end his sick experiments. He snapped his fingers and a wall of blue flames shot up between us. I didn’t care and charged through.

I drove the meat cleaver through his left arm and into his side. His arm fell to the floor and he let out a cry of pain. A glance behind me to check on the situation showed that the flames had gone out and Clarissa was moving incredibly fast right for me. I scrambled to the side as she grabbed the doctor and ran off. All the wolves were lying in various states of dismemberment as I came back up to my feet. I noted that Clarissa had also grabbed the doctor’s chopped off arm.

I followed his blood trail to a door way which was open and showed a stair case leading up. I followed the stairs and finally saw my first bit of real light. I was in the Str Fortress. I was sure the doctor would be back on his feet soon and I had no chance of beating him and Clarissa. My sword! I had lost the Slice of Life.

I remembered where they had taken the other enchanted items I had brought them. I left the room and into a hallway. The blood trail had become much smaller and I stopped following it. I began making my way through the corridors staying alert for anyone that might be after me or even a patrol. Everything was surprisingly quiet. I made my way towards the center of the fortress.

I peered around a corner and saw two guards. I had no weapons since the meat cleaver had been left in the doctor’s side. I raced forward. They both had a look of shock on their faces as they tried to draw their swords. I did a flying kick into the chest of one of them with my tri-pronged foot. He crumpled against the floor as my prongs dug through his leather armor and into his chest.

I reached down and pulled his sword out of his hand and the sheathe it was partially in still. The other soldier opened his mouth to shout something but I was already moving forward driving my new found blade through his face and out the back. Bits of brain matter mixed in with blood coated the side of the corridor.

I pulled the sword free and turned on the soldier still lying on the ground. “Where are the enchanted weapons kept?” I asked.

“Urggg…” Blood began to come out of his mouth. He was already dying and completely useless. I shoved the blade through his eye, ending his misery. I turned to the guard I had de-brained and looked him over. It would be a bit large, but his clothes should fit. I managed to get his clothes off without making too much of a mess and wouldn’t pass a close inspection. I looked at my foot, probably not even a distant one at that.

I turned to the wood door and pulled it open. More stairs leading up. I began climbing up the tower. I reached another door at the top which was locked and embedded into the stone itself so it could only swing outwards. Tapping it revealed that the door was solid.

“Kek, can you go into the lock and open the door.” I made a small cut on my arm and watched as my status bars dipped down. Kek went into the lock. There was grinding and clicking from inside. I kept a hand on the handle, pulling slightly while standing to the side. The door opened and I felt a slight tug. Three bolts hurtled through the door to hit the wall off to the side. I looked inside the room and found gold and weapons.

I found the Slice of Life and grinned at my luck. I quickly strapped it to my side and grabbed another two blades. I had no idea what they were and didn’t have the MP to spare for an Identification. I was hoping for something good. There was so much, it was tempting to take more, but it would only weigh me down.

I grabbed a small bag of gold coins and left the room with Kek returning to me. I heard noises from the bottom of the stairway. “He is up there. Go! Go!” Soldiers with shields and spears began to advance up the stairway. When they saw me a cry went up. I raced back up the stairs and shut the door. Since it opened outwards I couldn’t pile up stuff behind it to brace it shut. I had Kek jam the lock as best as he could, but that wouldn’t hold them out for too long.

There were no windows in the room either. I looked up and the ceiling above was just the rafters and the roof. I stacked up the three tables in the room and then climbed up on top of them. It was frustrating only having one arm and I would already here the banging coming from the door along with the splintering of wood.

I made it up to the rafters and then pushed the roof tiles off to the side. Looking out it was a huge drop down. I checked other portions of the roof to see if there was a walkway or something I could get down to. There was nothing I was trapped up on the tower. I looked down and saw a small hole being made in the door way. I went back down to the floor and began grabbing each weapon one by one and saying, “Flame on.”

Finally one of them lit up. I smiled, when it doubt light things up. I lit the tables on fire. The floor was also wood and I lit that on fire as well. I then turned to the doorway and lit that on fire. Turning the room into an inferno. The soldiers were already retreating and I went down the stairs. At the exit to the corridor two bolts flew through the doorway. I saw more soldiers lined up with crossbows.

“You can’t escape!” One of them called out.

“I killed Lord Str, did you know he was an NPC?” I called back. There was silence. “This whole place is going up and Solid Steel is done. Whomever is the last one left alive out there gets an enchanted sword.”

“You will just kill us all. No dice, stay strong.” I cursed to myself. Fire behind, soldiers in front. Four blades, two with unknown enchantments.

“What do we have here? Hehehehehehe.” That laugh could only be one person. “A standoff, how interesting.”

“Doctor, you need to fall back, Blood Rain is cornered up ahead.”

“Yes, yes. I have a debt to repay, for science of course.” If there was one thing I was definitely good at, it was pissing off people. “No chances. Claraissa remove limiters, code omega.” There was a feral roar from the hallway. I glanced around and saw the woman hulking out. Her clothes ripped as armor plating appeared along with spikes out of her skin. “Hehehehe, no escape for you now.” The doctor’s left arm was hidden inside of his clothes so I couldn’t see if he had replaced it with anything.

Clarissa let out a roar and all the soldiers retreated. I did the same back up the stair way into the inferno that the tower had become. My clothes began to turn crispy as she barreled up the stair case. I maneuvered around the burning floor to the far side of the room from the doorway. She came charging up. As her large bulk hit the floorboards, they gave way and she well down to a lower level with a roar.

I made my way around the gaping hole and back down the stairs. It was time to get out of here, Burst Speed. I leapt out of the door way. The soldiers had relaxed since they had assumed Clarissa would rip me apart, their mistake. The bolts went wide as I darted forward.

The doctor began to speak but I cut out with the flame blade across his chest. He fell back with a cry and I kept running and striking out when I could. I cleared the corridor and began making my way out of the fortress. I was glad I had been here before since this place was a maze. I reached the main wall and leapt over.

I went tumbling on the ground but I was soon back up on my feet. I started running for the river. I needed to get away. I heard a rumble and turned around to see the tower caught in the inferno collapse into a pile of rubble.

I kept my pace to 9.9 miles per hour to conserve my rapidly dwindling SP. Once I reached the river it would be simple enough to make an escape. I heard a roar from behind me and a glance revealed Clarissa with blacked armor plates and murder coming from her red eyes.

I kept running hoping to wear her out since she was moving at incredible speeds. I really wanted to use an Observe but I only had 10 MP left, enough for a single skill. She was closing in fast and the way she was holding her massive sword in one hand indicated it wouldn’t be a friendly meeting. The river was at least a mile away, which meant I had to fight.

Clarissa charged, I moved out of the way of her jab and countered with a slash. She let the attack skid over her armored plating and turned to face me. She kept jabbing out again and again and it was all I could do to prevent being skewered. It was like The Encasement all over again. The only vulnerable part were her eyes.

As I maneuvered around her I noted riders off in the distance coming from the direction of the fortress. More enemies and I needed to get away. “Kek, cover the eyes.” Part of Kek left me and I maneuvered myself so he was thrown onto Clarissa’s face. He quickly covered the opening in her armor around her eyes and I set off running again.

I heard a roar behind me but a quick glance revealed she wasn’t pursuing. I kept running and noted that the riders had stopped since Clarissa was randomly charging about and swinging her massive sword. I kept running away towards the river.

***

UltimataSecret: Solid Steel is more like riddled steel

6996: Str is screwed, the Order will probably sweep the whole thing up

GambleMan: Jackpot is now $1.3 millions dollars, place your bet now on time of death

TheWinzKid: You are all winz Blood Rain

TheWhiteWoman: I saw a clip go up of him running from Str

OwlEyes: A burning city, a burning fortress, what more proof do you need

GODHAXLOL: SOLID STEELYYYYYY!!!!!

SolidSteel: Everything is under control, do not be alarmed. We are a minor situation which has been dealt with. Lord Str is in good health and is currently reorganizing the city

UltimataSecret: You call losing an army, having your captital and fortress burned down minor? What is a major disaster then?

Worm: Brunnnnnnnnn

6996: The diss or their city? I like to be clear on my insults

TheArm: Sending my love to you Blood Rain, XOXOXOXO

***

Author’s Note: Kek saved the day once again and Blood Rain escapes. The doctor is struck down, but is still alive. Well this is 50 main chapters, and over 250k words. Yeah! Thank you all for the support.