Time continued to pass, and it passed oh-so-slowly.

For months, Villin and Elinoire were forced to endure the high-gravity. The only bit of time they would be able to relax was when the cell got checked for enchantments, something that happened once or twice a month.

At this point, the two of them had been here for five full months. For almost half a year they had been locked up in a cell, taken to perform experiments every three days. And right now, Elinoire reached her breaking point.

It came after a series of bad experiments. First, she lost four of her toes due to one of the spells tested on her going wrong. They were unable to be grown back due to the anti-magical properties of the spell. Then, just six days later, she returned with a mangled ear, one that didn’t seem to be healing either.

“I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to keep this up.”

Villin was also feeling empty at this point, after such a long time, it was hard to keep thinking optimistically, it seemed that they could die at any time.

“I know.”

When Elinoire came back with the mangled ear, all that Villin could really do is sit beside her. The two of them would sleep together every night, for comfort. Obviously, they had no thoughts about sex or anything of the like. They just slept side-by-side, trying to take comfort in the other’s person’s proximity.

After this day, Elinoire changed, she broke. This day was the last one Villin saw tears coming out of her eyes. If Villin didn’t grab her attention, she would be staring at the wall for hours and hours.

She also no longer taught Villin transfiguration, she seemed to lack interest, the emotions in her eyes seemed to have dissipated.

Villin guessed that the second layer of her mind must’ve been crippled, she no longer held emotions, as for memories, those were being affected long ago.

It wasn’t that she couldn’t recall anything, it was just that her memory was badly affected. She was suffering from dementia, where she would forget things all the time.

Normally, this would’ve made Villin sad, but right now, Villin was sparse with emotion.

Even though the mental wall he had built had become extremely sturdy, barely even shaking these days even with the experiments that went wrong, it wasn’t everything.

He could feel himself begin to change, there was no way he couldn’t. His mental space wasn’t getting damaged like Elinoire’s, but he still got the memories, and he still felt the pain. Not everything within one’s mental space is good. More and more of Villin’s memories became darker ones and due to feeling heavy emotions so often, he had begun to feel less to avoid getting exhausted subconsciously.

Still, he continued his plan. Every ‘night’ he got up and began drawing certain symbols in the air with full concentration. Thus far it was the same as it was in the beginning, nothing happened whatsoever, whatever he was doing, it didn’t seem to be working.

The sixth month, Villin went through his first truly successful experiment.

He had to swallow a dark-grey pill. According to the talkative Candil, the pill was supposed to increase one’s vitality permanently. It would harden the skin and increase the number of platelets created when wounded. The intention was that open wounds would close within just a few minutes, decreasing blood loss.

There had been dozens of such pills tested before. Villin was glad when he got to test one of these since it was one of the less painful ones. Generally, you would feel severe pain on the entire torso, this was considered good for him.

Surprisingly, this time it didn’t happen. First, Villin thought it was a dud, one of those that didn’t do anything. But soon, he felt an itch. It began with his chest but quickly spread throughout the entire body.

When Villin didn’t seem to be in severe pain, Candil lifted the spell that stopped sound coming from Villin to reach his ears, and he began asking Villin questioned.

Just like the other times this happened, Villin answered honestly, describing the sensation.

Hearing it, Candil got excited. After waiting for a few hours for the itching to stop, he made a cut on Villin’s arm and waited. After two minutes time, a scabbard was beginning to form over the wound, soon, it was closed up entirely.

Testing the skin, it was also slightly more durable, but not to an extent that was all that noticeable.

Seeing the success, Candil was ecstatic, constantly writing things down, trying to figure out why this pill worked and if the success could be replicated.

Of course, he was still careful. The pill’s effects could wear off in a day or two, in which case it would still be somewhat of a failure.

After this event, Villin was given one day off. Then, Candil told him they would begin on the second round of pills.

Villin wasn’t sure what he meant but it started to become clear, there was a reason Candil was having him test certain pills. And it didn’t seem to be because he wanted pills to become better than gene solutions, at least not entirely.

Since, after this point, the scientist began trying out pills that would increase the vitality of his organs, Villin got a few ideas. It was possible he wanted to create some sort of supersoldiers. It was also possible he wanted to increase Villin’s body so much so that he could extract partial organs and bone marrow constantly without worrying he would die.

No matter what, Villin couldn’t think of it too much. It could be a large number of reasons, fretting about it would do him no good.

And so, time continued passing.

Villin never gave up on learning transfiguration. Even though Elinoire was no longer capable of teaching him, he knew enough at this point to self-study. He also found out that the statues wouldn’t move as long as you didn’t transfigure the area too much. When he went too far one time, he could faintly sense a magic aura coming out of one of the statues. He then quickly stopped transfigurating, allowing the aura to disappear.

In principle, the art was relatively simple. The first spell would help your magic power penetrate into an object. The second spell would cause the object and magic power to become one, allowing you to morph it. And the third spell, in most cases, would let you control this from a distance.

The spells were the easiest bit though. Controlling the magic power was much, much harder, especially when it was within an object.

Still, Villin was already skilled previously when it came to controlling magic power. From ‘Cut and Crease’ to the way he controlled his puppet. He also had some techniques that helped him out further, the ones he got from Richard so long ago.

The seventh month, Villin made a breakthrough. As he did so often, he took his battered body, got up despite the gravity, and began drawing in the air with his finger, fully focused.

One of the runes he drew in the air felt different. Everything looked the same, and generally, nobody would be able to tell something was different, except for Villin that was. He could feel his magic power lingering in the air before him. For the first time in months, he smiled, laughed even. He had been working terribly hard, now finally, he had achieved something.

In the air before him, was a rune, etched into space itself.

This was part of Villin’s plan. The creation of a ward. Even though it was only one rune out of thousands, it was a beginning, it meant his plan was possible.

Yet, soon the rune dissipated. It may have been etched into space but it was unable to attract enough magical energy to sustain itself. Villin counted five minutes before it dissipated. Generally, when making a ward, one would need to use a technique, letting each rune take in magical energy by themselves.

Sadly, Villin didn’t know how you could do this, so he had to take another path. As a runemaster, he realized runes are runes no matter how they get used. He believed that it should be possible to create enchantments within the ward itself, allowing it to gather magical energy using these.

He would need to be able to create such an enchantment within five minutes so that all the necessary runes were present, this would once more be a long and arduous task.

And so he continued, task in mind. He worked even harder, but the longer he stayed, the lonelier he became. Even though she was sitting close, in Villin’s eyes, Elinoire was dead. He was all alone now, any experiment could be his last, and he may never be able to see the outside again.

The loneliness was extremely severe, but there was nothing that could be done.