Action time. Now two weeks later, my laboratory is up and running. Next to me is a criminal, who volunteered to my small experiments. Of course, some help was needed, but no one will miss this ex-ripper. I have to say, I was very lucky with our friend here. They had I skirmish with the guys from the artisan district. No idea what it was about, but that didn’t deter me from taking one of their wounded.

Now, I am about to give him some medicine. The reason for that is, that even though he is the best I can get my hand on. It is still not what I wanted. A mage apprentice would have been optimal. killing the very weak ones was not the problem. Capturing them and getting away with is. All of the apprentices, who come to Osmor are people, who are somewhat competent. I don’t think, that I can silently abduct them. The apprentices from my tower is also a no-go. If I start abducting them, someone would notice. How I now that? Easy.

The mortality rate of an apprentice is surprisingly high. Close to 60 per cent of the people who were in my batch are now dead. Some got killed during a mission, some got the unfortunate fate of becoming an experimental ‚assistant‘ for a Mage when there wasn’t enough prisoners. And the others got killed by the enemy faction. The cocky ones are mostly gone. I am mostly in my room, and even when I go out, I always rip a scroll of concealment. In front of Mage that scroll is nothing, but in the number of people who come in and out of the tower daily, it is unnoticeable. I just have to be careful not to bump into anyone.

So now, my goal with Subject#002, that is the guy in front of my, is to artificially awaken his blood, the same thing what happens to every apprentice the first time they correctly use their meditation method. My approach is one on the way of blood tonics. Through black mantis, by the way, I have to name my new organization, I managed to obtain a lot of magical ingredients, which are normally only exchangeable through contribution points. I have to say, smuggling is a very lucrative business.

The gangsters are also behaving themselves. In fear of them doing something stupid, I have to conquer dark and white gang, as to unite the western side of the city.

If that is done, they will have more then enough on their hands to do anything that they shouldn’t.

Back to my experiment. I made four experimental solutions for the goal of awakening the magic in his blood. The first is simply made from herbs with a very strong magic potency, but not a specific affinity. It is like pure mana solution. This was one of the harder one to make. I had to distil the solution to make it more effective, but at the same time, I had to trap in the mana.

The second is the same, but with water type mana. I choose water, because it has the least volatile properties. Injecting someone with raw mana like arcane or fire would result in a spectacular firework. Something interesting, but with a very limited amount of test subject, I rather not waste them like this for shit and giggles. Maybe later.

For the third, I used a plant, which has some weak blood property mixed with some gentle mana herds. I have the highest hope for this one.

And the last is something I am not very proud of. I got bored a bit and mixed some of the leftover herbs. Luckily I documented everything, so in case of success, I can make another dose. Though it might not very useful for this particular experiment, I have a hunch, that I created something useful by accident.

The order I inject him is the same I just mentioned. First the pure mana one, if it doesn’t work, it will just dissipate because of the lack of suitable vessel. The second is similar. The third not so, but if that fails, I will inject the last just to see what would happen.

„good morning sunshine“I said while removing the gag.

„Who the fuck are you, why the fuck am I here?“ he shouted. Too bad for him, I have inscribed enough sound dampening runes, that even an elephant rampaging wouldn’t be noticed b the patrons if Luke.

„alright sunshine, here comes injection one“. I said and injected him with the first solution.

At first not much happened. Than his pores began to bleed. No idea how that works but that happens.

So a failure, alright next.

I waited for two hours. A half for the mana to dissipate from his blood and one and a half for him to somewhat recover. Then I injected him with the second one.

Honestly, this went a lot better. His body seems to be able to take the water type mana a lot better than pure mana. This might be because the human body is mostly made up of water.

He seems to be in pain, but not as much as with the first injection. This time he only sweats a lot, but nothing else happens except that. To be honest, I expected something gorier, but lucky for the cleaners, that is what I call the ringleader, who had been ordered to clean my lab, nothing too explosive happened. Next, I give him the third.

Not a whole lot happens this time. After 20 minutes of nothing happening, I inject him with the last solution.

After 2-3 minutes, I can see a difference. His skin gets a light blood-red tune and he begins to paint heavily. The next thing is something that I didn’t expect. He breaks the ropes he was tied with and lunged at me.

„Damn, I should have thought about something like this“I roar in my mind while trying to dodge and utterly failing. He catapults me through the cellar and I land on one of the bookshelves. They were luckily empty, I didn’t have time yet to fill them.

After getting over my dizziness, I see him lunging at me again. He seems to still have his mind. It just made him more aggressive and a lot stronger. Prepared this time, I cast ‚soul shock‘. And immediately after that ‚minor shock‘. He is twitching on the ground because of that.

Getting a better idea, I distance myself from him, and use ‚soul shock‘ to confuse him during the duration of the potion. After 3 more minutes of rampaging, he slumps to the now very disorganized floor of my lab. I am not happy that the lab is in shambles, but well, it’s not like I have to clean up.

Binding him again, I check his blood. Still nothing.

„Honestly, not what I wanted to do, but I can work with this, “I say to myself, as I order more of the herbs for the third and fourth potion.