Nathan

Year 2849 | Month 10 | Day 22

Hunger.

This is the first thing that I feel as I regain consciousness and let out a groan.

The feeling isn’t like the hunger that I’ve felt before. Instead, it’s a light burning feeling in my stomach. Not too overwhelming and easily ignorable if I try, but still quite uncomfortable and tempting, nonetheless.

“I can tell you’re awake, child. Open your eyes.” A familiar voice grates on my nerves, albeit without the power I used to sense in it.

So I open my eyes, just to frown as everything seems a little bit clearer. Brighter. And in a lot more detail than before.

The heck?

It’s at this moment that the memories of what had happened before losing my consciousness flood back to me. And more precisely, the memories of the mutagen.

Oh.

“Unfortunately, you wasted quite a bit of the mutagen in your escape attempt, so it didn’t have anywhere near as large an affect as I’d hoped,” the skeleton who I find standing in front of me from my place on some sort of wooden counter says. The undead magician is now wearing a dark black robe with streaks of red running through it, with a deep cowl pushed back. And his tone honestly sounds like he’s scolding me for trying to run away from his attempts to capture me. As if I were some child running away from their tutor.

I try to push myself up, only to end up underestimating my strength and shooting up way too quickly.

“The hell…?” I mutter while glancing at my hand.

Why am I so strong? Also, is my skin paler than normal?

The skeleton clicks his tongue – which shouldn’t be possible considering his lack of a tongue – and snaps his bony fingers, causing a pitch black rift to open up to what I’m assuming is the elemental plane of death, which for some reason feels comfortable being near. He then has a mirror of all things floating out of it and moves in front of me. Showing my new appearance to me.

My mouth drops parts slightly at the sight of my bright red eyes and slightly sharper canines. But other than that, I actually don’t notice any differences. Aside from my paler skin.

Okay, that’s not as bad as I was expe-

Suddenly, the corpse of a small animal follows the mirror out of the rift and the moment I smell its aroma, my hunger flares just slightly and I instantly have the urge to eat it. At the same time, my image in the mirror changes. My eyes are now releasing a faint red glow, and black veins are beginning to crawl down my face.

I rip my eyes away from the mirror and the animal corpse through sheer willpower to glare at the skeleton, who simply nods his bony head while typing away at his terminal, which I’m wondering where came from.

“Death mana has given the test subject vampiric traits despite being alive, Space and Time mana have managed to let the effects bypass the subject’s unchanging body,” the skeleton mutters out loud, but I throw my fist towards the monster with a lot more strength than I’d of thought possible. And even more strength than I used earlier. However, the skeleton just ignores my fist that strikes him in the chest. Or rather, strikes a barrier of death mana that I didn’t even know was there and does absolutely nothing beyond sending a wave of air out in every direction from the impact. “And the poison mana has made the results permanent and fully spread throughout the test subject’s body.” He then looks up at me as if I hadn’t just attacked him and says, “Despite the lacking quantity of mutagen exposed, I feel satisfied with this experiment. You are now free to go as I’ve already collected samples of your blood.”

My eyes widen in shock at his words, only for a confused look to spread across my face.

What?

He… how?

The skeleton begins to walk away while calling back, “I used death magic to trick your body into believing the samples of blood were dead and needed to be replaced instead of reattached.” He then walks out the door of the room, which I’m just now realizing is his lab, just without the cage in it.

Right before the door closes on its own behind him, I hear him muttering, “Now I just need to figure out how to recreate the child’s circumstances on someone el-”

I blankly stare at the closed door for several seconds, not moving a muscle the entire time. But eventually, my hunger for the dead animal meat snaps me out of my funk and I find myself turning to stare at it, only for the sight of black veins running across my skin and my glowing eyes to snap me out of that as well.

Are you fucking kidding me? First it’s reality itself, and now a mad scientist… are you fucking kidding me?!

My body is not a plaything for you to change as you please!!!

Our of pure anger, I slam my fist on the counter, vaguely noticing my eyes flaring even brighter in the process through the mirror as a large portion of the counter shatters from my fist and leaves me falling to the floor myself. After that, I simply put my head in my hands and let out a mute scream, venting out all of the anger and frustration at everything that’s happened to me throughout the past years.

It takes me over half an hour to calm down back to my usual level. But after I do, I finally take a moment to look down at my clothes, which are the exact same as they were before I went unconscious. Without any of the damage that they sustained during my escape attempt.

At least the skeletal bastard took the time to fix my gear.

I raise my head to look around the lab before finding my weapons and device to open my storage both sitting piled up on the floor at the corner of the room.

And he didn’t steal anything. Just experimented on my body and then left me alone after it succeeded.

After confirming everything is as it should be, I turn back to the mirror and poke at my new canines. If I remember correctly, vampirism is an undead trait that allows an undead monster to feed off of the blood and or flesh of another living creature to temporarily grow stronger through it before going back to normal after the blood or flesh is used up as fuel for their extra strength. But at the same time, they gain a hunger for flesh and blood and need it to live. And the hunger only grows with time until it’s unbearable enough that even the sentient undead that aren’t inherently aggressive towards humans can’t help but attack them at first sight.

I frown at that before glancing at the dead corpse and holding myself back from tearing into it.

Since I didn’t need food before, does that mean I don’t actually need to sate my hunger? My hunger never really grew beyond a certain point before now, so maybe I can just ignore this vampirism?

I’ll just have to wait and see.

With that thought and a grimace to go along with it, I affirm my sword’s sheath and rifle’s strap to me before getting up and beginning to head out of the lab.