I thought that my life was going to go one of two ways from now on. Either I was going to experience a personal hell which the followers of the church and Altru would thrust upon me with unrelenting force, or I was just going to end up as a valuable resource of blood and would end up getting treated better than a heretic rightfully should.

It ended up being both, but also neither. Nothing could ever be simple could it.

I should probably mention at this point that early on in the process they attached some new holy knights to be my escorts and these devout men of god got tired of my big mouth faster than the other two chuckle-heads I was with before. Since they realized breaking my jaw was a temporary approach (SPU 4.6) they decided to gag my mouth. So I got to experience the rest of this without the only thing that had kept me going, which was sarcasm. Any and all wise-cracks were to remain in my head without ever being spoken, and that was the true travesty here.

The doctors of the empire got to work right away on Altru’s little ‘project’. I was brought to a room that was the medieval equivalent of a sterile hospital room and they began their experiments to test my regenerative abilities.

They initially stuck me with a single needle to see if I could give a continuous blood drip at the level of taking a normal person’s blood, but maintained for days instead of the few minutes they normally used for blood donors. Here they ran into their first major roadblock.

As it turns out my regeneration ability is somewhat comprehensive. Just like how my body expelled the bullet on that first day, anything my body recognized as a foreign object was expelled. Each time they inserted the needle it would take just a few moments for my body to reject it and push it out. As you can imagine this was annoying for the would-be blood-harvester doctors. So they tried to get creative.

First they tried a larger needle, which got pushed out even faster than the small needle. Then they tried a hooked needle, which I wanted to ask how the hell they made with the level of tech I’ve seen so far but only managed a muffle “umph” from behind my gag. The hooked needle lasted longer but my power seemed to “adapt” and pushed it all out at once (hook and all) instead of trying to back it out. Amazingly it seemed like my ability ‘learned’ as it went. It took two minutes to expel the first hooked needle, then only a minute for the second, then 3 seconds for the third.

At this point some of the doctors became very interested in the ability I possessed and mentioned other experiments that could be run. However their leader pointed out that blood harvesting was Altru’s direct order so they were to work on that first.

The grumpy doctors began to carry out tests in quick succession.

They used an adhesive on the needle to keep it in. The adhesive was also expelled with some flesh attached (SPU 3).

They tried to steadily pour acid to keep my body from regenerating around the small wound. This worked for about an hour before my ability began to let the acid drip right through my flesh and straight to the ground. (SPU 4)

They used medicines that were supposed to curb healing, which was apparently necessary for certain magical illnesses that ‘heal’ your veins and airways shut, proving that there is always something worse than even my situation. These simply didn’t work.

Next they tried to heat the needle. This seemed to circumvent my healing very well but it defeated the purpose of harvesting blood as the blood would congeal or evaporate and become unusable. (SPU 4.4)

They tried to anchor the needle by putting a bar through my arm with a latch that the needle stuck to (SPU 3.7). This was harder for my body to get rid of as they maneuvered it so that the bar went in between two bones. Finally, they found something that worked. My ability worked hard to expel the object but it seemed unwilling to break my bones to get rid of the bar. Maybe some people would be disappointed that the doctors succeeded but by this point I was as happy as the doctors that it worked as that meant no more experiments. They extracted blood for an hour and got a healthy amount. I thought I would get queasy losing so much blood but the doctors switched out the gauge (size) of the needles as they observed how much my body recovered and found a balance that let me recover blood as fast as they took it.

When everything was dialed in and the blood was flowing it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought. It’s amazing what humans can adapt to. If my body didn’t keep actively trying to expel the bar it might have been like having a really annoying piercing. But it looks like I’m not in control of my body either, as the regeneration continued to try and heal me despite me wanting it to stop.

My body turned out to be just as efficient as Altru hoped. I produced about 2 gallons of blood every hour. Considering a normal person gave a pint in about 10 minutes my body was more than twice as efficient as a normal person and didn’t stop producing more. The doctors cheered at their success and finally called it a day. Turns out it had already been 12 hours since we started. My how time flies when you’re having fun.

They left me with an observer still strapped to the table and giving blood, but they finally took the gag off and I was allowed to eat. Turns out I didn’t really ‘need’ food as my ability repaired any damage caused by lack of food, which became apparent over the course of the day with doctors literally observing me every moment, but Altru ordered me to be fed. Nice guy that Altru, I only kind of want to find out what would happen if I used the bar in my arm to crush his adams apple.

In reality, that would never be possible. They never unstrapped me from the table and I was extremely exhausted. I don’t know if it was just mental or if the constant regeneration and lack of food was making me tired but I didn’t even have the energy to back-talk. I just lethargically chewed my food until I passed out and enjoyed what little time I had to be unconscious.

…

I woke up feeling oddly refreshed. I saw the observer nodding off on the other side of the otherwise empty room. All the implements must have been removed while I slept as there was nothing near my cot. The rod and needle were still in my arm dripping steadily into a large container but something was… off.

The blood flow was a lot less than before I fell asleep. The rod and needle also seemed to be less painful than yesterday. I wondered what was up with that so I shifted my arm as much as I could with my constraints to get a good look at the rod and needle.

At that moment some weight left my arm and a loud “clang” resounded in the room.

I couldn’t see clearly what happened and the observer snapped up in a daze looking around in a panic. He looked at me, then my arm, and his face went pale. Before I could ask what was going on he left the room in a hurry shouting for the head doctor.

I twisted again to get a look at my arm and managed to get a look. My arm was covered in blood, but there was no bar to be seen anymore. My arm was clean and smooth under the thin coating of blood.

It felt absolutely liberating to have nothing in my arm for the first time since the experiments started yesterday and I just enjoyed it. I hummed while I thought about the coming day.

I was really too tired to do anything yesterday and my mouth had been gagged the whole time. Both of those problems were gone today, or at least for now since they never re-gagged me after I ate my food last night, so I thought about what I could do to slightly improve my situation in the silence of the empty room.

First of all, sarcasm is banned. I don’t want the gag put back on if I can avoid it. Second, I can convince the doctors to try less painful experiments as soon as the blood problem is taken care of, so I might have to actually help move the process along if I can. That might sound insane, but I’m slowly realizing that the only thing I’m allowed to hope for here is a reduction in suffering and not freedom from it. Compliant test animals get treated better than rabid test animals, and that’s all I am to them. Third, I would like to figure out my power more. It has lots of interesting aspects and seems to adapt frighteningly quickly. I might not have any hope now, but if I could find a creative way to use my power I might be able to escape in the future after they let their guards down.

So from today on, I’m a compliant but curious lab rat.

As my thoughts came to a close I heard a clamor outside and the group of doctors from yesterday came in with 2 new hoy knights behind them. Guess the knights are on rotation.

The head doctor came up and picked up what I recognized to be the bar and needle off the ground. I say I recognized it, but it was not what it once was. The bar was two separate hunks of metal with nothing between and the needle only had the portion that was outside my body left.

The doctors examined my arm while I stayed quiet and they began to hypothesize what happened. The head doctor was having none of this and told them to bring another of the same device so they could watch what happened instead of just guessing.

They brought in a carbon copy of the device from yesterday and stuck it in my arm. At first everything went the same; my arm kept trying to expel the device but wouldn’t break my bones to do it. After a minute this stopped, and everything became still. The doctors looked on with confusion and I decided to start up my act of compliance with an explanation of what they couldn’t see. After all it was my arm and I could feel exactly what was happening, and I was amazed at how comprehensive the ability I held was.

“I’m healing through it…”

“What?”

The head doctor turned his eyes to me coldly as he questioned me.

“What do you mean healing ‘through’ it?”

“I mean my flesh is healing straight through the bar. I don’t know how but I can feel my muscles going into the metal.”

“Hmm.”

The head doc nodded his head and observed my arm a little longer before demanding a scalpel from one of his group. He used it to cut lightly into my arm and observe (SPU 2.2). He spoke out loud to have his words recorded by another assistant with a notebook.

“The patient appears to be correct, the muscle tissue and other flesh are eating through the bar like acid.”

The assistant furiously scribbled to capture his words.

“From other experiments recorded about beings with regenerative properties we can conjecture that this is a new phenomenon. Trolls will expel foreign objects just like the patient but they can not ‘heal’ through objects embedded between the bones. This seems more like what happens to metal consumed by a slime. While slimes are not actually acidic they break down any material they ingest by using mana to break the bonds that maintain a material’s structure, turning it into a small particle one cannot see with the naked eye.”

I felt like making a wisecrack about being compared to a slime but remembered the plan. No use pissing off the doctors while they were still letting me speak.

“Just like with previous experiments to extract body fluids from the subject, it appears that their natural gift has adapted to bring the body's condition back to its prime. Such evolving abilities are uncommon but not non-existent. I would be interested to know if this gift is natural or given by a god, and in the case it is god related which god could grant such an amazing bestowment.”

“Wait, I thought all of the abilities came from gods.”

I only opened my mouth with a reasonable question in the hope of opening up some dialogue that would intellectually satisfy this man. He seemed to be in charge of this whole project and if I could get him to say no to the gag permanently that was one step up in my living conditions.

He eyed me for a while, his eyes even flicking to the gag that one of the holy knights had produced, before he decided to just answer me while waving to the holy knight to put the gag away.

“Most abilities, perks, powers, whatever you may call them come from the gods directly. But these abilities are only the gods giving shape to the power generated in the summoning naturally. There is a chance that if no god wants to bother shaping a summoned beings power then it will naturally manifest in terms of increased basic stats or a natural talent being boosted, such as rapid healing or increased cognition or body movement. These are more rare than god sculpted gifts but not unheard of.”

The whole time he spoke to me he observed the metal by cutting open a viewing slot every few seconds to prevent the regenerating flesh from blocking his view. He then proceeded to pull out some needles of different materials and thickness from his workstation next to my bed.

“I will now proceed to insert various materials to see if the breaking of bonds is by material or more fundamental.”

I gulped as he started to insert the needles one by one, and then had another doctor hold the sides so that my body couldn’t eject them.

This experiment deviated from the original intent of gathering blood, but no one questioned the head doctor, who I found out through the light conversation we shared was called Dr. Crute. He was focused on the experiment and an hour passed by in a flash. Over this time period my restraints were loosened (though not enough to really move around) and they let me actively participate in the experiment that, in all honesty, I was more curious about than even them. What better way to test my power than a lab controlled experiment with a medical expert?

At some point Dr. Crute seemed satisfied and glanced at a time-piece hanging on the wall of the room. It was now 8. The days in this world are around 20 hours, with shorter night-times than earth which started around the 19 hour mark. All the doctors answered my questions in a sort of back and forth and I’d asked about the time earlier. Apparently Dr. Crute, despite being engrossed in the experiment, still noticed the time. It was exactly the time the doctors were supposed to initially arrive for the blood extraction.

“Alright everyone, back to work.”

Well, I guess this is still happening.

To make a long story short, many experiments were tried over the day but only one really worked. They found needles to be useless as anything entering my skin was either broken down or expelled, so they changed tactics. They attached a magical device with a surgical blade to my wrist that cut the veins at set intervals to keep the blood flowing. This was far less painful than the previous experiments so I was pretty stoked. Amazing how having my wrists cut was now something to be excited by, but here we are.

The days continued with me gathering information from the doctors while they experimented on me in their free time, and then extracting blood during a set time period every day. I felt like the doctors were easy to get along with in a way. They weren’t outright hostile and just seemed to be doing their jobs while enjoying some research on the side. I voiced very few complaints and let them get comfortable, eventually earning me the ability to sit up and shit somewhere that wasn’t a bed-pan (under the watchful eyes of the holy knights of course). All in all it wasn’t too bad, especially compared to getting my face beaten in by the holy knights, which still happened occasionally when the doctors were not around and a dedicated holy knight felt that me being allowed to live as just an experimental pin-cushion was too light a punishment.

I was getting used to this new daily routine when, about 2 weeks after we started, Altru showed up.

Me and Dr. Crute were having a nice conversation during the “free time” between the blood extraction when Altru just walked in without any announcement.

He looked down at me sitting on the bed with a little blade attached to my wrist and bowls beneath them, seemingly taking in the oddities of me and the doctor calmly conversing while this was happening.

He then turned to me and gave me a smile, and at that moment I knew that even this new routine I was getting used to was also going to be taken from me.

“Congratulations Tony. You’ve done something amazing.”

He pointed to me and Dr. Crute in turn.

“Thanks to you and the good Dr. Crute, we have enough blood in cold storage to supply the troops for a year at least. All of this in two weeks!”

The smile on his face felt genuine, and because of that genuine smile I felt the floor falling out from under me as anxiety set in. If they have enough blood that means…

“Time to move you to your next task Tony!”

All those hours I spent helping the doctors, getting close and getting them to allow me just the bare minimum of comforts, gone just like that.

Whether it was imagined or not I saw a malice in Altru’s smile and eyes, like he knew.

I let out the first truly involuntary statement I had uttered since I entered this room, and it summed up everything nicely.

“FUCK!”