A few days passed as the final few experiments were being conducted. Dr Crute had a few medicines for treating rare diseases he wanted to work on before I became a military asset. Most of these were some of the most painless experiments that had been conducted so far.

I finally had some time to think in peace. Before I went back to everyone I knew I wanted to sort out all of my thoughts in a more logical way than I had been. It’s felt like I’ve only had time to give knee-jerk reactions to the things happening to me so far and if one thing will improve my life right now it is some direction and control, even if the control part is just mental.

First thing is first; what do I want to do?

Vague question, but one I needed to answer first before I could make any other decisions about my future.

The way I saw it I had about four options laid out before me. First, I could calmly comply with the empire. If I work hard and keep my head low I might receive better treatment over time. This has already become apparent as my conditions have already improved. The beatings have been stopped, the experiments grew tamer and more focused on actual results. Lying low would be a safe bet.

Here’s the thing though…

Fuck that! Fuck them! Fuck this Empire! FUCK THE CHURCH!

AND ESPECIALLY FUCK THAT CUNT ASS BITCH OF A GODDESS!!!

Ahem.

I can only cover up so much of what has happened to me with sarcasm. I’m not certain I would want to fight against Altru and his ilk, but I sure as fuck am not working for them willingly. Plus, I’m not wagging my tail just hoping to get some fucking dignity back. This collar on my neck is all the evidence I need to show that while the situation might be better overall, I will never be trusted free.

So… Second Option.

Kill them all.

While this option seems somewhat unhinged, it’s probably the only way I get ‘true’ freedom. As an avid gamer will know, if there is no one to talk about it then you have succeeded in your stealth mission. If everyone who knows about my existence dies, my heresy dies with them until someone looks at my stupid stat page again.

While freedom is nice and all… this option just isn’t feasible. I have no idea how I could kill an entire castle and even if it were possible the list of people who know includes my fellow travelers from Earth. Also who knows how far word has spread outside the castle or in the church or if viewing my page was actually fairly easy or a common form of identifying people in this world.

Let's shelve the murder-hobo option for now.

Option 3; pretend to be a good little slave until I find an opportunity to escape.

This option has a lot of merit. If they are really sending me into battle against these ‘demons’ there will be plenty of opportunities to get away. The problem is obviously the collar. However, I actually had a few aces up my sleeve there.

Besides the fact that I had learned enough about my ability during the experiments to have a 90% certainty that I would live from losing my head (and I mean that realistically not optimistically) I also had a few secrets I kept from the researchers.

Firstly, I learned the true nature of my ability. ‘Regeneration’ is a pretty vague concept. What state do I return to when I regain my form? Is it just like before the damage happened? Is it returning me to the state right when I got the ability after I was summoned?

Unfortunately for the Empire it was none of the above. My ability returns me to ‘optimal’ condition. Let me give you some examples that prove it.

1. The brain drug that they gave me became semi-permanent.

This drug was, by all accounts, something that should be temporary. The drug forcefully injects mana into the brain to improve its functions, it’s more like doping than an enhancement. Once the mana is gone, so are the effects, at least in theory. Even if that wasn’t the case my regeneration should have gotten rid of any changes to my brain if it reverted me back to a previous state. Instead, now I have a limited amount of the effects that won’t go away. Time is still somewhat slowed down and my memory has become photographic as far as I can tell. It’s not like the drug's full effects are working, but it is basically the same as the state I was in before the drug started doing damage.

2. I’m getting buff in stupid places.

Ok… Hear me out. Everywhere where the tests have damaged my muscles have healed already but the sections most damaged have changed a bit. I’ve gained an amount of muscle that can’t be ignored considering I have basically been tied to or lying on a bed for the past weeks… months… whatever. Either way I shouldn’t be gaining muscle but it is building up where damage happened. It sounds stupid but I once heard that you gain muscle from tearing it and then repairing it. I think my regeneration is doing that to my damaged areas, except on crack. My forearm where they've been putting in needles and taking samples is positively jacked compared to the rest of my body.

3. Medicines work, but only the positive effects.

All the medicines that Crute has tested on me have worked. If no damage is done to my body , it is allowed to ‘change’. One such medicine hardens skin slightly, and its effect is still there. On the other hand any negative effects were ‘cured’. Headaches repaired themselves, Internal ruptures were healed, even forced depression (which put Crute on my shit list somewhere in the top ten) was forcefully corrected back to when the effect wasn’t present after some time had passed.

All of this is ‘proof’ of sorts, but in reality I was just getting an inherent feeling for how the power worked. I took that feeling and tested it against what had happened to me in the experiments and found it to be accurate. So I return to ‘optimal’ condition.

This means I can still grow, and probably fast too despite the [Stunted] attribute I have. If I can get strong just by tearing muscle, plus potentially getting little bonuses through medicines and even what most would consider poison that then become permanent, then at the bare minimum I should become a hardy tank of a human even if I still can’t fight well.

Besides knowing how I could use my ability, I also got some good information during the experiments. I remember EVERYTHING thanks to the slow drug. All of the notes they took, all of the equipment they used, and all of the magic ‘diagrams’ they drew.

And yes, that includes the one Black used to lock this collar on me. I don’t know if the same pattern will unlock the collar but it’s better than nothing. My favorite spell I got to memorize was called ‘lie detection’. They used it to make sure I was being truthful at times, and while I don’t know the exact effects they didn’t doubt anything I said after they cast it on me.

And, if you couldn’t guess from how excited I was to ‘learn’ the magic patterns, I’ve also figured out how to cast magic.

The last and best effect from getting mana injected forcefully into your brain is that you can sort of ‘feel’ mana after such an experience. Now if you move that mana you can now feel down to your finger, suddenly you can draw shapes in the air with it, just like how the mages have been making the diagrams that make magic in the air. My mana is absolute shit so I can’t even get a full diagram drawn, but hey I’m sure there’s a way to train it.

These advantages mean that I have cards I can play given an opportunity. So lying low and acting dumb could very well be the best decision I could make, but there was still one more option.

Option 4; Be proactive.

This option can take millions of forms. Dig a hole in the wall of my room with a spoon, try to find a collaborator to help get me out, take a hostage important enough they are afraid of detonating my collar, test magic on the collar, try and create chaos large enough that I can escape.

This option was the most balanced between risk and reward. Sitting still gave basically no rewards with no risk. Trying to be a murder-hobo would likely immediately get me killed but would also give a better chance of escape than biding my time. Pretending to be compliant will give me time to get strong, but the opportunity to escape may never come no matter how likely it seems. Being active means I make that opportunity happen myself. I take on the risk of being locked up more securely or killed off but I also don’t sit on my thumbs waiting for god…. well I guess one of the gods to have some mercy on my sorry ass and help me.

As my thinking time was coming to an end and my re-integration into the group approached I leaned more and more heavily towards the last option. That decided, what could I do to be proactive now?

The game plan is as follows; get strong in a way most won’t recognize (don’t wanna put Altru and his people on edge), find people who are willing to help me escape, and stab Altru in the fucking throat while he sleeps find a good way to create chaos that doesn’t lead back to me. All of it will be vague for now till I get my bearings and learn more about the castle. So a secondary task will be information gathering.

A plan in place, no matter how shitty and vague, made me feel immensely better. It’s funny how you don’t realize how truly stressed you are until some of it bleeds away. It felt like drugs entering my system, and not the shitty ones Dr. Crute likes to give me.

Suddenly mentally unburdened (somewhat) and knowing I would get to see my friends and the others soon; you could say I was practically in a good mood.

Dr. Crute noticed my mood apparently. He had been mostly quiet the past few days of experiments, lacking the drive for research and conversation he had shown previously.

He opened his mouth to talk a few times today, but still had thought better of it and said nothing. As the last round of tests were drawing to a close, hee seemed to have made his mind up about something.

“Tony… I’m sorry. For everything.”

Good mood gone.

Something in my head popped for a second and my smartass mask slid a bit.

“You can take your apology and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine. It can join your soul in the fucking dark.”

Crute physically cringed, dropping a vial of something he had been holding and spilling it all over the floor. His face twisted in pain for a second but returned to his usual cold after a second or two.

“That’s fair Tony. Just know that while I did my job, I felt worse and worse as I got to realize you were someone who couldn’t possibly deserve this.”

I just kept silent to prevent another outburst.

“Tony, I know that you’ve been keeping the effects of the drugs.”

Mother fucker.

“I haven’t told anyone and I don’t intend to. I hope that one day you can get that collar off but… I know better than to think gods will change their minds.”

He rattled around on his little work bench and pulled out another vial.

“Tony, this is the last drug we’re testing today.”

“What does it do?”

“It’s an interesting drug I developed. Its effects on animals were extraordinary but it always leads to death.”

“Sounds like a drug you would make.”

Crute sighed a heavy sigh.

“Tony this allows an individual to suppress their mana so that none escapes.”

“Oh so it makes me even more mana deficient?”

“Tony. In this world if something doesn’t have any mana, it is dead.”

Wait.

“The test animals are the first recorded incident of a creature with 0 mana being released from its body continuing to live, though it was for a short time. If you take this after taking significant damage or if it looks like you were lost and they could no longer track your mana…”

“Then they would assume I’m dead?”

“Correct.”

I didn’t know what to say. Turns out I already had a collaborator inside the castle, but it was the mother fucker who made my world slow down just to give me an extended taste of hell.

I didn’t think I could totally forgive him but…

“Hey Crute.”

“What?”

“Thanks.”

He gave a small smile and handed me the vial.

“Eat that. You won’t get hurt from it and if you get hit hard enough in the stomach it’ll break. Try not to take any gut shots for a while. And if you shit it out, don’t let anyone find it, they’ll take it.”

Crute was really sticking his neck out here.

Turns out just saying thanks when you don’t really mean it builds trust.

Congratulations Crute, you’re at the bottom of my shit-list…

But you’re still there.