System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 1999 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 114
It was like a nightmare, no, worse than a nightmare, because Roy felt every ounce of pain with an unblinking, razor-sharp awareness every second.
The Virus ran rampant inside him, ravaging his immune system; his lymph nodes swelled, vast heat spread through his body, and he was burning with fever. His dried, ashen lips blistered in quick succession, yet he could not black out or fall asleep.
It was as if a venomous snake had crawled up out of molten rock and burrowed through him, winding and writhing from head to toe and then back again from foot to crown in an endless loop.
He rolled on the operating table, his body twisting like an earthworm, his features contorted into a mask of ugliness, but he gritted his teeth and gave no cry or complaint, only a sickening, hissing sound.
The pain rivaled his first intake of pre-potion.
Still, it remained within what he could bear.
Coral, standing by, twisted her delicate fingers without realizing it, worry showing on her pretty face.
In nearly a century as a Sorceress she had seen many things, scenes far crueller than this one, whether done willingly or by force—the vivisection of the Daughters of the Black Sun, monster limb grafting, forbidden experiments in necromancy.
She had not been moved by an experiment in a long time, yet a ripple of feeling rose in her chest now.
Sorceresses were shrewd and learned, but Lytta Neyd at least kept her word—she had only promised an accident.
Watching the boy writhe in agony, a faint thought took root in Coral’s mind: to cast a charm, to ease his suffering.
“Calm yourself, Lytta Neyd ... additional power will trigger unpredictable mutation,” she told herself, and in the span of a breath the impulsive idea was smothered by the Sorceress.
“All steps must be followed to the letter!”
Her face smoothed back into composure, her fingers tracing layered magic circles deftly in the air, her red lips moving in barely audible syllables. Multicolored light streamed from the boy and fell onto the open blank sheets, where row after row of precise bodily data were invisibly transcribed.
She kept her pretty face taut, her gaze fixed on that precious experimental record, and she did not look away again.
...
“Let it continue and even if I don’t die, I’ll go mad, won’t I?”
Trapped in the mire of agony, Roy suddenly had a clarity; he understood why so many apprentices, despite surviving the Trial of the Grasses, later suffered mental collapse.
He understood why Nenneke insisted he purge his rage.
Because of the pain.
In mutation, pain was like worms at the bones, torturing his nerves without respite, tearing at his will.
Especially for those whose Perception ran high, the pain came through with brutal vividness.
The cat-clan Witchers also possessed superior Perception, which is why this happened—bodies surviving mutation while Willpower was shattered, minds fouled by corrosive emotions.
In the end the mind and Willpower warped and broke.
“I must do something!” His extraordinary Willpower left him room to think.
Though his body convulsed like a madman, his mind held a single thread of clarity, but it was thinning; reason was being devoured by the rage.
“Meditation—” it was the only method he could call to mind that might ease this, to withdraw the mind into the void of the elements, where the pain vanished and, with it, the seeds of madness.
So he tried to relax his body, using a technique he had seen before.
He began at the head, imagining a gentle hand brushing through his hair, fingertips massaging his scalp, a tingle of numb pleasure, letting go.
Then the eyes, closing the lids, rolling the balls; then the nose and mouth, inhale, exhale, relax ... facial muscles, neck, shoulders, chest, abdomen, the lumbar spine, thighs...
Roy broke his body down into parts, relaxing each in turn.
If once failed, then twice; thrice ... ten times...
Pain interrupted the process countless times.
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