To start, Ryder quickly began commanding Epoch to scan the genes within his body. He wanted to first differentiate between the normal and bloodline genes.

However, to his dismay, Epoch reported that there were only normal genes within his body. There were no genes that were out of the ordinary.

In other words, Ryder had no activated genes from his bloodline. Not a single one.

He hadn't expected much, but not having a single activated bloodline gene was a bit hard to take in.

Desperate, he commanded Epoch to check on more time, but it was useless. The results were the same.

He then received another report from Epoch about the orb. The nanobots had tried scanning it but to no avail.

Even weirder was the fact that the orb seemed to be integrated into his brain like it was meant to be there.

Frustrated, Ryder didn’t know what to do. If he had just one activated bloodline gene, then he could perform research on it. But there was none.

Without any information about his bloodline genes, Ryder had no idea where to start. The orb only served to increase his frustration.

Knowing that something foreign is residing inside your body is always an uncomfortable feeling, and he didn't like it one bit. It could even be a parasite for all Ryder knew.

Heaving out a sigh, Ryder was stuck in a predicament. He wanted to start researching, but he couldn't. A scientist’s greatest weapon is knowledge, which Ryder currently lacks.

Feeling helpless, he tried consulting Brigitte and Kade, but none of them specialized in genetics. Brigitte said he could look for more information in the chamber for genetics if he wanted, something that Ryder agreed to do. He had nothing to lose by doing so anyway.

Thus, Ryder spent the next day in the genetics chamber looking through all the books, reviews, research papers, notes, or anything that contained the slightest bit of information in them. He even asked the researchers who worked there if they had any information on the bloodline genes.

But there wasn’t any information at all. That either means people with bloodlines are extremely rare or information about the bloodlines is kept secret.

Ryder considered asking Dr. Krugal for more information, but that would just be telling him that he hadn’t even started yet. Who knows what Dr. Krugal would do to him then?

A few more days had gone by and Ryder was becoming more and more distressed. He became more cranky and would usually lash out at those who tried to talk to him, including Brigitte.

At this point, Ryder had already considered abandoning the plan for researching and straight up decided to escape from the lab.

The pressure was just too much for him to bear, and this was the first time he was researching with his life on the line.

He didn’t want to die, not when he still didn’t know why he had been “reincarnated” into this world.

When he was in Kade's lab, he even made some crucial mistakes due to his distressed state. Kade was able to tolerant the occasional mistake, but after seeing his equipment cleaned using the wrong substances, that's when he was unable to stand it.

"Ryder stop," Kade said sternly.

Ryder, who was lost in thought busy cleaning up, stopped in place to look at Kade.

"Huh?"

Seeing his state, Kade sighed and walked up to him.

"What's wrong?" Kade asked him. "You've been out of it these past few days."

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Darting his eyes, Ryder quickly responded, "It's nothing, I just haven't slept well, that's all."

Kade crossed his arms, not believing him one bit. "You've got to be more convincing than that."

Ryder only chuckled in response.

"Look," Kade started. "Whatever you're doing, you won't be able to do it while panicking."

Looking at Ryder, Kade continued. "Calm down and think it through, that's when you will be in your best mind."

Ryder nodded; he knew Kade was right. The state he was in right now will get him nowhere.

Taking a deep breath, Ryder knew it was time to break his dilemma.

After scanning his body one more time to no avail, he gave up on researching and began to dedicate his time to mapping the layout of the lab.

Having only a few days left before the deadline, Ryder quickly got to work. To begin, he quickly walked around the lab, noting down every detail in sight.

He did this whenever it was time for meals or during the night so it wouldn’t seem suspicious that he was just randomly walking around in the lab.

By now, his brain had already been fully enhanced, and just like Ryder predicted, he could memorize much faster than before. Combined with his vision and other senses, he was easily able to take in his surroundings with ease.

He made sure to pay extra attention to security cameras and possible exits. Areas with fewer security cameras were locations Ryder considered as a possibility to escape through.

The only problem was, he was unable to find the main exit. Usually, there would be a door that leads to the outside, but Ryder was unable to locate it even after hours of walking around.

Without much time left, he tried asking Brigitte.

Seeing the distressed Ryder in front of her, Brigitte couldn’t bring it to her heart to not tell him. She was also sure that Ryder was in huge trouble now and wanted to do something to help him.

Taking a look at the hybrids, who were all now out of the nutrition tanks and sleeping peacefully on specialized beds, she had an idea.

Ryder, on the other hand, was still processing Brigitte’s words.

She had told him that the lab contained multiple floors, each with its own purposes. This floor was mainly used for research, whereas other floors contain other uses such as training or medicine related practices.

The main exit of the lab was at the highest floor, something Ryder did not want to hear. That meant mapping out his floor was not as useful as he thought, since he wouldn’t be able to escape using his memory alone.

When he asked her what floor they were on, Brigitte also had no idea. She said she was just placed in here without doing anything else.

It was also impossible to move between floors unless you had a key card used to access the teleporters.

Only the upper echelons had the key card, such as Dr. Krugal. Ryder had to somehow find a way to obtain that key card.

It will be hard, but not impossible. There were barely any guards inside the lab, so even if he were to get caught, it would be hard to catch him.

But Ryder just didn’t know what awaited him outside of the lab. He will leave that to the future him.

It was now all up to luck. He had already mapped out the entirety of his floor, but he didn’t know what existed on the highest floor. It could really be anything.

Now that he knew escaping wouldn’t be as easy as he thought, Ryder finally decided to enhance his strength.

There was no point in hiding the increase in his strength if he was going to escape anyway. He also needed the extra boost in power in case he came across anything dangerous when escaping.

There were still a couple of days left, but Ryder wanted to enhance his strength as fast as possible.

To do so, he first decided to enhance his muscles.

He commanded Epoch to reinforce his tendons and ligaments, making them stronger and more resilient to changes in muscles.

That was doable since the nanobots only needed to fuse with the cells within those tissues.

What was not doable, however, was straight up increasing the number and size of his muscle fibers. Muscle fibers are what enable the growth of the muscles, thus increasing his strength. But Ryder was not able to just straight up increase the amount of fibers in his body.

The nanobots simply lacked the amount of proteins needed to create the muscle fibers.

In other words, they weren’t able to do much.

This stumped Ryder. He was not expecting his nanobots to fail when he needed them the most.

He nervously bit on his nails. Sweat dripped down his head from nervousness and also from his mind going into overdrive.

‘THINK! THINK! THINK!’

Suddenly, Ryder’s eyes lit up. A sudden idea racked his brain. What if he were to approach this problem from another perspective?

Increasing the number and size of his muscle fibers directly was an impossible task, but what if he were to enhance muscle hypertrophy?

Muscles grow when the body repairs damaged fibers by fusing them, which is also known as muscle hypertrophy.

If he could use the nanobots to enhance this process, then maybe he could gain a large amount of strength in a short period of time.

But first, he needed to do something that would injure his muscle fibers.