The dorm that Cain and Dorian shared was not large by any means. There was just enough room for a bunk bed, two tables, and a closet, leaving just enough room to have a tiny carpet in the middle of the room. There was quite literally no free space outside the floor directly in front of the door, as the bed, table, and closet all bordered the room.

So when Dorian came back to see Cain sitting in the middle of the room, carefully studying a live heart that was still beating, Dorian knew that he’d be smelling rust for the next couple of weeks.

“Oh hey Dorian, what’s up?” Cain replied.

I cannot believe that this guy has the audacity to say what’s up like nothing’s happening. He knows damn well what he’s doing. Matter of fact, it’s probably time we reach an agreement for no studying live hearts inside the room. Shouldn’t be too hard of a compromise right?

“What’s up? Well for starters, my roommate is reverting back to a 2nd-century caveman, and it looks like he’s about to start eating hearts again,” Dorian snorted. From what he saw, this was yet another one of Cain’s strange experiments.

There had been a large number of them this semester, very few of them ending well. There was the time when Cain was tinkering with how Ichor flowed in and out of a 1st level beast, trying to optimize for Ichor concentration.

That had resulted in the heart exploding into pieces, putting Cain in a hospital for 2 weeks. Leaving Dorian to clean the dorm for around 4 hours where he tried to rid the dorm of both the remains and smell of the heart.

Please God, just let this be one of the few normal experiments where nothing explodes and there isn’t any lasting damage, Dorian quietly prayed to himself.

“Again, just because you’re not used to it doesn’t mean that it’s wrong. Your closed-mindedness reveals a lot about your character,” Cain rebutted.

“Fair enough, but that also doesn’t factor in the damage you’ve caused to OUR dorm. Emphasis on our, cause this is still a space the both of us share, right?”

“Tsk.”

Dorian blinked a couple of times.

“What did you just say to me?”

Cain feigned surprise and looked almost offended at the implied accusation.

“Me? I didn’t say anything.”

“All right Cain,” Dorian took a deep sigh, “We should probably set some ground rules right? If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that you running these experiments in the room never ends well.”

“Well, that’s certainly a fair point. But I don’t think you get the grasp on what I’m actually doing. I know that you understand that I’m studying how Ichor flows through the heart, but you don’t understand, or maybe don’t acknowledge how important and potentially groundbreaking this stuff is.”

And so a long and surprisingly logical debate and negotiation began, mostly thanks to Cain. It was pretty clear that Dorian didn’t want to end up cleaning the remains of Cain’s mess whenever he had a failed experiment. While Cain wished to perform his experiments in secrecy, unwilling to let anyone see what he was doing.

Dorian had first entered the room at approximately 4 pm. The debate was still going on at 11 pm.

At this point, Dorian had argued so much that he had run out of words to say.

“- so if you understand just how complex and vital these experiments are to my Ichor comprehension, you’d let me use the room. Having a quiet and serene place helps immensely, and unlike you, I’m not gifted enough to use talent to brute force my way into these things. I need this to catch up with the talent of people like you. Having a solid foundation and compreh-”

“Fine. Fine. You win. Just know that I will personally take out a high-interest loan on your heart if we need repairs for the room again. Being an ‘international’ student and whining about how expensive the costs are won’t save you a second time.”

Cain gave Dorian an awkward smile.

“Thank you, Dorian.”

Damn, I think I felt my skin crawl when he gave me his thanks. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were a serial killer, Dorian thought.

“Yeah, no problem I guess.”

***

God that kid is annoying, Cain thought to himself.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

It was still weird for him, despite being halfway through the second semester already. He still felt like he was mentally well older than a century, making it weird for him to be stuck in the body of a young 19-year-old and to interact with other people his age.

Either way, it didn’t divert him from his research. Although today’s argument had been a slight hiccup in his plans, it wouldn’t affect anything in the grand scheme of things.

And with that said, Cain tried to return back to his research. Ichor felt strange to Cain. Something akin to goosebumps. He couldn’t quite place it, but he felt as if something was off, like his body was in an unnatural state whenever he focused on the Ichor running through his veins.

Oh to be a talented Ichor manipulator like Dorian, Cain thought, I could have the world at my fingertips. With that kind of natural talent, I could easily be a millionaire by the age of 20, and live life like a king by the age of 30.

There were plenty of ways to make money with Ichor, most of which Cain had already tested. From selling his own blood to teaching students how to sense and control their Ichor, Ichor was only limited to his understanding and application of it.

And that had led him to where he was today. Research. Cain wasn’t a particularly poor student. As a Southern Empire native, his parents were a little hesitant to send him to a school in the rural parts of the Eastern Empire.

But not one, but a group of alumni from the school had personally recruited him, preaching about the quality of the education and how the campus life was to die for. All of which Cain translated to the typical propaganda schools paid alumni to say. But more importantly, they promised to cover his tuition once he became a Teaching Assistant for the course ICH 1001.

It was a phenomenally good offer, one that Cain immediately took the alumni up on. After all, getting any kind of scholarship or anything that covered his tuition was a rare and much-needed relief. Especially given his, lack of a stellar transcript, so to say.

There was little to no chance that he’d be recovering a scholarship anywhere within a 100-mile radius of his hometown. That was for certain.

And that left Cain in his current position, stuck in a school in the middle of nowhere, sitting in the middle of his dorm, researching his only real interest in this world, Ichor.

As of now, he was still stumped on how blood and Ichor were produced in the body. Staring at the heart in his right hand, Cain fiddled with the veins and tubes of the heart.

It still seemed like such a peculiar thing to him. Despite all the time, energy, and focus he spent studying this singular organ it remained an enigma to Cain.

To be able to produce godlike powers from such a human organ just felt... Wrong. It didn’t make any sense to Cain. There was something special about the heart. There had already been numerous tests on how Ichor worked. And from what Cain could understand, according to the latest studies, the blood itself was created from the bones, while the heart converted traces of suitable blood to Ichor.

So it wasn’t viable for him to murder people and use their hearts as eternal Ichor farms to generate an infinite profit. Not that he had tried anything similar to that before.

Cain chuckled to himself.

If only I read that paper earlier, it would’ve saved me a significant amount of trouble, along with my reputation. Well, to be fair though, my reputation was already bad enough so I’m not sure how much that could have saved my reputation ...

From his experiments, Cain had learned what veins blood would flow in and out of the heart, helping him significantly with his own Ichor control.

Most students were taught in a horribly archaic and backward way. Methods such as meditating and ‘feeling’ out your heart and how the blood flows in and out of it just doesn’t work for a large majority of the population. This kind of technique was more reserved for experts who already had a good feel of their heart, and this would enhance their already good control of their heart.

Unless of course, your name happens to be Dorian, Cain thought to himself.

Cain had been studying the heart in his hand for the better part of 2 hours now and decided that the rest of his time would be better spent on ‘feeling’ out his own heart. And a bit of practice to go along with it.

As usual, he closed his eyes, sat on the floor, and sat in a meditative position. Cain visualized a 3D diagram of his heart, imagining how his blood would flow in and out of his heart with each heartbeat.

Finally, he began channeling his Ichor.

***

Dorian was lying on the top bed of the bunk bed, reading a textbook on the basics of Ichor control he had borrowed from the library. Although he rationally understood that he needed to read this textbook, as he would be quizzed on it later, that didn’t make the textbook itself any less boring.

Why would I ever spend time reading up on how to control Ichor when I can just do it myself? He thought to himself.

A light red glow appeared from the center of the room.

OOoohhh, he’s practicing his Ichor control again.

It was always an entertaining sight watching others channel their Ichor, and wrestle with their own body to even detect the Ichor within their blood. So when Dorian was offered the opportunity to stop reading his textbook and instead watch Cain practice his Ichor control, he happily put away his textbook.

Cain, like everybody else, had their quirky way of getting into the rhythm of controlling his Ichor. He would sit down, close his eyes, and ‘meditate’ like how his teachers would tell their students in class. The so-called ‘correct’ way to get a feel of your Ichor.

It’s a bit bullshit though, all best researchers and warriors just do it on command without any prep though, Cain mused to himself as he watched.

After a couple of minutes, a faint red glow that came from all of the veins in Cain’s body disappeared. It was a classical case of body enhancement. It was clear that Cain was improving his body’s functionality overall, which was a clear indicator that Cain was well into rank 1. But that small demonstration wasn’t enough for Dorian to guess whether Cain was an upper, middle, or lower rank 1.

Dorian continued to observe Cain, watching him glow red for a couple of minutes at a time, then returning to his normal non-glowing state for a few minutes, and then repeating the cycle again and again.

No matter how many times I see it, it always looks a little freaky when Cain’s practicing. He looks like he’s about to explode every time he channels his Ichor, Dorian grinned as he imagined said scenario, plus I’m not so sure how effective this would be in the heat of battle... If you need to meditate and close your eyes before you can channel your Ichor you’d be as good as a regular human. Or maybe even worse, cause you’d be vulnerable during that time.

Dorian considered throwing something at Cain while he meditated.

I could technically call it practice. You know, to simulate a realistic environment. The only time you’d have this kind of environment to prepare your Ichor would be an assassination job... And for some reason, I doubt that Cain would be the type to be an assassin.

Dorian took another look at Cain. He looked like a porcelain doll, with his long hair tied up in a ponytail. He just looked so perfect, that Dorian felt slightly annoyed.

Dorian glanced at his paper bookmark within his textbook. It wasn’t exactly the brightest of ideas to distract someone while they were practicing their Ichor control. It could even be argued that doing so was actively worsening the practice session. It wasn’t anything fatal or dangerous, but would definitely interrupt the flow of Cain’s practice.

The worst-case scenario would be Cain completely losing control of his Ichor and having to restart his little ‘ritual’ so he could get a feel of his Ichor again.

The more that Dorian thought about it, the more tempted he was. Countless memories flooded his mind, helping him recall all the times that Cain had absolutely thrashed the room, leaving furniture damaged and staining the walls with blood due to his heart experiments.

Dorian attempted to resist his intrusive thought. But it was in a vain effort. And so he picked up his bookmark, crumpled it up into a ball, and took aim at Cain’s head.

What followed next was a deceptively silent crumple, as the paper ball hit Cain in the head, leaving the room in an awkward silence.