After thinking for a while, Villin managed to think of a potential plan, or well, two of them. Firstly, he would ask Elinoire to teach him the theory behind transfiguration whenever she was in a decent state, hopefully after practicing for a while, he would at least be able to open the doors in this place. This would also probably make Elinoire think he would try to escape himself, throwing her off of his true plan.
His real plan was different. From the information, he had gathered he would be called upon to experiment once every two to three days. Since Villin had quite the evolved web he would only be unable to cast magic for about ten hours after the procedure. This meant he had two and a half days to work on other things.
When Elinoire was awake he could practice magic, make sure his skills don’t get rusty, perhaps try a few derivatory versions as well. When Elinoire, was asleep, he could begin his real escape plan. This consisted of going to one of the walls that would be impossible to spot from the door and where Elinoire usually slept and begin drawing runes onto the wall, creating a magical beacon.
Villin was confident that, if given time, he would be able to create a powerful beacon capable of sending a magical pulse that would help others find this location.
He estimated that if he worked on it for four hours a day, two days out of three, it should take about a month to create anything decent. The lack of an enchanting pen made the situation a bit harder but he should be able to manage without, imprinting his magical power into the stones himself.
Then, in the end, he could activate the beacon and try and get someone to come to save him. If The Academy came, he could use his new transfiguration skills to open the doors, escaping while The Academy and Decorus were fighting.
In reality, Villin knew the plan was unlikely to work, but it was something to do while he thought of a better one. And so, once Elinoire woke up, he asked her about transfiguration, surprising her.
“I mean, I could try to teach you about transfiguration. I grew up learning about the theoretical part of it. I’m afraid I’m not the best at the art though, I often fail in the practical sections.”
After this, Villin began his first lesson with Elinoire. The first part was the most difficult, finding the right spell connections within the web. Without a spell blueprint, it was very hard to learn from someone else. Luckily Elinoire recalled Villin studied the web often back when they were roommates and after hearing his discussions with Kayley, she also began studying the web properly. And so she began describing properties of the nodes required, it would take quite a while before Villin would be able to find all of the nodes required, but right now, they didn’t have much better to do.
In total sixteen nodes were required, a total of four spells. With these four spells, you would be able to transfigure and control things. On the first day, Villin found three of the required nodes. The second day, Elinoire was taken by the scientists and he began working on the enchantments on the wall. The night of the third day, he felt something, he heard a voice in his dreams, as if someone was calling out to him. After managing to stabilize the connection, he heard a voice “Villin? Are you alright?”
Villin recognized it as Ruby, she used the connection they made before the attack and managed to stabilize it, probably using certain enchantments, using it she could send a message to Villin. Piggybacking on this connection, Villin managed to say something back “I’m alive, did you also get captured?”
After his message went through, the connection severed. From this point onwards, using this technique, they would both be able to exchange one to two messages every other night.
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It would give Villin some comfort in days to come, at least he knew he wouldn’t be forgotten, something he was happy to know. He would also learn that his friends were fine. The professor’s self-detonation caused a massive hole to be made within the mountain, the grade got blown wide-open and some of the surviving students managed to escape in the chaos. Kayley had been badly hurt but she would recover in a few months’ time.
The following day, Villin was called upon for the second experiment, and it was as painful as the first.
Other than once more extracting bone marrow from two locations, Candil extracted a large amount of blood, turning it blue with a certain spell and analyzing it. Villin noticed that Candil would regularly take out a notepad and scribble certain things down. Even though Villin was in too much pain to read it when it was being scribbled down, afterward his photographic memory and increased comprehension would help him read the things the scientist was writing down.
After the blood and bone marrow extraction, Villin was set to test out new pills. The risk was significantly higher compared to the spells being tested on Elinoire but each held its own risks.
From the talkative scientist, he managed to gather that Decorus was trying to create pills that would help one permanently. Making them as good, if not better, than gene solutions.
The first pill he tested caused him to feel like his body was being ripped apart, his liver squirmed and continued to rip itself apart, he had to be put under constant healing for over three hours before the pill’s effects subsided. The exact effects were written down and changes would have to be made to the formula.
Something like this would happen every three days. Bone marrow and some other bodily resource would be extracted and then he would be forced to go through the testing of an extremely painful pill. In the course of a month, he only got lucky once, when one of the pills actually worked, even though the effects stopped after half a day.
Before he realized it, a month had already passed. Even though he was always treated with long-term healing spells at this point a number of permanent scars already covered his body. The spells weren’t able to keep up with the damage caused and occasionally they failed to heal the damage.
Villin was still set on his goal even now. It had gotten to the point that, even while in severe pain, he would still choose to learn transfiguration even if it was just after an experiment. Over time, his mental defenses had gone through subtle adjustments, especially the outermost wall.
Right now, it was extremely strong, the pain he went through attacked the wall every three days, since he repaired it the following day, the mental shield began being tempered through fire, becoming stronger and stronger. The pain also began to become slightly more bearable to him. As for the scientist, he had been surprised Villin was still alive, generally, at this point, people like him would be insane, and so, he even gave him one day off where he would usually be experimented on.
On this day, under the careful gaze of multiple official magi, he was brought to a training hall about fifteen minutes away from the cell. There, he could attack a puppet for a couple of hours.
There was a reason for this. It was so that his web wouldn’t get crippled by not being used for too long. The people here obviously didn’t know Villin’s web was higher than the normal ones by two grades. The nodes in a regular web would indeed slowly degrade if they weren’t used, he didn’t have that problem.
Still, Villin welcomed the practice, he hadn’t been able to use most of his offensive spells for a month and so other than the derivatory ‘Mentallage’ he used all of his spells, practicing how to effectively use them. He was also told he would get such a day off every month he survived, giving him an incentive.
Elinoire, on the other hand, was doing much worse.
Even though she didn’t get hurt as much as Villin, she was suffering more. She didn’t have Ruby who would make him recall ‘home’ every other day and she didn’t hold much hope. Seeing her situation, Villin began teaching her how to create mental defenses but it only eased her trouble a little, since there were only three days between every experiment and she would suffer from mana exhaustion for large parts of the time, she never managed to build a proper foundation that could take the pain.
Every day, she looked a little worse and Villin was seriously considering to show her his true plan of escape but he refrained, he had to be careful, even now he thought it possible for her to be undercover, he just didn’t want to take the risk yet.