“No! Don’t kill me, please I’m begging you!”

A voice called out, crying for help.

It belonged to a gruff, stoic middle aged ‘Macho’ man, who at this moment was not exhibiting any one of those traits.

Because he was strapped down to a table, unable to move and unable to process what was going on.

He had just awoken in this place, confused and disoriented, only to look down and find that his left leg…

His whole left leg was missing.

But he strangely couldn’t feel a thing.

This only added to the horror of the whole situation.

“Don’t worry, I severed your spinal cord from the rest of your body, so you won’t feel a thing.”

A cold, emotionless voice responded to the man.

Standing nearby, with many different tools and other devices at his disposal, stood a handsome, suavely dressed man with a lab coat covering up his stylish clothing.

“P-Please… I’ll do anything!”

But no matter what the terrified and confused man on the table said, the handsome man never even flinched or hesitated.

It was like he had no emotions at all — which wasn’t that far off from the truth.

This mad scientist was, in fact, what was commonly known in this world as a sociopath.

Sociopaths are commonly misunderstood and misrepresented.

It’s become a common ‘fact’ that they lack the ability to feel emotions, which is factually untrue.

It’s more like they lack the ability to feel ‘strong’ emotions like the average person can.

Which is why a lot of sociopaths often turn to things like crime, murder or become top business elites — because the adrenaline rush from seeing their victims beg and cry, or seeing their company succeed was enough to actually make them feel something.

“My head f*cking hurts…”

Suddenly the man on the table started feeling dizzy, with sweat beads pooling up on his forehead.

He tried to resist the pain, but nothing he did could alleviate him of the pain he was experiencing.

“Ahh… That would be the hole I drilled in the back of your head, the acid should be working right about… now!”

Right as he finished his sentence, the man on the table fell unconscious, with blood starting to pool and drip down the back of the table onto a conveniently prepared bucket underneath.

‘Test subject 08 — lasted 00:32:12 before succumbing to the acid’s effects. It seems we need to adjust the ratio for subject 09.’

The scientist noted some words down on his notepad.

He wasn’t like those murder/serial killer types of sociopaths.

He found his thrill from doing scientific research, and because of his ‘unique’ traits, his superiors had assigned him to a more discrete, not so legal division of the company that others who actually had morals were more adverse to.

And he excelled in his role even more.

“They’re ready to see you now, Lucian.”

But the handsome man, better known as Lucian Verdan, was pulled out of his thoughts by a sudden voice from the doorway of his laboratory.

‘Ahh, that’s right.’

He had almost forgotten that he was pitching a new research topic to the higher ups.

He was just too engrossed in his current research that his mind had completely filtered that out.

“Thank you, that’ll be all Sylas.”

Lucian nodded at his assistant, Sylas, in the doorway and made his way past, ignoring the disgusted look on Sylas’s face as glanced at the scene inside Lucian’s laboratory.

‘It truly takes a special kind of person to do this job…’ Sylas thought.

As he was walking through the maze-like hallways, Lucian practiced the pitch he had prepared for his new research project.

It was something he found particularly interesting, even before he became a scientist.

Souls.

That was the direction of his project.

Not much was known about them, or whether they existed at all, but that was exactly what Lucian intended to find out.

“Sir, you can’t go in there.”

A man, covering his face with a hood, barged his way past the main desk of the laboratory.

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The receptionist, a petite and small woman, would never be able to stop him with her small frame.

So her next best option was to shout for help.

But even though this did manage to gather the attention of other workers nearby, none of them actually took action.

They were all like the young receptionist, they weren’t security, most of them were normal research assistants, or scientists.

Risking their lives for their job was not something on their agenda for the day.

‘There he is!’

The hooded man exclaimed inwardly, as he spotted the very person he had been looking for this whole time.

He ignored all of the gawking onlookers as he increased his pace to a sprint and chased after the handsome man in the white lab coat, Lucian.

Meanwhile, Lucian was completely engrossed in his thoughts, unaware of what was happening around him.

But that wouldn’t last for long.

“You killed my wife, you son of a b*tch!”

Out of nowhere, the hooded man pulled out a knife and leaped at Lucian.

Lucian wasn’t quick or aware enough to dodge, so he could only look on, confused, as the man, who’s hood had long fallen backwards, revealing his disheveled appearance, lodged his knife in Lucian’s chest.

*Cough*

Lucian let out a cough and a groan as he fell to the ground, the disheveled man still on top of him, holding him down.

‘Who is this man!?’

Lucian started to feel some emotions he had never felt in his life.

Anger.

Frustration.

Fear.

They were all bundled up together, raging through him for the first time in his 35 years of life.

‘Is this how I die?’

Lucian couldn’t even feel his body anymore, as the disgruntled husband of the wife he had supposedly killed, continued ramming the knife into his chest without end.

‘Sh*t, I didn’t even get to finish my research.’

As expected of someone like him, Lucian was more concerned about his unfinished business in this world, than the fact that his own life was being taken away from him.

***

“Ugh…”

Lucian let out a groan as he awoke.

It felt as if his head was splitting apart, a headache like he had never experienced before taking over all of the pain receptors in his head.

‘I thought I died…?’

The scene that opened up before him was not something he was familiar with.

An irritating voice in a language he didn’t understand was grinding in his ears, only worsening the effect of the headache he was experiencing.

He opened his eyes, disoriented.

‘Where am I?’

His vision was filled with walls made of wood, looking like they came straight out of the 17th century.

Even more confusing was that there were quite a few youths with eccentric hair colours sitting around him with their heads buried in their work at each of their individual desks.

Some of them were giving him some strange glances though.

‘Is this a classroom?’

Lucian felt his head become clearer as the pain from the headache started to lessen slightly.

He was sitting at a desk, with some papers and books filled with some squiggly lines and other such symbols.

“Arrghhh!!” Lucian let out a scream, startling everyone in the classroom.

Just as he thought the pain from his headache was actually going away, a sharp and intense pain assaulted his head, like all of the pain he was previously experiencing all coming back at once.

The pain arrived suddenly, bringing with it some unfamiliar memories, as well as filling his mind with all sorts of knowledge he was forced to accept.

Lucian tried his best to resist fainting.

“@#!{#@”

“Hey.. @~@#”

However, after 10 seconds passed, it seemed the pain had finally gone away, fully this time.

But Lucian was more concerned about the fact that he could now somehow understand the words on the paper in front of him.

Even weirder was the fact that he was beginning to understand the person speaking to him.

“Is something the matter, Lucian?”

Until he finally became fluent.

Lucian heard this voice in a daze, and couldn’t help but open his eyes to look up at who was speaking to him.

‘Did I reincarnate?’

This was his first thought upon seeing the smartly dressed middle aged man in front of him.

He was wearing clothes that would normally be shown in pre-industrial revolution exhibits.

‘Does this mean souls exist? If this were in my previous world, this would be a groundbreaking discovery!’

‘If only I could have continued my research…’

‘No, wait, Maybe I could continue my research in this new world…’

Now that his head was clear, Lucian remembered very clearly that just moments ago he was getting stabbed repeatedly by the husband of a woman he had killed in one of his experiments.

In the time he was from, the year was 2175, and technology had advanced so far that everyone received their own AI implants right after birth, and medicine had even reached a point where limbs could be regrown and cancer could be cured.

But even with all that progress, Lucian wouldn’t have been able to survive such a brutal attack before the doctors got to him.

The damage to his heart and all his other organs was just too severe.

But the obvious giveaway that he was reincarnated, was the very room he was inhabiting, as well as the fact that his body felt very different.

This place would be considered a museum exhibit in his previous world, and he could feel that his body and frame were much smaller than what he was used to.

After organising the memories he had received when that sudden, sharp pain assaulted him, Lucian had a better grasp of things.

The people of this world were at a developmental stage equivalent to the European middle ages.

With Knights, chivalry and all that lot still being the main focus of this society.

His current body was also named Lucian Vernon, the son of a Knight.

His father, Knight Robert Vernon, had him tested and found that he had the gift to become a Knight as well, and so he asked some of his old buddies from the academy to pull some strings and allow entry to Lucian, even though he was officially too young to enter.

He was currently in the preliminary classes, with the actual academy being in another location.

And all this time the teacher was still standing in front of him, waiting for an answer.

“No sir, I just had a bad headache, that’s all.”

Lucian tried his best to imitate the actions and words of the previous occupant of this body to the best of his memories.

“No ordinary headache causes a reaction like that one. Go to the nurse to get yourself checked out.”

But it seemed like the teacher was a responsible one, as he wouldn’t just forsake his duties and take a 12 year old boy’s word for it when he said he was fine after letting out such a blood-curdling scream.

Lucian just nodded and stood up from his seat, following the instructions of his teacher as he left the classroom.

“Now, where was I…”

The class carried on as usual without him, like nothing had even happened.

Lucian decided to actually visit the nurse to confirm that nothing was wrong with his body.

He didn’t know what kind of after effects could be caused by reincarnation, but he wasn’t willing to be thrown back into the loop so soon after he had come back.

“Where are you off to, Lucian?”

Lucian looked over at the voice that just called out to him.

He saw that the boy who spoke was a large, tall young boy.

Or would he be considered old now that Lucian himself was 12?

He had vibrant, blue eyes, a well chiselled face and golden yellow hair.

He looked far older than he actually was, with his body being well muscled, looking like a bodybuilder who had been working on his physique for decades.

“The Nurse.”

Lucian just gave a short answer.

He was struggling to remember the name of this particular youth.

“Haha… Lucian, don’t you know you have to pay the hall tax before you get my permission to go anywhere?”

‘So he’s one of those types.’

Lucian originally thought he must have been one of the previous Lucian’s friends.

But it seemed not.

‘Hahh, trouble’s already found me and it hasn’t even been 10 minutes since I inhabited this body…’