1st Person (Junichiro)

It has been a few days, or months, since the day the mind-controlling ring was attached onto me. In this place, there was no way to track or record time, and as every hour seems that long anyway, I decided to not bother to count.

In some movies, the criminals in their jail cells uses a piece of stone to mark lines into the stone wall, counting the days they were stuck there. It is perpetually bright here though, so the days and nights made no difference.

In fact, I am not even sure if there were days and nights in this world. I hope it did, for it would be helpful for the day I escape.

“Aaaargh” [Junichiro]

The ring was acting up again, it must be due to the thoughts of escape I had before.

Hugging my knees in the corner, I wiped the tears away from my eyes, and tried to stay determined.

The white ring was extremely versatile in usage. It causes pain to the target it was attached from, and forced the target itself to either follow the instructions of the user, or continue to feel the pain until you do.

On top of that, it was also able to completely paralyze the target’s body, causing the target to not be able to do anything, but flop onto the ground.

All my body is belong to them.

Sitting in the corner of the room, as far away from the door as possible, I slowly recalled the experiments the geezer’s minions did to me during the period of time.

What this people kept me here for, was nothing simple, like the testing of side effects caused by new drugs.

My whole body was completely restructured by them, not even the toes were spared. Sounds really like some sort of evil underground organization.

And above all else, the biggest problem is that these restructuring experiments were not done through some kind of state-of-the-art technology, but instead are based on magic.

The first experiment they did to me, around two days after attaching the ring, was to make my body be able to contain, and manipulate mana.

Would it be more accurate to say that they pumped mana into me? I don’t really remember the details, but as a result of that, I was able to perceive a new type of energy, both flowing in my body, and outside in the world.

It might sound amazing, and even fun to be able to manipulate mana, but out of all the experiments that were done to me, this was the most painful one.

It was as if some stuck an intravenous drip into me, and slowly let molten aluminum flow into my blood vessels. Moreover, the ring caused my consciousness to be kept awake forcefully, so I had to endure every second of it.

Now that I think about it, it’s amazing I had actually survived that ordeal.

Even after that experiment, the burning sensation took quite some time to just lessen.

Due to this experience, I became aware of the phenomenon known as , brought about by , without any problems. However, to understand and to control it were two different concepts. The types of magic I was able to use was still unknown, since I have not tried it even once.

Since that control ring is also made with , I’m certain the effects should be able to be nullified by .

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Ever since then, I whom had gained the ability to control , was forced to undergo many more experiments, each one as disgusting as the one before. What meaning, or results each and every experiment held, a test subject like me wouldn’t know.

After confirming the presence of in my body, the next experiments involved injecting various liquids of a flashy color into me. Watching the funnel of liquids slowly emptying itself into my veins was nerve-wracking, even without the pain.

There was even one time, where they tried drowning me in a bucket of silvery grey liquid, which looked like Mercury, but stank tens of times worse than the public toilets, and the dump truck.

On other experiments, they opened up my body to embed a wide range of assorted metal parts, and gem-like stones, each one infused with a huge amount of stagnant mana.

The side-effects of each experiments, usually ignored by the brilliant scientists, included headaches, stomach aches, nausea, high fever, breathing suspensions and many other fatal symptoms, which made the maintenance of life activity doubtful.

However, no matter how lethal the experiments, or the side effects may appear, my body was still able to return to a healthy state after I slept.

During the endless cycles of reconstructing my body, I started to hallucinate that maybe, I had already died multiple times, and was brought back for more experiments.

After all, there was magic in this world.

It wouldn’t be surprising, no matter what they do to me.

I began to wonder how much of my body was still me, after all of these experiments.

The only visible results to me were the ability to feel , and the words spoken by the masked natives started to sound like Japanese to me. And I don’t think those are hallucinations.

That, and also the times like now, where my self-consciousness was clear, slowly dwindled. This was not me falling asleep randomly, but me losing control of my body, and entering a dreamy state.

My sleeping hours were ironically, not even near two hours. But in the first place, I was too tired to notice the difference between daytime and nighttime.

After being summoned here, I have not seen anything but white walls. Even if the grass was blue in this world, I wouldn’t know.

Still, inside this empty prison room of mine, as long as I kept on remembering those peaceful school days of the distant past, I’ll remain myself in my mind.

Today, my condition is pretty good.

Neither head nor body hurts anywhere, the sensation of the tears flowing on my cheek can also be felt clearly.

Aaaaauuuuu, I want to go back, I want go back home………

“No. 56, get out now.” [Masked man]

Opening the door, the masked man called me.

No. 56, this is my name here. I dread to think about the other experimental subjects.

“Hurry up.” [Masked man]

Stand—— Come—— Walk—— [ring]

Before the headache could become worse, I climbed to my feet, clutching the wall by my side for support, and stumbled out to beyond the white corridor.