I looked at the starving people in the building next to the one I was staying in. I looked over at Louis. “Yes?” He asked.

“There are no mice or animals are there?” I asked.

“No and bringing monsters into the city is impossible. They are all volunteers. Ken expects results in 7 days. If you need anything speak to Jerry. The guards will keep you safe. Get to work,” Louis said.

I swallowed any objection I might have had. It could easily be me turned into a test subject instead of the other way around.

Something inside of me rebelled at the idea of human testing. I recalled the first day, where a person had been cut down. The constant threats. The low value put on human life. How the scientists before me had been disappeared. I needed to first look out for myself before I could look out for other people.

I got to work. The first thing was testing dosages of crystal powder. Over the next three days I made several conclusions as I advanced my research into the crystal powder.

First, crystal powder only worked up to the dosage of one crystal. It didn’t matter if crystal powder was mix and matched with other crystal powder. There was a hard limit. This hard limit translated into 1,000 seconds exactly, or 16 minutes and 40 seconds.

Second, a period of weakness, or recovery period, double the initial high and boost would occur. Additional doses would just reset the time limit and extend the period of weakness even further. So, if someone took a second full dose 15 minutes into the first full dose, they would get 31 minutes and 40 seconds of being boosted and high. In turn the recovery period would last 63 minutes and 20 seconds.

Third, once the period of weakness set in, any more doses would be ineffectual until the period of weakness was over. This time period was set and nothing I did could change it.

Fourth, the active period of the crystal powder induced a mild high, increased strength, energy, and focus. The recovery period was an inverse of the high. A prolonged period of over an hour ingesting the crystal powder would lead to loss of focus and headaches. Frequent doses don’t appear to cause this effect as long as there was a break in between doses, no matter how small.

Fifth, higher tier crystals had stronger effects. Testing showed a boost of 10% based on strength testing with level 1 crystals and a boost of 20% based on strength testing with level 2 crystals.

Sixth, the best medium of consumption were flasks, with a high enough concentration of crystal powder dissolved into the flask to induce a full boost with a single mouthful of crystal powder infused liquid. Attempting to eat powder was a mess. After testing, 10 crystals per flask was optimal. This would put the price of the flask, crystals, and water, at 151 points. Make that 156 points for another 5 points to flavor the water with fruit juice.

I didn’t record my seventh and one of my more important observations. The crystal powder improved stats but reduced them as well. This also meant energy could dip into the negative. Once that occurred the test subject was able to gain some sort of energy sense. A huge advantage.

I capitalized on this discovery myself. There were risks, but I needed every edge I could get. I risked going into negative energy and it felt like I was going to die. This experience made me more aware of what Energy actually feels like inside of me and around me. Like sensing breeze, or subtle motions in my vision.

I needed to train this ability. Once I truly understood energy, hopefully I could find a way to manipulate it. Once I could do that, I would be able to escape from Ken’s clutches.

It was day 167. I had performed a second negative energy session the evening before. I felt every portion of my body in a way I hadn’t before. The second session was much less effective than the first, but I finally had a sense of my Regeneration and Spirit, and not just from keeping track of the time.

The logic of this place made sense in an abstract occult kind of way. I remembered reading about alchemy and the early attempts at prolonging one’s life or turning lead into gold. I could feel the energy rushing through my body, through my blood.

That gave me an idea. I considered using my own blood, but that would be foolish without testing it on someone else first. I went to Jerry. “I need blood.” Jerry looked up at me.

“Blood. How much?”

“A couple bowls worth.”

“This will be messy.” I winced, but I needed to know. I needed to find out what was possible.

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“It is important.”

“Well, with the results you have been passing along, Ken is quite pleased. I will make the arrangements. It won’t stay fresh for long. Any other requirements?”

“No.”

“Alright.” Half an hour later, five bowls of blood were brought to me. I had saved up my energy and quickly dissolved as many crystals as I could into each bowl. A small sip revealed blood didn’t have a different effect than water from normal dissolved crystal.

What was different was what was left behind after the blood evaporated. There was no sticky mess, just red powder. Before the powder had always been a clearish white. Putting the powder into water didn’t do anything new or have a new effect besides giving it a reddish tint.

What could I use red powder for? The energy had a different feeling than the normal powder. Well time to try everything I could think of. Mixing powders, nothing new. Ingesting raw powder, nothing new. I put the red powder into water and used a brush to paint on a piece of paper, nothing happened, and when it dried there was just powder.

Wait. I poured more raw powder into the circle left behind and could feel the energy wanting to spin in a circle. It was weird sensing Energy, like feeling air blow around even though I couldn’t see it. I now had a circle of powder. I felt like I was missing a key step. What could it be?

I added more blood powder, nothing. Regular powder didn’t have this circulation effect. I made various shapes, including a pentagram, but the circulation feeling was the strongest with a circle. The energy wanted a circle to move around.

My gaze drifted to the largest source of energy I could sense, the crystals themselves. Perhaps some occult ritual? The crazy ideas seemed to be the correct ones. I needed to trust and believe in myself.

I took a crystal and set in the center of the blood powder circle. Yes, this was correct. I could feel the pulse of energy from the circle resonating with the crystal. It just needed a push. A push like I had given the crystals in water originally to dissolve them.

While nothing else had worked with the crystals, only dissolving, I had hope. Activate. I poked the crystal.

I scrambled backwards as the crystal appeared to expand and the blood powder disappeared along with the crystal. I felt something in my mind. Yes, let whatever was happening, happen!

A small brown wolf materialized in front of me. I could sense it. I could sense through it. “Hahahaha!” I began to laugh. This place truly was insane, but I had discovered one of its secrets. A secret no one else knew. I mentally commanded the small wolf to sit. It sat. I closed my eyes and could see through its eyes.

Finally, I had a way to escape my imprisonment. While it was a gilded cage, it was still a cage. I would need to run a lot more tests to find the limits of this power. I focused and the monster collapsed into dust. The dust itself quickly disappeared. This matched the descriptions of what happened to monsters when they were killed, minus a crystal appearing.

I would need a lot more blood powder and crystals to run tests. I also wasn’t going to reveal this ability at all. Ken could live with just his drugs. I had something far more potent. I could summon monsters under my control.

If my parents could only see me now, they would be so proud. No matter what situation I was put in, hard work, a pinch of luck, and my natural ability would see me on top. Instead of a grade, one was judged on points, with failure being death. Grades or points, I was at the top, where I belonged. With this discovery, I could finally control my own fate. No longer would I be subject to the murdering whims of crazy drug lords.

I rubbed my hand over the table, there was no dust or powder left. I looked at the remaining blood powder. It was time to run more tests and find the limits of summoning monsters.

The next few days were quite busy, but I came to some very important conclusions about summoning.

First, mixing various levels of blood powder would disrupt the energy flow. A bad energy flow would cause the summoning to fail.

Second, it cost 10 energy to summon a level 1 monster and reduced my regeneration by 1 to maintain it. This would put my hard cap of monsters at 50, which was my current Regeneration stat. The last few monsters would take forever to summon since my Regeneration would be crippled.

Third, higher level monsters required more energy than I had. My hypothesis was 100 energy instead of 10. There was a way around this limitation though.

Fourth, energy could be fed into the ritual crystal slowly, but can’t be stopped once started. If stopped everything would turn to dust and disappear. This allowed me to summon a level 2 monster. A level 2 monster required 10 Energy upkeep. A level 2 monster required 2 separate circles of level 2 dust instead of 1 circle.

Fifth, if the circle, ritual, or any process of the summoning was disturbed, it would fail to occur and the ingredients would turn to dust and disappear. If my energy dipped into the negative, then all my summons would collapse into dust. I could barely sense energy trails connecting myself to my summoned monsters.

Sixth, I could sense the monster summoned, its location, its senses, and mentally control it for a set distance. Tested monsters within the city and outside of the city. A short distance from the city, the link would snap, and they would turn to dust. Monsters like slimes took a moment to get used to, but it was like mentally having a video screen in my mind for each monster.

Seventh, it became increasing difficult to manage monsters the more I controlled. Monsters couldn’t be left with complex instructions. I could mentally say go here, maneuver like this. But I couldn’t leave an instruction like, ‘if you run into a person, dust yourself.’ All commands had to be active commands and constantly given.

All of this violated so many principles, I had known on Earth. Clearly this place operated under a different set of laws. While this could apply to the laws of man, I was referring to natural laws. The crystals, the mental control, all of it made absolutely no sense. How was information being transmitted, and how was I interpreting it?

At a certain point, I just had to accept what worked and what didn’t. I would need to harness what was working and pave my own path forward without getting caught up in the minutia.