Oh man, what a fuckin' headache.

He tried to open his eyes, but a blinding light was shining directly into his face. What kind of asshole shines a light into a man's eyes when he's trying to sleep?

"Could you turn that crap off for a second? I'm trying to get some shut eye here," he complained.

"Oh, I do apologize, I was simply trying to get everything to line up just right," a soft, almost toneless voice said, immediately pulling Eik out of his brain fog. "I'm sure you understand, don't you, Mr. Eik Magnasen?"

Squinting through locks of his own hair, Eik managed to block the light enough to actually begin to see a little. "Where the hell am I?" he snarled. His head throbbed painfully as he struggled against restraints that were wrapped tightly around his wrists and ankles.

Wherever this place was, it was a nauseatingly sterile-looking, white cube room. Strapped to a metallic slab that resembled an autopsy table to a frightening degree, he could only hope that this particular autopsy table wasn't used for such macabre purposes.

Two of the four wall were painted that paper white hue, while the other two were made entirely of thick glass. Contrasting powerfully with the white of the interior and the single, powerful beam of light aimed at his face, the outside of the cubed room was so dark that he couldn't see anything.

Actually, out there in the dark he could just barely see the front bit of the black armor. "You are in my laboratory. It took you long enough to wake up. I didn't hit you that hard, did I?" He stepped in closer and became bathed in light.

"Fuck you!" Eik felt anger swell in his chest like a balloon.

The black armor didn't deign to answer, instead walking over behind the white wall and coming in through a door. As he sauntered up, Eik pushed thick streams of Profound Toxin through his system, empowering his strength many times over.

With a series of grunts of exertion, Eik attempted to rip the straps that kept him tied to the table but they didn't budge whatsoever. "It's no use. These could hold a low S-ranker. You'll never get out of them until I let you, which I will. Just not yet."

It was Eik's turn to not answer. His head still hurt a lot and he was having trouble opening them for the bright light.

"Now that you're awake, I can finally get a proper look at you." The slimy creep put the eye slits in the face of his helmet all the way down to Eik's arm which was glowing a soft blue with the Backflow as he continued to struggle against the shackles, his skin flaking off.

"How fascinating," he whispered, the sensation of his tepid breath sending shivers up Eik's spine. "So this makes you stronger, I take it? And a lot stronger, I see. With a few additional buff and potions you would be one of the most formidable powerhouses for your rank."

Eik didn't respond, but then again, the black-clad cultist didn't seem to be looking for a response from him in the first place. Everything he said seemed to be entirely for himself. This bastard was a complete nut job.

"But I can see that it hurts you too, isn't that right?" he whispered, his finger coming up to dig around in the tender flesh revealed by the decay of Backflow. Eik hissed through his teeth in pain as the sharp, metallic digits ripped and tore. "Does it hurt?"

"Of course it fucking hurts!" he growled.

"Then I won't do it anymore unless I have to," the cultist said and removed his finger from the bloody wound he had created.

Gee, thanks, asshole.

"What is your power?" he asked, an almost childish sense of wonder clear in his voice.

"Toxin," Eik muttered, deciding that a half truth was probably his best bet right now. The cultist had already seen him fight and use his abilities, but at the same time he definitely couldn't reveal the true nature of his Worldbreaker ability, which was throwing a tantrum inside his mind right now, by the way, screaming at him to remedy the dangerous situation. Well, he would have if he could have.

"Toxin? Hmm…" the black armor drawled.

Had he bought it? Eik knew for a fact that abilities could manifest differently depending on the Awakened, especially visually. A blue version of Toxin should feel like to great of a mystery.

Hopefully the cultist would accept that.

"Show me."

"What?" Eik asked.

"Show me your ability sheet."

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"I'm not showing you anything!" Eik snarled. Letting the cultist see his Worldbreaker status would be a certain death sentence. He would be murdered as a simple precaution.

"But why not?"

"It's common sense not to how your status to anybody haphazardly. Everybody knows that."

The black armor chuckled. "What do you know about common sense, Eik Magnasen?" he said. "You're nothing but a whelp from a new world. Your view of the Unified Mass and the way she works is infantile and false. All you have to worry about is doing what I tell you to do." An icy chill had suddenly snuck its way into his voice.

Once more, Eik zipped his mouth shut and refuse to answer. Like a disappointed parent, the cultist put his hands on his hips with a tired sigh. "You know, I said I wouldn't hurt you again unless I had to, and here you are, already forcing me to do something I would rather avoid. You're making me look bad," he said, the icy tone giving way to sadness. This guy was legitimately insane.

"You don't have to do this," Eik tried. Fear was intensifying. During the past ten years, he had been subjected to much pain, certainly mentally, but also physically since Awakening. He had endured more of it than he had thought possible. But what truly frightened him was not some one-off torture session. It was the fact that he could never give in. Giving in would mean death, and that would mean not getting back to his loved ones. That could never happen.

The Eik from before his Awakening would probably have given in, but the current Eik knew he would not. And that frightened him.

He didn't want to be here. He wanted to be back in Forest. He wanted to hug his father and sister. He wanted to cuddle with his cat and eat a snack. Hang out with his friends. Go out for dinner with Ihasu again. He wanted to not be here and not to be at the mercy of this lunatic, more than anything.

But he was here and at the mercy of the black armor.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

"No, I do! I do have to do this. Don't you see that? You were, what, D-rank back then, yet you hurt me so easily. How? If a question plagued you so, would you not also feel like being denied the answer would drive you mad?"

There really wasn't anything you could say to something like that. 'Let me go, please'? Yeah, no, that would do fuck all.

"This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you," the cultist promised as a blood red aura sprung into life around the blade of a curved dagger that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere.

"Somehow I doubt that," Eik hissed. Seconds later the blade dug into his already tender skin, drawing a long line of blood as the cultist cut his flesh. Whatever that red glow was, it must have amplified Eik's sensation of pain. He screamed.

For hours the black armor continued his terrible work. Any time Eik's injuries began to grow grievous enough to threaten his life, he was given a rank-appropriate healing potion or two, a variety of other drugs that he was having a hard time determining the precise effects of, as well as a healing ability which the black armored cultist surprisingly enough was capable of casting.

Cutting and twisting, the cultist tormented him, ripping and tearing. But Eik never broke the promise he had made to himself. He never gave in.

"See you tomorrow," the black armor abruptly said and turned on his heel, marching out of the cubed room, turning the lights off and disappearing so quickly and suddenly that Eik was left reeling with confusion and sudden night blindness.

Every time he had been healed, that same demand had come up again: 'Show me your status and ability sheet.' Eik had refused every single time.

He heard an outer door slam shut somewhere as his vision began to return. It wasn't completely dark. In fact, now that those flood lights weren't burning holes through his cornea anymore, he could finally see a bit around the cube he was in.

With ceilings at least ten meters high, the structure his cube was placed inside looked more like a hangar than anything else. Scattered across the vast floor space stood other cubed rooms, that looked exactly or almost exactly like his own. If there was any variation, it was mostly in size and not shape.

Dim ceiling lights ensured some visibility inside which allowed Eik to see that they were all occupied by… things.

Or rather, some of them were things. Some were people like him. What the hell was this place? The black armor had called it his laboratory and that hadn't seemed too far-fetched at the time, but now that he saw the wider scope of the place, he wondered if that claim wasn't just another one of the cultist's insane delusions.

Until now, Eik hadn't seen a point in activating Toxic Liquefaction to escape the bindings on his arms and legs. He didn't even know where he was. An effective escape attempt came after the intelligence gathering phase. But at this point he just wanted to stretch his legs.

Flowing out of the restraints and onto his feet, he pressed his face against the thick glass. Unable to resist the urge, he slammed a fist wrapped in crystalline Profound Toxin into the transparent wall.

It didn't leave a trace.

There was a slight rustle from one of the other cubes near his own. He could seem about half of the space inside. Someone came up to the glass, then one more, and then another.

"I think he finally left," someone muttered.

"Yeah, I thought he never would."

"He always leaves."

"Do you think the new guy died?"

"Of course not! He's standing right there. Come take a look." One more person came to the glass to look at Eik's cube.

If not for the multiple people pressing themselves against the window, Eik would have thought it was just one person talking to himself. All of the voices were exactly the same. Their faces too were like those of clones.

"Hey! You good over there?" one of them called.

Eik looked down at his own body. It was absolutely covered in his own blood. Much more blood than he should have been able to survive, but hurray for magical and alchemical healing… The black armor hadn't bothered to heal him up fully before leaving so several open wounds and bruises still remained, albeit nothing life threatening. "That's up for debate, I suppose."

"You were screamin' a lot back there."

"Yeah, well," Eik grumbled. "It wasn't exactly a dessert party."

"We know. He'll stop eventually."

This got Eik's attention. "He tortured you as well?"

"All eight of us, yeah."

"Why?"

"Because there are eight of us. We're octuplets. Our species don't get twins, much less octuplets."

"And he wanted to know why?"

"Yeah, the fucker's crazy!" one of them yelled. "He's not even a scientist! He doesn't know what the fuck he's doing! He just poking around with his fuckin' knife!"

"And how long until he gets bored of that?" Eik said, dread in his voice.

"A little under two weeks with us, but it sounded like it's personal with you, so probably longer."

"Great…"

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