After the first attempt worked out just about as well as anyone could hope, we didn't have trouble getting the next person to agree. Hel, there was a queue of them, all interested in getting the enchantment once Joshua aptly demonstrated the tangible benefits. Everyone wanted it, and they wanted it as soon as possible, even after Joshua described the painful part of the procedure. At that point, I wasn't quite sure if the people in idiot-ville were desperate or dumb, but did it truly matter? Not to me, not really, so we decided on the next test subject and made an appointment for the next day, just to give us all a chance to settle down and relax.

On that next day, the procedure worked out similarly well, though not quite as well as it had with Joshua. We had no idea why the difference came about but the amplification our second test subject could achieve was markedly lower than the one Joshua managed and even his regeneration was lowered. There were no obvious reasons why the difference came about, though we did take copious notes so we would be able to look for a pattern if the occurrence repeated itself during later experiments.

Persons number three and four were similarly successful, their amplification and regeneration landing between Josuha and number two but after those two, with our fifth test-subject, things went a little wrong. Not terribly so, just a bit but it was enough to be annoying.

The problem with number five was two-fold. His regeneration was lower than that of our second test subject, far below that of Joshua, but his amplification was far beyond Joshua's, and that was where the trouble started. Even pushing himself moderately hard, not even trying to go for his limits, was enough to severely injure him, his muscles able to break his own bones and easily snap his sinews to the point that it required treatment by Luna and myself to avoid permanent injury. More notes were taken, and we went over everything one more time, searching for a reason why the performance differed so much, but so far, we came up blank. There didn't seem to be any data points correlating, though I had a feeling that the reason wasn't just a single data point but a whole number of factors we would have to figure out.

For that, we'd have to find more test subjects and collect data, which is exactly what we did with our next three test subjects, all of which worked out fairly well, with one of them getting a fairly insane regeneration out of the deal, compensated by his very moderate amplification, possibly because so much of his magical potential was tied up with the regeneration.

Sadly, while there seemed to be some correlation between the total magical potential, which I currently interpreted as an additional hidden attribute composed of the person's Courage, Charisma, Intelligence and Intuition, each included with its own weight, though I couldn't be certain, it was just an assumption. An individual's affinity to Blood Magic might also play a role, alongside a dozen other factors that could all play into it, but without a lot more test subjects, who could say?

Things went seriously wrong with our next test subject, the ninth in total. The procedure itself worked out quite well, though as soon as we stepped back and watched the regeneration kick in, things went immediately wrong. Where all the others had slowly started to be optimied, this one did not. Or maybe it was an optimisation, just not in the right direction, we hadn't been able to figure out why things went so seriously wrong, just that they did.

Somehow, the Life Magic Luna had used to keep the subject alive during the procedure had been incorporated into the regeneration, pushing things in a deadly direction. Instead of the usual regeneration, this person's body started to grow in a somewhat unorganised fashion, his cells rapidly splitting to the point that the growth became visible on the outside. Not that the outside growth was the problem, sure, his hair was growing almost a centimetre in the minute we managed to keep him alive, and he gained multiple warts and strange growths, but those were all manageable. Or they would have been if the uncontrolled growth had been limited to the surface of his body.

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Sadly, the growth was everywhere, essentially giving him the equivalent of super-cancer, similar to the countless small animals which had died while Luna was learning how to use her powers. There were growths in his brain, pushing the intracranial pressure to the point that it almost leaked out of his ears. Just about every blood vessel in his body had blockages, and his lungs started to fill up, too. Luna tried to keep him alive while I was to remove the enchantment, but it didn't work out. There were just too many problems, all of which were deadly in their own right, and even Luna couldn't keep up with them. I might have been able to help, but given that I needed to get rid of the enchantment, I didn't have time. Ultimately, the guy lost his life in a fairly peaceful manner, his brain shutting down just as his heart was blocked off completely, his life ending and, with it, the enchantment.

With his death came the questions of what to do with the body and what to tell the rest of the idiot village. Of those, the body-disposal question was actually the easier one. I had a few ideas I wanted to test in regards to Death Magic, especially when combining it with Mind Magic, so I could use the body quite well.

But what to tell the people? The truth might hurt further experiments, and given their gullibility, or maybe desperation was a better word to use, they would likely swallow even the most outrageous lie simply because they didn't want to know the truth. Quite a few of them, at least every one of the guys I had worked on, had seen the proverbial writing on the wall. They simply didn't know what to do about it. They could see that their little settlement was a burning dumpster rolling towards a cliff, but they, somehow, didn't see a need to abandon ship and bail out, joining another community in the process. Or, maybe, they were simply suicidally stubborn, ready to take part in a dangerous experiment if it meant they wouldn't be proven wrong. Either was a possible explanation, but I wasn't sure I wanted to understand their reasoning.

After discussing it with Lia, we made the decision to tell them nothing unless asked. If they asked about number nine, we would tell them that he ran into some trouble and wouldn't make it back. Not necessarily that the experiment killed him, but if they pressed, I might imply that he tried something stupid and paid the price for it. Either way, the important things to remember were that he died due to no fault of us and that his name was Kevin. If I reduced his existence to a mere number, even if it was a fairly low number like nine, the people might get annoyed.

The acquisition of test subject number ten went about as well as it could have gone. They did ask about Kevin, but we managed to insinuate that he had insisted on making his own way back to their little village, and we accepted his desire. If he didn't make it, that wasn't on us, or so we claimed, and they could only shrug and carry on, even if a few of them gave us suspicious looks.

But regardless of those looks, number ten, and the first female, not that we immediately noticed that Blaise was actually female, it wasn't something one could readily tell from her looks. Or their looks, as they apparently preferred; I truly didn't care; I only cared about the underlying biological reality. And those fundamental parts were fixed, with no amount of pre-change surgery able to alter them. Maybe something could be done with a combination of Life, Blood and maybe Mind Magic, possibly with some sort of Darkness Magic imbued into it to embody the change, but that was an entirely different question and not one I cared to invest too much time in. I had other things to do. Namely, I had to make sure that we didn't lose this one, too; otherwise, the villagers' distrust might turn into something more annoying. Sure, Jademoon Tower wouldn't fall to some angry mob, no matter how many torches and pitchforks they brought, but having a hostile force camped out on my doorstep would be a pain, while slaughtering them would be bad PR. Doing either would be simple, but accepting the consequences would be annoying.

So, I'd better not kill random person number ten just to prevent some future headaches.

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