As the words of the spell echoed in his ears, Merlin's vision turned white, he squinted his eyes from the bright light, a few seconds later, he adjusted to the brightness and was finally able to get a gleam of his situation.
He opened his eyes and found himself bound, in something that looked like a laboratory, but that wasn't what threw him off, what threw him off was that he was completely submerged in a chemical filled glass pod, the kind that held illegal experiments.
Merlin immediately took a deep breath, strangely the chemical didn't affect his vision or hurt his eyes, his nose and mouth had been covered with an oxygen mask allowing him a space to breathe.
'So this is my second nightmare… hopefully it's nothing too wild'
The blaring alarm echoing through the experiment chamber drew him out of his thoughts as he focused on the room.
He wasn't in a hurry to leave his current position, after all he wasn't sure about the situation outside and he needed to gather information first.
After scanning the room, he found that it was empty, it's wasn't empty in a sense, just devoid of people, living people… the entire room was lined with chemical filled pods similar to his, but inside, it was filled with… well calling them golems would be rather generous.
They were simply human looking, two hands, two legs, a body and a head. Merlin stared at them, some of them were not complete, some were missing arms, some were missing legs, the looks of the bodies sent waves of fear through Merlin's body as he instinctively moved his body, after confirming his legs and hands were intact, he heaved a sigh of relief.
Immediately after he confirmed the situation, he used his apprentice ability to leave the pod quietly, he looked around the room, then he turned to himself, he was standing in the empty room, stark naked, cold breeze of the experiment chamber cooling down forbidden zones, then Merlin's gaze stopped at a certain point of his body, he stared for a few seconds and felt like crying… he had no forbidden zones, it was just stark plain.
'This… feels oddly uncomfortable'
He immediately thought of something, then with the faceless ability, he manipulated his body to create a forbidden zone, and strangely, he was successful.
'Heh… faceless ability really comes in handy sometimes'
Then the next moment, he summoned the cloak of mysteries and willed it to become a shirt and trousers, mostly like the kind used by hospital patients, the reason he didn't summon another memory was because he could tell, outside the room, there bound to be people around, so considering that he was a naked experiment, if they saw him in a suit of armor, they would put him down, and if the people outside couldn't, maybe they would call those who could, then forget completing the nightmare, he would just be stuck in a chamber for experiments, after all from what he had learnt, this was probably a research facility, probably one that specialized in trying to create life.
Merlin ignored the alarms wailing outside, and walked towards the only table in the room, on it were stacks of paper, the papers were filled with the files of the experiment chambers.
Merlin searched through the materials till he found the file that held the number written on his pod.
.
[Data Research Forum - Creation Phase]
Research Material 047 (Partial - Artificial Synthesis).
Host: 047
Gender: Male
Rank: Awakened Infused (Four Infused Shards)
Status: Physically / Chemically Balanced (Stable)
State: Cryostasis
Description: All physical parts and neural functions align, all standard processes successfully integrated, stables quotations and responses to neural scans.
Final Analysis: 78% chance of success.
.
He stared at the file in his hand and sighed, the researchers, whoever they were really tried to create life, and it seemed like they were close to succeeding.
He turned towards the door, listening to the sounds of destruction outside, then he sighed again.
'It seems like they finally succeeded, but not in the way they wanted… am I going to have a frankenstein situation on my hand'
He summoned the formless, then willed it to wrap around his hand like a black long arm cover.
'Here we go winter soldier mode… call me bucky'
He walked towards the glass door, then he stopped and stared at his reflection, his head was hairless, his eyes were black and bloodshot, his face was an even uglier mess with a long scar just over his nose, with a thought, he used the faceless ability to revert his looks to his normal pale white hair and golden eyes with pale skin.
He smiled at his now handsome look and thought.
'the faceless ability really is a cheat…'
Then he walked out of the room, as he arrived at white hallway, the wails of the alarm became louder in his ears as he began to walk down, the noise seemed to be coming from the other end of the hall.
"This won't turn into some zombie invasion… right" Merlin muttered as he continued walking.
As he was about to reach the end, his danger sense activated as a creature flew out of the door beside him.
Merlin turned to avoid its reach, then he willed the formless into a sword, he stared closer at the figure as its features became clear and he saw what had lunged at him earlier.
And just as he had expected, it was another one of the many specimens from their experiments, and this one was clearly a failed one, it had excessively elongated limbs, and one of its uneven arms was clearly not human.
"Looks like it wasn't only human experiments they did, they even fused bodies with nightmare creatures and probably other things" Merlin muttered as he gripped his katana.
The monster lunged at aiming to pin him down with its non-human arm, but Merlin was quicker, he sidestepped to dodge its lunge, then he slashed down with his sword, severing its head.
[You have slain an awakened monster, unknown.]
[Your soul grows stronger…]
He stared at the twitching corpse and frowned, it wasn't a nightmare creature, it wasn't even a regular awakened, when he checked it with his spirit vision, he didn't see the cores that nightmare creatures and humans usually had, instead what he saw was simply two awakened soul shards.
Merlin stared at it then muttered under his breath.
"Seems like they magically engineered some kind of golem… it seems that they were trying to create life, but why… this one looks like the earlier failed tests, or maybe the tests that checked whether they would come alive…"
He turned his head towards the other side of the hall, the location he was just coming from.
"...And it seems like my set were the more human kind…but the research lab I left didn't look like that's where all the efforts were focused, at most it was a preservation chamber… so where are the real focus of these experiments, judging by the situation, I'm guessing that it's probably where everything went wrong… I guess no zombie invasion, just golems, walking killer golems"
Merlin turned towards the room where the golem had just jumped out, it was more of a chemical storage facility, but on the inside, was a glass door.
His eyes narrowed at the look of the glass because it was stained, stained with blood, and the blood was still fresh, He walked forward, then as he arrived by the glass door, he saw the cause, a female scientist, was sprawled on the cold floor, dead, completely torn in two with all her innards spilling out.
Merlin stared at the look of absolute terror in her eyes, the look was locked there even after she died, he was about to gag, but he controlled himself and leaned into the cold calculating embrace of his flaw. He crossed over her body, then opened the glass door to the other side.
Inside was a complete horror room, there were corpses of scientists, scattered chemicals, and equipments all around the room, the stench of relatively fresh blood permeating the air.
Merlin walked through the bodies, he picked up a few less stained papers and glanced through it, and as he expected, these were files on the chemicals they kept and a few others from other experiment subjects.
Screech!!
A loud sound drew his eyes away from the papers as he turned to the bloody broken glass door on the other side, then he saw another researcher trying to scramble away only to get pinned down by another golem.
Bang!
Bang!
Before the golem could bite down, Merlin had already killed it with two air bullets. The helpless scientist turned to him and hurriedly scrambled to his side.
'What makes you think I won't just kill you too…' Merlin's mouth twitched a little at the thought as he stared at the male researcher.
"What's going on here?" Merlin asked calmly.
"Huff… huff… it- it's the specimens… they've gone feral…" the terrified researcher said through rough breaths.
Merlin turned to the body he had killed earlier and a look of confusion flickered across his face, he turned to the researcher then asked.
"How did they come alive? Was it part of the tests?"
He asked because he was genuinely confused, the two creatures he had seen both looked like hybrids, like failed fusions between human and nightmare creatures, but if they were going to test if these things could come to life, why would they do it with these creatures when the laboratory he woke up in was filled with better specimens that looked more complete.
"It… it wasn't the tests, they began to come alive after we turned on project X…"
Merlin listened calmly then thought 'Project X… seems like these guys were trying to create some super soldier or something…' he cleared his thoughts and asked.
"What's project X?"
The researcher hesitated before replying in a low voice.
"That… it's classified information"
"Heh, classified information huh… are you prepared to take that information to your graves?" Merlin asked with an amused smile.
Although he could just figure it out himself, that would just be him rushing in blindly, and that wasn't the way he preferred to do things, the last time he rushed in blindly where did it leave him, in a city ruled by a cursed rank creature.
"You… you don't understand, that information cannot be told to others" the researcher insisted.
"Is that so…" Merlin said then turned to face the other direction.
The next moment, another of the failed experiments crashed through the glass frame, the creature sniffed around before turning to face them.
In that moment, Merlin summoned the spectre suit and immediately entered a wraith state, leaving the researcher to face the incoming creature.
"Aahh!" The researcher shouted as he tried to run, but the creature had already reached his front.
The creature which had a hand that was part nightmare creature with elongated claws immediately shot out to pierce the researcher, but instead of hitting the researcher, its claws only stabbed the ground in front of it, then it turned around sharply and started slashing at nothing while making seemingly useless movements.
Merlin reappeared and stared at the fallen researcher, he shook his head and said calmly.
"I've put that specimen under an illusion, it cannot see our true location, but I can just as easily undo that illusion and let it kill you, so answer this, will you tell me what is project X and I kill that…" he pointed to the specimen "...or will you keep quiet and see what happens when I undo the illusion"
The researcher stared at him with wide eyes , then turned to the thrashing creature, but his gaze was still hesitating.
"Fine then, suit yourself.." Merlin shrugged as he adjusted the illusion, the creature immediately stopped thrashing around, and locked eyes with the researcher.
The researcher noticed this then immediately turned to Merlin and begged.
"Please… powerful warrior sir, spare me, I'll tell you everything you want to know"
The researcher begged as the creature lunged at him, then the next moment…
Sching…
The sound of Merlin's sword cut through the air as he decapitated the creature and its dead twitching body fell not far away from the researcher.
Merlin flinged the blood off his sword then turned to the researcher and gave a smile.
"Now then… I'm listening"
The researcher scrambled to his feet, then turned to Merlin with a frightened look, but he composed himself and started explaining.
"The city has been fighting nonstop against the creatures of the abyss, the powerful warriors like yourself all march towards the city border to help us fight against them, but the city research department wanted to create something more, an abyss creature even powerful than the ones beyond the walls, and completely loyal to the city…"
He sighed then continued.
"We began our research by trying to combine humans and abyss creatures, to create a new stronger species… but that method never worked, most specimens never survived the process, and those that survived became feral like the one you just killed, so the head scientist ordered them to be shut down and sealed away…"
"Our research then changed direction, and then we thought, instead of fusing two different species, why don't we just have our people draw power from the same source as the abyss creatures… and then the second phase of the experiments began, we harvested the shards from the abyss creatures and fused them with humans to increase our power and possibly create more powerful warriors…"
The researcher ran his hands through his hair as he met Merlin's gaze.
"During the experiment, there was a lot of failures and a lot of the specimen were unresponsive, a few showed signs of response, but the process were brief and they died right after… but there was one that survived, she was called project Alpha, the head scientist's own daughter, she was the only successful specimen that lived, but she didn't show any signs of gaining abilities like the powerful warriors, it was only her physical constitution that surpassed that of our warriors, reaching the strength of our generals, but apart from that there was nothing else…"
He sighed again then finished.
"The success of the experiment gave us a profound idea of what could be accomplished, so the head scientist then started project X, an experiment that involved transplanting the shards from a strong abyss creature into a weak one, and then using an operation to transfer the brain of a human into the abyss creature so that we can have something stronger and under control…"
Merlin stared flatly at the researcher, he couldn't even begin to think of how to slap the sense into him and his fellow colleagues, the guts they had to try to pull off something that seemed smart yet utterly stupid at the same time… create a loyal nightmare creature, such absurd thinking, and brain transplant… heh is corruption that easy to bypass.
Merlin shook his head and sighed as he asked the researcher.
"So how did the project end up?"
The researcher hesitated as a flickered of fear crossed his eyes.
"The transplant was successful according to our data, but the abyss creature showed no signs of life immediately after… the head scientist closed off all other experiments concerning the abyss creature and it was sealed, until a few hours ago, someone triggered the alarm in the sealing chamber of the abyss creature, then the next moment it came to life, and with it, other sealed specimens came back to life and became feral leading to this moment"
Merlin nodded then he asked.
"The shard infused in project X, what rank is it?"
The researcher turned his gaze to the floor and muttered in a low but heavy voice.
"Transcendent…"