Owen explained what the message at the end of the video said, basically that it didn't matter if we as the children meddled or not and that we would be captured and tortured for any information of our parents. Owen was not sure if my sister was still alive as it hadn't been shown in the video, he had also silenced all channels that could contact my parents so as not to bring attention to us.
Though I believed this to be too late as the message seemed to indicate they would probably use me to bait my parents out or torture me for information I didn't have.
Knowing that eventually, they would come for me I had Owen use the full resources my family had at our disposal to counter this enemy, I would do everything within my power to avoid this threat. Though they may come for me I wouldn't want to put everyone else at risk so I made my own plans for when those scum showed up.
With my plans set into motion, there wasn't anything to do but train and resume my work at the wall, and my tinkering with my puppets all that while trying to use my new class. I guess my schedule was a bit full, so I decided to work on my class for the time being.
My new class seemed to be based around analyzing and modifying bloodlines, while my Tekfiend subclass was based on organic technology like my arms and legs, though I wasn't sure how my limbs were created I was sure that just like Hextia they were a mixture of magic and technology. That included our unknown bloodline that was slowly overtaking the other bloodlines, which meant I needed to research as many bloodlines as I could get my hands on.
A single order was all it took for the maids to begin collecting blood samples from my people, though only a dozen or so bloodlines were available. I did have another source of blood, the patients at the wall, they probably wouldn't mind me taking a vial or two. I even took a vial from my mount, never hurt to study beast bloodlines too since I had a little dragon in me as well.
My first experiment was just to analyze the blood with life hack and create a database of the bloodlines, though finding a pure bloodline was hard, for the most part somewhere along the line it seemed someone went against tradition and found a mate outside the norm, though after scanning through so many bloodlines the spell was becoming more refined and easier to cast while the data it showed increased. I had put a bounty on slime corpses at the adventurers guild while I was at it, I needed the slimes for the genetic material needed for the king slime bloodline advancement for Hextia.
After working for a few hours on the bloodlines I tried getting some sleep.
The next thing I remember was sitting up while gasping for air, I had dreamt of my siblings' torture and their screams before I finally woke up from the nightmare. I went to the bathroom and splashed my face with cold water to clear my head. I came back into the room and looked out the window to see a pitch black sky, it had only been a few hours, but it would have to do. I went back to my lab and got started on my experiments, Hextia kept me company and assisted me with analyzing the blood.
She even came up with a few ideas for the ship, she had been cultivating her mind and had been able to improve the number of splinters she could control by two though it wasn't by a lot it was still an improvement. Cultivating and refining her mind took time and a good portion of energy but she was able to cultivate her mind at ridiculous speeds, and as her mind became more refined the faster she seemed to cultivate. She had begun to burn through several energy crystals a day, when she first started it was maybe two in a single day.
I put down my instruments and watched her as she was taking a break to continue her cultivation. Her splinters still moved about the room preparing additional skeletons and armor and weapons. Some even had tablets and were recording my notes and books to move to the ship, I turned back after admiring the view to the file of a lamia and began analyzing her bloodline.
The Lamia was a strange race, it doesn't matter what or who they mated with for some reason their bloodline always won and they only produced females, they could lay a clutch of eggs every two months that consisted of 2-6 eggs. By rights, the lamias should be a very dominant race but as they were all female and usually very beautiful they had been marked as some of the best "servants" that money could buy thus they were hunted and sold. They were very far from extinction but their race was mostly enslaved, only a few worlds were controlled by them and a few wild tribes existed here or there.
The experiment I had in mind was to introduce the unknown bloodline to others and see exactly how invasive it was. I wasn't sure if I could pass the bloodline the natural way so for now I extracted a sample of my blood and confirmed it had the unknown bloodline before arranging several small orbs that were filled with a solution that kept the blood alive and filled with vitality. Each orb received a single drop of my blood so now all I had to do now was play the waiting game, unluckily for me, there was no progress for now.
I could hear the others starting to move about in the bedroom, looking at the time it had been several hours since I began my experiments. In a few hours, I would be heading back to the wall and another round of healing would begin, though I would also get to collect a few bloodlines so it wasn't too horrendous. I had one of the maids bring me a light breakfast as I had one last experiment to perform.
I walked over to another glass orb that had the growth I had removed from that patient the other day, I filled the orb with my mana and cast life hack to get a better understanding of the thing. The bloodline was basically a copy of the patients but it had a few pieces that were twisted and deformed so I increased the mana output to see if I could learn anything else.
The feedback from the new scan told me that the growth itself couldn't do anything other than grow at an enhanced rate, and it gave me a name, a tumor. A human ailment that did not pose a threat to magical beings as we could either heal it or cure it. With this small bit of information I decided to dig a little deeper into the illness, something seemed to be pushing me slightly from afar to understand it. With information being rather accessible I found there were many types of tumors and cancer cells that used to plague mankind before their scientific research obliterated the disease.
How did such a thing resurface if it was cured? Perhaps it was a natural mutation in the cells as there didn't seem to be an underlying cause, no damage, and no essence of dark magic either. It was just possible that some were prone to it as they slowly evolved over time.
Staring at the growth in the orb I realized it had been growing at a substantial rate in the fluid that was keeping it alive, I had a feeling like I was at the edge of a cliff while staring at the thing, my mana was still lingering in the jar with it and out of impulse I gave it a command. 'Grow'. My mana swarmed towards the tumor and dove into it, a few moments later the tumors' growth exploded, I took a bite of toast as I watched over the next few minutes as the thumb sized tumor grew to the size of a fist. It came to a stop once the mana ran dry but the fluid around the tumor had also been drastically reduced to support its growth.
"Ping!"
My stats page flew open and a message was laid out before me along with new spells.