*SLAM*
After slowly turning around, Becky began walking up to Rolf. Falling on his knees, Rolf felt despair. For what reason is this happening to him? Why must it be him?
Before Becky could get to him, he felt something going into his body, feeling sleepy, that something knocked him unconscious.
"Humph, did you really need to use magic on him, Becky? You should've just let him piss his pants, that would've at least been more entertaining", Richard commented on Becky's act.
"Tch, useless, this is why he put me in charge of this project rather than you, Richy" Becky quipped. After knocking Rolf out, she picked him up using her magic and went near a bookshelf in a corner of the room.
"Now, before he wakes up, let us ready our preparations, the sooner we have results, the better our rewards…", after speaking Becky pulled on a book on the shelf revealing a staircase downwards underneath the house.
Quickly taking a swig of his alcohol, Richard followed her grumbling all the way down.
—--------------
Reaching the bottom of a staircase was a small lab, an open flat area, and next to it led to another smaller concrete room. Opening the solid iron door, she placed Rolf in the single metal chair in the middle of the room that was next to a table with a variety of medical instruments.
After she chained him to the chair, she left to speak with Richard about moving forwards with their plan.
—--------------
"So, when are we starting Becky?" Richard inquired.
"Wrong, it's when will "I" be doing all of the procedures and testing while you will only be testing his mental, physical, and magic strength," Becky answered but didn't stop there, continuing seriously, she said, "Don't forget our objective, we aren't experimenting on humans for fun, it's to test the body's limit of magic capacity and try to create the first super soldier slave. If we complete this and meet or exceed his requirements, then we won't have to do anymore of this for the rest of our lives, and we may possibly rank up! So don't you dare go too far with him, he may just be our best shot at this!"
Unknown to the rest of the household and even Grant, Rolf had a unique body constitution that they discovered not too long after he was born.
—--------------
The night that Rolf was born was exactly in the dead of winter. Of course many other children could've been born that day, however, their King, Arne Erikson, declared that the Royal Divination Masters had received a holy message from many different Gods saying that a calamity will strike in the dead of winter, and that one born from the iceland and into misfortune, would cause the world to fall into a cold and endless darkness.
This particular night was the coldest winter recorded in the Northern Continent. Temperatures so cold they nearly broke the centuries old formation and permanently damaged the one thing protecting the entire kingdom. It got so cold that any non-magic liquid temperature measuring device froze solid and shattered into pieces, no matter what they were built out of. The last recorded temperature was -100C (-148F), and the worst thing about it was that it wasn't just naturally occurring weather, it was infused with magic. By being infused with magic, the ice element was the most present and dominated every other element within its domain –the northern continent. Although fires could be lit and somewhat maintained, they had to be caused by magic, as a regular wood burning fire wouldn't be able to last. Even magically created fires lasted far less than normal as it required 5 times the normal amount of magic to sustain it.
The dead of winter lasted for exactly a week straight, afterwards the temperature dropped nearly instantly causing people to think it never happened. However, one thing that no one knows about is the constant and rapid black lightning that struck Rolf several times immediately after his birth, not even his parents knew. The black lightning was so strong the mere presence of it knocked his parents and everyone else who was in the room, out cold. Without anyone to witness it, Rolf's body absorbed the lightning as if it was water hitting a massive sponge.
—--------------
Back in the present moment, Richard had no choice but to accept what Becky had just said. They both knew that Rolf was the best subject to test due to his body that could absorb magic and other weird substances. Afterall the tonics they gave him weren't just to help him "recover", but each one had something specific to test his resilience against foreign magic. Fire, ice, dark, light, those were just some of the main ones but sometimes they even wanted to see if he could resist other things that weren't magic! At some point they tried putting poison in them along with the recovery effects! And it did nothing! They even did it several more times to make absolutely sure, yet to no avail, Rolf was fine!!
"Very well, but I won't hold back much when we fight, so don't be surprised if you see him half beat to death during this project", with that, Richard left the room, and if looks could kill then he'd surely be dead by the nasty stare Becky gave him.
Although irritated, Becky had no choice but to accept it because she could at least heal Rolf, since she was most adept at healing magic.
—--------------
Waking up, Rolf was confused as to where he was, the only thing he saw around him was a table full of weird tools he's never seen before and around him he noticed that he was in a solid concrete room from all sides with a singular door in one corner. Trying to move, he realized that he felt weak, and that there were cuffs around his limbs connected to chains. Recollecting his thoughts, he remembered that before he fell asleep, Becky was walking towards him.
'Oh shit..' realizing that Becky had done something to him, he used some of his father's favorite curse words.
Struggling and shaking his chains, he couldn't figure a way out of this situation. While shaking his chains, the iron door opened revealing Becky in a lab coat.
"Good, you're awake now, we can begin" Becky said with a smile on her face.
"Wait!! What are you doing? Why am I here and why are you doing this to me?!? I'm your damn son!!!", Rolf practically screamed at her with what little strength he had left.
"Mm, good questions, and to answer that, let's start off with, why you? Well the answer is simple, you may not know it, but your body is a treasure trove ready to be explored and we intend to find all of its deepest secrets. Next question, you're obviously here to keep people from hearing your screams and we can't let people find out about this now can we? Rest assured, as long as you're a good boy you'll be allowed to perform your daily duties again in order to keep up appearances." Becky said with no break or pause in her voice, clearly knowing that Rolf would ask this. However she did hesitate a tiny bit before saying,
"Lastly, you're not my son, and neither am I your mother".
"W,what..?" Rolf stuttered. He was absolutely stunned by her answers, although he didn't have either her hair color or eyes, he just had an instinctual feeling that led him to feel that she was his mother, as well as the fact that he knew he had to be Richard's child from having the same hair and eyes.
Before Rolf could say anything more Becky began speaking again,
"Well, technically this body is your mother, I just killed her and took over her body, ~~AHH~~ Praise Lord Ankou! his abilities are endless *ahem*", after clearly her throat from her little… moment, she spoke once again,
"Your mother was already despairing over having given birth to you in the middle of the dead of winter, and using that opportunity, I killed her and took over her body, and began moving forward to completing his plan. Oh one more teeny weeny~ thing", switching over to a smiling crazed look she continued, "If you mention Lord Ankou to Richard, I'll kill you on the spot, ahahaa".
Unable to process everything Becky had said, Rolf's mind became unstable and his heart began beating rapidly, soon he fainted from the shock of the events that just transpired. After he fainted Becky muttered,
"Well… that's no fun… eh, well, I can continue once he wakes up… it's more fun that way.."
—--------------
According to what she said, when Rolf woke up, her experiments began. For her first one, she began injecting her own mana into him to see the effects it would have on his body. The reason for such, is that mana –the magic flowing through a magician's body– can be bent to the owner's will and create/cast spells. The dangerous part was that when magic entered the body and was converted into mana, they were no longer compatible, the mana became unique to the host and was like their true signature, unable to be forged by others, and only controllable by the host.
However, when casting a spell –usually one according to a certain element– the signature gets mostly absorbed by the magic and is able to become the spell. So in that sense, that magic is no longer uniquely theirs, it only contains a sliver of their actual signature. The only time a certain magic can be injected into another person is through mana transfer, which due to it having a spell's properties, it acts like magic allowing other people to absorb it and use it as their own. However, the downside to that is when being transferred, it is not a 1-1 ratio, so hypothetically, say if the caster were to use 50 mana, then depending on how proficient they are, the recipient can only absorb 10-40 of that original 50 –which is clearly not proficient.
By injecting pure mana however, it would force the recipient to feel excruciating pain when having another's mana push inside their body, causing an inner battle to occur. Should the recipient drop to less than about 50% mana in their body during this torture process, it's common to become crippled in magic and sometimes even die.
—-
Rolf felt indescribable pain, it felt like someone inside of him. Anywhere on his body he felt it, whether it be on his skin, eyes, or directly on his brain –which lets face it, if you can't deal with a migraine, imagine something clawing at it–; he felt as if it was trying to consume him alive. Gritting his teeth for what seemed to be hours, he finally felt it lighten, in fact he even began to start feeling better. Although his feeling was not wrong, that was not actually what was happening. What happened was his unique core adapting to the mana being injected into him and beginning to absorb it –making him feel better.
Seeing this, Becky was fascinated and quickly began writing down notes, causing her mana to stop flowing into Rolf.
—--------------
After that, Becky began injecting more and more mana into Rolf, until something interesting happened or he fainted from the pain.
Several hours later, –now in the afternoon– Rolf was in front of Richard holding his wooden Katana and his short gladius on his back.
After going through the magical "experiments", Becky told him that he would need to go through physical and mental "experiments" with Richard.
"Come at me boy, we're going to have some fun now..", Richard said while he licked his gauntlets that he wore. In contrast to inwardly being creeped out, Rolf couldn't help but feel a tinge of happiness after finding out that he would still be able to partake in –what he saw as– training and a chance at revenge.
Deciding what to do, Rolf finally decided to lunge in at Richard with his Katana, exchanging a few blows, Rolf felt that this exchange was fine and doable for him to get better. Unlucky for him, Richard just wanted to see where Rolf was at in terms of "battle" experience, and obviously there wasn't much.
"Stupid shit, so many openings, and is this the so called 'above average talent with the sword', your trash! You are Complete And Utter Garbage!!!", Richard screamed before attacking one of Rolf's openings and hitting him square in the jaw.
Sprawling away on the ground, Rolf tasted blood in his mouth and could feel a tooth gone as well as a few loose ones forming. Screaming, Rolf yelled,
"Screw you, you bastard, feel the pain I've gone through!!!". However, unfortunately, Rolf's hit did absolutely nothing as it was blocked by Richard's set of metal enchanted gauntlets, which then caused Richard to retaliate and hit Rolf in the face twice.
—
And like this, Rolf's experimentation with Richard went on until night.
Currently, Rolf was slowly limping back to his room for the night to recover until the next day for more experiments. After his sparring, – just like Richard said he would do– Rolf was near death's door from the brutal beating he faced from Richard. Since Becky was adept at healing, she healed Rolf, but only to the point where he would be fine for the next day. She didn't heal him fully just in case he decided to escape during the night. Luckily for Rolf, Becky and Richard didn't have entirely free reign in their house since if a servant went missing after their Lords called them, or were beaten badly, the chances of one of the kings spies that were within every household reporting that matter were very high –which in turn would immediately be reported to the king's most trusted advisors.
That night after letting Rhea in, he bawled nearly all night, seeking solace within Rhea's warmth, who in turn would emit low growls every time Rolf mentioned everything they did to him –-whether it be recent or before he turned 3. For the first time in months, Rolf had finally felt a slight weight lifted off of him. Even though he knew that more of this past day would continue indefinitely, he believed he could get through it as long as Rhea was there for him. Curling in bed hugging Rhea, Rolf had slowly fallen asleep while Rhea was nuzzling his baby cheeks that she had always loved.
—--------------
(A/N Rolf is about 3 years and 6 months old (maybe a lil' older) and dw, there's only a few more chapters till things start getting good)