Eric stood silent for a moment and gathered the courage. He took a couple of deep breaths and walked toward the doors.
"Let's get this over with." Eric said, with eyes filled with fierce determination.
When Eric walked out of his cell, he saw Doctor Erl, assistant Darvin and two leather wearing soldiers. Eric stared at them for a moment until he heard Erl's words.
"Put on him the slave collar." The doctor Erl ordered the soldiers.
"Huh?" Eric questioned in confusion.
"And get him to the transformation chambers."
"Let's set up the transformation for two weeks." The blond said with a serious expression as he wrote something on the desk near the table.
The guards walked in front of Eric. They made sure he was facing the same direction they were walking. Eric groaned in distress as he realized the collar fit snugly around his neck, causing him to feel even more restricted.
When they arrived outside, he saw a small, dark room with a table on the far side. The doctor had Eric stand before a large man with blond hair and a weird-looking earring. Eric didn't like him from the start. The man smiled a bitter smile as he spoke.
"Hello E-68. Are you ready to become a child again?" Blonde researcher said to him.
"Huh?!" Eric questioned again.
"My name is Jarv. Your name is Eric, right?" Blonde researcher introduced himself.
"Y-Yes." Eric replied.
"Wrong. Your name is E-68. Anyway, let's turn you into a kid. Shall we?" Jarv chuckled.
Eric was even more confused than before. He couldn't understand why the doctor would want him to become a child again. Or how was that even possible?
"Take him to the C-30." Jarv ordered the guards. *Creature - 30 The operation table*
The guards restrained Eric and brought him to the table. They lay Eric down on the table and released the restrains.
For a moment, Eric felt relieved, but soon he felt something creeping over his arms and legs. He tried lifting his head to look at what's touching him, but he realized he couldn't.
"Just relax and close your eyes." Jarv laughed as he watched Eric struggling to move.
"W-What's happening?!" Eric shouted, as the weird feeling of someone touching his limbs turned into immense pain.
The table manifested weird, spider like creatures that were connected to it by small strings. All the spiders were crawling on Eric, and slowly eating and replacing Eric's skin, flesh and even bones.
"AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!" Eric screamed as his eyes were almost popping out from its eye sockets in terror.
Eric screamed in an unimaginable pain and for a moment, he even forgot about his ambition to find the actual murderer of his family. The transformation process was such a torturous that all he wanted was death.
"Ah, the screams. The music to my ears." Jarv said with a gleeful smile on his face.
Erl gave Eric a worried-looking glance. Erl thought Eric deserved what was occurring right now, but he also understood that if Eric passed away, they would have to sacrifice actual children in order to uncover an anomaly in Cinderfrown.
As the spiders proceeded to eat Eric's flesh, he screamed in agony. The anguish caused his heart to stop beating a few times, but the electric jolt the spiders produced made it start beating again.
"L-Let me die, please!" Eric yelled.
"I beg of you!" Eric continued pleading for death.
Darvin looked at the scene with pity. He was used to torturing E-ranks and rarely felt any remorse. But the sight infront of him was too much even for him.
"Maybe turning an adult into a child was a bad idea?" Darvin wondered out loud.
"While this table can change an appearance of a human for a while… They still require to be at least similar height and weight." Erl added.
"Who cares? We can always get more E-ranks to try again. Until one of them survives." Jarv chuckled..
After about fifteen torturous minutes, the spiders disappeared, revealing a younger version of Eric.
"Did it work?" Jarv wondered as he walked to check if Eric was still breathing.
"Is he dead?" Darvin asked.
Erl, without saying a word, he wanted this to work. He needed this to work. After all, why sacrifice innocent, when you could sacrifice someone like Eric?
"He's alive." Jarv said, after checking Eric's heartbeat.
"It actually worked?"
"Luckily. Even if we could use more E-ranks, it would still take time we do not have." Erl said with a relieved expression.
In a few hours, Eric woke up in a carriage, locked up in chains. Eric looked around and noticed a couple of guards staring and pointing their guns at him.
"W-What happened?" Eric muttered, as he felt completely different from normal. He looked down to see that his legs had shrunk, and he looked much skinnier.
'They actually turned me into a child? But why?' he wondered.
"You're awake?" Erl said from behind Eric, startling him.
Eric looked behind him to see Darvin and Erl sitting and taking notes on paper.
"How do you feel?" Darvin asked, staring at Eric curiously.
"I don't know. I feel different." Eric muttered..
"Speak louder E-68. We can barely hear you." Doctor Erl ordered..
"S-Sorry." Eric raised his voice.
Doctor Erl and Darvin continued writing something down, continuedly taking glances at Eric.
"Where are we going?" Eric decided to ask..
"You'll see when we get there." Darvin replied.
In a few hours, they reached Cinderfrown, and stopped their carriage. When they left the carriage, they looked around to see an ordinary-looking town, with people staring at them.
"I wonder what will happen now." Darvin muttered under his nose, taking a glance at Eric.
"I am not sure. I hope these works and Eric will attract whatever anomaly is going on here. Otherwise…" Erl said with a frown. He did not want to think of a possibility of having to sacrifice children for a mission.
Eric had been released, but he still felt weird and uncomfortable. It was hard for him to even walk, as he had to adapt to his new body. He kept tripping as he walked through the town. Suddenly, Eric felt chills after noticing an abandoned house.
"W-what the…" Eric said out loud.
"What's wrong E-68?" Darvin asked.
Eric did not respond. He simply stared at the house. In his vision, the house was getting bigger and bigger. He felt as if dark, vicious hands were leaving the house and coming after him.
"E-68?" Erl asked worriedly.
Erl knew that whatever was happening in this town had already begun, and Eric was already feeling its consequences. But he could not discern what Eric was staring at. In Erl's sight of vision, Eric was simply staring at the barren plains.
"ERIC JAYSON!" A deep and gloomy voice shouted in Eric's head.
Eric stood there in a trance as the voice continued speaking.
"I KNOW THAT YOU'RE NOT A KID. BUT I DO HAVE SOMETHING FOR YOU AS WELL!" a voice told him.
"You have something for me?" Eric asked. His eyes looked dead.
"YES." the deep voice replied.
"A GIFT." A young boy's voice shouted.
"PRICELESS GIFT." a girl's voice screamed.
"THE ONE THING YOU WANT THE MOST." Dozens of kids screaming.
"The one thing I want the most.
"THE ONE THING YOU WANT THE MOST." They kept screaming the same sentence over and over.
"THE ONE THING YOU WANT THE MOST."
"Is that…" Eric muttered. The only thing he wanted was to know who the actual killer was.
"YES! IT IS THE ANSWER TO THE QUESTION YOU'VE GOT!"
"Tell me." Eric's voice trembled. He knew that whatever this thing was, it might be tricking him. But he was ready to take the chance.
"GET RID OF THE PEOPLE SURROUNDING YOU!" the deep voice ordered.
"COME TO THE HOUSE." the girl told him.
"GET THE ANSWER!" the boy shouted
"COME TO THE HOUSE." This time, both boy and girl shouted in unison.
"GET THE ANSWER!" Dozens of kids screamed in unison.
Erl was listening to Eric speaking to himself, as he couldn't hear anything. He took out an orb that has a power to scan for any abnormal activity, trying to scan for an anomaly, but there was nothing.
"Nothing." Erl looked at Eric with suspicion.
"Is he faking it?" Darvin asked.
For a moment, they even thought that Eric might be just faking it, but after taking a glance at Eric's dead eyes, they understood that was not the case.
"That could only mean…" Darvin said as he looked at an orb.
"Whatever is happening, the orb treats it as a natural world's order." Erl said with a frown on his face. This was the first time, that the orb reacted to an anomaly this way.
Meanwhile, Eric snapped out from trance and stared at doctor Erl and Darvin. He has to get rid of them, and reach the house alone otherwise, there won't be any answers. He wouldn't mind if the monster or whatever that was lied to him and this was simply a trap. The offer was still too good to pass away.