Capítulo 2: The Living Body Experiment Saul Stood Still
He was thinking, but he was running out of time.
The candle flame on the wall had turned from a ghostly yellow to a dim yellow, and when it turned to a bright yellow, it said that tomorrow would be bright, and Saul had to get back to the fourth floor before the candle glowed white.
These were the rules.
The puddle of blood on the floor was still in place.
If he leaves, he'll be turned into flower fertilizer the next day.
But clean up?
What could he, an ordinary man without any transcendent means, do to fix that weird murderous blood?
Ask for help?
The boys who lived together seemed to have some animosity towards the pre-crossing Saul, and they would never come to his aid. Besides, those people were just as ordinary as Saul, and they weren't capable of helping him either.
Looking for the butler?
But the butler never appears at night, and Saul doesn't know where to look.
His entire current area of activity was the fourth servant floor and the eleventh through thirteenth floors.
There was no way out.
Sol's trembling fingers suddenly stabilized.
He returned the mop to the cart and straightened his clothes.
Walking over to the room opposite the room where the blood flowed out, he raised his hand and knocked gently on the door three times.
The three knocks were very clear in the silent hallway.
Saul hung his head and glanced at the hardback book, on which no new method of death for himself appeared.
Just as Saul raised his hand to knock three more times, the door in front of him suddenly opened.
Saul held his breath for a moment.
The door opened a little bit.
A slender figure appeared behind it.
It was a woman, wearing a black robe, with a plump but not obese figure, and the skin exposed outside the clothes was very fair.
Saul tilted his head and saw a beautifully defined chin, red and plump lips, and a high nose, on which ... there was no more.
The woman only has half a head!
In the dark night, seeing such a picture, Saul only felt that his soul was going to fly.
Saul held back his fear and didn't allow himself to show a disrespectful expression.
However, his teeth cackled uncontrollably.
The woman across from him lowered her head, the top half of her head missing, the flesh white and rotting at the incision of her skull.
Where the eyes should have been was replaced by a semi-circular glass cover.
The glass cover held a murky white liquid, and as she lowered her head, something suspected to be an eyeball hit the glass wall from time to time.
"What is it?"
The half-faced woman's vermilion lips slightly opened, and her voice was quite pleasant.
"My lord ...," Saul heard his voice trembling, he took a deep breath to stabilize himself a bit, "A pool of blood is coming out of the room across the hall. I am unable to deal with it, please my lord, help me."
The woman looked up and an eye appeared in the glass enclosure clinging to the edge.
The eye then faded away and she lowered her head again, letting out a soft laugh, "Why should I save you?"
Saul knew he wouldn't be so lucky as to meet kind, helpful people as soon as he knocked on the door.
"What do you need from me, my lord?" Sol lowered his head.
He was just a servant, not qualified to make conditions.
The woman held her chin with her slender fingers, "I need a living experiment subject, but I don't have quite enough credits lately, so if you volunteer to be my experiment subject, I'll help you with that trouble."
Saul squinted at the hardback book over his left shoulder.
The hardback didn't react.
The current Saul was too weak, and he could only rely on the Hardback Book's death cue to take a gamble.
"Yes!"
The woman hooked her red lips, satisfied with Sol's determination.
She sidestepped to let Saul into her room, then stepped outside to do who knows what.
Saul stood in the woman's room.
He realized it was mostly bigger than the bunkhouse where a dozen of them lived, with an ensuite inside.
The living room was lit with oil lamps, very bright and steady, and supposedly wizardry as well.
On the long table in the very center of the living room, there were many props and materials that he didn't even recognize.
The most conspicuous is a crucible in the center on a small stove, in which a pot of black liquid is bubbling "gulp gulp gulp".
"This is what you're looking at." The woman walked in at some point.
Saul looked back, the door had already been closed, and he wondered if the puddle of blood outside had been disposed of.
"I need you to put a hand, into the crucible, take it out and tell me what you feel." The woman pulled back the bench and sat on the opposite side of the table, crossing her legs and waiting for Saul's reaction.
Knowing he had no bargaining power, Saul simply didn't sell his misery and beg for mercy.
He rolled up the sleeve of his left hand, took a deep breath, stepped forward, and stuck his entire hand directly into the black liquid.
He didn't use a single finger to test it out first, fearing that he would botch it and cause the woman's displeasure.
"Hiss-" Saul huffed.
But he wasn't burned, he was cold.
A bone-chilling cold.
"Cluck cluck cluck."
Saul's teeth chattered from the cold.
"It's ready to be taken out."
Hearing the woman's voice, Saul was busy pulling his hand out.
But when he saw his hand, the breath he had just exhaled from relaxation was sucked back in.
The skin and flesh on his hand were gone.
Saul's left hand was now left as a skeleton, clean as a mannequin in an art studio.
The most frightening thing was that Saul didn't even feel any pain at the moment.
"Ho... ho..."
Saul couldn't stop gasping for breath, his right hand holding his left wrist, both hands trembling together.
And as his left hand trembled, it also made the sound of bones rubbing together.
The woman across from him didn't comfort Saul's fear as she stood up, her fingers tapping her chin.
"It's as if the hyseri python put in too much stomach fluid. What do you feel in your left hand now?"
"Giggly ... cold ... but not painful ..."
Saul fought back the fear and cold and tried to act like a professional researcher.
"It seems manageable."
He said, and moved the fingers of his left hand.
It was somewhat difficult, but it did move.
"Not bad." The woman smiled, seemingly satisfied with Saul's answer.
She picked and chose, taking a few of the materials on the table and tossing them into the crucible seemingly at random.
The crucible "gurgled" with two streams of white vapor, then returned to its quiet, bubbling form.
"Now," the woman sat back again, raising her chin in interest and pointing to the crucible, "put the other hand in instead."
Thor let out a breath, he had expected this.
The first test, apparently, hadn't worked.
The second trial was just as logical.
Saul let go of his left hand, then with determination he put his right hand into the crucible.
"Uh..."
He instantly felt his entire arm freezing.
The right hand buried in the black liquid was even less conscious.
"It's okay."
Hearing the woman's voice, Saul immediately pulled his right hand out.
Reassuringly, the one taken out this time was finally not a skeletal hand.
Not only that, his palm, which was originally strewn with scars and calluses due to his labor, also became smooth and white.
Not waiting for the woman to urge him, Saul took the initiative to say, "Ho ... it's still cold, colder than just now ... giggle giggle ... "
He struggled to control the clatter of his teeth.
"... It doesn't hurt, it's manageable ... "
Saul stretched his fingers and held them up for the woman across from him to see clearly.
The woman smiled again, this time she was clearly a little happier and Saul saw the sharp white teeth behind her red lips.
"You really surprise me."
The woman stood up and even clapped her hands twice.
She walked to the other side of the room and pulled a crystal flask out of a cabinet and handed it to Saul, "Drink up."
Seeing Saul's face become hard, she smiled a big smile, the white pulp on her head bobbing with the movement.
"Don't worry, this time it's not a test, it's a potion for healing."
(End of chapter)
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