Experiment

Suddenly, Beatrice flipped to a page in the middle of the booklet, causing an extremely surprised expression to appear on her face as soon as she read the first words on it.

'Grand Knight level experimental subject 20 elemental stones, ten percent wholesale discount above ten units'

'Royal Knight level experimental subject, 200 elemental stones five percent wholesale discount above 10 units'

As she read the first two lines she layed her eyes onto, Beatrice couldn't help but let out a cough.

Even though she had some expectations, using the word wholesale to describe royal knights made Beatrice feel a weird feeling inside of her.

After taking a few more looks at the book, Beatrice turned back towards her room without buying anything, as she did not want to waste her precious elemental stones.

Looking at her empty room, Beatrice let out a sigh before sitting cross-legged on the bed.

...

A week later,

Suddenly and without warning, as Beatrice meditated on her bed, she lost consciousness.

"This is my inner darkness?" mumbled Beatrice as she struggled to see anything in the endless void around her, even though this was the insides of her own mind, as soon as Beatrice appeared here it seemed as if her mind wanted to devour itself.

Even though she successfully visualized the rune, Beatrice only stood inside of her mind for a few moments, and after that, she exited it and found herself on her bed.

"I'm almost there, I'm finally going to be a mage after all this time," mumbled Beatrice as happiness was shown on her usually emotionless face.

But even though she had successfully done that, Beatrice once again went to sleep, not bothering to do anything else, as her mental well-being would have much more of an effect on her success rate.

...

Sitting crosslegged, Beatrice took a deep breath before beginning to absorb the elemental energy in the air, and as soon as she did that, a large amount of elemental energy began flowing into Beatrice's orifices

"It's close," mumbled Beatrice as she felt the elemental energy that entered her body begin to slowly transform into something else, and at the beginning of that transformation, something else was added to what would soon become mana.

From a rune that she was currently visualizing the Inner Darkness Rune, a large amount of darkness began pouring out of Beatrice's mind and into the already volatile elemental energy which seemed to have been transformed by Beatrice's body.

And under the effects of the dark energy, the color of the elemental ener- no rather that of the mana began turning from grey to black, and after a while that same black mana began settling into Beatrice's body.

"This is great," mumbled Beatrice, who even though she had spent several hours in the exact same position, felt better than ever, and after a while, the flow of elemental energy into Beatrice's body eventually slowed down before fully stopping, signaling the finishing of her transformation, but right now, Beatrice had to do one final thing.

After making sure that no more elemental energy entered her body, Beatrice began visualizing the elemental rune from the Inner Darkness Meditation.

Now that Beatrice's mana was mixed with her inner darkness, under the control of the rune, her mana became completely stable and did not cause any trouble for her.

...

Gritting her teeth, Beatrice looked at the official knight strapped onto the table with a sad look on her face as she had to spend five elemental stones to buy him, but of course, Beatrice persisted with her experiments.

Thick streams of elemental energy then emerged from the two elemental stones, and under the man's horrified gaze entered his body.

After over an hours of being stable, just how Beatrice looked when she first became a Mage Apprentice five days ago, the official knight seemed calm, but as two hours passed some things began.

"Thirty-two minutes longer, but it's still very much poisonous unless transformed into mana," mumbled Beatrice as she looked at the official knight, who had just died under the effects of the elemental energy.

Compared to the normal humans Beatrice experimented with, none of which had survived more than an hour and a half a half under the effects of such powerful elemental energy.

Suddenly, all eight restraints on the bed suddenly opened, allowing the body of the dead knight to fall to the ground, or rather, fall halfway down before beginning to float, causing Beatrice to smile.

After that, the body of the dead man then floated over to a table, on which he then rest.

Suddenly Beatrice walked in front of the table before closing her eyes for a few moments, or rather, exactly 3.2 seconds.

"I wasted to much mana," mumbled Beatrice as she wiped the sweat off her forehead and looked the small pitch-black knife in her hands

Suddenly, Beatrice swung the knife at the hand of the dead knight, but rather embarrassingly for her, the knife in Beatrice's hands passed through both the hand, perfectly separating it from the body and then the solid steel table.

After that Beatrice picked up the hand before placing it in a large bag, completely disregarding the blood that landed on the floor, only making sure that the blood did not land on her skin, as Beatrice noticed something.

"Even though he's an official knight, it makes no diference," mumbled Beatrice as she felt the soggy texture of the hand and noticed that it was already rotting from the moment the subject died.

Beatrice would have to conduct more experiments on the matter.

...

"I want to go back to the prison," shouted John as he tried his best to escape from the restraints imposed on him, being much more willing to conduct physical labour in prison than be part of this experiment.

But rather sadly, John had no choice in this matter, right now he could only stare at how Beatrice put more and more crushed rock into a watery mixture.