82 Testing Chamber

Inside the Cleansing room stood an old man who was sweating up a storm as he worked on a futuristic looking machine and a young man who was watching over the screen that showed the vitals of the woman currently inside the Testing Chamber.

While technology advances, there is a limit to how quick the minds of geniuses could invent new machines that make a certain level of ease worth a person's money. While it was easy to create solutions to already well-known problems, it was hard to create solutions to problems that might not even bother most people.

It wouldn't be hard to imagine a fully realized world without a remote-controlled fan, but it would be strange to imagine a future without any smartphones.

That's the type of crisis the Linton Industries faced twenty years ago, when the growth of the company had stagnated to a point where the ruling body who had been keeping their heads in the clouds found that their lack of conviction wasn't a viable option anymore. It was a time where most of the members had to struggle as they desperately tried to survive the advent of the information technology, one they were not ready for.

But while most were already planning how to carve a piece of the blooming information technology, a breakthrough in human knowledge was made by a team stationed on Molle, Kanada, they had made a world altering discovery.

It turns out that an energy, untraceable by all known means of detection, had been crystallizing in great numbers inside the 'Mourning Caves' behind the famous 'Lavander Falls' in Molle, Kanada.

The energy had a list of wonderous and unpredictable qualities that is still undergoing experimentation to this day, but that didn't mean that there had been no inventions made from studying the material. In fact, it was hard to say that it wasn't the leading cause of the corporation's increase in profits, hidden behind the eyes of the public.

That energy was kept under wraps, developed and given purpose by a man who would prove to be a genius in the field of studying the energy. This man was the same man who had discovered the energy crystals, now dubbed 'Linton Diamonds'. The same old man who was working hard this early in the morning.

The old man had long taken off his white lab coat and only wore a plain black sleeveless shirt along with a pair of gray jogging pants, showing off his chiseled body that he had kept in top shape all these years. He wiped his sweat off with his dangling lab coat that he placed around his shoulders as if it were a handkerchief while keeping an eye out towards his young assistant.

"Take a deep breathe, don't think too much about it. Remember, it's just a quick sensation so don't dwell to much on it. Relax, and take another breath." Pale walked over the calming procedure while Leonard, Dr. Prime, prepared everything else by himself.

It wasn't that Pale didn't want to help, it's just that Dr. Prime has never given the formula to anyone and has certainly not given anyone else the chance to perform a 'cleansing'. It was a part of the deal Dr. Prime agreed to when he joined, or that's what he told him anyway. Not wanting to get on the bad side of his boss, Pale didn't dare to question him and just followed his instructions to a T.

The machine used in the cleansing process was a tall wall that housed a few vials of liquids that Dr. Prime prepares himself. He first cleans the sockets for the vials before doing a check on all the other parts that are now liable to break, because this machine hadn't been updated or replaced for a few years now and was never meant to run these many times. If it was someone else doing the preparations, there will certainly be problems during the procedure. 

"This junk is just a fucking mess, isn't it? They better hurry up with that renovation plan I gave them or there will be unexpected accidents that I will not be taking the blame for." Dr. Prime went over the checkup once more and found more parts that needed to be replaced, but that would only increase the machine's lifespan by a few more uses and won't really be cost-effective in the long term.

"It's ready, go fire it up on your own. I'll be on the other room, don't bother me." Dr. Prime gave the old machine a pat on the side and the interface on its center lit up. Designated calculations were already set, and all that was needed was to secure the subject, so they won't make a mistake before pressing the start button right next to the interface.

"Are you ready, Mrs. Dalion?" Pale nodded his head towards Dr. Prime's retreating back while smiling towards the woman who had been looking at him through a transparent glass. She had on a tight body suit that hid most of her skin except for her hands and feet, as well as her head.

Her eyes, however, were covered with special goggles that were meant to keep them off the pressure she would experience. They had cases of subjects having to keep their eyes closed the whole procedure because they felt as if their eyes would pop out, this was just a way to keep that complaint from happening.

"I hope you know what you're doing, mister Pale. It's quite scary from where I'm standing but I'll trust you on this." Jasmine Dalion kept her hands on the bars beside her, the ones that showed an outline of where she needed to place her hands to be. There was also a place where she needed to place her feet on, but she felt fear when she saw that there were holes on the indicated platform. She couldn't help but let her imagination run wild at what would come out of those holes.

'Could they be large needles? Those holes are so big so the needles might look like spear, instead. Gosh, what have you done Jas!' Trembling hands that wouldn't place themselves properly wandered around inside the room.

Pale looked at this with a smile and finally gave the woman an outcome she wouldn't be able to resist. "The moment we start, it would take around a minute before the procedure ends. Painless, that's what people tell me when they leave the room. But that's not what they say first, they usually say 'My skin! It's so smooth!'"

At first glance, the woman looked to be quite beautiful, but she was showing signs of aging on her rather wrinkled skin that had long lost their youthful glow. But her stark blue eyes were captivating enough that her mature look matched with her temperament, which was fierce to say the least. It created an image of a strong, independent woman who was showing a soft side.

"Phew. I'm ready!" Turns out, Pale's words were just enough for Jasmine to motivate herself to go on with the procedure. She was about to have second thoughts when metal braces appeared and kept her limbs locked in place against her will.

She wasn't able to voice out a complaint, however, as red gas filled the room and a small prick of a needle passed through all four of her limbs through her hands and feet. The needles were long, but very thin. So thin that they didn't leave a mark when they left her limbs all together. The moment they retracted back to where they came from, a series of flashes of light occurred inside the Testing Chamber that disoriented Jasmine.

'No signs of an awakening, seems that this one's a Red as well.' Pale took a few notes on his personal journal before looking at the screen showing details of Jasmine on his right. He observed Jasmine for a while before shaking his head, then placed a cross on her image on the screen, making a line appear on the top right that said:

[Level 1 - Red]

This was the lowest kind of affinity a person could have with mana. This would usually mean that there would be no chance for them to awaken an ability, or even if there was one, it would be something simple like a strength enhancement. While it would still be advantageous, they would be embarrassed to present that kind of ability in front of someone like Mark Linton who had a much more amazing ability.

'Not everyone can be like those guys, even I'm just a Level 1 - Orange.' Pale sighed while maintaining a certain level of attention towards Jasmine who was currently under a state of confusion.

Pale wasn't lying when he said that there was no pain, but if someone told them that there would be 5-centimeter needles passing through your four limbs, you wouldn't want to do the procedure. In fact, the first instance that Dr. Prime demonstrated the procedure, a board member of the corporation fainted when he saw the needles passing through the transparent, plastic dummy they used it on.

"Kyah!" Jasmine was still quite stiff from her expectations, especially when she was looking for something to go wrong. It wasn't that she wished for something to happen, she just couldn't help but think that something will.

'Hmm?' But when she looked around, she saw Pale's typical business man smile through the now easily see through mirror. The gas was gone and the metal braces that kept her still were gone as well, with not a single evidence of them being there in the first place left behind.

"Good! It's done, you can take the room on the left and lay down on the table there. No one will be bothering you, and the clean-up process will be done by our certified automatic system. Please, check the results to your heart's content." Pale talked slowly so that Jasmine could understand his words. He looked at the black filth that covered Jasmine's body and had no particular aversion to it now as he had long lost his disgust for seeing it, but he was mindful of any chance at smelling it.

He remembered the first time he had to assist with the procedure and felt sick to his stomach on the faint smell he could swear he will never forget in his life. The mere thought caused him to shudder from the core of his very being.

The good thing about having a glass in between them was that he couldn't get a whiff of the stench that probably filled the Testing Chamber by now. If there wasn't such a barrier between them, he'd be throwing up his recently taken breakfast.

"Awight, chank you wister Paie." Jasmine didn't understand what just happened, as all she could see a while ago were the red gas that filled the room and the bright light that surrounded her.

There was an instant where she felt hot, but it quickly subsided along with the red gas. She wasn't even aware that her speech was impaired as she tried to find something to hold on to before she falls to the ground.

What she didn't get to see was that the red gas didn't get filtered out of the room as she thought, but instead, it got sucked into her body through her four limbs. There was an instant where she lost consciousness and got back to her senses a mere second later. Pale wouldn't tell her any of this, of course. It was a trade secret that even he didn't know all the details of, and the less the customers know, the better.

"Ish it juss me, or does shamting schmell bad in hew?" Jasmine has her senses dulled from the procedure, making her sense of smell much weaker than it normally would. But even then she could faintly smell something atrocious coming from somewhere, but she couldn't quite pinpoint where it was exactly.

Having all the dirt and filth removed from every fiber of your being makes your whole body unfamiliar to even itself. It would take a while before the mana that was injected into her body makes their way into her mana nodes and gradually start their first revolution.