Chapter 19

"Ugh my head…" holding his head Noah finally woke up to find himself in a dimly lit prison cell.

His hands were still shackled with mana dampening handcuffs and his clothes were changed into a baggy prison uniform.

Waiting for his head to stop spinning, Noah finally got up and started looking around.

Apart from him, there were others also locked into separate prison cells. There was no visible similarity among each of the prisoners that Noah could find, as some of them were old and some in their 20s. One thing he was sure of was that he was the youngest here.

With each cell only having a wash basin and a toilet, there wasn't any item or tool that Noah could use to pry himself out.

Since he had the shackles on, the most he could do currently was see his own status in the HUD.

As time passed by, Noah could feel himself getting colder. The spirit contract he had with Skadi was still in effect and had started to go berserk once again. Without his mana, he was no longer able to control the ability. After making sure not to use more than half of his mana during battles, Noah couldn't help himself to believe he was going to be done in like this.

The door soon opened, and a guard walked in.

"Don't even try to do anything funny. If things go well, you can leave. So behave."

After speaking shortly, he started to open the doors of the cells one by one.

The moment one of the prisoners tried to attack the guard from behind, the sound of gunfire rang. Half of the prisoner's abdomen was blown apart. With blood still flowing from the wound, the man slowly fell to the ground to breathe his last.

Most of the prisoners screamed and knelt, covering their eyes from the corpse.

Breaking the silence, the guard continued. "Well, next!"

Gathering all the prisoners out, the guard soon led them to one of the research lab rooms.

Several scientists continued chattering about the research test failure, while others who looked like assistants jotted down notes.

Leading the prisoner group to a side, one of the assistants started measuring elemental affinities of each of the prisoners.

Right after measuring Noah's elemental affinities, the assistant went to talk with the others. Soon after, all of them started looking at him.

"With the boy, it's possible. Bring him here."

Dragging Noah by the arm, a guard brought him in front of the team of scientists. While they continued to examine him, the assistant took a syringe out to take a blood sample from Noah's arm. Without flinching, Noah continued to stare at the professor.

"Tell me, why are you so cold?"

"."

Looking at the guard, the scientist nodded, following which the guard slammed the baton against his back.

The pain was enough to make Noah hurl, but he continued to remain silent on the matter.

"Toss him inside the chamber."

After a series of beating, Noah was thrown into a metallic chamber.

From the speaker inside the chamber, Noah could hear the sound of the scientist once more.

"Subject 81, I see you have affinities towards 6 elements. Even though you are just a child I am sure you know what that means as well. So this experiment is going to be easy to understand for you. We'll be subjecting you to a small training to awaken affinity towards an artificial element we created. I am sure you've heard of multiple ways to awaken an element and feeling the element is the most important. So, try to survive."

As soon as he completed, the shackles finally fell off to the floor.

The ceiling of the chamber folded to reveal a stack of mana stones and herbs held in a casing. Noah could feel his mana restoring by the second even without opening his status window.

Just as Noah was about to relax, black flames started to surround him from everywhere.

===

On reaching the sos flare site, the mercenaries and the ice temple knights reached a dead stop. After finding a totalled carriage, the group was able to find bodies of a few mercenaries and thieves.

From the account of the carriage owner who somehow survived the ordeal, they got to know that a kid had saved his life with a potion and had used the flare here to help him out.

Although Melissa and the knights were proud of Noah for his goodwill, they were still upset as there were not many clues from here for them to find him.

When the owner mentioned that he got caught by one of the thieves at the end, Melissa couldn't keep her calm.

The thieves that had caught him were well known in the area and were not caught in years.

From the group of mercenaries, one of them came forward with a pack of chikyutaro.

Chikyutaro was an evolution of the canines that adapted to the earth elemental. With it's brown fur and medium sized build it was also kept as a domestic pet by many in the east.

Taking a piece of cloth out, Edgar brought it near the pack for it to sniff. Although Chikyutaros weren't the best for this kind of detective work, they were good enough to finding the location as the scent was still fresh.

Most thieves and hunters were reluctant to use spells to cleanse or remove body scent as these spells also created a concentrate of the removed body sweat and odour which often pulled more aggro against them if they didn't leave the location quickly.

Getting a whiff, the Chikyutaros started moving towards Noah.