Point-of-View: Selesa Jeule

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  So, this is the Research Tier area, huh? It was fully taken up by a large building, filled with twenty-five labs on the ground floor, and residential areas on the first and second floor. Oh, I should hurry, Les is waiting outside. Let's see, the person I had to deliver these plants to was named Dr Balat Guyen, and he was in Lab 4. There were directions on the walls, so I was able to find it without a problem.

  I walked in after taking a deep breath to calm my nerves. There was a man inside, hunched over a row of test tubes and beakers filled with various liquids, there were also some raw ingredients here and there. He hadn't noticed me entering, I should probably get his attention.

  "Ahem, I have returned, sir," I spoke up, bowing like I had seen some pawns bow to lapdogs.

  "Hm? Oh, it's you, Retya. Did you bring the hemlock plants I requested?" He responded, turning around.

  He appeared to be around thirty-five or so, with medium-length shaggy blonde hair and purple eyes, a scruffy face with slight bags under his eyes, he was slightly overweight, didn't appear to have any physical mutations, and……his face was kinda……sleazy, I guess? Not really sure how to explain it exactly, but that's the first word that comes to mind.

  "Yes, sir!" I replied, walking over and showing him the plants we'd collected.

  "Ah, very good……hm, I shall excuse it this once since you are likely tired from traveling, but us researchers must be addressed as 'doctor', remember?"

  Huh? Crap, I fucked up, I didn't know that! I need to play it cool……

  "O-oh, uh……is that not what I said, er……doctor?"

  "No, you addressed me as 'sir'."

  "My apologies, doctor, I did not mean to offend you," I bowed again, breathing slowly to keep my heart rate from increasing.

  "Well, I must admit that you are a rather useful assistant, so I suppose I shall excuse you this time. You may leave for today, I expect you to be here tomorrow at 8 AM, understood?"

  "Yes, doctor, I shall be on time," I replied with another bow, before turning and beginning to walk away.

  "Good, see that you do," He added, before I felt hand brush across my butt.

  Wha-!? No, wait, I can't snap or exclaim……that Retya woman said that she was respectful towards this guy, so I couldn't do that……that aside, it's clear that this hierarchical structure is taken very seriously among the members, so I need to suck it up for the sake of the mission.

  I kept my cool and continued walking towards the door, exiting the lab. I let out a sigh of relief and headed back outside after briefly exploring a bit of the ground floor of the building, only researchers were allowed to the residential floors, though I didn't see all of it since I didn't want to keep Les waiting too long. Well, I have two weeks, so there's no particular rush.

  After I rejoined Les in the cart, we went and found my living quarters, spoke for a bit about the mission, and he then left, heading for the Pawn Tier area. I guess……I should get some rest before tomorrow. I need to wake up early and maintain my cover for a whole day, that'd be tough if I was tired and stuff……

  As it turned out, I went to sleep so early that I found myself wide awake at four in the morning. While this wasn't exactly a feather bed, it was way more comfortable than sleeping outside, which had been everyday for the past week or so.

  Well, better too early than too late, I suppose……still, what am I supposed to do for the next four hours? This world sucks in this regard, if I had a phone or a laptop I could kill time in the blink of an eye right now.

  After doing nothing for a couple of hours, I headed out to get some food. I saw the food stall with food packs yesterday, but I hadn't actually eaten anything since arriving at The Empire, and I was hungrier than a starving child in Africa!……

  was that too far? Whatever, Africa doesn't exist here!……

  Oh, God……just vegetables?

  Come to think of it, I did see some pawns and lapdogs in the grassland area campsite capturing some animals like rabbits and chickens and roasting their meat, guess if you wanted actual tasty food, you had to get it yourself, huh……

  Thanks to my hunger, I was able to eat it all, but that was a seriously disappointing meal……I gotta eat this craps for all three meals for two weeks? That's like, uh……more than forty of these veggie packs! Aw, man……that's gonna suck.

  Around 7:30 AM, I headed to the lab early due to boredom, unable to stand the whole 'nothing-to-do' vibe. I arrived there within fifteen minutes and……it was locked. Of course it was. Fuck me. Thankfully, I didn't have to wait long, Dr Guyen showed up about ten minutes later.

  "Good morning, doctor, I hope you are well this morning," I greeted him with a bow.

  I'll imitate the tone that those polite-ass butlers in movies do, except that instead of 'master' or 'sir', I'll have to use 'doctor'.

  "Ah, Retya. I appreciate the punctuality, my dear," He replied, heading to unlock the door after giving my ass a squeeze.

  I flinched in surprise and unease as he did, but kept myself from reacting any further. Thankfully, he didn't seem to notice me flinching. Or maybe he did, and just didn't care. Ugh, why couldn't he have been, like at least fifteen years younger? He wasn't the worst-looking, but being older than me was an instant turn-off for me……

  what? That's just how I'm wired, don't judge me.

  Back when I reincarnated, that creepy-ass voice recommended me getting my soul cleansed or something and reincarnating with a clean slate instead of reincarnating with my old memories, since apparently, my soul was more than halfway corrupted……I didn't understand why, I hadn't committed any crimes or anything, I was just a NEET living off my inheritance money after my millionaire parents died in a plane crash when I was young.

  According to that voice, my soul hadn't been corrupted by evil, it had been corrupted by excessive degenerative tendencies……when I asked him to clarify, he said, and I quote……'you watched far too much porn'.

  That pissed me off and I insisted on reincarnating with my old memories. And here I am, twenty-two years later, playing the role of a straight-up spy. Quite an improvement over living life as a NEET for over thirty years in my old life. Wait a sec……am I mentally over fifty years old now?……

  I-I'm not gonna think about that right now.

  I need to focus on assisting this guy without blowing my cover.

  Oh, in case you were wondering, I died in my old life by, uh……f-falling asleep and drowning in the bathtub after pulling an all-nighter with gaming. Not my proudest moment. Between my life as a NEET and this life with magic and powers……I think I preferred lazing around as a NEET. Magic is cool and all, but between video games, anime, movies, air-conditioning, food delivery and of course, porn, I probably had more fun in my old life.

  Anyway, I spent most of the day in that lab, with a handful of breaks in between, and was thoroughly exhausted by the end of it.

  He was working on creating and enhancing different types of poison, and of all the things he was working on, the one I especially took note of were poison smoke bombs. Between these and the guns we'd seen, The Empire had some pretty effective weapons of war, weapons that were useful for taking out multiple enemies in quick succession.

  He informed me that this assignment would likely end late tomorrow or early the day after, and we would be moved to a different project, that was how the system here worked, they didn't keep the same researcher on a single project for too long in order to prevent tunnel vision or something like that, as well as to get multiple perspectives on a single topic.

  Les and I had agreed to meet up in the Pawn Tier area tonight, and I could use seeing a familiar face. Well, technically, his face right now wasn't exactly familiar, but you know what I mean.

  Today had been pretty trying day, that greasy doctor had continuously groped and grabbed me everytime I got anywhere within his reach, and as the day drew to a close, I got pretty terrified that he might ask me to 'meet him at his chambers' or something along those lines, but he didn't, thankfully enough. Maybe I did watch just a bit too much porn in my old life……

  I complained about it to Les when I met him, but my younger brother showed me no sympathy for some reason. Maybe he was just on edge cuz of the mission.

  I told him about the poison stuff Dr Guyen had been working on, and as for him, he didn't have much information yet, there wasn't a whole lot for him to do in the Pawn Tier area. We agreed to meet again at the same place and time two nights later.

  I got myself a pack of food and headed up to my room, quickly wolfing it down so that I didn't have to taste it, before going to bed at 9 PM……

  For the next three days, it was more of the same at the lab, until 5 PM on the fifth day, when the doctor declared the assignment complete and informed me that we'll be moving to a new assignment in Lab 22 tomorrow morning, for about three or four days, along with two junior researchers. Junior researchers were those who had been researchers for less than two years, they weren't allowed to have their own assistants till after that.

  He didn't tell me what the assignment was about, and I thought it safer not to inquire. I'd find out tomorrow anyway, so it shouldn't matter.

  I had met with Les last night, and he had been pretty busy, observing The Empire's campsites. Most surprisingly, was when he mentioned that there were numerous tasks available to pawns and lapdogs to collect Marijuana, he pronounced it wrong but I figured out what he meant to say. They were also poaching elephant tusks and rhino horns, along with capturing carnivorous animals alive.

  What he said next was pretty interesting too……the way they activated spells here, they used some type of card instead of scroll. I decided to look into that.

  On another note, I noticed the guards glancing at me for a while when I headed back into the Lapdog Tier area.

  I'd asked Dr Guyen about it as subtly as I could, found out they were called Spell Cards, and later during a break, while following a lead, I bumped into Kuro. Huh, if he was looking into these Spell Cards too……then there's no need for me to do so!

  Anyway, after Dr Guyen informed me that we were done with this assignment, he let me go home for the day.

  I still had the gun from before on me, and since I had some extra time that day……I decided to look into it. I asked around the other lapdogs, claiming my gun was broken and needed repairs. I found out that they were designing and manufacturing the guns in a large underground chamber, the entrance was a large trapdoor behind the building where the lapdogs can get their clothes cleaned.

  Speaking of which, that laundry spell is convenient as hell.

  Anyway, I messed up the gun a bit and took it down there for repairs, getting a good look around as I did. They had made some impressive progress, they had plenty of pistols already made, a ton of ammo, and looks like they had begun making rifles too……not good. After they fixed up the gun, I headed back to my room and had dinner, more disgusting veggies. I went to bed early, preparing to get well rested before my new assignment……

  The next morning, I headed to the research building early, deciding to explore it a bit. It was now the sixth day of infiltration including the day we arrived, and I really hadn't found out anything useful so far, besides the fact that they were making a bunch of poison-based weapons and that they used cards instead of scrolls to activate spells, which were way more compact. I hope the new assignment I'll be assisting that sleazy doctor with will be something that I can glean a lot of information from.

  As I made my way through the building, I noticed that the labs all had glass walls in front, though some had drawn curtains to keep anyone passing by from seeing inside them. The labs were all relatively close together, I'd say there was about a fifty to hundred meter gap between each lab, depending on the size, with the larger labs having bigger gaps between them and the preceding and subsequent labs.

  Lab 25 was the exception in that it didn't have a glass wall, and based on the gap between it and Lab 24, over two hundred meters, it was the biggest lab in the building by far. I wonder what's in it……

  Eventually, I decided to head for Lab 22, don't want to be late. As I arrived, I noticed that one person was already inside, a woman with messy, long blonde hair tied up in a ponytail, wearing glasses, and had some scars on her neck, along with a missing left arm. The room was dimly lit, and I couldn't really see what was in it. She turned around as I opened the door and walked in, standing up with a limp. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties.

  "Who are you?"

  "Please excuse me, doctor, I am Retya Posmer, Dr Guyen's assistant," I replied with a bow.

  "Oh, right……go turn on the lights, let's get warmed up before the others arrive," She instructed, a sadistic smirk spreading across her lips.

  That was a little unsettling. I looked around the room, it was a pretty big lab. There were a couple of desks halfway into the room, and all the way in the back of the room……not sure, it was too dark to see.

  There were six Light Crystals in this lab, only one was switched on right now. Oh, this woman was crippled, that's probably why she hadn't switched all of them on……talk about lame, literally, heh. Definitely shouldn't say that out loud.

  There were two Light Crystals in the front of the space, two in the middle and two in the back. She had turned on one of the crystals in the middle, near the desk she was seated at.

  I walked to the front and switched the two of them on, before turning on the inactive one in the middle. Two more. Huh, are the walls in this lab soundproofed? But wasn't that pointless with a glass wall in front? No, wait……as I looked up, I noticed that in addition to the curtain that could be drawn, there was something else too……a roller shutter.

  You know, those metal shutters that shops drag down over the entrance when they're closed……except this wasn't a thin metal shutter, it was much thicker and was coated in soundproof material.

  "Why is this lab soundproofed, doctor, the previous lab I assisted in wasn't," I inquired, as I began heading to the back of the room.

  "Well, only four labs are soundproofed, so I guess it's not surprising that you don't know……it should be obvious though, the labs that are likely to be loud are soundproofed in order to avoid distracting those working in the other labs, of course!"

  Loud? What did she mean-?……I nearly let out a gasp as I switched on one of the lights in the back of the space, finally getting a look at what was there. A row of ten operating tables, each with people attached to them. They were hooked on IVs to keep them alive……this was the first time I was seeing IVs in this world, there's no doubt about it, someone or multiple people in the upper levels of The Empire had memories of their past life.

  Don't tell me this next assignment involves human experimentation……oh, no……

  "I-if you don't mind me asking, doctor, what is this assignment about? Dr Guyen did not inform me about it," I cautiously inquired.

  "We're supposed to find efficient torture methods through trial and error. See, sometimes our torturous interrogations result in the subject losing their mind before they start talking, so we need to figure out how to torture someone without breaking them……in other words, we have to inflict pain effectively and get them to talk without fucking up their sanity."

  Oh, no……this was going to be rough……

  Before this woman could begin getting 'warmed up', Dr Guyen arrived, and she sat back down. A few minutes later, he looked pretty irritable since the other junior researcher was yet to arrive. He didn't show up till half an hour later.

  He appeared to be around seventeen or eighteen, with long blonde hair, dark blue eyes, and a dog……no, it looked more like a wolf Anima, he had grey-furred ears on the top of his head, and his hands and feet were also mutated.

  "You're late, Lehosa, hurry up and pull down the soundproof shutter so that we may begin," The doctor snapped impatiently.

  "Huh, and why must I do that, when we have a lapdog here to do the menial work for us?" He inquired, before signaling me to pull it down.

  I should probably do as he says, he does outrank me……

  "Not so fast!" Intervened Dr Guyen, pulling me back and wrapping an arm around my shoulder, his hand resting on my boob, "I did not give you permission to use my assistant, Lehosa, and as a senior researcher, my word carries more weight than yours. Retya, I forbid you from assisting Arg Lehosa. You may help Dista Matist if she requests assistance, unless I say otherwise, understood?"

  "Y-yes, doctor, understood," I replied, doing my best to ignore his hand groping me.

  "Tch, you would have a lowly lapdog disobey me? You……," Growled Lehosa, before grudgingly pulling down the shutter.

  Not long after that, they began working for the day. Dr Matist limped over to one of the restrained people with a couple of bottles, syringes and a……uh……what is that? It looked like a large doll made out of a potato sack or something.

  She cut off a lock of hair from the person she picked and then stuffed it into the doll, pressing a Spell Card to it and activating it, before twisting its arm. As she did, the person's arm stiffened and a pained expression appeared on his face……

  No way……was that a……voodoo doll?

  Dr Guyen walked over to another of the restrained figures, a young woman, carrying a tray of various liquids. I recognized some of them, they were the poisons we had been working on before……they weren't the lethal types, but the types that would cause varying degrees of excruciating pain.

  As for Dr Lehosa, he had a box of tools with him, torture tools. He took one out, it looked familiar……oh, wait, I had seen that in a horror anime, it was a fingernail ripping tool.

  He put the finger of the person he had picked into the tool and jammed down on it, ripping off the fingernail and eliciting an agonizing cry of pain from her, smirking cruelly as he did.

  I felt my legs growing weak as I watched them……I felt nauseous. When I watched Kuro torture the guy that Les took over, I didn't feel much of anything since in my head, all the members of The Empire were complicit and responsible for the millions of people they'd massacred, in fact, I might have even enjoyed watching him……but now, watching these researchers coldly have their way with potentially innocent people, I could feel my heartbeat increasing in speed and my breathing turning ragged.

  "What are you waiting for, Retya?" Inquired Dr Guyen, nodding towards the restrained subjects who weren't being tortured.

  No……did I have to torture someone too? I don't w-want to, but I……I can't blow my cover. I h-have to do this……

  I shakily picked up some random bottles of fluids and a couple of syringes and walked over to one of the restrained subjects, a middle-aged man.

  I injected him with one of the liquids, stepping back nervously……nothing happened for a while, until……his body suddenly spasmed, as his expression turned into one of agony, blood pouring out of his nose and mouth as he let out a tortured scream, his eyes bulging like crazy.

  "Hm, make a note of that, Retya……that serum is not effective for interrogation, it appears to almost instantaneously destroy the subject's sanity."

  "Y-yes, doctor!" I replied, shaking writing it down.

  I was trembling all over, but none of them seemed to notice……they were far too engrossed in torturing their own test subjects……

  I'm not sure how long I was at it, the constant screams of agony and pain made me feel like I was losing my mind, and by the time it was over, it was almost 6 PM, and……I had inadvertently killed two of the test subjects.

  Dr Lehosa had killed three of them, all dying due to shock caused by blood loss, his torture methods were brutal, and he had clearly forgotten about the assignment, he was just having fun.

  Dr Matist didn't kill anyone, but the three subjects that she worked on were all mentally crippled, completely dead inside. She used some liquid called Pain Amplifier after she got bored using that voodoo doll.

  As for Dr Guyen, he ended up killing one of his subjects by overdosing them, and as for the other……she was just about hanging onto her sanity by a thread, but was right on her breaking point.

  "It appears as though we did not make much progress today, we can stand to discover a much more efficient torture method than what we tried today. We shall get a fresh batch of subjects to work on tomorrow, I ask that you all be on time……I'm looking at you, Lehosa," Remarked Dr Guyen, after poring over the notes each of us had jotted down.

  "Tch, whatever."

  "You may all leave for the day."

  Oh my God, yes! Fucking finally!

  I was at my limit psychologically, I felt like screaming and bashing my head against the wall in frustration, but I need to hold it together until I get back to my room……the last few hours had been a nightmare, but the worst of this mission was yet to come……

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  Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Don't forget to vote, and feel free to leave a comment, I appreciate any and all feedback and criticism!

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