Chapter 70: Test Subject: Ozai Thorne!
Fearing the swelling would spread to his upper arm, Ozai didn’t hesitate. In one brutal motion, he swung his remaining blade down...
SLASH!
Blood sprayed in a hot arc as his severed upper arm fell to the cave floor.
"ARGHHHHH!!!"
The sound tore out of him, raw and animal. He grit his teeth, a strangled groan escaping as agony rippled through his body. The pain was blinding, his vision flickering red as his pulse thundered in his ears. It was too much, the pain was unbearable, but Ozai’s didn’t regret his decision.
Bruce blinked, genuinely surprised. Then, a slow smile crept across his lips.
"Smart," he said softly, almost approvingly.
Ozai’s breath came in harsh, trembling bursts. His legs quivered as he stumbled backward, eyes wide and bloodshot, face drained of color.
Bruce tilted his head slightly, speaking in that same unnerving calm tone that made every word worse.
"Relax," he said casually, as if commenting on the weather. "You’re doing way too much. I just overhealed your cells. It’s not like I injected you with some potent poison or anything."
He smiled, light, almost friendly.
That smile broke something in Ozai.
For the first time in his life, the heir of the Thorne family, raised among power, prestige, and pride, felt genuine dread.
He’d faced beasts. He’d faced masters. But none of them had ever smiled like that. That smile wasn’t human. It was clinical. Detached. Like the smile of someone watching a lab rat twitch after a successful experiment.
His pulse quickened. He wanted to step back further, but his body refused to move. His throat tightened. Every instinct screamed that the man standing before him wasn’t an opponent.
He was a predator.
And Ozai? Just another experiment. In Bruce’s eyes, he was no different from the feathers provided by Jordan gave him back at the beast Exchange market which he used to test his cloning theory.
Meanwhile Bruce, noticing the terror in his eyes, nodded faintly.
"Understandable," he murmured. "But you should relax."
Then, in a calm, unhurried tone, he said,
"Heal."
A soft glow emanated from his palm.
Under Ozai’s stunned gaze, the bleeding stopped. The mangled flesh pulsed, then began to regrow. Bone, muscle, sinew, and skin formed in seamless succession, knitting together in real time.
In seconds, his arm was back, whole, clean, even stronger than before.
Ozai stared, utterly stunned. He flexed his wrist; the sensation was unnervingly normal, no stiffness, no pain, no scar. Yet his arm thrummed with vitality, veins pulsing as if overflowing with some potent energy. It didn’t just feel healed. It felt reborn. Stronger, faster, alive.
His mind couldn’t keep up. His heart pounded against his ribs, each beat echoing with disbelief. He had seen healers before, timid, fragile support types who stayed behind the lines, their role simple and unimpressive: mend wounds, patch bruises, maybe stop bleeding if they were lucky. That was the limit of their so-called ’miracle.’
But Bruce... this was something else entirely.
He wasn’t just restoring cells, he was rewriting them. The sheer vitality surging through Ozai’s body made him feel like he had awakened anew. Every instinct screamed that what he had just witnessed wasn’t normal. It wasn’t healing, it was domination over life itself.
And then came the strangest part, the question that twisted in his chest, drowning every rational thought.
Why?!
Why the hell was Bruce doing this? After everything, after the fight, the humiliation, the killing intent, why heal him at all?!
The contradiction burned through his skull like a fever. A healer who fought like a predator. A man who could cripple and then restore with the same calm smile.
Ozai’s breath quickened, his eyes trembling as he stared at Bruce. He couldn’t understand him. He couldn’t predict him.
And that, more than anything, terrified him.
"W-why...?" he asked, still trembling. "Why heal me?"
Bruce waved a hand dismissively.
"Relax. It’s nothing," he said with a small shrug. "I just prefer my test subjects in top condition."
For a moment, silence reigned.
Then realization hit Ozai like a hammer. ’Did... did I just become his lab rat?!’
A shiver ran through him, cold enough to drown out the lingering heat of the flames. His mind blanked, heart pounding against his ribs.
’Such a twisted mind...’
Every trace of fighting spirit in him was gone. What replaced it was something simpler. Purer.
Fear.
The will to survive.
At that point, all he could think was,
I want to go home.
The pain, the pressure, the fear, it crushed him. Somewhere in his mind, he knew this was a simulation. A VR trial. But that knowledge didn’t matter anymore. Everything felt real. Too real.
Bruce stepped closer, his voice soft, almost reassuring. "Don’t look so demotivated. As long as you cooperate, I’ll keep healing you after each test."
Ozai could only stare, his jaw tight, breathing uneven. Every instinct screamed that Bruce wasn’t joking.
Bruce continued, tone steady and almost conversational, as if discussing research results. "You see, I’ve always reasoned that this VR world operates at about 99.9% to 100% real-world accuracy. My first experiment on you wasn’t just about testing the ability, it was about verifying that realism."
He smiled faintly. "Turns out I was right."
Bruce’s calm explanation only made it worse. The words were meant to reassure, but every syllable sank like lead into Ozai’s chest.
His hands trembled uncontrollably. Beads of sweat rolled down his forehead.
He didn’t even notice when his legs began to shake.
Somewhere deep down, he understood now,
Bruce wasn’t fighting for rank. He wasn’t fighting for survival. He was experimenting.
And Ozai Thorne, heir of one of the greatest families on the whole of Velmora, was just another data point.
A slow chill crept down his spine as he stared into those calm, calculating eyes.
That was when it hit him, Bruce Ackerman wasn’t human in that moment.
He was evolution, dissecting the world piece by piece, one experiment at a time.
***
A/N:
Second Mass release Chapter