(Arin's POV)
Click.
The turning of the laboratory door lock sounded heavy. That sound seemed to act as a firm boundary separating my world from the reality of the revelry taking place out there.
I leaned my back against that cold iron door for a moment. I exhaled a long breath until thin white steam formed in the air of this intentionally chilled room. In the distance, the cheers of the students' victory party could still be heard faintly. They were celebrating the defeat of the Benzzi Faction, celebrating freedom, and celebrating the name of their new hero.
Tch.
If they saw me right now, inside this cramped room reeking of sharp chemicals and metal dust, they would not see a hero figure. They would see a crazed addict preparing to inject deadly poison into his own body in pursuit of an illogical ambition.
I stepped forward approaching the workbench in the center of the room. The sound of my footsteps echoed in the solitude.
I condensed the light of the magic lamp on the ceiling until it solely illuminated a single focal point on the table. There rested a metal cooler box with a slowly blinking preservative magic seal.
My hand reached out. It trembled slightly not out of fear, but due to the anticipation burning my nerves. Carefully, I opened the lid of the box.
Fwoosh.
Cold nitrogen vapor billowed out, caressing my face with a freezing chill. As the mist thinned, its contents were revealed.
The Heart of the Silver Wolf.
Its size was roughly equal to two adult fists combined. However, unlike a typical living creature's heart which is fleshy red and wet, this organ possessed a luxurious dark purple hue. Its texture appeared dense and dry.
The most terrifying yet mesmerizing aspect was the network of veins sprawling across its surface. Those veins did not contain red blood; rather, they were a metallic silver that gleamed under the spotlight. Even in death and separated from its host body, the organ still radiated a thick aura of intimidation.
Zzzt.
A small spark of static electricity leaped from one of the severed silver arteries, stinging the air with the distinct smell of ozone.
"Beautiful," I muttered. My eyes were glued to the object as if hypnotized. "And deadly."
This was not mere flesh. This was a biological anomaly. A perfect fusion of organic tissue and magical mineralogy. Proof of the evolution of a tier four monster that had transcended the limitations of ordinary flesh.
I shifted my gaze to the side, where a thick book with severely peeling leather covers lay open. My forbidden holy scripture, How to Extract Monster Serum, Unofficial Revised Edition by Ghislain Bassil.
I put on thick rubber gloves, then carefully turned the pages of the book using tweezers. Page after page filled with horrifying anatomical drawings and Ghislain's chicken-scratch handwriting passed before my eyes.
Finally, I found it. Page two hundred and three.
Chapter 7: Metal Organic Mutation and How to Cook It Without Blowing Up Your Kitchen.
I read the opening paragraph. Ghislain's chaotic and arrogant writing style seemed to jump right off the paper, mocking me to my face.
"If you are reading this page, congratulations! You must have just killed a Metallic type monster or you are stupid enough to steal its carcass from the royal warehouse. Listen closely, you snot-nosed brat! Do not treat this like cooking Grizzly meat soup!"
I smiled thinly reading it. That crazy old man always knew how to greet his readers.
"A Metal Organic Framework will not dissolve in alcohol or hot water. If you boil it like ordinary serum, you will only end up with a hard and useless boiled rock. The Mithril molecular bonds in its blood cells are too strong. You need a solvent that can make iron cry."
My finger traced the list of required ingredients below it.
Concentrated Hydrochloric Acid to soften the flesh tissue.
Potassium Nitrate powder as a strong oxidizer.
Catalyst: the user's own blood as a DNA binding agent to prevent immune rejection.
Heating temperature of eight hundred degrees Celsius.
"Acid, oxidizers, and hellfire," I mumbled softly. "Truly a refreshing recipe for a midnight drink."
I took a deep breath, gathering all my focus.
"Let us start cooking."
Step one, raw material preparation.
I took the frozen heart from the cooler box. Its weight was extraordinary, at least three kilograms. It felt exactly like holding a bowling ball coated in meat.
I tried to cut the right atrium section with my usual Mithril scalpel.
Ting!
My scalpel blade snapped instantly upon touching the surface of the heart. Its outer skin was as hard as forged steel.
"Damn it," I cursed while throwing the broken knife handle into the trash bin. "I figured as much."
I walked to the equipment cabinet, retrieving a heavier tool. A medical bone saw whose blade had been coated in synthetic diamond powder.
I dragged the saw blade across the surface of the heart.
Sparks sprayed out! Not blood, but fire. The smell of charred meat mixed with the scent of ground metal filled the air. It took ten full minutes and profusely dripping sweat just to cleave that hard organ into small diced pieces.
Once split open, I could see its interior. The clotted blood inside the heart chambers was not red. It was a thick silvery liquid, exactly like liquid mercury or molten tin.
"Metallic blood," I analyzed quickly. "This is the source of its physical defense."
I placed the diced pieces into a distillation flask made of thick Pyrex glass reinforced with heat-resistant magic.
Step two, dissolution.
I took a glass bottle containing fuming clear liquid. Concentrated Hydrochloric Acid. With a steady hand, I poured the acid into the flask containing the heart pieces.
Hiss!
A chemical reaction occurred instantly and very violently.
Thick purple smoke billowed up, filling the condenser tube. The sharp smell of ozone and stinging sulfur assaulted my nose, forcing me to hurriedly put on a gas mask connected to an oxygen tank left over from my previous experiments. The mixture inside the flask hissed angrily, churning like a miniature volcano crater. The liquid's color changed from clear to pitch black, then slowly faded into purple.
I ignited the magic Bunsen burner beneath the flask to its maximum intensity. Blue flames licked the bottom of the flask.
The liquid began to boil.
Bloop... Blub...
Under extreme heat and acid attack, the Mithril metal particles from the wolf's heart began to melt, separating from their destroyed flesh tissues.
"Hold on," I whispered to the vibrating glass flask. "Do not explode."
The final step, centrifugal separation.
After one hour of a nerve-wracking heating process, I turned off the flame. The liquid inside the flask was now a cloudy silver mixed with black sediment. I poured that dangerously hot liquid into small heat-resistant tubes.
Then, I walked toward my pride and joy machine.
The Mechanical Centrifuge.
The machine I built with Stain. I inserted the tubes into the machine slots, ensuring perfect balance.
I turned its manual crank lever.
Creeeak... Vwooooom...
The gears spun. Stain's custom ball bearings worked soundlessly. The tubes spun at high speed, creating artificial gravity that would separate substances based on their specific gravity.
I stared at the spinning machine with a blank gaze. Then I smiled crookedly.
"I still have twelve years. That is why I must take the risk to become strong as quickly as possible."
To others, losing decades might be a tragedy. But to me, twelve years was a very long time. It was more than enough to become a Knight, master the medical world, and die as a legend.
"Investment," I whispered to the spinning machine. "This is just an investment."
Five minutes passed.
I pulled the machine's handbrake. The rotation slowed and stopped.
With hands clad in heat-resistant gloves, I took one of the glass tubes.
At the bottom, there was a dense accumulation of dirty black sediment. That was the remains of charred flesh, fat, and organic waste.
But at the top...
There was fifty milliliters of liquid.
The liquid was not clear like antibiotics. The liquid was pure silver, thick, and heavy. As I shook the tube, the liquid moved slowly and lazily, exactly like molten liquid metal. The liquid reflected my tired face on its surface.
Silver Wolf Serum, Version 3.0.
I poured it into a measuring glass. The lamp light reflected on its shiny surface, creating a mesmerizing gleam.
"This is crazy," I whispered to myself. My voice sounded foreign to my own ears. "This looks like molten lead. Is this really drinkable?"
My sound logic screamed hysterically. That is heavy metal! You will be poisoned! Your intestines will be perforated! Your kidneys will fail!
A normal human's survival instinct would throw this glass as far away as possible.
But I was no longer a normal human. I was a vessel.
I touched my chest. There, behind ribs and flesh, the Mana Void, a black hole within my cells, throbbed hungrily. It did not fear poison. It did not care about metal. It only desired one thing, namely energy.
"You are hungry, aren't you?" I whispered to the monster inside my body. "Eat. Or I will be eaten by the world."
I raised the glass. The metallic smell was strong, like the smell of blood mixed with rusted iron.
Without giving doubt a chance to grow larger, I opened my mouth and downed it all at once.
Gulp.
The first second, there was no taste. The liquid was heavy on the tongue, slippery, and lacked any flavor.
The second second, as the liquid passed through the esophagus...
Cold.
Not hot like the Grizzly Serum. But a freezing cold. As if I had just swallowed a block of liquid nitrogen. The liquid slid down, freezing the path it traversed, making my throat instantly stiff.
But as soon as the liquid reached the stomach and reacted with my stomach acid...
KABOOM!
That cold exploded into a thunderstorm.
"Gaaahhh!"
The glass in my hand dropped and shattered into pieces.
I collapsed onto the hard concrete floor. My hands clutched my own neck as if wanting to choke the pain out.
This was no ordinary pain.
This was not a burning heat.
It felt like thousands of microscopic electric needles were being stabbed from inside my stomach, spreading out through every blood vessel, piercing every nerve ending.
"Arghhh... Haaah... Haaah..."
My body convulsed violently. My back arched stiffly over the cold floor. My heels kicked the workbench until tools fell crashing down on me.
I could feel it. The silver liquid was not being digested. It was seeping. It penetrated the stomach wall, entered my bloodstream, and began altering my blood composition.
It felt heavy.
Every time my heart pumped, it felt like pumping iron sludge, not liquid blood.
Clang... Thud... Clang... Thud...
The sound of my heartbeat changed. No longer the wet beating sound of a biological organ. It was the sound of heavy, slow, and painful metal collision. My heart, my Piston Heart, was being forced to pump liquid metal throughout my body.
My lungs felt stiff, as if my alveoli had been coated in iron. Every breath drawn felt shallow and heavy.
"No... not... yet..."
I tried to crawl. Tried to reach the table to stand.
I looked at my hands gripping the floor.
My eyes widened in horror.
Beneath my pale skin, my veins bulged out. Their color was no longer blue or green.
They were silver.
Silver lines crept up from the arms toward the neck, like a metallic infection taking over its host body. Wherever those silver lines passed, my muscles spasmed stiff as hard as stone.
Pain! It hurt so much!
It felt like my bones were being melted and recast. It felt like my muscles were being pulled and twisted into steel cables.
My cells... the Mana Void was eating that metal. It broke down the Mithril structure and forced it to fuse with my DNA. Biological warfare occurred at the cellular level.
My vision began to blur. White spots exploded in front of my eyes, followed by darkness creeping in from the edges of my sight.
Did I miscalculate? Was the dose too high?
Damn it... would my twelve years end tonight?
My consciousness began to be dragged away by the strong current of darkness. The humming sound of the machines in the room sounded increasingly distant.
In the final seconds before my eyes closed completely, I saw my reflection in the glass door of the storage cabinet.
My face was as pale as a corpse.
But my eyes...
Those blue irises now blazed with wild flashes of silver electricity. My pupils were no longer round, but sharply vertical like the eyes of a wolf.
Then, the world went pitch black.
Thud.
My body fell limply onto the cold laboratory floor, among the glass shards and a dangerous dream.