One day before the academy classes began.
Two days passed by quickly with Zick focused on his experiment.
The evening's orange sunlight dimly entered Zick's room through the windows.
Feeling disappointed at the result of today's experiment, Zick sat on one of the couches of his room.
'[Thought acceleration]' Casting this magic upon himself, Zick started thinking about the experiment he performed upon the two slaves in his basement.
'In the end, It was a total failure.....'
Unfortunately Zick's experiment on trying to alter a person's memory had hit a wall from the beginning.
This experiment was not carried out blindly. Zick had already thought of many situations that might occur while carrying out these experiments, but the result was still a failure.
By aiming at the Hippocampus of the brains of the slave which held all the memory, Zick tried to alter their memories a little.
The whole process was very hard, just a little carelessness could lead to the slave's death.
Touching the head of the slave, he sent a thin thread of mana just enough to effect the slave's Hippocampus, into his head.
The mana thread could only transmit few memory at a time so it would take a long time to see Through the whole memory of the slave.
Extracting a portion of the memory or erasing it made Zick feel his own head throbbing in pain just because of the sheer amount of concentration he put on it. This made his focus waver to a large degree, but luckily he was somewhat used to the pain so it didn't affect the experiment very much.
A normal human being would have lost consciousness or even worse if they tried doing this process. Zick could only last this long because of his dragonoid status.
The first slaves was the man in his fifties with white hair. His real name was Jevet which Zick got to know after seeing a little of his memory, Unluckily he died.
Extracting memory didn't put the Hippocampus of a brain under much stress, But when Zick tried altering a portion of the memory it started getting stressed heavily. Within a second, the damage done by the mana travelled to the whole hippocampal formation which supports a persons learning ability and perception, then in three seconds the slave died.
Zick wasn't able to save the slave with the speed he died.
'.....I wasted money buying a middle rank knight for nothing. I was going to use them to see if Enchantment was possible in a bodyguard but.....never mind. I will be needing many more slave than I thought. There was also the thing that happened to the slave after I erased a portion of his memory.'
After a portion of the memory was erased from the slave's brain, his eyed suddenly dilated and the erased memory was actually totally restored!
Even the dragon's eyes couldn't tell what it was!
It was a totally unexpected situation for Zick.
Thinking about it, he didn't find it weird, there had to be a reason why no one was able to alter a person's memories till now.
This also peeked his interest in finding what might be causing this. So he moved on to the next slave to continue his experiment after letting his mind rest.
'',
Today's experiment went smoothly in the beginning, but the end result was something which surprised Zick immensely.
Zick didn't try altering the slaves memory by putting in fabricated one's, but instead tried to find the reason to why their memory was restored. He started erasing their memory by extracting it through the mana threads like before.
The lost memory was again restored mysteriously.
After doing this process for three times, a change occurred at last. The slave starter to spasm in the ground, he convulsed to the point it wouldn't be weird if he died the very next moment.
Zick still remembered the hoarse scream of the slave which stem from pain and insanity.
After a minute the slave stopped convulsing.
Instead the slave started showing sign of going insane. his eyes dilated rapidly becoming fully white and he started baring its teeth like an aggressive wolf.
Resisting the suppression from the slave seal, the slave with brown hair pounced towards Zick, trying to catch him by the neck. the slave seal was not able to stop the slave for some reason too.
Zick stood far from the slave, He had moved a few meter away from the slave when he started convulsing in the ground. He wasn't flustered at all, he easily suppressed the slave with a simple flick of his finger. The mana around him suppressed the slave with flash, making him kneel on the ground.
Seeing the slave body getting destroyed internally at a rapid pace, Zick took out a high rank healing potion and pour it upon the slave.
The slave still held value so he was willing to use a high rank potion like this.
The slave body healed rapidly and he even recovered some of his sanity back, but the very next moment he collapsed on the ground. All signs of life leaving his body. He was already as dead as a corpse could be.
Zick couldn't do anything to stop this, but suddenly he remembered something from the novel. He had already memorised most of the novel now.
There was a disease in the second continent, for which there was no cure found. It was impossible to treat it without an elixir which was as rare as a dragon.
This disease was declared as a curse by the people of the second continent because of the symptoms it brought to the people afflicted by it . It's name was the mind killer curse.
The mind killer curse was very rare, there were only few people afflicted by it throughout the second continent. No one knows how this disease came to be or how people get afflicted by it. There was no mention of it in the novel either.
Once afflicted by this curse-like disease there is only one outcome to a person, that is death. Their condition would just keep getting worse until they die.
There were three stages of the mind killer curse. The third stage was very similar to how the slave just behaved.
The first stage of the mind killer curse causes people to lose certain parts of their already hazy memory. They also become a little impulsive.
The second stage, for the people in this stage it becomes hard to even remember what he was doing a few days ago. At certain times, the person loses some of his sanity temporarily and starts fighting people or destroying things in his surroundings.
The third stage, people in this state don't have long to live. They live three to four days to the maximum.
The people in this stage don't even remember the thing they did a few instant ago and lose their sanity almost instantly when feeling any negative emotions, which they all do because of their condition.
It was almost the same to how the brown haired slave behaved.
This could only mean one thing, someone was trying to alter memories of people just like Zick.
The most probable culprit was the alchemy tower.
'ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ NovelB(i)n. ᴄᴏᴍ',
'Without a doubt there is something that I don't know and it wasn't mentioned in the novel too. I even don't know what exactly is causing this.'
Zick recovered from his disappointment soon, he put this matter aside for now. Thinking about it currently would not get him anywhere as it was related to the second continent.
The second continent is also known as the eastern continent by the people of the first continent as it is located in the east.
And the first continent is known as the middle continent as it is in the middle of the eastern continent and the demon continent.
p A thick layer of mist covers the three continent's horizons. It is not possible to pass the mist as it poisons the mana or aura which touches it, if anyone stayed in there for long this would lead to their death.
It is also not possible to fly above it for anyone in the three continents.
Changing into comfortable clothes, Zick started training in his aura as usual while sitting upon the bed with crossed leg.
There had been a thought that had bothered him a while ago.
Zick had grown a lot since the day he came to this worlds because of the thing he went through. There were only a few moments when any immature thought appeared in his mind.
The new experience of going through pain.
The feeling of growing stronger.
The experience of staying in the battlefield for two years.
Accepting everything about his past life and his broken mind.
And many more things.
This all experience attributed in forming his current mindset and who he was.
He was getting to know more and more about himself and the way this world's society worked.
Zick had been living a leisurely life for a while now, so he couldn't help but ask himself.
Is this the way I wanted to live?
Zick couldn't help but think of everything he had been doing till now.
And the answer he arrived on was-
'No.'
Living a leisurely life wasn't the way Zick wanted to live. He liked it but an empty feeling still appeared within him.
Zick had been moving keeping the demon lord in his mind, but he didn't want to make defeating him as the goal of his life.
Actually Zick already had an idea on what he wanted to do.