Azotreh spent the rest of that day copying the text about the spider scorpion seahorse monster. It was dense, but not the densest Azotreh had ever read. Whenever her fingers needed a break from the work, she'd ensure the edges of the paper were hidden as she observed the world with her, or rather, their, aura.
Her senses felt complete in a way they never had before. Like a blind man given sight, Azotreh spent every moment she could watching the infirmary. The bed beneath her let out a constant stream of warm energy as the green-red runes across its surface lit up. The walls were still dark and cold, and the lights brighter than ever. While there wasn't too much to observe in the blank and boring infirmary, it was still a new collection of sensations.
She experimentally began to use her aura, retracting and dilating it across the room on instinct. She knew that she was using their vivacity, but didn't care right now. It was not just a new sense, but it felt as if she'd gained another limb as well. It was something with the capacity to utterly change their life.
It felt like no time at all before the dusklight moon's silver light filled the room from overhead, filtering in through the reinforced glass skylight. The facility still wouldn't turn off for hours, since it entered its true quiet period only when the dawnlight moon rose and the dusklight moon set, but Azotreh was forced to notice the difference as their aura forcefully retracted.
It was pressed tightly against her skin, but refused to be pushed any further.
With no other option, she returned to writing about the monster, copying text with a fanatic intensity. She appeared to be in a trance-like state, something she'd entered once before while writing. Though she got little from the text, it was still a calming activity. Especially when she could still feel the occasional trickle of blood from her neck and had to swipe it away with the back of her hand.
When the page was finished, something strange happened. Her eyes lit up like projectors onto the paper, glowing with black and white light. The light danced like letters across an endless expanse of text, moving left to right or vice versa on a whim. There was likely a pattern, though it shifted constantly.
Then, after a half dozen seconds, the light vanished. The page sat as it had before, whole and glittering slightly with the mana used to write it. The illustration at the top of the page glittered a little more brightly, and shone with multiple colors rather than just the blue of the mana.
While Azotreh held the mana quartz she'd used to write it to their wrist to let it absorb their mana, a new gap appeared in the wall beside them, producing a mechanical hand. It lifted the sheet from Azotreh's grip, producing an eye from a second stalk to observe the paper. The eye blinked in satisfaction before turning to Azotreh.
There was no voice box beneath the bed to communicate the will of the administrator, but his intentions became clear as another hand emerged from the wall. This one held a book, glowing slightly with a mix of crimson and the same white light filled with lines of black that had emerged from their eyes.
Azotreh took the book curiously, and the administrator's presence retreated into the wall it had emerged from.
The book felt like it was made from leather, yet with a hint of smooth crystal. It also wasn't warm against their hand like worn leather, but a little chilly, even in the warm room.
This was the largest item the administrator had ever given her. Usually he just gave Azotreh some kind of sweet when she completed a page for his collection. But a whole book? What could be in it?
Azotreh was eager to find out, so she opened the book. The pages inside were covered in text too dense to read, and shining with the same sanguine light that lit up the book while it had been closed, though much brighter.
After a moment of the book being open, the text began to lift from the surface of its pages. The words spiralled around Azotreh's head as the pages began to turn on their own. The leather and paper began to dissolve into red smoke smelling faintly of iron with a hint of old paper.
Though the letters were glowing, when she looked at the wall behind them, there was no reflection of the light or the words. Like a system box, it seemed like these were only visible to her.
Strangely, she felt their aura move, but not under her own power. Within her center, Nicholas, or maybe something that just felt like Nicholas, moved their aura to grab at the dissolving book, pulling some of the crimson mist into their wrists, at which point she stopped feeling it.
But that wasn't as important as the text, as the words began to push themselves into Azotreh's head, in a spot right between her eyebrows. It burned against her skin, but not painfully. It flowed in like honey.
As more of the text entered her mind, she began to put together the picture of what the book was exactly, and what it had granted. Her mind was being exhausted by the effort, with her vaticence being rapidly drained, or so she assumed. It was still hard to grasp the draining of the less real resources when she couldn't feel the arcane energies of her body.
Even as their mind exhausted itself to not burn out on the new information, she still gained more insight into it.
The book had contained precise details on a skill under the power of the system. Specifically, a ritual used to observe the status sheet. It was imprecise compared to the system status window, but would do its job nonetheless.
Once the ritual finished pushing itself into their mind, she was immediately far too drained to do any more than lay down on the cot. Despite there still being a few hours of the second left, she decided that getting to sleep earlier would be better. After all, she had a big experiment tomorrow.
Azotreh awoke from a dreamless sleep, the first one she'd had in years. She had partially been expecting to return to the soul realm, but it seemed that required more than just sleep. Hopefully it wasn't too much more. She still wanted to know more about the stranger occupying her existence.
But her mind was drawn back to the book she'd been given last night, the skill book. She wanted to try the ritual immediately. She grabbed the torn piece of paper she'd used the night before to stop the wound on their neck from completely closing. Instinctively reaching up, she found the wound had seemingly sealed around the paper. It had ceased bleeding, but from the fact that she could still feel their aura, she knew the collar wasn't completely repaired as she slept.
She tried to find something that she could use to draw blood. It needed to be from the index finger of her dominant hand, which was her right. To use the ritual, she needed blood.
But there wasn't anything sharp near their cot. In fact, it was explicitly the opposite. The cot was made from curved metal, as was the side table and everything else. Nothing even had corners, let alone a sharp edge.
Before she could try to rip into their index finger with her teeth, two figures moved into their line of sight. A pair of guards, different from the pair from the night before. Though it was rare for them to see any duo of guards more than twice in a week.
One guard, a taller man with a spear, approached her.
"Up. You've got an appointment."
The other guard, a woman with long blonde hair, chuckled at that remark, though Azotreh didn't know why. It wasn't that funny.
Either way, she slid her feet from the cot and pushed off to land with her bare feet once more on the ground. She turned to the first guard and held out their hands.
"An obedient one. Thank goodness." The man muttered as he pulled a pair of manacles from the empty air beside him. He snapped them around Azotreh's wrists before turning back to his fellow.
"What are you looking at me for?" She asked.
"You have the collar."
"No, I don't."
The first guard raised an eyebrow and pointed at Azotreh. "If that one ain't got a collar, why didn't the doc give you one?"
"Are you blind? If that 'lady'," she made air quotes as she spoke, "gave you another blindness curse as a way to cleanse your impure soul, then I'll gut you like a fish."
"Why would I be blind?"
"She's got brands. She doesn't need a collar."
The first guard snapped his fingers in understanding, making his fellow let out a long groan. She stepped forward and grabbed Azotreh by the chain between the manacles, grumbling about incompetent party members.
The two guards almost dragged Azotreh through the facility until they finally reached the administrator's lab. It was lit up like noon of the first, and in the center of the room stood a mass of metal that vaguely resembled a human. He turned to look at the intruders, a pair of crimson glowing eyes lighting up very sharp features.
The man stood more than two and a half meters tall, towering over not just Azotreh, but both guards as well. He didn't speak, just gestured for the pair of guards to leave.
They glanced at each other as they left, confusion evident on their faces.
Once the door was shut and the room isolated, the large form of the administrator began to release an echoing voice from the depths of his metallic frame.
"Did you accept the book I offered?"
The question surprised Azotreh, but she rapidly nodded in affirmation.
"Good. I'll need you to commence the ritual for me once before, and once after the procedure. I don't want to burn your throat too badly to peer at your sheet."
Azotreh instinctively brought her hands to her throat defensively, the chain between them forcing both hands to move as one. The administrator let out a laugh as cold as the grave before taking the manacles from Azotreh's hands and producing a thin knife.
He grasped Azotreh's wrist in a vice grip and turned her palm up with his thumb. He pushed the knife into their index finger until it drew a trickle of blood, then squeezed the base of the finger to produce more. Finally, he produced the required paper.
Azotreh wanted to refuse, to show some initiative in her own desire for freedom. But the administrator wasn't the only one who wanted to see Azotreh's status. The single glimpse she'd gotten within her soul simply wasn't enough. She needed more.
She brought their finger down on the paper, drawing out large runes in her own blood. Steady hands and years of drawing for the imposing figure standing before her allowed her to do it with relative ease and with greater speed than a beginner should have possessed.
When the final rune was drawn and the circle closed, she placed her hand in the center just as their knowledge told them to. She couldn't force her mana into the ritual to start it without any way to sense the energy in their body. So instead, she used their aura. She pressed her wrist against the circle and tried to force their aura to fill it.
The ritual began to sputter gold before shifting to a bright cerulean blue. The drying blood turned into a glittering fluid and began to draw itself across the page. The script was dense, though nowhere near as much as the skill book the administrator had given them.
She knew the administrator was simply using them, giving her an ability to better monitor the experiments, but she didn't care at this moment. She cared about the characters now inscribing themselves into the paper.
At first, the text was in a runic language they'd never read. She had seen the runes before, but had no inkling as to their meaning. But after the letters placed themselves, they rapidly shifted to a language they did know. Not Scinparic, but English. The language that Nicholas had somehow infused into her when he was fused into her soul.
The administrator stared blankly at the page before turning to Azotreh.
"AZ-087. What does it say?" The crackling voice of the administrator reverberated through the metallic frame of his body, seemingly emerging from his chest.
The sheet was simpler than the true status sheet, showing only the grade of each poten and which other parts were present. It didn't list ability levels or skill advancement. It did show both achievement and title levels, but that was it.
It also wasn't as neatly organized as the system's sheet was. Not at first, that is. Azotreh knew from the skill book that they could rearrange the sheet during its formation through aura manipulation. They weren't ready to do that yet.
"AZ-087, respond." The administrator insisted. Azotreh looked up at him and shook her head.
"I'll tell you about anything specific, but I don't want to tell you every one of my skills or abilities."
"I am already aware of your prior advancement." The voice of the administrator paused before he said, "I will allow you to otherwise keep your secrets. However, you will inform me of any status sheet alterations caused by an experiment. Am I understood?"
Azotreh nodded silently. The administrator picked up the paper, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it into an empty hole in the wall. An empty hole that was suddenly filled with flames. Azotreh jumped violently at the fire and attempted to take a step back, only to find the cold grasp of the administrator once more around their wrist. More hands began to emerge from the oversized form to lift Azotreh into the air and place her on a waiting examination table.
The next experiment was now to begin.