This chapter contains a large amount of gore, blood, violence, and disturbing content.Readers who are easily disturbed or sensitive to such material are advised to skip this section.
Chen faced the attacking woman calmly. With a simple, effortless move, he kicked her knee and sent her crashing to the ground. Then, in a single swing, he severed her head with his sword. However, as if he himself had been injured, he collapsed to the side and began vomiting.
Aka could empathize with him—he had been through the same thing himself just a few years ago. Unlike Aka, however, Chen had very different goals. Because of that, Aka merely reminded him of his family and told him that if he truly wanted to become a leader, he would have to do this hundreds—perhaps even thousands—of times more.
After consoling Chen as much as he could, Aka went to speak with the steward. Carefully, they collected the head and the body and brought them to a massive workshop located in the farthest corner of the palace. The workshop was filled with strange-looking glass and metal instruments, cauldrons, and places designated for lighting fires.
Seeing how attached Aka had become to Chen, the Lord of the Palace had assigned this workshop to Aka and granted him permission to experiment on all the corpses Chen killed. Aka himself had requested this, and the Lord had not refused. After all, Aka was both disposing of bodies and, when the time came, gaining a dark reputation that would make him an ideal scapegoat. The palace housed countless servants and ordinary people, and to them, an apothecary constantly dealing with corpses was more than capable of committing crimes.
When Chen arrived at Aka's workshop after leaving the corpse, he was still lying on the ground. Aka lifted him up and forcibly injected physical energy into him, easing his exhaustion somewhat. Chen's mind was in complete disarray. Even so, this surprised Aka. The man before him was the potential future ruler of this city, yet he was struggling this much over killing a single person—someone who was not innocent, but a criminal who deserved death. It was difficult for Aka to understand, and because of that, he was not very successful at comforting him.
So he did what he was best at. He forced Chen into a fight, beat him until he lost consciousness, then gave him a sleeping draught to let him rest. After laying him in bed, Aka withdrew to his workshop.
Aka was extremely excited when he entered the workshop. This would be his first experiment on a corpse. He had already decided what to do first. He took the ginseng he had been secretly accumulating over the past four weeks, divided it into two portions, and crushed them. Over one portion, he poured blood taken from the corpse and placed it on an empty shelf in the workshop. Into the other portion of ginseng, he mixed a purée made from an eye he had removed earlier and placed it beside the blood-soaked ginseng.
After that, he mixed various herbs with different body parts one by one and placed each container onto the shelf. Finally, he stripped all the flesh from the body and placed it into a cauldron. The bones were neatly stored beneath his table for future use. Then, he began measuring the results of his experiments in sequence.
First, he boiled pieces of skin and flesh over fire and mixed them with three types of herbs he had gathered from the garden—herbs he normally used to create Dust. When the mixture thickened considerably, Aka poured it into a glass cup and waited for it to cool. Once cooled, it solidified into a gel-like consistency, though its color was pitch black.
Even though he felt disgusted, Aka coated his blade with the gel and lightly cut his own leg. The poison took effect rapidly, just like Dust, slightly relaxing the muscles in his leg. It seemed that adding flesh to the mixture had not changed its effect at all. The only difference was that it was no longer solid like Dust, but semi-liquid. Perhaps it could now be applied directly like a cream to finish the job.
When that experiment ended, Aka mixed the herbs he used to make Precaution with lakeside grasses and a red-colored flower. The result was surprisingly effective. Precaution had grown slightly stronger, but it was no longer in a small solid form—it had become a liquid. This made it easier to consume, though harder to carry. Still, the fact that a lifesaving medicine like Precaution could be improved filled Aka with satisfaction.
For another experiment, he took a portion of the blood ginseng and quickly sat down to focus on his energy. Apparently, the blood had greatly accelerated digestion, which was an excellent result. He placed the remaining blood ginseng into a pot, added a small amount of water, and kept it over the fire until it thickened. Then he poured it into a glass and waited for it to cool.
Even after cooling, unlike the flesh-based cream, its consistency did not change—it remained liquid. Aka tasted it to test the result, and the outcome truly shocked him. This liquid was absorbed even faster than the previous one. He was already excited about the possibilities of improving Precaution using this substance in the future.
As one of the final experiments, he tasted the mixture of ginseng and eye purée. It produced no noticeable difference compared to normal ginseng, and heating or cooling it did not alter its effect either. However, knowing the properties of ginseng, Aka suspected it might enhance physical energy recovery. He did not want to expend enough physical energy to test this theory, so for now, this experiment was deemed a complete failure.
For his final experiment, Aka crudely stitched together pieces of skin taken from the corpse and placed hair on top, forming a black sphere in his hands. From a distance, it looked horrifying, but Aka was delighted. From a single corpse, he could produce three or four of these pouches, each with countless uses. For example, by loosening some stitches and filling them with poison, they could be thrown to deliver immediate effects. They could also be used to safely store liquid medicines, and the hair on the surface helped stabilize the pouch's temperature.
After completing all these experiments, Aka went to sleep for two hours. He then woke up, roused his disciple, and resumed training. When the day ended, he eagerly returned to the workshop to face the bones waiting for him.
He gently removed one of the shoulder blades from the skeleton and struck it with about 30% of his strength. Miraculously, the bone withstood the blow, confirming his theories. He then took the other shoulder blade and carefully cut it down to fashion a small piece of armor.
He carved the arm bones next, attempting to create a blade, but they were not as durable as he had hoped. However, something he tested while carving them filled him with excitement. He mixed the fine, sawdust-like shavings produced during carving with water. Consuming a small amount had no effect, but when some accidentally spilled onto the table, he noticed it sticking firmly. That was how he discovered his own organic adhesive.
Using this adhesive, he carved the leg bones he had not yet experimented on and glued Dust onto them. He threw them swiftly, then lightly cut himself. Just as expected, the numbing effect spread rapidly across the small area. Yes—thanks to this completely accidental discovery, he could now affix poison directly onto his daggers.
As for the remaining bones, nothing else came to mind. He simply boiled them in water and set the liquid aside separately, believing that something would surely leach into it. He threw the leftover bones to the street dogs. In just two nights, he had completely disposed of the corpse.
There were nineteen more like this awaiting him. Though, correcting himself, he smiled with even greater excitement—there were no longer nineteen people ahead of him, but nineteen specimens upon which he could conduct any experiments he desired.
Hello everyone. As I mentioned at the very beginning, this chapter contains a significant amount of violence and disturbing content. However, if you consider the fact that Aka has already lost his sense of morality, there is no real difference between doing these things and preparing an ordinary meal. That is precisely why these subjects feel so unsettling to us as readers.
Anyway, if you've read this far, thank you so much. If you have any feedback—positive or negative—please feel free to leave a comment. I will most likely respond quite quickly. Once again, thank you very much for reading.