I do not own RWBY or anything mentioned in this fanfic.
This is my first approach to trying to write something like this. I would appreciate any advice.
The glow of the cracked moon was coming through the window illuminating the interior of the living room. The quietly ticking clock struck ten p.m. a few minutes ago. Chris sat on the couch staring at the night sky through the window thinking about everything that had happened since his twelfth birthday.
After Madame ordered him to help her relax, he began to test how much he could allow himself before he was punished.
It appears that she trusts him enough that he is no longer restricted to remaining in the storage room at night, he can move freely as long as he is quiet and he can sleep in any of the rooms.
Of course, the door to the 1st floor is locked at night so his new privileges are limited to the ground floor.
Unfortunately, in order to earn this trust he had to carry out Madame's increasingly bizarre whims.
At first, she ordered him to do something called a massage where he was to knead and rub her body in the spots she specifies.
The problem in her plan with the massage was Chris's hands or rather what they were made of. The hard and angular metal was unpleasant to the touch and poorly suited for massage so Madame gave him black rubber gloves that were covered with bumps.
For some reason she kept them in her bedroom and when she gave them to him they smelled strange. Fortunately, he was able to get rid of the smell from them after a few washes.
Another problem with his metal hands was that he had absolutely no sensation in them. She had to tell him with what force and how to knead her body because at first he treated it like pie dough.
So that's how it started. Over the months leading up to his birthday, Madame would call on him from time to time to help her relax in one way or another.
First she had him give her a simple back massage to assess how he was doing and decide the next steps of learning. As with his first violin playing, so with his first massage he made a few mistakes.
After finishing the first attempt, Madame took her notebook and wrote down all the mistakes and shortcomings she had caught. Tearing out the written page, she ordered him to review it and focus on correcting them next time.
After several days of practicing massage, Madame decided that he was good enough to move on to the next stage. When he was summoned the next time to give her a massage, Chris found Madame lying on her stomach on a pre-prepared table, waiting for him.
She was wearing underwear that barely covered her body. He wanted to ask her about her choice of clothing but before he could say anything Madame turned her head toward him.
"Chris you look like a person with questions. What's on your mind?"
"Madame, is what you are wearing today related to the next stage of exercise you mentioned?" Chris asked while tilting his head slightly.
"That's right, today you will start the next stage in which you will have to rub special oils into my back before starting the massage and depending on how you do, we will progress from there."
As he was ordered to do so, he did. For the next few times he was summoned, he rubbed the back of her pale body with various oils after which he massaged her tense muscles.
After another few weeks had passed, Madame announced that it was time for the next stage. A full body massage with rubbing oils and everything else she had taught him so far. He thought she would call on him right away the same day but she said she had to make a few more preparations so in the meantime he could peacefully perform his daily duties while waiting to be summoned.
For the next few days, the scenario repeated itself, in which after breakfast she would announce that she had things to do in the surrounding settlements and would be gone for a while, in which he was to complete the tasks on the list after which he could do whatever he wanted.
When asked how she would get from place to place when all her friends decided to leave her, she replied that she still had some contacts who could help her for the proper price.
When a car pulled into the manor the next day, Madame wordlessly exited the building after which she got into the car and headed out.
Chris waited until the car disappeared behind the gate after which he did exactly what Madame ordered him to do, performed his duties after which do whatever he wanted.
There were several things he wanted to do but the most important was to locate the key that opens the door to the basement where his freedom awaited. He had seen this key several times, unlike the others, this key was thick enough that it could easily be used as a meat mallet.
The door it was used to open wasn't as reinforced as the one leading to the 1st floor or outside, but that didn't mean it was easy to break through.
The basement door, like the entrance door, was made of thick oak planks but was only reinforced with a few metal strips mounted across the width. These reinforcements were weaker but enough to prevent them from being broken easily and quickly, so Chris had to find a key to them.
For the days that Madame was absent, Chris searched the upstairs rooms. In one room he found a heavy metal box with a dial with numbers on it, in another he found a closet that took up half the room filled with all kinds of clothes and in Madame's bedroom he found an ornate axe on a holder on the wall that was of course locked with a padlock to prevent its removal.
He still had a few rooms left to search but unfortunately Madame had done what she was supposed to do and stopped leaving the manor.
The next evening Madame called him up to the 1st floor to give her a massage. He started by spreading oils from the top of her back all the way down her legs after which he began the massage. As the back of her body was fairly familiar to him he quickly massaged all the places she pointed out, kneading her tense muscles.
When he finished massaging her calves, Madame turned belly up, sat down then proceeded to remove the underwear that barely covered her body. When she was completely naked she lay down on her back placing both arms behind her head.
"What do you say my little servant, hmm?" She asked with a smug expression on her face.
"Uh... You look good Madame?" He replied hesitantly.
Judging by the way her face fell it was probably not the answer she hoped for.
"I ask for forgiveness Madame but I don't know what kind of answer you expect from me." Chris said after which he bowed deeply hoping he had not angered her.
"No matter, continue with the massage." She sighed waving her hand dismissively.
As he was told to do so he did. He wasn't sure how to massage this side of her body so he decided to do as he did with her back.
He took the oil and began spreading it over her body from top to bottom, rubbing it first into the collarbone region and then lower down to the two thingies that at first glance looked like sacks of fat with two spots at their tips with slightly darker skin around them.
"Is this another faunus thing" He thought moving his hands below these thingies, only to have Madame grab his hand leading him to the skipped body part.
"I ordered a full body massage. Why did you skip it?" She said firmly.
"Please forgive me Madame." He said wincing slightly.
She said nothing to that so Chris went back to rubbing oils into the skipped part of her body. Noting the force he had to put into massaging the oils into that part of her body, he assumed it was softer than her backside and it was also much more jiggly. His observation was interrupted by a grunt from Madame.
"Are we having fun?" She asked teasingly.
Her face expression dropped again when, instead of the expected reaction, Chris stared at her blankly.
"What do you mean, Madame?" he asked, tilting his head slightly.
"Ehhh... forget it." She said in resignation while covering her eyes with her arm.
The rest of the oil rubbing as well as the massage went fairly smoothly. Madame flinched and got goosebumps only a few times as he rubbed in the oils and massaged her in a few specific places.
Thinking he was using too much pressure he stopped only for her to tell him not to worry and to continue the massage.
By the end of the session Madame was heated as if she had a fever and was panting deeply while beating back his concerns about possible illness by claiming it was normal after massaging that side of her body.
When Madame sent him away claiming she didn't need anything else he bowed then went to the downstairs bathroom to wash gloves in preparation for the next session.
Preparations for the winter holidays as well as the holidays themselves went much the same as last time, a small amount of food, a large amount of alcohol.
This time Madame didn't even wait for the end of the meal, but immediately started the drinking game in an attempt to get Chris drunk. Unfortunately, thanks to his partial immunity to poisons, she again ended up so drunk that he had to escort her to the bedroom.
"Holy shit you have a hollow legs or something?" She asked barely conscious as she sat down on the bed.
"They seem pretty solid. I don't think they are hollow Madame," Chris replied slightly puzzled by her question.
"Ehhhhh... I have to start teaching you idioms because sometimes talking to you is a torment." She fell on her back covering her eyes with her hand.
"Please forgive me Madame, next time I will try to understand you better" He bowed even if she did not see it.
"Is that all Madame?" He asked a moment later.
"Yeah, yeah, you can go." She said after which she lay down and fell asleep in her clothes.
The days leading up to the new 78th year went by variously, once quickly when Chris was able to work in peace and once not so quickly when Madame joined in to help.
Preparations for the celebration as well as the new year itself went differently than usual. Chris prepared food for two people, Madame chattered about how those whores had betrayed her and she again ordered a drinking game.
This time she pulled out something called whiskey which was much stronger than wine. Somewhere in the middle of the bottle Madame stood up on shaky legs and announced that she was going to shoot fireworks from the balcony and that he was to help her do it.
Chris felt funny because of the alcohol he had consumed so far and Madame didn't look much better but an order is an order.
He went to the kitchen to get a lighter, taking a washcloth just in case, then returned to the dining room and, helping Madame up the stairs, they went to the balcony door.
"Madame, I've never done this before, what should I do?" He asked Madame, who was sitting in a chair by the balcony door, after he brought the box of fireworks into the room.
"Okay, you take an empty bottle which is probably lying in a corner here somewhere, plant a stick from a firework in the neck of the bottle, aim at the sky through the balcony, set fire to that string at the bottom of the firework and once it shoots out of the bottle you put another one in and repeat what I told you." She explained to him how to do it by gesturing with her hands in the air.
As she told him so he did, step by step preparing the firework and waiting for a sign from Madame to set it off. When the clock downstairs began to strike twelve a.m. Madame ordered him to start firing.
Chris lit the string and after a moment the firework soared into the sky to explode in a colorful cloud after a few moments of flight.
Before he prepared to shoot the next firework, the sky above the forest lit up with colorful explosions from the areas where he assumed neighboring settlements were located.
Chris shot off three more fireworks when Madame got up from her chair and began pouring the yellow liquid called champagne into glasses after which she raised her glass up urging him to do the same.
So he took the glass, mimicking Madame's behavior, raised his own up and tapped it against hers, watching what she would do next. She first began to sip the sparkling liquid before tilting her glass and emptying it in one go.
Chris did as she did only to realize moments later that it was a mistake. The disgusting, sour taste of the drink immediately assaulted his taste buds as he tried with all his might not to puke on the floor.
The sight of his torment must have been incredibly funny because the Madame laughed so hard that she almost fell off her chair.
"Hahaha hehe oh gods, forgive me Chris I forgot to say that champagne can sometimes be quite sour... hehe" She said once she had calmed down.
He, without saying anything, put down his glass and shot off more fireworks grimacing slightly through the bitter aftertaste.
"Don't pout my little servant, as your thirteenth birthday is not long away then in exchange for being the target of today's joke I will give you something special for your birthday." Madame leaned towards him with a smirk on her face.
Chris didn't know what she meant but for some reason a shiver ran through his body. Not wanting to be in this situation a moment longer he decided that he would ask if he could go now.
"Madame, as I have shot off almost an entire stock of fireworks does that mean I can go now?" He asked hopefully.
"Yes yes you can, just remember to wash yourself thoroughly somewhere like a day before your birthday," She said winking at him.
"Of course Madame. "A shiver ran down his spine again but he, not letting it be known, bowed and left the room.
The next day Chris got up in the morning, cleaned off the table, prepared a late breakfast for Madame then went to do the tasks on the list. He didn't even look up and it was already evening, the next day was the same and the next day too.
He realized it was already the fourth of January when, unable to sleep, he sat on the couch and looked up at the sky.
He was a little worried about what was or was not going to happen the next day. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, maybe she would drink too much wine again and forget? He wasn't sure anymore, all that was left was to wait and see for himself.
The fifth of January began like any other day. He couldn't sleep for too long and the weight of the situation caused his sanity to drop a few percent but other than that the day was no different so far.
Madame came in for breakfast a few minutes after seven o'clock and when she had eaten, she got up from the table and went down to the basement, informing him that he would be spreading meat around the freezers today so in the meantime he should go and do the tasks on the list.
So he took a watering can and began to water the flowers on the ground floor. It wasn't too long after Madame's descent into the basement when he heard the sound of a bell from behind the kitchen door.
Entering the kitchen, he saw the sights he was already familiar with. Madame was standing by the countertop , completely naked and apparently under the influence of alcohol.
Seeing him, a predatory smile appeared on her face, which was strange considering that she was a rabbit faunus.
"Hmm... are we ready?" She walked up to him then ran her finger over his jaw.
"A-Almost Madame." He choked out barely, stiffened like a board by her touch.
"Hmmm... You're right, you're completely sober, it's not proper, I'll wait for you in the living room and in the meantime you are to empty at least two bottles of wine and come back to me. You have twenty minutes" She ordered after which she left the kitchen.
He spent a few moments to steady his breathing, then headed for the storage room. Whatever she wants to do to him he must somehow prevent it. Maybe he can hide under the floor or behind one of the cabinets?
Chris entered the storage room and, without looking under his feet, kicked Madame's clothes lying on the floor. He bent down to pick them up but saw a shape poking through the fabric of the clothes.
He uncovered the clothes only to see a heavy metal key. Could it be that luck had finally smiled on him? Will he, through the foolishness of his captor, gain his freedom? there is only one way to find out.
Chris took the key and inserted it into the lock, into which it fit perfectly, after which he turned it a few times, slowly so as not to make a sound. When the door stood ajar he slipped through it then locked it from the inside and descended into the basement.
The stairs to the basement were so steep that several times he almost flew off them at break of neck. Death by falling down the stairs while escaping, what an embarrassing death that would have been.
After a few moments of careful descending, he finally came to a solid floor. To his left was the opening to the cargo elevator and in front of him stretched a corridor with several doors on the left and right.
Not knowing where to start, he entered the ones that were opposite the elevator opening. They were made of metal like the others but unlike the rest their rims were covered with frost.
"Hmm... cold, is that the freezer she mentioned?" He said to himself
"It seems that it is, you are looking for the keys so you shouldn't worry about it. After all, who in their right mind hides keys in the freezer" His advisor's words appeared before Chris' eyes.
"Exactly, who in their right mind. Madame is anything but a person in her right mind," He said to himself reaching for the metal handle.
"Chris listen to me carefully, you really shouldn't go in there" Another text appeared in front of his eyes that looked almost as if his advisor was pleading.
"Oh calm down, I'll just take a peek inside and I'm gone." Chris said entering the dark, cold room.
"Please leave and search the other rooms, these keys are definitely not here." His advisor displayed another statement in front of his eyes.
Chris, looking for the light switch with his nose against the wall, didn't even read what his advisor had to say
"Aha, got you," Chris said turning on the light.
"Don't turn around, leave!" His advisor tried unsuccessfully to dissuade him from checking the room.
"Calm down, I'll just check what's here and I'm gone. What, are you afraid of the old salad? Whatever is here can't be that... bad..." He turned around only to see why his advisor wanted him to leave so badly.
Chris dropped to his knees and stared blankly at the sight before him while his mental health percentage plummeted to barely three points. A familiar bowl full of meat stood in the corner next to the butcher's table.
"Chris... please forgive me, if you had known from the start, your sanity would have dwindle faster than you were able to restore it. It was the only solution." His advisor projected his statement in front of his eyes, but Chris did not respond to it in any way. He merely started laughing.
His advisor displayed message that his eyes had gained some unique ability, but he paid no attention to it. He could only stare ahead and laugh.
He laughed and laughed and laughed, trembling like a leaf in the wind, while tears streamed freely from his silver eyes, soaking his cheeks and the collar of his white shirt.
His frenzied laughter echoed loudly through the basement as his advisor tried unsuccessfully to communicate with him, while his sanity was slowly returning to normal levels.
Chris was alone in the freezer, but for his temporarily broken mind, the whole room laughed along with him. The shadows dancing at the borders of his vision laughed with him, the twisted faces looking at him from places not illuminated by light laughed with him, the partially chopped human corpses hanging from meat hooks laughed with him.
Meat that he ate and from which he prepared dishes for her. It was never pork. All this time, Madame had been feeding him with human flesh. He wanted to throw up, scream, do anything to wake up from this nightmare but the only thing he could do now was laugh.
Madame was starting to get impatient. Playing with herself was bearable, but she couldn't wait for her servant to finally return to start the fun. It had certainly been more than twenty minutes and he is still not back.
"Sigh... kill me. Is he making this wine or what that it's taking him so long?" She asked herself while spreading out on the couch.
"fufufu maybe he wants to continue pretending to be innocent and is waiting for me to go to him myself, and when I find him I'll do what I want with him?" She giggled getting up from the couch.
Madame entered the kitchen, stretched then called out. "Oh my little servant, I'm coming for you."
She entered the pantry in search of her trophy, looking you around corners and checking under cabinets and in tight spaces where her servant could squeeze into and, when she didn't find him, she moved ahead.
As she entered the storage room she began looking around the room again trying to find him somewhere. Having searched the entire room, she wanted to return to the pantry to look for it again, after which she planned to go to the kitchen she had skipped, but she was stopped in her tracks by a strange barely audible sound, as if someone was laughing.
She began to listen while slowly approaching the source of the sound and when she reached the door to the basement, it hit her.
"He's in the basement... oh fuck, oh fuck, he's in the basement, if he looks in the freezer he'll end up like the previous one and lose his mind, oh fuck." Madame started to panic when trying to open the door they didn't budge.
Seeing that she couldn't do anything with her bare hands, she rushed to the first floor to grab an axe from the wall, hoping to break through the door in time.
The wall bracket on which the axe hung was secured by a lock to which the key was hidden behind one of the paintings.
When she opened the lock, she took the axe in her hands after which she grabbed the remote control for her servant's collar from a drawer, she put on new pants and a hoodie and soared down the stairs toward the basement door.
She swung again and again, slowly punching a larger and larger hole through which she planned to reach for the key and open the door, but as if out of spite when the hole was wide enough, the key fell out of the lock and, bouncing down the stairs, flew deeper into the basement.
Madame cursed under her breath then went back to chopping an even larger hole through which this time she planned to squeeze whole.
After a few more hits, the hole was big enough for her to squeeze through, it's a pity that the axe got stuck in the door reinforcements but that's no problem, she'll pull it out later.
With the collar remote control in hand, Madame descended the steep stairs carefully. She was already skilled at climbing these stairs, but the presence of alcohol in her blood made it necessary for her to hold onto the wall with one hand while going down.
Descending the last set of stairs, she finally saw her servant. He stood in the middle of the corridor with eyes full of horror. He did not bow or beg for forgiveness. He merely stood there.
"It seems that I was too lenient with him. ehhh... Plan B then." She thought, pulling the remote control for the shock collar from her hoodie pocket.
His eyes and head ached from crying, his lungs, stomach and throat hurt from laughing, his sanity was recovering at a snail's pace, something started pounding on the wood in the background and to top it all off, besides the fact that he kept hearing laughter coming from all directions at once, he started hearing voices, or rather a voice saying something to him.
Chris didn't want to listen, he wanted to sink to the ground in disgust but the voice only got louder and louder, so when he managed to lay his forehead on the cold floor, he closed his eyes and focused on the words he was hearing.
"...ris, Chris, you need to get up and look for the keys, I hear the same as you, she's about to break through the basement door, we don't have time" An unfamiliar voice sounded in his head.
"Advisor? is that you? How do I hear you? I thought you could only communicate through writing." He thought to himself which, fortunately, was still an accurate method of communication.
"Something changed when you learned the truth, I assume that through a strong emotional reaction you not only unlocked the power of silver eyes but also created a new form of communication with me." The voice of his advisor sounded again in his head.
"A new form of communication... ok but what power of silver eyes? what are you talking about?" He thought while trying to slowly crawl backwards out of the freezer, being careful not to open his eyes, because if he had done so, this time his mind would break completely.
"Okay, now I'm quoting the description of this ability that came with it 'The ultimate weapon against creatures of grimm, you can blind them, vaporize them or turn them to stone. This ability produces a very bright light so it is not recommended to use it in stealth situations.' And that's it. The first time I read it, I thought it was a joke, but no, it's a description of a legendary, unique ability. It's a good thing I can edit the content of descriptions, at least that way as we learn more about your eyes I can put it in." His advisor said while Chris retreated from the room.
"So... you are not the one responsible for giving , describing and naming the skills I have?" Chris asked in his mind.
"No. Nor do I know what is responsible for this, but you really should hurry, she could be here at any moment." His advisor urged.
Chris closed the door to that cursed room, opened his eyes and intended to look for the keys in other rooms, when he heard the sound of bare feet descending closer and closer.
He could have tried to search at least one more room in a panic or tried to hide somewhere, but before he could do anything Madame appeared on the last series of stairs stopping at the top of them.
His advisor saw Madame through his eyes as she always was, but to Chris, the thing that stood on the stairs only resembled a human being or faunus in silhouette.
The entity's skin was pitch black, two pairs of red eyes filled with hatred stared back at him and all he could do was stare back shivering in horror, because to his still broken mind, in front of him stood not his tormentor, but a creature of grimm.
Seeing his lack of reaction, the entity pulled something out of the black space around it's abdomen, then began to speak in Madame's voice.
"It looks like I've been too lenient with you, and now because of this, you have difficulties with understanding where is your place." It said with venom in its voice.
"So let me help you." It said while doing something on the remote control it was holding.
A green lamp lit up on Chris's collar after which electricity ran through his body causing spasms in his remaining muscles and the intense pain forced him to fall to his knees greedily gasping for air.
"YOU ARE MY SERVANT!" The creature, shrieking, used the remote control again, sending electricity through his body.
"MY PROPERTY!" It did it again.
"MINE!" and again.
"So be a good human and cower under my feet begging for forgiveness." The creature ordered while descending slowly down the stairs.
He lay on the floor spasming from the electric shock, gasping for air while tears were pouring from his eyes.
At this point, Chris didn't give a damn whether the being in front of him was a product of his broken mind or not. He knew that the pain was real and that he would soon die if he didn't do something.
He then recalled part of the description of his new ability saying that it creates strong light. Grimm or not it was about to be blinded.
With great difficulty, he lifted his head and, looking at the silhouette of the creature descending the stairs, with the help of his advisor, he activated the new ability filling the stair shaft with blinding light.
For moments after his eyes stopped glowing Chris couldn't see anything, his head started hurting like hell and his eyes felt like they were about to melt. He wanted to lie down at least for a while but the sound he heard forced him to move.
Seconds after he used the ability, he heard the creature on the stairs wail in pain then tumble down the stairs with a wet snap, howling in agony.
When his vision cleared of the dancing black dots he saw his target. The creature's left leg was twisted the wrong way and a bone was protruding from the fracture. When the creature saw that he had picked himself up and was approaching it, it tried to use the pilot but Chris was faster.
He made his two hands into one fist and, like a mace, swung at the hand holding the pilot, breaking it. The creature wailed in pain trying to crawl away from him, but he wasn't going to stop.
All those years of being treated worse than trash, all the pain and humiliation he had to go through, all the torture she had subjected him to, and the fact that she had knowingly fed him human flesh all this time, all came together and boiled over that day.
Blinded by rage, Chris stood over the broken form of the creature whose silhouette began to flicker, showing once pale skin once tarry fur. Not giving the creature a chance to reach for the pilot with its other hand, he swung his still-folded fist behind its head, then swung them like a hammer at an anvil aiming at the creature's forehead.
At first it tried to defend itself, but after a few more blows the creature's hand fell to the floor. Despite this, Chris didn't stop, striking again and again until its skull couldn't take it, and with one more hit it burst, splashing its contents on him.
Covered in blood and chunks of gray matter, he knelt over the slowly cooling, twitching in post-mortem spasms, corpse of the thing responsible for all his suffering. As the adrenaline stopped coursing through his veins and his mind cleared, he was flooded with mixed emotions.
On the one hand, he was happy to be finally free, but on the other hand, he had blood on his hands. He had taken something he had not given. Another blow came when his sanity recovered to 10% and his perception returned to normal.
The sight of Madame's massacred corpse stunned him, he knew what she had done and that she had probably killed and ate a lot of people, but her actions did not change the fact that he had killed someone.
This time his stomach couldn't handle it and he puked its entire contents on her corpse.
"W-What have I done?" He choked out trembling.
"Chris listen to me, you did the right thing. By killing Madame, you have prevented her from hurting anyone ever again. She was a monster in faunus skin. You did the right thing." The supportive voice of the advisor sounded in his head.
"If I did the right thing, why doesn't it feel that way?" He said under his breath, still trembling.
"Besides, she had an incurable disease so she would probably have died anyway. We could have waited those few more years but I preferred that you get out with as little mental scarring as possible." He added a moment later.
"What?" Chris asked meekly.
"Scan her corpse again. Before that you didn't catch anything because I hid it from you due to the fact that, it was related to Madame's 'diet'."
Chris used the scanner skill then frowned.
"What is a laughing death?" Chris asked, puzzled by the new item on the disease tab.
"Laughing death is an incurable, fatal disease caused by consuming human flesh. Fortunately, you don't have it, and it's also possible, though I don't know this for sure, that you, thanks to your regenerative abilities, are immune to it. She, on the other hand, had no such comfort, and I see from your scan that she was in the first stage of the disease where she was experiencing bone and joint pain. This would explain why she ordered you to give her massages so often." His advisor said, displaying the text of the speech in front of his eyes as well.
Chris was about to ask another question when suddenly from Madame's corpse something, like wisps of smoke from a candle that had just been put out, began to rise toward him, seeping into his body.
When it stopped, a pop-up window appeared in front of his eyes.
Secret task completed
"It would happen sooner or later."
Consume someone's soul to activate magic system.
As quickly as it appeared so quickly it disappeared leaving Chris puzzled.
"Uh... Advisor, what does that mean?" He asked uncertainly.
"That... I don't know, I haven't seen something like this before but I'll find out soon. You, in the meantime, go find the keys and start getting ready to leave this cursed place."
"Yeah, the keys. Okay." He said getting up from his knees.
"Chris, are you okay?" Advisor asked in a worried voice.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, I... I'm fine." Chris replied while walking further into the basement.
The advisor did not respond probably examining this magic thingy so he, not wanting to stand by the corpse any longer, began his search.
Some of the doors were open and others like, door leading to the garage, were locked. Fortunately, the locks weren't very strong and the doors were made of not very thick sheet metal, so Chris got through without too much trouble, destroying a lock here or punching a hole through a door there.
After some time, he found the keys. They were in a metal tool box that was padlocked and was behind one of the locked doors. Inserting one of the keys into the places on the shackles, he opened it, finally releasing his metal claws. After activating them a few times, he took another key then inserted it into the lock locking shock collar.
The lock opened with a quiet click but the collar, having been around his neck all this time, clung to his skin tightly. Panicking slightly, Chris grabbed the two ends of it and jerked it open with all his strength, opening it up but ripping off chunks of skin from several places and causing mild bleeding.
It hurt like hell but he didn't care because he could finally breathe fully. After getting rid of the shackles, Chris went upstairs to do something he had wanted to do for some time, take a shower.
Stepping back onto the 1st floor, he headed straight for the upstairs bathroom. Stepping inside, he checked the knobs over the faucet and, after a brief moment of tinkering, managed to let the hot water run from the shower.
He took off his blood-soaked clothes, hurling them into the corner of the bathroom after which he headed for the shower, stopping in front of the partially steamed mirror.
From its surface, his tired, partially blood-covered face looked at him. His eyes were circled, his left cheek was cut in half by a long scar and his neck was covered with scars from electric burns, with skin ripped out in places and an imprint where the collar had been.
He looked awful but he didn't care because, no matter how bad it looked, in the mirror he saw the face of a free person and that was all that mattered to him.
Looking at the slowly fogging mirror for a while longer, Chris let his new wounds turn into scars. He would not show itself to anyone anyway so he saw no point in focusing regeneration on making the scars disappear.
When the mirror was completely covered with steam, Chris stepped into the shower letting the hot water wash over his body. When he had washed himself clean of all the blood and grime, he sat down on the floor of the shower letting the warm water wash over him, soothing his nerves.
After a while, the feeling of disgust and regret from what he had done to Madame faded. He was still aware of what he had done as well as what he had seen, but he no longer felt anything.
"Chris, I now know what we're dealing with." the advisor's voice sounded in his head.
"Hmm? You found out what that magic thingy is?" Chris asked.
"Yes. After you consumed Madame's soul, a brand new category of abilities was unlocked with a system of acquiring new abilities from that category by using acquired abilities and gaining levels of proficiency in using them."
"From what I've learned, after gaining ten levels of a particular ability, you will be able to choose one of four new magic abilities which, once selected, will be available for selection from the menu. The ability you choose will, of course, be at the first level where it will be weakest and your task will be to use it to increase its level and make it stronger. How you will use them I don't know yet, but we will figure it out together."
"Of course, such miraculous abilities are not free. The price of using a given ability varies from one to another, but what they all have in common is that in order to activate them they need fuel, which is your sanity points as well as your vital points, so be careful when using them because if you mess up you will lose your mind, kill yourself or both."
"Uhhh... do you want my head to burst? Try to make it simple or something." Chris said while massaging his forehead.
"I'll try to do it, but you don't have to worry about complicated things, all you have to do is pay attention to the percentage of your sanity and vital points as well as the amount of them needed for a particular ability. Or should I say for a particular spell?"
"Uhh... Okay look at the percentages and be careful, tell me if I got any spell to begin with." Chris asked slightly excited.
"Yes, you got something to begin with, or even several of them. For the beginning we have a spell called enchanting. It allows you to give magical properties to an object of your choice. You have to think about what and how you want to enchant the item, for example, if you wanted to enchant a cup so that its contents wouldn't spill out unless the person holding it wants it, you have to think about this enchantment and use the skill from the menu. This has its limitations, which are listed in the description of this spell, as well as the fact that the chance of success in enchanting an item is 15%, so you can enchant an item successfully the first time, but you can also struggle for days and nights without achieving anything. Another point is the price of this spell which is 8 vitality points as well as 10 sanity points, so you will be able to use it a certain number of times before you have to rest to regenerate your parameters to a safe level." A wall of text appeared in front of Chris' eyes with the advisor's voice in the background.
"Ughhh... my head. What's next?" Chris asked still massaging his head.
"The next spell is called size manipulation and it does what the name implies, it allows you to change the size of objects or as in your case it will allow you to adjust the size of your prosthetics because I see they have gotten a little too small for your height. The price of each use is 10 vitality points and 12 sanity points. This spell does not work on your body so you cannot lengthen your ears or... change the size of other body part." Another text appeared before Chris' eyes.
"Another spell you can use is fire manipulation, and I guess this is one of its branches because this spell allows you to place remotely detonate fireballs which, when they explode, will cover the area with a sticky flammable substance that will burn as long as it has fuel. The cost of this spell is 3 points of vitality and 5 points of sanity, it takes 15 seconds to place each fireball and the detonation distance is 100 meters so if you move further away the fireball will self-detonate."
The last spell on the list is healing magic and, as the name suggests, allows you to heal all sorts of injuries. The cost of this spell is 5 vitality points and 7 sanity points to activate and one vitality and sanity point per minute to maintain the spell. It is also another spell that has no effect on your body, making you able to heal others but not yourself. In addition, in order to gain experience and levels in using this spell it is required to use it to heal intelligent beings such as humans or faunuses, and judging by your experience with both races I think this spell will not be used very often if at all."
"So... to activate these spells all I have to do is think about them?"
"Yes, think or select from a list in a new tab. The only exception is enchanting where you have to think about how you want to enchant the item and then activate the spell but that's only the one so far."
"Okay, and as for the price of spells, what's the limit on how much points I can use before I have to stop, and how long do I have to wait for sanity and vitality to regenerate to safe values?"
"The least vitality and sanity you can safely have is 10% and both values regenerate at 1% per minute."
"Do I have to be in some special state for the values to regenerate or something?"
"Yes and no. Your vitality points as well as your sanity points regenerate constantly no matter what you do, but if they drop low enough you will be forced to rest anyway because with low vitality you simply won't have the strength to move and with low sanity you will see and hear things that are not there, preventing you from functioning normally."
"There is also another resource which is your energy produced by the bioreactor which is used to power your prosthetics, your internal organs that have upgrades, which is pretty much all of them, is used as fuel for your two basic skills, the scanner and the rangefinder as well as being a resource used for some enchantments."
"Wait, what?! I used the scanner constantly, why didn't you say anything?!"
"Calm down. I didn't say anything because these skills consume barely 1 point of energy each and just a handful of berries allowed you to regenerate 1.5 points and when you were in this place you had continuous meals that provided even more so I didn't see any reason to tell you and give you even more worries. I only told you now because you're in the process of leaving this place, it's winter so there's no fishing or gathering and the amount of supplies in this place is limited so I thought you should know."
The very thought of the meals he ate in this place made him sick. He would never touch pork again.
"Okay, last question, I think so, what besides new spells will levelling my current spells give me? Will they be stronger or require fewer points to use or something like that?"
"And that's another one of the questions I unfortunately don't have the answers to yet. We will find out together what the higher levels of spells bring."
"Okay then... I think I'll go now to search the manor for things, clothes and other trinkets that I might need."
He got up from the floor of the shower, turned off the water that was getting colder, then stood up, dry himself off and decided to adjust his cramped prosthetics with a spell.
Four uses later and with vitality at 60% and sanity at 52%, Chris adjusted his prosthetics then went to grab clothes for the journey.
Entering the dressing room, Chris looked around then began selecting items. Fortunately, Madame kept clothes from her would-be fiancé so he didn't have to worry about a shortage of men's clothing. He dressed in an undershirt, boxer shorts, insulated cargo pants, a zipless hoodie, tall snow boots, a pair of long leather gloves and a long knee-length metal-buttoned fabric coat with a hood.
Dressed, he took a few extra pairs of hoodies, undershirts, pants and boxers each and, draping them over himself, turned toward the exit.
He was about to leave but saw a buckled leather backpack in the corner of the room. Knowing that it would be useful for him to have something to transport his belongings for the journey as well as a test object for spell testing, he took it and left the room.
Chris placed a backpack on the living room floor then sat down opposite it and, summoning a new category of abilities with his mind, began reviewing his enchantment options. On the list were enchantments such as, a enchantment to increase lifting capacity, an enchantment to connect the backpack to a selected storage compartment that did not exceed the capacity of the backpack, or an enchantment to shrink the items put into the backpack, etc.
These options were quite ok, but the enchantment that caught his attention was called home away from home, and it allowed him to enchant that backpack so that when it was placed on the ground, it turned into a gateway to a kind of pocket dimension with an interior like a typical room.
Without delay, he thought of this particular enchantment after which, choosing enchanting magic from the list, he got to work. He used the enchanting magic once, a second time, a third time and after the fourth time he thought he would spend the next few days doing it, but to his surprise the fifth time the backpack flickered and a small window appeared in front of his eyes informing him that the enchantment was successful.
Using magic, he changed the size of the backpack so that he could easily fit into it after which he looked inside to see how to get to the enchanted part of it.
At the bottom of the backpack was a visibly outlined platform with a pressure plate in the middle. Standing on it, the platform lowered into the enchanted space only to return back to its entry position when he stepped off. Next to where the levitating platform had stopped was a lever that, when used, lowered the platform down.
Knowing how to get out of the inside of the backpack, he began to look around the empty space. on the walls were places which, after putting enough points of sanity and vitality into them, would form two rooms and one corridor between them. These spots were mirrored on the left as well as the right wall of the room.
In the corner of the main room was a place that required much more points to activate but formed something called a fabricator. Neither Chris nor his advisor knew what it was supposed to be but judging by the number of points needed to create it they assumed it would be something important.
Having seen everything, Chris again stands on the platform that went up after which he got out the backpack, threw all clothes inside and started collecting everything he could use.
With significantly increased carrying capacity, Chris returned to the to the guest rooms on the 1st floor and used magic to shrink one of the double beds to the size of a wallet after which, taking a few blankets and pillows, he set up his backpack on the floor and carried everything inside.
When he left the backpack he returned to the closet room and selected a few more pairs of tall leather boots, a few sewing kits, a few patches of cloth for patching clothes, a few more pairs of long leather gloves and a pair of snow masks.
When he went back out his advisor told him to try to open the safe he had once seen because inside there might be valuables or money that he would need sooner or later.
Chris entered the room in the corner of which the safe was located, then approached it and, looking at it closely this time, he noticed that five of the numbers were slightly faded.
"It seems that Madame liked to recount her wealth." The advisor said.
"What do you mean?" Chris asked.
"Do you see the blurred digits? She must have entered the code so often that she started blurring them."
"So if I press the same numbers as her the safe will open?"
"Exactly, this process just like with enchanting can take long hours but judging by your luck you can probably figure it out right away."
"Okay then, here goes."
Chris entered one combination, then another and another. He thought his luck had deserted him, but on the ninth time he heard a click, after which the door of the safe opened revealing its interior hiding valuables.
Looking inside, Chris was slightly surprised, because instead of jewels or gold coins inside the safe there were different colored plastic-like cards.
"What the hell is this?" He asked puzzled.
"This is the currency of the four kingdoms called Lien, and as you can see we have quite a bit of it, it should easily last us quite a long time as long as you don't spend it on stupid things."
"Are you sure? Those valuables don't look too... valuable."
"Yes I'm sure. Pack them up inside and go gather the other things you need."
"If you say so."
Chris emptied the safe of its contents by tossing Lien on a pile in the middle of the room in a backpack then went downstairs to collect things.
He collected all the cans of vegetables, spices, flours, oils, jams, pickled vegetables, juices, all the dust crystals he could find, one of those emotion-distorting machines, all the knives he could find in the drawers, a set of sharpeners, fire starters for the stove, every lighter and box of matches he could find and an axe that had been stuck in the basement door, then went downstairs to search the garage and the storage room of this group to which Madame's fiancé belonged. A white tooth or something.
When he went all the way down he looked again at the stiff, massacred corpse of the cursed woman, and this time he felt nothing. He walked around the corpse as if nothing had happened and went to burst through the door leading to the garage.
Getting through them was not too much of a problem since this door, like the others, was quite thin. Once inside he began to look around.
In the middle of the garage stood a four-wheeled vehicle with the hood up, and judging by the parts removed from inside it, it was not fit to be driven, various keys were hanging on the walls, and a portable sink was standing in the corner.
What interested him was another door on one of the garage walls which he assumed led to the group's storage room.
Breaking through another closed door he saw the interior of a room that did not look like it had been visited for some time.
Everything was covered with a layer of dust and the shelves, cabinets as well as weapons racks were empty. Only one of the lockers looked untouched, perhaps someone had forgotten the code or hadn't returned from an excursion?
He didn't know and didn't particularly care because whoever's locker it was, its contents would now belong to him.
Without much trouble, he pulled the cabinet door off its hinges after which he looked inside.
On the bottom shelf lay a metal breastplate and on the top shelf lay an elegant-looking helmet. This helmet had a single oblong in width visor, some kind of device at the height of the mouth which he assumed was used to filter out toxins, and to put the helmet on he had to lift up the front part of it.
The helmet as well as the breastplate were a bit too big for him, but with the help of a spell he quickly adjusted them to fit. With a new helmet that was open on his head and a breastplate put on his body, he went back upstairs to pick up a few more things he had forgotten about.
When he got upstairs he headed to the living room after which he took a wind-up clock from the wall along with his wind-up key then headed to the kitchen to take his violin. He had planned to leave it behind, but changed his mind because, unlike the cookbook, he associated it with good things.
He then went upstairs to Madame's rooms and collected every bottle of alcohol he could find in there. He hated the taste of it, but he remembered that, usually when Madame drank, the next day she could not remember what had happened the day before.
He hoped that with the help of alcohol he too would forget, if only for a moment, what was in the freezer and what he had done.
Checking one last time that he had everything, he went down to the basement one last time. While at the bottom, he took Madame's corpse by the arm and dragged it to the freezer.
Taking a deep breath he entered the freezer and then turned on the light. It was a good thing he had his helmet open because the very sight of the corpses, their empty eyes and faces twisted in the agony and terror of their last moments made him nauseous.
He was aware that coming back here would only burn the sight of their bodies and faces even more into his mind, but he wanted to do the right thing.
Using a system of levers located on the wall by the door, he lowered the corpses to the floor after which he dragged Madame's corpse between the bodies of her victims and began placing fireballs. It was the least he could do for them.
After placing four fireballs around the corpses, he detonated them with his thoughts and watched for a moment as the fire consumed them before turning around and heading for the garage door.
After punching a hole in the door, he activated his golden aura after which he closed his helmet and stepped outside. The snowstorm that had only been gaining momentum in the morning was now raging at its best, rocking the treetops rapidly and sending snowflakes in all directions, it was beautiful.
Chris took a tentative step outside the manor, then another and another. He didn't even realize and he was already running at full speed toward the fence, which he jumped over in just a moment and raced onward.
Today he regained his freedom, today he got his hands covered with the blood of another, today marks the beginning of his new life. He ran ahead without looking back experiencing a joy he had not experienced in years. He was free at last.