Seraphs of the Emperor’s Judgment

Chapter 131: Augmentation

When vast amounts of those unnamed drugs were pumped into his body, the boy felt as if he were in the midst of an ice storm and began trembling violently and uncontrollably.

During this process, the restraint straps on the operating table held him firmly against the cold metal plate, preventing him from falling to the floor.

As the trembling and frenzy continued to crowd out his thoughts and flesh, his consciousness gradually became chaotic.

After an unknown amount of time, he finally broke free from that storm, as if he had been carried into a warm and stiflingly deep, dark cave.

He lay there, continuing to immerse himself in the illusions.

The boy dreamed for a long time.

The pain-induced hallucinations visited first. The throbbing pain across his entire nervous system shaped these hallucinations into something incredibly sharp, while the massive amount of Painkillers injected into his veins twisted and distorted everything.

Those sharp, fragmented dream shards were like scattered puzzle pieces or shattered mirrors, interspersed with segments of dark, silent comatose states.

The interweaving and collision of these two sensations was like a match between two master players of Regicide—the meticulously thought-out caution of offense and defense, the far-reaching depths of long-term strategy, and the prolonged planning before a piece was even placed.

After drifting for an unknown amount of time, the sharp edges of his mental shards gradually dulled, and those dreams became increasingly enduring and complex.He began to have some extremely long, cyclical, and grand illusions.

Those dreams spanned months leading into years, crossing the eras of generations. He witnessed solid ice covering all things before melting into spring waters, experienced the oceans freezing completely solid before surging once more, and gazed as the brass disc-like sun sprinted across a sky full of clouds—first shining brilliantly and bursting with light, then gradually dimming, turning to cinders, and being wiped away by a gentle breeze.

Day and night alternated endlessly...

Sometimes, his dreams felt like an adventure. He sat upright in an accelerating roller coaster among the clouds, taking in the entirety of the universe. Yet he frequently ascended abruptly or plunged downwards, needing to tightly grip the handrails to prevent himself from accidentally falling.

Sometimes, his dreams drew his gaze inward, escaping into his own flesh and blood. On a macroscopic level, he observed this body that was as complex as the galaxy, examining one by one the countless atoms that made up the whole. He took the essence of his life and disassembled it into the most minute genetic information, just as one might ingeniously use a prism to filter out the colorful components of a beam of light.

He felt as if the organs and tissues all over his body were dissociating one by one, as if he had become an old grandfather Clock. Every delicate component covered in Geneva stripes was laid bare before a craftsman, waiting for maintenance and repair.

He was also akin to a biological specimen, a laboratory animal pinned to a workbench. First his chest was cut open by a sharp blade, and then his internal organs were removed one by one like the gear parts of a pocket watch.

Or perhaps like an insect pinned to a wax tray, where the tissue cells from various parts of his body were respectively placed on glass slides for people to study all sorts of internal mechanisms.

After the prolonged dreams brought him back to that cave, he often felt as if he had been reassembled into a completely different form.

If he was still an old Clock, then the arrangement of his gear parts had changed. Some components had been cleaned, repaired, or replaced, such as the mainspring and escapement mechanism, the transmission gear and the balance wheel. Moreover, all the minute Levers and hands were reassembled in a fresh sequence full of creativity, and finally, the dial was firmly screwed down.

All of this rendered his completely transformed internal structure completely unknown to outsiders.

He began to think about the cave itself again.

It was warm here, safe, hidden deep in the darkness, far away from the disturbance of storms.

But was he brought here purely for his protection?

Or was he merely being stored away by some beast?

The most bizarre and rarest dream occurred after one of his violent convulsions, following which a voice began to converse with him.

His sense of smell had recovered somewhat, but the air here smelled completely devoid of life, like a dry boulder on a polar plateau—without even a trace of moisture capable of forming frost.

This place was far removed from the warmth and firelight of the cave. When staying here, the boy constantly felt his limbs were as heavy as lead, as if his stomach was full of ice, as if some chilling liquid metal flowed through his veins, becoming his heavy burden.

Even his thoughts were sluggish and viscous.

He fought desperately against this bone-piercing cold, terrified that he would be dragged into a deathly slumber bereft of dreams.

However, his maximal effort seemed to only make his limbs twitch slightly; he couldn't even lift his eyelids.

"Don't move!"

This was the first sentence that voice spoke to him.

These sudden and unprompted words instantly froze him in place.

"Don't move!"

That voice repeated itself. Its hollow tone still sounded like thunder even when whispering.

It didn't sound much like a human voice. It sounded closer to the rumbling roar let out by an ancient horn, with every single syllable bearing the exact same muffled reverberation.

"Stop twisting and turning."

"Where am I?"

"In a dream."

That voice answered. At this moment, it sounded like the howl of a goat horn from a distant, lonely peak.

"I don't understand."

First there was a burst of silence, and then that voice suddenly rang out by the boy's right ear, as if the other party had just circled behind him.

"You do not need to understand a dream. A dream is just what it is; it does not need to be understood, and that is all."

"But why am I here?"

When that voice's response arrived, it already seemed rather distant.

"You are here to experience those dreams, it is as simple as that. So dream at ease... This will help you pass the time. Just dream well, and stop twisting and turning! I'm annoyed!"

The boy hesitated for a moment. He didn't like the threatening tone in that voice; the other party was clearly very impatient.

"I don't like it here."

"Yes, none of you like it here!"

A second later, that voice boomed by the boy's left ear. He couldn't help but let out a terrified Screaming.

The other party's loud voice was not only close at hand, but it also held a hint of a roar.

"None of you like it here."

The other party repeated this sentence a bit more calmly, the voice lingering in the darkness surrounding him.

"But it is precisely because your bodies resist that dream that many of you have died! This is not what we hoped for; we did not have you choose death."

What followed was a long stretch of silence.

"Who are you?"

The boy asked hoarsely.

"My name is kept only for myself, not for your use."

That voice was still just as impatient.

"Then why are you still here?"

The other party paused for a moment before muttering:

"Because of you."

"How long have I been here?"

"It's been some days... Stay right there and don't move! Keep your rotten mouth shut and stop bothering me."

With those words, a burst of intense pain struck, and the boy's thoughts were once again shrouded in fog...