Seeing this reaction, the researchers had Vegis pull out a sample of blue sapphire that was in another box. It released a much stronger presence than the previous gem and when Vegis grabbed it, frost started to coat his right arm. He swapped the gem to his left and pressed the new gem against the barrier. The flesh flattened itself against the opposite wall and started to peel away from the skeleton inside of it. It still clung to its lower half but parts of the shoulder and chest were revealed. It was then, Vegis felt a repulsion to the sapphire in his hand. It slowly got stronger and stronger but when Vegis reported this to the researchers, they said to continue. Eventually, the force of the repulsion shattered the gem in his and sent the fragments through the clone’s hand. Vegis had the other two clones go down and drag the injured one out. Some fragments were still in their hand but when they checked, it was not there. Vegis guessed that it must have been absorbed into their hand and when it got checked by proper gear, it seems to be true. The stuck fragments turned into new tendons and skin which was stiffer than their normal skin but was way more resilient than the original toughness of the sapphire. This made V2’s hand be permanently a deep clear blue even with the basic disguise on. They have to deliberately change the color and texture of the area to make it look normal which broke the internal mana balance they had and drained the mana more than what they can absorb.
This led to a small change in Vegis which was a small orange gem to form in the middle of his back. It was a week after V2’s wounds healed and most people were already asleep. Vegis was sleeping and the clones were in the middle of cleaning the inside of the house and the equipment until a researcher contacted them to do something. “V2. Would you come to the basement please? I need you to do something” was passed into V2’s ear implant so they dropped what they were doing and went down to the basement. When they went down, they were directed to stand in the far corner away from the gaping hole down to the plant room. The moment V2 tried to walk to the corner, they were overwhelmed by a vision that was redirected to Vegis. V2 was stuck kneeling on the floor, ice slowly forming vine-like constructs that pinned them in place. The researcher, a woman named Australe, noticed something was wrong since V2’s camera deactivated and had V1 and V3 to go down to see what happened. When she saw the strange activity, she hit the emergency button and rushed to wake up the other researchers on this strange activity. V1 took a thermometer and noticed the ice constructs were -250° and were more like masses of mana than actual physical matter.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
They tried to contact Vegis but couldn’t get through. When they checked up on him, they immediately noticed that frost was building up on his door and had to break the steel door for his room. Inside, everything was covered in frost and Vegis was suspended in a large ball of ice. Vegis was originally dreaming about a clear day fishing in the open ocean. He had caught a few small fish but everytime he tried to release them, a larger fish would come around to eat them and it would always evade the lure of the rod. The one time it did take the bait, it snapped both the rod and the line before disappearing into the depths. Slowly, a dark storm front appeared in the distance and when he tried to move the boat, the turbine caught something and caught fire. Seeing that he would not be able to escape the storm, Vegis walked around the boat and found the trap door to get inside. When he got inside, the entire boat got launched into the air by a large wave, flipping the boat. Vegis got up after almost ten minutes of just groaning on what was the ceiling.
The sound of thunder and rain could be heard all around Vegis as he tried to look out the windows but all he could see was the sea floor. On it, there was an entire coral reef full of life. Fishes were swimming all around, starfish were crawling around the floor, and crustaceans walking around. Suddenly, Vegis felt a chill encompassing his entire body and the sound of rain was replaced with hail. The choppy waves were interrupted by a larger one that flipped the boat rightside up. An hour passed, and all noises stopped. Vegis tried to exit the inside but the trap door didn’t budge. It took Vegis grabbing a chair laying around and swinging with all his might upwards. It heavily deformed the door and chair from the impact but it did also open it up. A large draft of freezing air hit Vegis when he got near to the exit. Shivering, he climbed out and saw thick ice all around him. Snow was falling over the hail and ice that was everywhere while on the horizon, land could be seen. The only thing that wasn’t covered in ice was the fire being released from a stick that stabbed through the roof of the boat. Seeing nowhere else to go, Vegis grabbed all the supplies he could find and walked to the land in the far distance.
