The Founder's POV

Chapter 19: Broken Mind

"He seems to be in good condition, the reports from the past few days indicate that he's ready," said the man holding the paper in his hands. He was a middle-aged human with black hair and dark eyes, his strength around B rank.

One of the other guards attached a chain to the hole in the collar around my neck. I really hated this collar.

I acted like a broken-minded person. I didn't know if that was their goal, but I decided to take the risk.

I would be in trouble if they noticed my good health; they might decide to send me back to that hell again.

They led me into a strange laboratory where an unfamiliar old man stood in the middle. His expression was cold, and he didn't even care about my presence.

He took out a syringe and filled it with a liquid, moving quickly and steadily as if he had done this hundreds of times before.

The guards forced me to sit on the chair in front of him, and I couldn't help but feel terrified while looking at the liquid in the syringe.

The Seal of Sloth reacted strongly just at the sight of the liquid, much more than it did when I quickly swallowed twenty fruits.

"Hold him steady."

I recognized the voice as soon as I heard it, and my body couldn't help but stop on its own. This was the man named Adam, the person who handed me over to that girl named "Diana" from the Arovan family or something similar...

Looking at the man who cold-heartedly condemned me to slavery, I couldn't help but feel anger and resentment inside, but I was powerless to do anything.

With someone of rank B holding me from behind, my body was immobilized without the need for the other guards' help. The syringe entered my body through my hand without even an anesthetic.

A simple syringe shouldn't be painful for me now, after everything I had been through.

But after being injected with this syringe, I forgot to act. I forgot myself, my goals, my identity, my family, and everything.

In the face of that pain, all I could do was scream loudly until my throat went dry, and tears streamed down my face continuously.

The people around me were unaffected as if the scene was a usual occurrence.

My body suddenly disappeared into a spatial cube, and I didn't see the light after that.

***

In the same room, the old man Adam looked at the guards in front of him, specifically at the man with the paper in his hand.

"Did he really manage to resist swallowing the fruit?"

Throughout his time working here, old man Adam had never encountered a similar case. Even he wouldn't be able to resist chewing the fruit if it were in his mouth, and he wasn't even addicted.

"But where did the fruits he took go? It wasn't found in his coffin, and he certainly didn't spit it out anywhere either."

Sweat droplets slid down the face of the man with the paper as if he had hit a dead end.

"The investigation is still ongoing."

Old man Adam's forehead turned red upon hearing that, and he couldn't help but start cursing here and there.

"Useless! Why did I even hire you! How were you chosen to do this job?!"

And many similar things. Despite his cold appearance, he was still an old man after all.