I opened my eyes, but my vision was a blurred mess. I tried to move my arm, and my body's response came as a cold shock: I was nothing more than a helpless mass of flesh. In my previous world, I controlled the fates of heroes with a stroke of a pen; here, I couldn't even lift my head.
The dark magic I felt in my veins was not a "sword" to be wielded, but a "poison" gnawing at my insides. With my experience in character analysis, I realized instantly that this body was designed to be "consumable." We aren't warriors; we are living batteries. The mark (666-01) on my shoulder wasn't granting me power; it was stealing the warmth from my heart to keep the room cold enough for storing corpses.
The iron door creaked open.
No hero or savior entered. Instead, in walked the "Warehouse Curator." An old man with a hunched back, reeking of formalin and foul sorcery. He began to move between the stone tables, carrying a quill and a scroll in his hand.
"Dead... dead... this one will be dead by dawn," the old man muttered, crossing names off his list.
When he reached me, I felt a terror unlike any I had ever known. It wasn't the fear of death, but the fear of being "deleted." In my profession, I used to delete characters who served no purpose in the story. Now, I was that unnecessary character.
The old man stopped at my side. He raised a withered hand and pressed down on my chest with a force that pained my soft bones. "Batch 666-01... his pulse is strangely steady. Has he absorbed the death energy, or is his body rejecting the transformation?"
I tried to resist, to scream, but my lungs could only manage a silent, black exhale.
Right then, I realized the bitter truth: my mind is my only weapon, but it is trapped in a prison of flesh that does not obey commands.
The old man grabbed cold metal forceps and brought them close to my eye to inspect the pupil. "Smart eyes... too smart."
In that moment, my heart nearly stopped. If he realized I possessed full consciousness, I would be dissected as a "production error."
I forced my muscles to go limp. I summoned every bit of my acting skill, letting my eyes cloud over and stare into the void with the dullness of the dead. I pretended to be just another empty vessel, a soulless doll.
"Just a coincidence," the old man muttered and left me, moving on to infant (02) who was struggling for breath. I heard the scratch of the quill as he struck (02) from the list. Moments later, the guards came and dragged the child away by his feet to be tossed into the "Incinerator of Errors."
My small body trembled from the shock. In the novel I had edited, that child was just a passing line: "And the failures were disposed of." I had never felt the weight of that sentence until I saw it happen right before my eyes.
Several days passed in this manner, but the silence was short-lived. In the dead of a pitch-black night, the door didn't creak open as usual; it was literally shattered by a kick from the massive Commander himself.
"Bring (666-01) to the inspection room immediately!" the Commander roared, his voice carrying a jagged edge I hadn't heard before. "The Sorcerer 'Igor' wants to verify the quality of the 'fuel' before the Grand Ritual begins."
Before I could process what was happening, a coarse hand snatched me from my stone table. I wasn't carried with any semblance of care; the guard tossed me into a small wooden crate resembling a coffin and snapped the lock shut. The darkness inside was suffocating, but I felt the crate moving rapidly through the corridors.
The crate came to a sudden halt. The lid flipped open, and I found myself in a room filled with black mirrors and candles emitting green flames. In the center stood a man so terrifyingly thin he looked skeletal; his eyes were mere hollow pits from which black smoke drifted.
"Is this (01)?" Igor the Sorcerer asked, passing a long bone-dagger over my body.
"Yes, My Lord. He is the most stable in absorbing dark mana."
The Sorcerer leaned over me. Suddenly, he plunged a long needle into my shoulder, directly over the "Brand."
It wasn't an ordinary needle; it felt like a "hook" trying to tear my soul out from within. He was testing the strength of the dark energy's bond to my body.
Damn it... he's not testing my strength; he's trying to 'drain' me to see how long I take to recharge! I realized with my editor's intuition. If I show my full power now, he'll know I'm not just a vessel, but a conscious being.
I decided to gamble. Instead of resisting, I "shredded" a portion of the energy I had stored in my marrow and released it all at once through the needle. It was "corrupt and turbulent" energy, as if my body were exploding from the inside out.
"Argh!" the Sorcerer shrieked, recoiling as the needle burned up in his hand.
He looked at me with a mix of shock and madness. "Magnificent... truly magnificent! This child isn't just fuel; he's a 'reactor'! His energy is so unstable it attacks anyone who tries to draw it out."
The Sorcerer chuckled with a yellowed grin, then turned to the Commander. "Forget placing him in the front lines as a human shield. I will use this child as the 'Heart' of the Forbidden Incantation we shall cast upon the knight battalion. A shadow beast will carry him into the center of their camp, and once he lands... he will detonate. When he does, nothing but ash will remain of them."
They shoved me back into the wooden crate.
As I lay in the darkness, my heart raced—not with fear, but with a terrifying thrill.
They want to put me in the heart of the enemy camp? I thought, feeling the energy begin to surge back into my veins with even greater force after the test. Thank you, Sorcerer. You've just given me a free exit ticket from this basement—and a weapon of mass destruction that I will choose when and where to detonate.
The "routine" was over.
The game had truly begun, and I am no longer a character they can control.