"Earth made you win your bet. How very kind of it," Elias said, his voice carrying a faint trace of sarcasm.
Dreke, lost in his reverie, didn't seem to notice. He continued writing the process he was going to follow this time in the diary.
Every time he made a mistake, he crossed out the last line and wrote the correction above it.
"Kind? It was merely fulfilling its purpose. These wild places exist to be conquered and used. That world was weak and insignificant," he answered without a care in the world. "Its only value was in providing me with a stepping stone, and even that it failed to achieve perfectly."
Elias watched him, his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles were white. The coldness in his eyes intensified as he observed Dreke's every movement and every notation in the diary.
He was memorizing it all, especially the handwriting and the writing style, etching it into his mind.
"So, tell me more about this entertainment," Elias asked, his voice deceptively calm. "What else did you find amusing about the destruction of an entire world?"
Dreke, oblivious to the rage building within Elias, puffed up his chest. "Oh, there were many amusing moments. If I remember correctly, the world even gave birth to a Fable."
"That fable must be trapped in the land of fables somewhere now," he trailed off, a dreamy look on his face.
"When destroying that place, did you ever feel sympathy for them?" Elias asked, the word almost catching in his throat. "... for anyone? I'm sure there must have been many children there like us, right? What about them?"
Dreke waved a dismissive hand. "Collateral damage. Necessary sacrifices. They wouldn't have survived long anyway."
He picked up a small vial filled with a purple liquid and added a single drop to the mixture in front of him. The concoction released a cloud of dense smoke before calming down.
"That is true. Collateral damage is normal," Elias said, his voice barely audible, reduced to nothing more than a whisper by the realization that he was nothing more than collateral damage to this person.
Dreke finished writing a step-by-step process for the virus that he was about to create, and placed the pen in the middle of the diary before walking to the shelves.
He opened the lock and started taking out the materials. "Help me carry the two jars at the top. And you better not drop them."
After taking the jars, he walked back to the table, leaving the rest for Elias.
After he placed the jars he was carrying on the table, he looked back, expecting Elias to be carrying the other jars as instructed. But to his surprise, the boy hadn't moved an inch.
"Why are you not following orders?"
"The lab is here... You are here... The shelves are unlocked, so I won't have to break anything in the extraction storm..." Elias could be seen mumbling to himself, completely ignoring Dreke.
"What are you talking about? Have you lost your mind? Do as I said, you brat!" Dreke raised his hand to slap the back of Elias's head.
He wanted to bring him out of his daze, but he was once again at a loss when his wrist was caught by Elias.
He was on his second evolution, so he should have had more strength than Elias, but he wasn't even able to move his hand.
"Release my hand this instant!" he said, feeling as if something was seriously wrong with Elias. This was nothing like his subservient self from before.
"This should be enough." Elias glanced back at Dreke, realizing that he had already received more than he had aimed for. Everything was prepared for Dreke, just as he wanted.
"What are you saying?" Dreke's expression darkened as he started resisting even more fiercely, having a really bad feeling about this.
Secretly, he began releasing a virus through the hand that Elias was holding, letting the virus invade the boy's body without making any drastic movements.
He didn't know what the boy was trying to do, but he didn't want to find out. His instincts had already warned him the moment his hand was caught.
He expected Elias to start suffering from the virus that he had released. He believed that the boy would start screaming any moment, but something was also wrong with his own body. It was as if someone had cast a spell of sleepiness over him.
Within minutes, his mind was overwhelmed with thoughts of sleep, to the point that he could barely keep his eyes open. He didn't want to sleep at this moment, as it didn't feel natural, but his body was completely under the control of this sleepiness.
He tried releasing the virus in his own body to keep himself awake, but he was so overwhelmed with sleep that before the virus could be released, his eyes closed.
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The last thing that he saw was Elias still holding his wrist, and then everything turned dark.
"Don't worry, brother. I will not make you collateral damage... I will make sure to give you the priority that you deserve. So sleep peacefully until it's time to wake up..."
Elias watched Dreke, whose body had gone limp as he fell asleep. He carried the body to the experimentation table where Dreke had been trapped in his illusion.
Fortunately, the chains were also right there, which he used to bind Dreke's hands and legs before taking a step back to appreciate the scene.
He also looked at his hand, where a virus had started wrecking his body. Every second, he felt the pain become stronger, but it paled in comparison to the pain of evolution and merger with soul beast essence.
Not wanting to destroy the lab, he stepped out, and only after going far away from it, he used precise extraction to remove a condensed form of the virus.
After keeping the virus in his class storage, he returned to the lab to complete what he had left pending.