Chapter 137: Becoming a Perfect Weapon
Cold.
It was the first sensation Mordred experienced each morning, when they extracted him from his cell like a specimen removed from formaldehyde. Not a natural cold, invigorating or purifying. An insidious cold, almost tangible, that infiltrated down to the marrow of his bones. A constant temperature of nine degrees Celsius - low enough to slow metabolism without compromising vital functions. An environment calculated by beings who understood human physiology better than humans themselves. The cold of the draconic kingdom’s entrails, that of a place designed with architectural precision for a single function: to deconstruct the human in order to rebuild him.
To systematically fracture each psychological barrier.
For how long had he been subjected to this treatment? The chronology escaped him. The draconic kingdom did not measure time according to human criteria. No circadian reference points, no clock, no bell, no solar glow. Only the alternation between phases of forced wakefulness, characterized by controlled cortisol release into his system, and periods of total exhaustion, where his body, saturated with lactic acid and residual adrenaline, collapsed into an unconsciousness that had nothing restorative about it. Days were no longer temporal units but biochemical cycles. His body, a malleable organic system. And he, a prototype in perpetual modification.
His exact location remained unknown. Probably an underground section of the palace complex, judging by the barometric pressure and oxygen concentration slightly below normal. A living laboratory dedicated to the transmutation of creatures deemed inferior. A facility whose very existence was denied in official records. But geography mattered little. There were no witnesses, no applicable jurisdiction. Only draconic manipulators with hands protected by mana-conducting alloys, masked observers, enchanted instruments calibrated for each intervention, and pain administered with surgical precision, in measurable neurophysiological increments.
Dragons did not teach. They reconfigured.
Never raised voices. Never arbitrary punishments. Only meticulous observation, adjustment of variables, controlled experimentation. Like metallurgists working a rare alloy, between scientific fascination and ancestral pride. And Mordred no longer belonged to humanity nor animality. He had become a transitional state, a biological artifact in its final phase of optimization.
They strengthened his tendinous structures using myofibrillar compounds, introduced through thermal micro-perforation down to the collagen fibers. The first days, he screamed. Now, his nociceptive receptors had been recalibrated - his nerve pathways having been deliberately damaged then reconstructed during the initial weeks. He was immersed in solutions highly concentrated with liquefied manalytes, whose ionic composition corroded damaged tissues while catalyzing the multiplication of type II muscle fibers, those dedicated to explosiveness. The periods of prolonged fasting - precisely seventy-two hours - were followed by enteral injections of a hyperconcentrated nutritional complex of amino acids and specific proteins, directly absorbable by the intestinal mucosa.
They inculcated mastery of the autonomic nervous system: voluntary slowing of respiratory rhythm down to six cycles per minute, maintenance of muscle tone even during recovery phases, reprogramming of the circadian cycle. His sleep was fragmented into micro-phases of one hundred and eighty seconds, induced by stimulation of theta brain waves. And when he collapsed from exhaustion, they showed no reproach. They documented. They recalculated the parameters.
And restarted the protocol, adjusted.
Sometimes, while he was forced to progress across surfaces heated to exactly one hundred and twenty degrees Celsius - the temperature where skin begins to delaminate but before tissue carbonization - or to suspend his breathing in an atmosphere saturated with non-lethal concentrations of neurotoxic compounds, his thoughts drifted to Isaac. His other self. Immobilized, suspended, locked beneath Paris in a containment structure, under one hundred meters of limestone, with no sensory stimulation other than the awareness of infinite waiting.