Apotheosis

Soon, Ivan rummaged through a corner and found a long box.

The box was also carved from bone, with exquisite patterns on its surface.

Ivan carried the box over to Lu Xiao.

"My friend! This is a piece I have kept in my collection for many years!"

As he spoke, he opened the box.

Inside lay a bone spike roughly thirty centimeters long.

Exquisite, intricate patterns covered the entire bone spike.

A smooth, azure gemstone was also set into the end of its handle.

Ivan picked up the bone spike, his voice echoing through the room.

"This came from a leg bone and an eyeball I obtained by chance!"

"I have no idea which being they came from!"

"I poured my lifetime's understanding of alchemy arrays into this bone spike!"

"He is the greatest work of my entire life!"

Lu Xiao's gaze was utterly captivated by the bone spike.

His eyes never once left the exquisite bone spike.

After staring at it for a long while, Lu Xiao declined with a hint of regret.

"Mr. Ivan, this is too precious!"

Ivan, however, thrust the box into Lu Xiao's arms.

"My friend! It is yours now!"

"Only someone who appreciates fine work deserves to own it!"

"Clearly, you are someone who understands art very well!"

The prison doctor spoke from beside them.

"Ivan is right, my friend. Only you deserve to own it!"

Lu Xiao froze, his lifeless, dead-fish eyes spoiling the moved expression on his face.

"Thank you both for recognizing my worth!"

He put away the bone spike, then spoke solemnly.

"Forgive me! We have known each other this long, and I still haven't told you my name!"

"My name is Lu Xiao. Xiao, as in 'smile'!"

The prison doctor replied.

"Lu! Prison Doctor is my name!"

Ivan's voice also rang out then.

"Lu! We will certainly become very good friends!"

Lu Xiao nodded, his face beaming with a smile.

Through the surveillance feed, the doctor took in everything.

Contained Anomalies were monitored at all times.

One reason was to prevent abnormalities in the Contained Anomalies; another was to continually collect data for research and analysis.

"Hmm! S081's containment conditions can be updated!"

He murmured this under his breath.

Then his gaze settled on the bone spike.

Meanwhile.

Ivan's voice rang out again.

"Lu! Your curse will cause you trouble again in the near future!"

"I inscribed suppressive alchemy arrays on your bones, but that only treats the symptoms, not the root cause!"

Hearing this, Lu Xiao immediately began listening closely.

With his own body at stake, he dared not be careless.

Ivan said.

"That curse is rooted in your bone marrow. There is no possibility of eradicating it!"

"But that curse also gives you tremendous strength!"

Lu Xiao nodded, then said.

"Then what should I do next? How much time do I have left?"

Ivan pondered for a moment and looked at the prison doctor.

The prison doctor explained.

"I told you before that this curse ends with you becoming a mass of rotten flesh with no thoughts, only instincts!"

"But that theory may not necessarily apply, because the last time I saw it was in a pig!"

"Although that pig ended up as a mass of rotten flesh, it also transformed into a higher-dimensional form!"

"Even I nearly became contaminated when I saw that form!"

A trace of lingering fear colored the prison doctor's words.

As he spoke, he looked at Lu Xiao again.

"Your condition is similar to that cursed pig's. Judging by the curse components in your blood, you should become that mass of rotten flesh next month!"

"But the surgery Ivan and I performed pushed that back by a year!"

"So you need to find a solution within this year!"

Lu Xiao nodded and spoke gravely.

"Then where should I look? Back in the Dark Prison?"

The prison doctor replied.

"If you return to the Dark Prison, your curse will worsen, so my advice is to search in the human world!"

Lu Xiao nodded, then looked at Ivan.

Ivan offered no advice.

So Lu Xiao committed those words to memory.

After chatting for a while, Lu Xiao bade the two farewell.

Once Lu Xiao left, Ivan looked at the prison doctor.

"Why did you lie to Lu?"

"Returning to the Dark Prison is clearly the only way he might find a solution!"

The prison doctor shook his head.

"I didn't lie to him! Returning to the Dark Prison would indeed give him a better chance of resolving the curse!"

"But it would also accelerate the curse's corruption!"

He paused as he spoke.

Ivan instantly understood what he meant.

His bones began to vibrate strangely.

At the same time, every carving in the room began vibrating along with them.

At the monitoring station, the doctor adjusted his monocle as he watched the dark surveillance feed and listened to the cacophony.

Only then did the prison doctor continue.

"This curse is called apotheosis!"

"And since Lu is a human, the human world is better suited to him!"

Hearing this, the soul flames in Ivan's eye sockets flickered incessantly.

"How did a human like him end up under this kind of curse?"

The prison doctor shrugged.

"I'm very curious about that too!"

Worry seeped into Ivan's voice.

"But the consequences of failing apotheosis..."

He did not finish.

The prison doctor let out a harsh laugh, like a crow cawing.

"But I believe in Lu!"

Lu Xiao returned to his containment room and immediately spoke into the air.

"Doctor! Are you there?"

Soon, the doctor arrived at Lu Xiao's containment room.

Lu Xiao asked the doctor.

"Doctor! I want to go to the human world!"

Since Lu Xiao was unsure whether this human world was the world he had originally lived in, he could only use the term "human world" instead.

Of everything he had seen in the Containment Facility so far, apart from the somewhat familiar firearms, almost everything was something he had never seen before.

The doctor hummed thoughtfully.

"But the Containment Facility has no precedent for taking a Living Contained Anomaly into the real world!"

The doctor was not actually lying about this.

Lu Xiao was a living, mobile organism, whereas the Contained Anomalies called upon to assist with containment were generally inanimate objects.

The difference between the two was that Lu Xiao was harder to control.

Hearing the doctor's words, Lu Xiao froze for a moment, then asked.

"Then is there another way?"

The doctor forced a troubled expression onto his face.

"There is a way!"

Hearing that there was a way, Lu Xiao breathed a sigh of relief, then looked at the doctor expectantly.

The doctor spoke gravely.

"I can have you help the Prison Wardens carry out missions to Contain Anomalies!"

"But that would undoubtedly pose an enormous risk to me!"

He looked at Lu Xiao, whose figure was reflected in his monocle.

"If you injure a human while you are out, the organization will designate you Class D and put me on trial!"

Lu Xiao instantly understood what the doctor meant.

He patted his chest and promised.

"Don't worry, Doctor! I'm very friendly toward humans!"

The doctor nodded.

"At least for now, things are indeed as you say! That is also the basis of my trust in you!"

"But I have one more condition!"