CHAPTER 467: EXPERIMENT

"Hmm?" Lane paused, glancing at Ava. "More time?"

"Yeah. There’s something else I’d like to try..."

For a moment, Lane just stared at Ava in silence.

Did he have more time to spare? Well, yeah. Damien wouldn’t be back for at least a few more hours. And, while Lane had other things to do (such as catching up on all of the secret organization’s stuff, and so on), it wasn’t anything urgent. Thanks to how well Ava had managed his emails, he could afford to leave it for later.

...But he had a bad feeling about it. Seeing the spark in Ava’s eyes...

"What is it?" he asked hesitantly.

Which Ava took as a ’yes’. Since Lane was asking about it, it meant that he had time.

Well, of course he had time. Otherwise, he wouldn’t drop by ManaTech unannounced, would he?

She threw one last glance at her spider babies. They had finished hatching, and were now feeding on the monster meat she prepared for them. She felt a bit sad to leave them...

But there was a camera recording their activity, so even if she wasn’t there to personally see it, it’s not like she would entirely miss out on it.

And who knew when Lane would be able to drop by the labs again, with how busy he was at the Association? What she had just come up with wasn’t THAT urgent, not really, but now that the idea was in her head, she just HAD to do it, or else her curiosity would eat her alive...

Thus, she grabbed Lane by the wrist, practically dragging him out of lab E16. "Follow me."

"Uh... Where are we going?"

"You’ll see."

They didn’t go far. Ava just dragged Lane down the hallway, taking one turn right, then one left, before stopping in front of another lab, still within block E. She unlocked the door, letting them in...

The room was rather dark, even after Ava turned on the lights, and relatively cool and humid. Filled with multiple terrariums of varying sizes, starting from relatively small, to a few larger ones. Each of them contained the same type of environment, though, and living within them were...

"Uh... Why did you bring me here?" Lane’s eyes slid over the terrariums, the uneasy feeling within his chest growing stronger.

But Ava just smiled at him. "A while ago, you asked me to research how your ability affects people you plunder and possess, right?"

"...Right..."

There was indeed something like that. Well, it wasn’t exactly a new thing, since Ava had been trying to figure it out ever since they had discovered the side effects that Lane’s ability had on people... And they already had a good idea of what it did. The only thing they were still missing was how to ’fix’ it. Ava had been trying to examine all the samples she received from Lane, but since she had never notified him about the results, there were probably none to speak of.

"Well, then that’s a good opportunity to figure it out once and for all. Those slugs here are quite disposable, since we have a lot of them, and they are easy to breed. We can set an experiment by creating a few groups..." As she explained, Ava already started moving around, checking the terrariums which contained single slugs, and marking them as she picked the experimental subjects. "First, the control group... Which you’re not going to touch. Second, the Plunder group... You’re going to plunder their abilities, nothing more. Next, the Possession group... You’re going to plunder, and then possess them for a few minutes..."

There it was. The thing that Lane had feared.

"Wait, hold on," he interrupted Ava. "You want me to POSSESS the SLUGS?"

"Yes. Is there a problem?"

Lane blinked, staring at Ava as if she were dumb.

’Is there a problem?’ Was she seriously asking him that?

After she had just told him to POSSESS SLUGS?

"Ah, could it be that you can’t?" Ava tilted her head, as if she still couldn’t understand Lane’s reaction. "Since you can use the Plunder ability on the monsters, I thought that the Possession might also work, since the activation conditions are the same..."

Well, they were. And the feeling that Lane had with the spiders... He probably could have tried possessing them, if he wanted to.

Why would he want to, though?

"It would be great if you could..." Ava continued, subtly trying to convince Lane. "After all, the effects of the Plunder and the Possession are not the same..."

That was... true. After Lane used his Plunder ability on someone, the only issue was that their wavelengths were disturbed, which disabled them from controlling their abilities well. Hence, they called the ability ’Plunder’ rather than ’Copy’. It was bad for the person affected, of course, which is why Lane wasn’t going around randomly plundering people... But it was still nothing compared to the aftereffects of the Possession, which disturbed the nervous system, rewiring it to work for Lane. As a result, people affected could no longer control their bodies well, leaving them practically bed-bound, even long after Lane had broken their connection.

If Ava could figure out a method to fix those issues, though...

"It would be better for the experiments if we had all three groups... And then one more slug that you would possess, and then keep the connection with. This way, I might be able to figure out how it worked, and how to restore the subjects back to normal. Think about it, if we had a way to fix the issues, you would be able to plunder... no, copy, many other abilities! From Damien, from Nyla, from people from your organization... Wouldn’t that be great?" she added, tempting Lane.

Indeed, that would be nice... There were many abilities that Lane wanted to have for himself, but couldn’t take, because he didn’t want to harm the people who possessed them. If there were a way to take the abilities without affecting the people...

"And those slugs have electric ability. Your lightning ability is currently a C-rank, right? Think about how much stronger it would get if you plundered and possessed all those slugs..."

...Indeed. Lane licked his lips, looking at one of the slugs, lazily climbing the glass wall of its terrarium. Of course, the possession wasn’t necessary for the plunder, but... If he agreed to do it, then Ava would allow him to plunder more slugs.

Seeing that he was almost convinced, Ava shot her final argument,

"And that guy... Oscar, was it? We’d be able to finally get him healed..."