He thanked mother high heaven that he was here to explain the situation away, things could have gone worse in his absence. His subordinates weren't transcendents so they didn't know the history of the tradition only that it is a tradition.
"You have such an impressive son." He praised.
"Of course." She said with pride, but her mind was on something else. The prank gave her an idea of how to manage the trouble that was her eldest son. She just had to find something that Soverick was afraid of and she would be able to grasp a weakness of his. The failure of the earlier prank also made her realize that finding that weakness would be difficult.
Another officer joined in on the conversation. He complimented "Your son must be iron-willed or has not inherited the fear."
The presence of ancestral memories can create a weakness that shouldn't be there at all, especially in scenarios like this. The dreadful species have disappeared but the fear of them is very much still present. The worst part is that some fears become more prominent because of vague or exaggerated memories passed down from generation to generation, the source of the fear becomes terrifying due to generational amplification. It is one of the weaknesses of a royal bloodline, the inheritance of fear and weaknesses.
Many of the officers approached Soverick with interest. One of them gave him a thumbs up. "Nice going kid, what's your name?"
Soverick ignored all of them. Being on his feet for so long was not a pleasant feeling, especially when he was in the process of condensing his vitality core. The process was painful enough without the addition of a lame joke. He turned to the supervisor. "Can we start now?"
"Yes, we can." The supervisor answered. Then he glared at the officers. "Do your job." His voice was stern as ice. He envied them a little. They were too weak to realize they were standing in front of predators. Their minds are still locked within their bodies unlike him, so they couldn't fathom the strength of the people whose children they were traumatizing. "Ignorance is bliss." He grumbled to himself.
The prank might be a harmless tradition but there are sometimes future repercussions. It has happened several times in the past where a child they scared into pissing himself returned for revenge. The worst part is that they usually came for him because most of the people that participated in the prank had all died. But the pranking could not be stopped because just like the city, it had its origin story. The world becomes a peculiar place when history is not lost and the past is not some vague memory because there are people that have lived that long.
The officers rushed back to the machine and started pressing runes on its surface. The square patch by the side of the machine opened and elongated to reveal a horizontal platform. An officer pointed to the platform.
"Lie here. Don't worry it is comfortable."
Soverick climbed onto it and laid down. The platform was lined with a soft material that was comfortable to touch. Other officers joined in strapping Soverick to the platform. They used belts and buckles attached to the platform to restrict his movements on the platform.
"Don't worry, this is standard procedure. For the evaluation to succeed we will need as little movement as possible. You're safe."
By the time they were done Soverick had been strapped to the platform so tight that he couldn't move at all. His head, arms, chest, leg, thigh, and tail was held down with thick belts. The family had been watching from the side. They all had peculiar looks on their face.
"I can see why children will be scared of this," Kayla said. She wondered if she would be able to keep her cool in such a situation. Strapped to a table and fed into the belly of a weird-looking machine. The machine didn't scare her, it was the act of restricting her that didn't sit right with her. She wouldn't want to be at the mercy of others and be subject to mother high heaven knows what.
"Don't scare the kids." Ghoto stopped her from sprouting more fear-inducing words. His kids had already paid the price of being traumatized, it would be a serious waste if they become too scared to go through with the evaluation.
The officers checked each strap to make sure everything was in order before they gave the go-ahead. More runes were pressed and more runes flashed before the platform started to retract back into the machine. To Ghaster and Litori, it looked like the machine was eating Soverick. The officers were moving about, checking stuff and pressing runes. The supervisor was in turn checking the work of the officers, he wanted nothing to go wrong. If any accident were to occur it wouldn't happen because of the machine. The machine has been tried and tested over countless years and operations, the only room for error would be the operators. That would have been easy to curb if the machine had its artificial intelligence or at least an operation spirit, but that idea was shot down. The idea that the machine was slightly alive or sentient in any way did not go well with the intended users, even after the prank scare.
Meanwhile, Soverick remained calm within the insides of the machine. He was just hoping that everything would be over soon and he could return to his room and talk to his only friend.
"Please remain calm." A voice spoke through a concealed audio device.
"Stop telling me to remain calm. The fact that you emphasize it is counterproductive."
"Noted. Do you want to listen to anything?"
"No thanks."
"Noted."
Then all sound ceased. Soverick found the blank whiteness of the interior coupled with total silence to be soothing. It reminded him of the solitude of refinement. The evaluation began silently.
"Everything is going just well and it will take just 10 minutes." The supervisor said to the waiting family.
"This isn't right." An officer exclaimed. The supervisor rushed to the officer. "Couldn't you have just informed me privately instead of shouting it out to the entire room? Do you want me to die?" He cursed silently.
"What do you mean? What isn't right?" He fired the question in a hurry. The slight delay in response infuriated the supervisor. 'The mind processing ability of these people is truly trash.' He pushed the officer and examined the display panel himself.
"This can't be right." He also exclaimed. He had wanted the officer to be wrong but what he saw stunned him too. 'Could the machine be malfunctioning?' He wondered. Mihila and Ghoto were on top of him even faster than he was on top of the officer.
"What isn't right?" Mihila questioned with a steely voice. Ghoto remained silent, but he was ready to do serious damage if something went wrong. He had had enough and someone was going to pay for that. His patience could only take so much before he snaps.
"There's nothing wrong with the machine or your son. It is just that the results of the evaluation seem exaggerated, almost unbelievable."
"Details," Mihila demanded.
"It says here that your son is 105.69kg."
"What's wrong about that?" Ghoto panicked. He was aware that his son was a little heavier than his siblings but he hadn't paid it any special attention. What's the difference between 50kg, 100kg, or 1000kg? It's all the same to a king of law. Could it be that his negligence had caused his son harm?
"A child his age should be around 50kg, and at most 60kg. He has broken the limit by a wide margin." The supervisor struggled to find his words but thankfully communication through divine sense was emotionally intuitive. But even that wasn't enough to quell the pair's anxiety.
"Is that bad?" Ghoto asked. He just wanted to know the significance not the details right now.
"It doesn't look bad, just unbelievable." They were about to be relieved but the supervisor continued. "What is bad is his Vitality level. How is he even alive? It is more than unbelievable it should be impossible." He questioned in unbelief.
"The boy's cells are proliferating at an unsustainable rate, the tissue integrity ought to degenerate with the cells bursting at the seams with so much vitality. The gene chains wouldn't be able to keep up with the unraveling speed and should collapse. But the cells have somehow found a way to be stable and are channeling all the vitality to a single location. This is practically impossible." His divine sense screamed for all to hear.
They say that too much of anything is bad. Even water, a necessary component for life, is capable of poisoning a living being at sufficiently excess volume. Drinkable water itself cannot be too pure or it will affect the function of the body system.
