Reincarnated with a lucky draw system - Chapter 208

Chapter 208: DREAM II
Young Abigail floated within a sterile tube, her body suspended in a viscous, luminescent fluid that shimmered with an unnatural sheen, its properties alien and unyielding. Around her, other children, no older than fifteen, endured the same grim fate, their faces pale and drawn, eyes hollow with the weight of despair. The laboratory was a cold, clinical prison, its walls lined with humming machinery and monitors that blinked with indifferent precision, cataloging the suffering of its captives.

Her world had unraveled with brutal swiftness. A catastrophic dungeon break had torn through her life, claiming her parents in a selfless act of sacrifice to ensure her survival. The memory of their final moments—her mother’s desperate embrace, her father’s resolute stand against the encroaching horrors—clung to her like a persistent ghost, yet she was denied even the solace of tears. Whisked away to this clandestine facility, Abigail became a lab rat, subjected to relentless experimentation. Her blood was drawn daily, siphoned into vials that glowed faintly with her life’s essence, while crystalline dust, its origins a mystery was administered in cruel doses. Sometimes she was forced to swallow it, the substance burning her throat like liquid fire; other times, it was inhaled, stinging her lungs, or injected directly into her veins, sending jolts of agony through her frail body. Many of the other children succumbed, their lifeless forms carted away to unknown fates, leaving Abigail to endure the torment in solitude.

The ordeal eroded her spirit, each day stripping away another fragment of her will to live, until she was little more than a hollow shell, sustained only by a stubborn flicker of defiance buried deep within. One fateful day, she was taken to a surgical theater, her weakened state rendering her powerless to resist. Under the cold gaze of masked scientists, directed by a diminutive woman with a tight ponytail, they implanted a radiant, glowing stone within her body. With meticulous cruelty, they sliced into her organs—heart, brain, lungs, kidneys, liver, spleen—embedding shards of the luminescent core into each, the pain a white-hot symphony that threatened to shatter her entirely.

The days that followed were a haze of monitoring and invasive inspections, the scientists probing her condition with clinical detachment, their instruments humming as they sought to stabilize the volatile core now fused with her being. Yet Abigail clung to life, her minuscule will fueled by an unyielding resolve to endure. She studied her captors as they studied her, noting their routines, their weaknesses, and the faint whispers of their conversations. She learned the glowing stone was a dungeon core, its power amplifying her own, granting her abilities she barely understood but meticulously honed in secret.

For forty years, she bided her time, her body gradually adapting to the core’s influence, the negative reactions subsiding as her strength grew. She discovered her gift: the ability to weave illusions so vivid they could deceive reality itself. She masked the true extent of her power, feigning weakness while obeying the scientists’ demands with calculated naivety, all while plotting her escape. Her primary threats were the ponytail woman and a masked man who visited sporadically, their presence a palpable danger she knew she must avoid.

When the moment arrived, Abigail orchestrated her escape with surgical precision, timing it for when her overseers were absent. She wove an intricate illusion, manipulating the scientists’ perceptions to believe she still consumed the drugs designed to suppress her abilities. In truth, she hoarded her strength, letting it build like a storm behind a dam.

The day of her liberation came when she deemed herself strong enough. As the last surviving experiment in the lab, she unleashed her power without remorse, illusions cloaking her actions as she tore through the facility. The scientists fell, their screams silenced by her wrath, and the laboratory crumbled under the weight of her vengeance, reduced to rubble and ash. The dungeon core within her thrummed with power, amplifying her illusions to ensure a seamless escape.

Fleeing as far as her legs could carry her, Abigail collapsed in a grimy alley, her energy sapped by the exertion of her newfound abilities. The world spun around her, the edges of her vision blurring as exhaustion claimed its toll.

By chance, a woman with porcelain skin, raven-black hair, and an ethereal beauty passed through the alley at that moment, her presence a stark contrast to the squalor around her. Seeing Abigail’s crumpled form, she rushed to her side, concern etched into her delicate features.

“Are you alright?” the woman asked, her voice a melodic blend of warmth and strength, like a lullaby woven with steel.

“Mum,” Abigail murmured, her voice frail and unfocused, unable to discern the woman’s face through the haze of pain and fatigue.

With surprising strength for her slender frame, the woman lifted Abigail, cradling her as if she weighed nothing. As she moved to leave the alley, a group of thugs emerged, their leering grins and predatory postures blocking her path.

“Where do you think you’re going, lady?” one of them taunted, spreading his arms to bar her way, his voice dripping with malice.

“Let me pass if you value your lives,” the woman warned, her tone calm but laced with a chilling promise, like the quiet before a storm’s wrath.

The leader smirked, undeterred. “I don’t think so. Me and my boys have some… tension we’d like you to help us relieve. Your friend there doesn’t look so good, but don’t worry—we’ll be gentle with her too.” His tongue darted out, a grotesque gesture that twisted his features into a caricature of lust.

“This is my final warning,” the woman said, her eyes igniting with a crimson glow that seemed to burn through the dim light of the alley, casting eerie shadows that danced with menace.

“Or what?” another thug scoffed, brandishing a crude club with arrogant confidence.

“Blood summoning: blood bat,” the woman intoned, her voice dropping to a deadly whisper as a single drop of blood fell from her thumb, striking the ground with a faint hiss. A summoning circle flared to life, its crimson lines pulsing with arcane energy. From its center emerged a bat, its skin a vivid scarlet, its eyes glowing with the same feral red as its summoner’s.

“Kill them all,” she commanded coldly, her words a death knell that sealed the thugs’ fates as the bat lunged forward with predatory precision.