Feng Chou weakly lay on the ground, letting the young mage take off his clothes one by one.
As the son of a Frontier Knight, Leo couldn't be considered a noble, but his status was still nobler than an ordinary commoner. After all, he had a noble bloodline.
He was currently wearing a hunting suit that was quite popular among ordinary nobles. This kind of suit was soft and tight, it didn't affect his movements, but it was quite troublesome to put it on. Of course, it was also troublesome to take it off.
The young mage Drow spent a lot of effort to take off Feng Chou's bloodstained clothes. He bent down to gather the tattered clothes together, and just as he was about to leave with this pile of trash, the naked human behind him suddenly jumped up from the ground and pounced on his back.
The young mage Drow was very vigilant and reacted very quickly. Just as Feng Chou jumped up from the ground, he made a strange gesture, and at the same time, a short and melodious syllable came out of his mouth.
However, it seemed like nothing happened, at least in Feng Chou's eyes. He hadn't completely digested Leo's memories that he had just fused with. These memories seemed to be separated from his thoughts by a layer of gauze, and couldn't be used as quickly as his own memories and experiences.
Without time to think, Feng Chou's body had already pounced on the young mage's back, one of his hands going through the young mage's neck, using all his strength to firmly lock him.
Feng Chou's series of actions didn't have a trace of hesitation, revealing a frightening fierceness.
Unfortunately, this kind of fierceness was meaningless in front of a mage!
Feng Chou quickly realized that something was wrong. No matter how hard he tried to strangle the sorcerer, he was unable to touch the sorcerer's skin. There seemed to be a thin, but extremely sturdy membrane between his arm and the sorcerer's neck!
The young mage didn't seem to be in pain after being strangled by Feng Chou. He even unhurriedly revealed a disdainful sneer before extending his right hand and making a strange gesture. He once again uttered a different syllable, but it was still short and melodious. Feng Chou used all his strength to strangle him, but he couldn't make his voice tremble in the slightest.
As the young mage's syllables fell, a rope drilled out of his sleeve. This rope was like a spirit snake, coiling around Feng Chou's body and tying him up like a dumpling in the blink of an eye.
Feng Chou, who was tied up like a dumpling, naturally fell from the mage's body. The mage turned around and glared fiercely at Feng Chou with a pair of red eyes. His handsome face was filled with viciousness as if he wanted to devour someone.
But this young mage stared fiercely at Feng Chou for a while, then turned to look at the old mage's back. In the end, he didn't take any further action and roughly dragged Feng Chou to the center of the array.
Under the young mage's command, the rope binding Feng Chou kept squirming, freeing one of his hands. The young mage grabbed this freed hand and pressed it towards a certain part of the array.
Feng Chou naturally wasn't willing to let him do as he wished, and struggled with all his might.
After all, he was a 2nd Rank Warrior, so his strength wasn't small. The young mage actually couldn't resist him.
Feng Chou finally enraged the mage. He jumped up from the ground and fiercely kicked Feng Chou's head. After seven or eight kicks, he finally suppressed his anger. Looking at Feng Chou lying on the ground, he was actually looking at him with a disdainful and despicable expression. His blood rushed to his head, and he almost lost control of his emotions.
This despicable expression was what Feng Chou often used when he was bullied as a child in order to protect his last bit of self-esteem, even though this expression would make him suffer even more.
The young mage took a few deep breaths to suppress his anger.
After calming down, he seemed to have thought of something, and cast a spell at Feng Chou with some annoyance.
As the incantation fell, Feng Chou's vision darkened, and he fell into a deep sleep.
Using "Sleep Spell" to make Feng Chou fall into a magical sleep, the young mage waved his hand to remove the rope that was wrapped around him.
This spell that made the rope as flexible as a spirit snake and could be controlled by the mage was called "Living Rope". Like "Sleep Spell", it was only a 1st Rank spell.
The young mage pulled the sleeping Feng Chou into a spread position, and placed his hands and feet on four special small platforms on the array.
After placing Feng Chou in place, the young mage made a gesture and softly chanted a few syllables of an incantation. A few black octopus-like tentacles emerged from the four small platforms, firmly locking Feng Chou's four limbs.
After securing Feng Chou in the array, the young mage carried his tattered hunting clothes and walked out.
As a 1st Rank spell, "Sleep Spell" only had a basic effective time of one minute. As soon as the young mage left, Feng Chou woke up.
After waking up, Feng Chou tilted his head to look at the black tentacles that were tightly wrapped around his wrists and ankles. He struggled for a while, and after making sure that he could not break free, he gave up and began to look around the room. He also searched Leo's memories and began to identify the things in the room.
In fact, the things in the room were very limited. Other than the magic array below him, there were only the four iron cages in the four corners of the room that held unknown humanoid creatures.
The iron bars that made up the iron cages were very thick, with a diameter of more than three centimeters. A faint dark blue luster shone through the darkness.
"Black Steel!" A strange word emerged from Leo's memories.
According to Leo's memories, Black Steel was an alloy made from a metal unique to this world called "Black Iron" as the main material. This alloy was a very widely used metal alchemy material. Its biggest feature was its sturdiness, which could even reach ten times the strength of ordinary steel.
Among all the low-grade alchemy materials, Black Steel was the strongest in terms of both hardness and toughness. Even some mid-grade alchemy materials could not compare to it. The reason why Black Steel was a low-grade alchemy material was that its magic conductivity was too poor.
A sword made of Black Steel was enough for a 5th Rank warrior to use on the battlefield without worrying about damage.
This alloy was even more expensive than silver of the same weight in the market.
Such a tough and expensive metal was used to make such a heavy cage. What kind of thing was inside the cage?
Feng Chou could not help but carefully observe the creature in the cage.
It was a creature with limbs similar to a human's, but with a head similar to a cat's. The front of its arms were not human hands, but the sharp claws of a ferocious beast.
Very quickly, one name after another appeared in Feng Chou's mind. "Tigermen"!
Tigermen were a type of Werecreatures.
As for Werecreatures, according to Feng Chou's understanding of the information in Leo's memories, they should be similar to the "Werewolves" of the Western Middle Ages.
Werecreature was like a virus. Once a normal human was infected with a certain "Werecreature Virus", their body could possibly mutate. Under certain circumstances, they would turn into something that was half human and half beast.
Tigermen were Werecreatures that could turn into half human and half tiger.
According to Leo's memories, Tigermen were the strongest type of Werecreatures. Once a normal human was infected with Tigermen's Werecreature Virus, if their body's immune system failed and they could survive the mutation without dying from complications, their body would undergo drastic changes in a short period of time. They would become very strong, even comparable to a 5th Rank warrior.
After all, a 5th Rank warrior was already considered a mid-ranked warrior.
That wasn't all. Tigermen infected with Werecreature Virus would also gain the ability to transform, becoming half human and half tiger like a Werewolf.
Once they transformed into their half-human, half-beast form, the physique of the Tigermen would greatly increase, even comparable to a 8th Rank warrior!
Leo knew very well how powerful an eighth-rank warrior was.
When Leo was young, he had seen his father casually punch a wild horse that had charged at him out of fear, sending it flying five or six meters away. At that time, his father was already a 8th Rank Arcane Knight.
If there were only these benefits, then many people who pursued power by hook or by crook wouldn't mind becoming Tigermen. However, the disadvantages of being infected with Werecreature Virus were also very obvious.
Werecreature Virus would erode the intelligence of intelligent creatures. The end result was that the victim would completely turn into a wild beast. This was something that no intelligent creature could accept.
The most obvious sign of werecreatures losing their intelligence was that they would maintain their half-human, half-beast form for a long period of time. Some werecreatures had even completely lost the ability to transform back into a human.
The four Tigermen in the metal cage maintained their werecreature even when they were unconscious. It was obvious that they were the kind of people who had completely lost their intelligence.
Looking at these four Tigermen, Feng Chou suddenly had an ominous premonition. Could it be that this mage was going to conduct a bloodline fusion experiment?
When Leo was in the mage school, he had read a book about werecreatures. Even though his memory of the contents of the book was already blurry, he still remembered some of the most basic information about werecreatures.
Werecreatures were actually the products of failed experiments during the Arcane Empire when those crazy arcanists were researching how to create powerful warriors in batches.
Leo clearly remembered that it was written at the end of that book. "… Even today, there are still some mages who are obsessed with researching the bloodline modification of werecreatures. If they could solve the problem of the Werecreature Virus eroding intelligence, then this bloodline would undoubtedly be an excellent method to create powerful warriors in batches. It could even easily change the balance of power between the various races in the Tharlen Continent.
"However, bloodline modification is an extremely cruel experiment. The experiment could cause the bloodline of the test subject to collapse, and in turn cause the body to completely collapse. The test subject would turn into a ball of thick, scarlet minced meat in extreme pain …"
This deduction made Feng Chou's hair stand on end!