The first thing I noticed when consciousness returned was the weight.
My body pressed deeper into the surface beneath me than it should have, as if the bed I was lying on had become heavier while I slept.
For several seconds I kept my eyes closed, letting sensation return slowly while memory crawled back into place piece by piece.
Son of Argall Thragg.
The arena.
The fist that felt less like a punch and more like a collapsing mountain.
Right, that had happened.
Of course it had.
It wasn't like I had ever truly believed I could win that fight, especially since in my previous life people used to speak about the Grand Regent like he was some kind of walking extinction event.
A nightmare that even Viltrumites feared confronting directly, where if anything in the universe could kill him, it would take a pack of ancient Ragnarr tearing him apart together.
Even then it wasn't certain, and compared to that kind of monster, someone like me had never stood a chance.
Slowly I opened my eyes.
White light greeted me first, reflected across a smooth metallic ceiling where rows of sterile lamps stretched in perfect alignment with a glow too cold to be mistaken for anything but artificial.
The air smelled sharp and clean, like chemicals and metal, the realization that I was in a laboratory hitting me almost immediately.
I tested my body instinctively by trying to lift my arm, but the reaction was immediate as metal restraints tightened with a low mechanical hum and chains pulled my arms back against the surface.
I tried again, this time with real force that made the metal groan faintly, but it didn't break.
That alone told me everything I needed to know because these were Viltrumite restraints, and ordinary metal would have snapped like glass.
Both of my arms were locked down beside the table with reinforced bands, thick restraints clamped around my wrists and shoulders while armored bands ran across my chest to keep my torso from lifting.
For a few seconds I simply stared at them before exhaling slowly.
Of course they chained me, a Viltrumite who should have died but didn't, because the empire wasn't exactly known for letting mysteries walk around freely.
Footsteps echoed somewhere nearby until a figure stepped into view beside the table, tall and thin and dressed in pale armor marked with the insignia of imperial research.
His eyes studied my face with the calm focus of someone examining an object rather than a person.
"Good."
The man said it quietly, glancing toward a floating diagnostic panel beside the table.
"Neural activity is stabilizing faster than expected, and it seems our patient has finally decided to wake up."
"How long was I unconscious?"
I asked him plainly.
"Six days."
The man didn't even look up from the readings.
I raised my head slightly, just enough to look down at my own body, and at first glance nothing looked particularly different.
The same arms and the same structure, but then I noticed the subtle change where my muscles were denser and the fibers beneath my skin looked tighter, like tension cables stretched beneath the surface.
I flexed my fingers carefully, making the chains respond immediately with a dull metallic strain.
The change wasn't just visual because something inside my body had definitely shifted.
I closed my eyes briefly and tried to speak with the system or whatever gave me those rewards, but nothing responded since it did say it was a one-time thing.
Thinking about it hurts.
Then I opened them again, focusing more carefully on the room until the second difference revealed itself as the world sharpened.
It wasn't dramatic, but it was enough that it was impossible to ignore details that should have been invisible, like the tiny vibrations in the metal frame of the medical table.
I could see the faint electrical pulse moving through the scanning equipment and even the subtle expansion of the doctor's lungs every time he breathed.
My perception had deepened into something more than just sharper sight, a better awareness as if my brain had quietly received an upgrade while I was unconscious.
I shifted my focus again and the change intensified, my vision layering itself strangely until the world didn't just look clearer, it felt structured.
Patterns beneath motion and rhythms beneath movement made me realize my eyes had fused with the Sharingan fragment, meaning it wasn't something that needed to be activated.
If so, I wondered if my eyes were red with pinwheel irises, but the fact remained that every moment I was conscious, my senses were operating on an entirely different level.
That was useful, very useful.
The second ability revealed itself more subtly as I focused inward on the strange heaviness inside my body.
My cells were active, more active than they should have been even for Viltrumite biology, which already pushed regeneration beyond normal limits.
Now something else was layered on top of it, something deeper like quiet machinery running somewhere beneath the surface of my body.
Doomsday's influence hadn't turned me into some obvious monster, it had simply merged with what I already was.
Viltrumite durability was now paired with something that evolved through survival, a combination that had terrifying potential.
Then there was the third change, the simplest one, where the spot where my skull had been crushed felt completely normal.
No lingering damage and no weakness, the healing template having erased the injury so thoroughly that even my nerves behaved as if nothing had ever happened.
Magekyo sharingan.
Doomsday the god slayer.
Ken Usato - The Monster healer.
Three changes.
Three impossible upgrades layered onto a body that already belonged to one of the most dangerous species in the galaxy.
Eyes that could see deeper than normal sight.
A body that adapted through survival.
And healing powerful enough to rebuild a destroyed brain.
Which meant the doctor's confusion earlier probably wasn't exaggerated, from their perspective I had died, then stood back up again.
"My name is Doctor Halvar."
The man finally looked away from the diagnostic panel and met my gaze properly for the first time.
"I lead the imperial biological research division."
His voice carried the certainty of someone who had spent decades dissecting problems until nothing about them could surprise him anymore.
"That sounds like a very polite way of saying you cut people open for a living."
The corner of his mouth twitched slightly.
"Research."
He corrected me smoothly, though of course I knew who he was because everyone knew Halvar, the empire's favorite monster in a lab coat.
Entire conquered planets had disappeared into his experiments, which meant Commander Kraevus hadn't simply saved me, he had delivered me directly to the one man in the empire who would find my survival most interesting.
Lucky me.
Halvar continued scanning my body with the hovering device, noting that the neural damage alone should have resulted in permanent death.
"Body that ...rebuilt itself completely."
"I suppose I got lucky."
Halvar's smile deepened slightly, not with amusement but with interest.
"There is no such thing as luck in this world, there is only evolution and progress."
The scanner finished its sweep with a quiet tone.
"The question is whether you're willing to contribute to the empire or not."
In that second I thought a thousand times about what would happen if I said no to this man, but then again my instinct told me that would not be wise.
"I'll comply."
And just like that, without ceremony or celebration, my life as the empire's newest guinea pig truly began.
.
.
.
Six months have passed since I last breathed beneath an open sky.
In the beginning I tried to keep track of the days after waking up inside Halvar's laboratory, forcing myself to count every cycle of the artificial lights meant to imitate a normal day and night rhythm.
But somewhere around the second month the effort stopped meaning anything because time becomes a strange concept when every waking moment is measured by how long it takes your body to heal before someone decides to break it again.
At first I counted the experiments.
Then I counted the bones that snapped.
Then I counted the times my heart stopped.
Eventually even that became pointless.
What I never stopped counting, however, were the moments when I wished every Viltrumite in this facility would simply vanish from existence.
The resentment never faded, sinking deeper into the marrow of my bones with each passing day as Halvar calmly dismantled my body with the detached curiosity of a man studying machinery rather than a living creature.
And Halvar was very thorough.
There are many ways to destroy a body.
Halvar seemed determined to discover all of them.
Sometimes they locked me inside gravity chambers designed to compress Viltrumite physiology until my ribs began creaking like bending steel and something inside me snapped with a dull crack.
Other times they cut.
Piece by piece.
They wanted to see how the healing responded when damage occurred gradually, and I remember the first time they opened my chest; the pain was so overwhelming that for a brief moment, my heart stopped beating.
And then, just as quickly, the healing forced it back into motion again like an engine that refused to remain broken.
Hatred. Frustration. Despair.
At some point those emotions stopped having clear limits and simply blended together into something heavier, quieter, and far more dangerous.
The worst part wasn't the pain.
It was waiting.
That quiet moment when the machines begin humming and you already know what sound your bones will make when they finally crack.
"Increase the pressure slightly, I want to observe whether the regeneration maintains structural integrity beyond this threshold."
"Yes, Doctor Halvar."
The assistant hesitated only for a moment before adjusting the controls, causing the field to tighten and pressure to flood my body like an invisible ocean collapsing inward.
For several seconds nothing happened.
Then the fractures began spreading through my ribs one after another while Halvar leaned forward, fascinated by the results.
Ken Usato's healing magic didn't behave like ordinary regeneration because it forced the body to recover aggressively, refusing to accept the concept of injury itself.
When that magic merged with Viltrumite biology and the Doomsday template, my body adapted endlessly; bones grew denser after every fracture and muscle fibers reorganized after each tear.
Even my nervous system became more tolerant of pain with each cycle.
And then there were these red eyes of mine.
It took me some time to understand how the Sharingan truly functioned in this world since I possessed no chakra network, but I soon realized that mana was filling the gap.
At first it was weak and unstable, yet the Doomsday influence pushed every system inside me to evolve until my mana reserves increased and the Sharingan became easier to use.
The more I practiced inside that empty cell, the clearer the possibilities became.
Healing magic.
Enhanced perception.
Combat instincts refined by countless fights.
When I thought about the future waiting beyond these walls, a small smile sometimes appeared on my lips.
And Halvar noticed that.
Which meant the experiments escalated.
"Remove his eyes, I dislike the way those red eyes look at me."
I tilted my head slightly despite the restraints and asked,
"Are you afraid of them, Doctor?"
His gaze didn't change, but something colder appeared in it, likely because he remembered the moment months earlier when I used Tsukuyomi to show him a rat trapped beneath the claws of a cat..
Perhaps he remembered that feeling.
Perhaps he understood what had happened.
Whatever the reason, he never looked directly into my eyes again after that.
So, darkness followed.
For several hours the world vanished, then the healing restored them, and Halvar began documenting that as well.
Combat trials began around the second month.
At first Halvar sent alien prisoners into the arena, warriors from conquered worlds who hated
Viltrumites enough that they attacked the moment they saw me.
To them I was simply another soldier of the empire.
Another monster wearing the Viltrumite emblem.
"Your kind killed my father. You wiped out my people. You turned my world into a graveyard. Now you're going to answer for it, you vile sons of bitches."
"I won't pretend it was noble… but I won't apologize for it either."
"Then die!"
The creature roared at me just as I prepared to take flight, its massive claws tearing forward with terrifying speed before punching straight through my chest and lifting me off my feet.
A moment later my body was slammed into the arena floor with such force that my spine shattered on impact.
For a few seconds my heart stopped beating.
Then the healing forced everything back together again.
Bones knit themselves into place, organs rebuilt, and blood flowed once more through a body that refused to stay dead while the Sharingan memorized every twitch of the creature's muscle and every shift of its weight.
The second exchange lasted less than a second.
My hand shot forward and closed around its neck before it could react, followed by a sharp twist that separated its head from its body as easily as a flower plucked from a stem.
After that the arena rarely stayed empty.
Aliens came first as prisoners who attacked with the fury of warriors who had lost everything, followed by mercenaries hired from distant systems and eventually Viltrumite soldiers who treated the ordeal like a training exercise.
The Sharingan allowed me to understand how they fought while the Doomsday instinct strengthened whatever part of my body failed, making muscles denser and bones harder until pain lost the ability to slow me down and fights that once ended instantly began lasting for minutes.
Two more months passed in that bloody rhythm.
Fight.
Heal.
Adapt.
Fight again.
Six months was enough time for the earthling who once believed violence had limits to disappear completely after these hands had crushed bones, torn flesh, and taken more lives than I could possibly remember.
By the fourth month Halvar began documenting the numbers obsessively, claiming the combined casualties of the arena had already reached seven million.
I never bothered confirming it.
Halvar seemed strangely proud of maintaining such statistics.
And the worst part was that none of it shocked me anymore.
The horror had faded somewhere along the way until I simply stopped reacting and began waiting for the next opponent, the next experiment, and the next opportunity to become stronger.
Oh, Hell.
Somewhere along the way I had become something else entirely.
A demon.
"Doctor Halvar, when are you planning to send the next batch of prisoners?"
"No more casualities today"
One day I asked the question while blood dripped slowly from my knuckles, but Halvar only replied from his observation platform that I must learn patience.
I stood beneath him while thousands of bodies cooled across the arena floor, realizing that six months ago I would have hated every second of this existence, but now I simply waited for the doors to open again.
Everything he was doing to me was making me stronger, a realization that came to me during the endless hours inside my cell until my goal became perfectly clear and my weakness was laid bare before my own eyes.
All I needed to do now was wait for Argall to be assassinated and for the winds of the empire to begin changing, because when that moment finally arrived, the stage would belong to me.