The Collector

Before the fall of the Kingdom and its ensuing entrapment in a bubble of time separate from the flow of time, the Collector was an alchemist from the far lands.

Located at the very edges of the world where space fell apart at the seams, held together by the tenuous strings of coherence, the Far Lands were a place hostile to all forms of life.

One misstep and you would fall into the void separating worlds.

But either way, the far lands were a topic far from the present as he focused on the task at hand in the Kingdom of Sevallia

Finding a cure for the damnable disease called the malaise before it kills them all.

His blue eyes looked at the ceiling of the room he was in.

'Not that this twisted place will ever let someone die permanently.'

He supposed that he should be glad that this place wouldn't let people die permanently unless someone bypassed the time bubble.

Without the identical corpses that would remain untouched the next bubble over he doubted that he would be able to receive the results he was getting now.

Holding a vial filled to the brim with blue cells, his hands moved swiftly as they gathered tools and experimented on the gathered cells.

Strange things they were, only coming from the afflicted's second corpse, creations of the Malaise no doubt, but the reactions he had gotten from the mana rich balls of energy was surprising.

Cells were a collection of incredibly pure mana, generated through some unknown means by killing the body, the Malaise generated these cells within the Afflicted's first corpse.

Most Afflicted only had one cell within their body oftentimes not having one, but whenever they had more than one cell, it was always when the undead had much greater strength than their peers.

Namely, the Boss monsters and the Elite undead roaming the dead Kingdom.

"In other words, these cells created by the Malaise empower their hosts somehow during their first death, seamlessly detaching from their hosts upon their second death."

Speaking aloud his thoughts, the Short Lizard sat next to him looked up, face hidden by that strange orange veil over his face, a strange but otherwise acceptable part of their culture.

"We can't forget how they're so Pure!" Shouting loudly, the Short lizard raised an arm not his own.

"Yes, yes, we can't forget that." Tiredly waving him off the Collector picked up one of many blue vials he had distributed to the survivors of the island.

A commision he had made from the Blacksmith who knew how to pop the bubble and send it to the next.

Nodding his head, the Collector raised the blue vial containing the pure energy within the glass to the light, letting it filter through.

Despite being creations of the malaise that empowered the dying bodies of their hosts to higher and higher levels, the cells had the conflicting ability to repel the malaise from the body.

"If we could just harness the power within these cells and understand how they reject the malaise, we could theoretically find a cure for the malaise."

"And if we find the cure we can finally escape this heart's three hundredth and seventy first cycle!"

The Collector nodded his shadowy head hidden underneath the cloak while wondering how the Lizard knew how many cycles it had been.

Talking to Guillian was a pleasant surprise.

Despite initially looking down on him at first for his distinct lack of common sense, he was pleased to find out that the short lizard had an uncanny sense on the placement of organs in bodies both human and inhuman.

'If he were in the experiments early on would it have...?'

Recalling a task that the King had once commanded him to do while he was still under his employ, he recalled how the project failed and was inevitably shut down, the Collector shut down the line of thought.

'No, the theory was there and said it was possible, it's just that if we could understand how the rejection between bodies worked, it would've succeeded.'

Recalling the lab placed on the shores of the island now abandoned and turned into a playpen for the undead, the Collector entertained the thought of the Experiment somehow succeeding the experiment in his absence before throwing it to the back of his mind.

Letting it go forgotten as he continued to experiment on the corpse in front of him

The past was the past, and the experiment to discover what made the magical disease the malaise tick was one of the only things that would let his stilled heart beat.

His fingers twitched as his eyes glazed over momentarily as he fantasized gaining the strength of the maddened Malaise touched.

The collector was old.

As a human being, it was a miracle that he lived this long and saw so much

From the Far Lands millions of kilometers away, through jungles filled with man eating plants, swamps with poisonous flora and the ocean filled with leviathans.

He had seen many things.

He had survived many things.

All the way to the Kingdom of Sevallia he had survived through thick and thin, relying on the machine that was his life, but time was like a wave that washed over his entire body, rendering it slow, rusted, useless

And he would be damned if his journey ended there.

Not after he lived for so long.

Not when he could still learn so much

Not when he didn't have to die.

Eyes burning with an unconcealed desire, blue light leaked out of his mouth as the pipe connected to the giant tube filled to the brim with cells burned bright blue.

Sending the liquid mana through the flexible pipe, it entered his still beating heart and began to flow through its entirety, brightening the blue glow leaking from his eyes and mouth.

Twitching uncontrollably during the process, a crazed smile crossed his face as the energy of youth filled his limbs

But just as soon as the crazed smile crossed his face, it disappeared, replaced by an angered frown.

'It's not enough... the curse of death is getting stronger.'

Feeling the liquid mana filling his limbs disappear faster than ever, he clenched his fist in barely concealed anger with the faintest tinge of fear.

The price of using mana to extend his life was fast approaching.

His body was getting more and more resistant with every infusion of liquid mana, increasing the cost of extending his life everytime.

Eventually, the price would get so high that even the dozens of cell filled bubble popped tubes in his lab wouldn't be enough to stave off the jaws of death.

'And that's why I have you...'

Eyes turning to the giant tube of blue cells lying there on the ground now notably lessened in its contents, an orange purple gleam flashed before it was consumed by the blue swirl

A mad gleam filled his eyes as a silent cackle filled the entire room, Guillian ignoring it as per usual as he rummaged through the pile of corpses.

'My Previous...'

Whispering those words to himself, unseen by Guillian and unseen by all the other residents of the island, hidden within those blue eyes of the Collector.

Was the unmistakable orange gleam of the Malaise

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Tree that's experimenting with something