Injury Swap

When I came to, I was no longer on the castle turret.

I sat up on the bed and took in my surroundings.

The room was lined with large test tubes containing various creatures and human fetuses preserved in formalin. Power cords hooked up to unfamiliar machinery ran in all directions.

I must be in the castle’s basement lab.

I’d heard rumors about it, but this was my first time actually seeing the inside.

“How am I still alive?”

The outlaw had shot me in the head.

I even remembered the feeling of the bullet entering my right eye.

However, when I touched my eye, I found it perfectly intact.

“I’ve transferred your wound. You’ll be fine.”

Charlotte was sitting on a chair in the corner of the lab, smiling at me.

“Although, I lost a valuable homunculus specimen in the process. Oh, well.”

A dead creature with a bullet wound to its head bobbed up and down in one of the large test tubes behind her.

“Why don’t you fight instead? I bet you’d be able to defeat that outlaw.”

“Oh please. I’m renting this, you know. There’s a limit to how many times I can use this skill, not to mention the overdue fees are ridiculously expensive.”

“Rental Shop.” That was the name of Charlotte’s skill.

I wasn’t sure about its limits and constraints, but it was the most potent skill out there as far as I knew.

However, it seemed that she was trying to avoid a showdown with the outlaw.

“How long was I asleep for?”

“I’d say about an hour. Units 11 and 12 were annihilated while you were out cold.”

She says that as if it’s no big deal. Does she realize how many people have lost their lives?
“There was one survivor, so I managed to confirm a ninth skill: an inverted cross pendant named ‘Chika Kawai.’ Funnily enough, it happens to be the same injury swap skill that I just used on you.”

Could it really be a coincidence?

I couldn’t help but feel there was more to it.

Color rose into Charlotte’s cheeks, and a giddiness crept into her voice whenever she talked about the outlaw, despite being enemies with him.

In those moments, she resembled a young girl pining for her beloved.

“We’ve never had a survivor before. Are they still in one piece?”

“She’s lost her left eye and right ear, and her left arm’s barely attached to her shoulder by a piece of skin. Her body’s fractured in 32 places as a result of swapping injuries.”

Yikes. It sounded like she’d been severely battered.

“I wonder why he let her live.”

“I’m not sure. According to her, he crushed a stone that was lying beside her after talking to someone.”

“Talking? With whom?”

Charlotte pondered for a while before answering.

“Someone who wasn’t present at that moment, I think. The future’s been altered. In my prophecy, there hadn’t been any survivors in this battle.”

Damn, she can even see into the future? She truly is a menace.

I prayed that she hadn’t caught on to my plans.

“If someone’s intervened, that would be highly unforgivable.”

Charlotte’s face contorted in jealousy, as though her lover had been stolen away by another woman.

“Perhaps we should move on to the main event.”

“What do you mean?”
I suddenly felt incredibly uneasy.

“Let me ask you something. Who do you think is more powerful: a single person who possesses 40 different skills, or a coterie of 40 skill users?”

“The Saviors...you don’t mean...?”

Bingo, Charlotte seemed to say, a wicked grin on her face.

“I’m going to dispatch Unit Zero.”

Unit Zero was the unit my classmates were in.