"What more do I know?" asked Darian, trying to look away as Zrelekai moved his face closer, still chewing the biscuit.
"Exactly…" Zrelekai swallowed the cookie and kept speaking, his face inches away. "It isn't normal for someone in this world to have this many things. How did you get them?"
"Well, you see…" Darian moved his eyes, only to see Zrelekai right in front of him. The blackness of his face scared him for a moment before he continued, "I was able to find them in some ruins, you know…"
Zrelekai huffed, annoyed, and stepped away from Darian to return to the stool. "You see…" Zrelekai suddenly closed his eyes while speaking. Darian watched him, surprised and a bit scared. "You're a colleague of mine, no?" Zrelekai looked Darian directly in the eyes with a mad expression.
"I suggest you answer yes. I'm sure you'd prefer not to know how I treat my experiments…" Zrelekai's tone suddenly changed, becoming more threatening. Darian gulped in fear.
'Maybe I should do as he says…' thought Darian. Even as Darian remained lost in his thoughts, Zrelekai waited patiently; it felt as if Darian had all the time in the world to answer.
"Exactly… but how do you treat a scien—" Darian couldn't even finish speaking before Zrelekai jumped up from his chair with a happy look on his face.
"See? That wasn't hard!" As he got up, Zrelekai clapped his hands and jumped happily. It felt as if the expression he had before had completely vanished.
"Then this makes things easier." Zrelekai sat down on his stool again, and in his hands, a piece of paper appeared. He grabbed a pencil from behind him and looked directly at Darian, as if he were waiting for something.
"So? What happens now?" Darian asked, confused, clearly not understanding what was going on.
"Oh, it's simple. I want you to explain what you know about these scientific objects you're using," said Zrelekai while smiling. Darian seemed even more confused now.
"Like, should I just say the names or…" Darian didn't know what Zrelekai meant by describing the objects, so he just remained confused for a moment.
"Just tell me the names," answered Zrelekai as he placed the paper on the table, ready to write.
'Well, he doesn't know what things I have in my base…' thought Darian as he waited a moment before speaking. Zrelekai felt like a child waiting for a teacher to start explaining something.
"Well, first, I've used a simple scale to measure the weight of the creature," said Darian, looking down at Zrelekai, who was writing as fast as he could. The handwriting was totally weird; Darian had never seen anything like it. There was an 'e' that looked like an 'l' and an 'i' that looked a lot like a 't'. This handwriting, Darian thought, is definitely the worst I've ever seen.
"Mhmm, so a simple scale? Like this one?" Suddenly, Zrelekai got up from the stool and went out the door. Darian watched him leave, unable to do anything.
'Damn… it feels like he knows a lot of things… but what was that?' Darian kept remembering the moment Zrelekai created something directly from his hand.
'Was that his power? But it doesn't look like magic…' Darian looked at the paper on the table. Even if he couldn't grab it because it was too far away, he could definitely tell it was normal paper, like the kind he used in the old world.
'And that pen… it even has ink inside.' Darian looked at the design of the pen. Even though it looked extremely old, Darian could see the ink inside. 'I wonder how he was able to create a pen like this… He even created the tea…' Darian looked at the tea, slowly picked it up again, and sipped it. 'I don't get how he was able to even put this watermelon and lemon flavor in…' Darian kept drinking the tea. 'This man really must have such bad taste…' Darian looked at the cookies left on the plate, and after setting the tea back on the table, he grabbed another one.
'I don't get why he enjoys watermelon this much…' Just as Darian took another bite, the door opened again. Zrelekai was holding a scale. "You're enjoying the biscuits, eh? Watermelon is definitely my favorite flavor in everything!" he said happily as he reached the desk to set the scale down.
'Yeah… he's definitely got bad taste,' thought Darian as he finished another biscuit, which sent a shiver down his spine because it wasn't good at all.
"By the way, you're saying a scale like this one, right?" Zrelekai grabbed his plate of biscuits and put it on the scale, but nothing happened.
"Damn… why isn't it working now…" whispered Zrelekai as he checked the scale to see if he had done something wrong.
'It won't work, you dummy… even if this scale looks new, it isn't possible for it to work after five hundred yea—' Darian's thoughts were interrupted by Zrelekai's solution.
"Oh right, the battery! I removed it recently…" Zrelekai went over to the drawers to see if he had one left. "It should be around here…"
'Battery? What the hell is he saying? It shouldn't be possible to find a battery after these many years. After this much time, it couldn't even be defined as a battery anymore. This guy is definitely crazy.' Darian remained stuck on this thought until Zrelekai grabbed something from the drawer that made Darian's eyes widen in surprise.
'A—a battery?' Darian couldn't take his eyes off the object. It looks exactly like one from my time. Darian was sure it wasn't possible for a battery to last this long. 'So how does he have it?!' Darian couldn't find an answer.
Zrelekai had noticed the changes in Darian's expression. While he was searching for the battery, the moment he found it and turned around to put it in the scale, he smirked. 'He definitely knows what this is… and that wasn't a normal reaction,' thought Zrelekai as he returned to his normal expression the moment the scale turned on.
"Oh, perfect! It works!" he said, clapping his hands together. Darian noticed that the scale showed extremely precise numbers; it read exactly 370g. 'I'm sure that plate weighs exactly that… but how?' Darian couldn't believe his eyes; he was shocked to see a scale working as if it were nothing.
"And so you've used this to tell how much the creature weighs? I guess you must have had a really big scale…" pointed out Zrelekai as he sat down again and grabbed the pen.
"Well, yeah… sort of." Darian couldn't tell Zrelekai that the Krukins were weighed by Rusty.
"So, you were telling me the other things you've used to study the creatures."
"Oh right… I almost forgot about this part…" whispered Darian, annoyed.
"What is it?" Zrelekai had the face of someone who understood what was going on but didn't want to give the impression that he did.
"Oh, nothing…" Darian looked away for a moment, but when his eyes returned to Zrelekai, he noticed he was still watching him with the same expression.
"I've used a ruler to measure them, nothing too hard," said Darian. Zrelekai wrote about the ruler on the paper as well.
"But you see… you would never have been able to understand this many things about the creature with only a ruler and a simple scale… what else did you use?" asked Zrelekai with a more serious expression now.
"Well, you see…" said Darian, trying to find an excuse. Zrelekai waited with a serious expression. 'Sorry to every single scientist before me for what I'm about to say…'
"I simply hypothesized them," said Darian with a serious expression. Zrelekai was so surprised by the sudden look on Darian's face that he laughed softly.
"Very funny, Sir Darian." Zrelekai suddenly got up and started to walk slowly towards Darian. "…but you told me before that you're a scientist like me, and from what I've been able to understand, in the past, the most important scientists never wrote their hypotheses in such a well-written diary." Zrelekai stopped and pulled the diary from his pocket.
"I've seen a lot of beautiful drawings. If this were a hypothesis diary, no one would have ever spent so much time making such beautiful drawings… and tell me." Zrelekai leafed through the pages until he reached the page about Snowy. Seeing Zrelekai reading through his diary made Darian's heart burst with anger, but because he was still locked up, he couldn't move at all.
"Mhmm… here!" Zrelekai had finally found the page about Snowy and started to read it aloud. "The laws of physics don't apply to the creature. Sounds weird, right? But that's how it is. I still don't know where it came from, but it doesn't seem alive in the traditional sense. No organs. Just snow, layered and packed. When it fuses with me, its body shatters and embeds itself into mine, possibly flowing into my veins and freezing them from the inside. The nine tails stay fixed at the entry point. They are the key. They shape and launch the ice magic."
"I think you can remember what you wrote, so I don't need to read more about this…" Zrelekai suddenly looked Darian directly in the eyes.
"So? How could you make your hypothesis? Like, how could you tell that the fox doesn't have any organs, only snow? And what am I reading here? When it fuses with you, its body shatters and embeds with you…" Zrelekai already understood that Darian was clearly telling a lie, but he wanted to tease Darian, as he found his expression extremely funny.
Darian remained silent, clearly not knowing how to answer. "Like, did you open the creature's body to see this? Strange, but I wasn't able to see any cuts on its body." Suddenly, Zrelekai's expression changed into a creepier one. "Do you think the creature will die if I start to inspect its body from the inside?"
Darian could barely control his rage anymore; he started to breathe heavily, trying to calm himself down. "Don't touch him…" Darian clenched his fists, trying to free himself, but it was useless.
"Don't worry, I wasn't planning on doing so. That creature seems… you know, unique." Zrelekai's tone changed, and Darian was able to calm himself, but the moment he looked at Zrelekai's expression, he felt angry again.
"How can a creature fuse with you? What do you have that's special…" Zrelekai looked at Darian's hand, trying to see if he had something special. "Hey, don't touch me," said Darian as he pushed Zrelekai away.
"Still… I'm sure that if you're a scientist too, you've found it curious, right? I've never read about this type of creature in any book, so?" Zrelekai suddenly looked Darian directly in the eyes.
"So?" Darian didn't know what to answer.
"So where did you find it?" The moment Zrelekai started to speak, Darian hesitated for a moment.
"It shouldn't be possible to find it on earth… so maybe it was born with you?" Darian was surprised by Zrelekai's words, not knowing if they were completely wrong or right.
"All the Altereds with a special type of magic mutate their bodies since they were little… so what if you were able to get this creature when you were a child?" Zrelekai was now lost in thought.
'As if that would even be possible…' thought Darian, as he realized he could use this as an excuse.
"Yeah, now that I'm able to remember, I found this creature in my house when I was a child and it fused with me without even giving me the chance to realize what was happening." Darian was able to come up with an excuse that was partially true. 'It's true that I found it randomly and it fused without giving me the chance to realize what was happening, though…'
"Mhmm, interesting… I've never studied this type of magic. It will be fun to work together, Darian!"
"Work together? Are you saying that you'll free me?" asked Darian, happy that he could finally best Zrelekai.
"Yeah, sure," said Zrelekai as he went to a drawer to get something.
'He's probably getting the screwdriver to free me… I'll beat him up once I'm free,' thought Darian. Then he suddenly realized something. 'Wait… before, he freed my right arm without anything…' What Zrelekai grabbed from the drawer wasn't a screwdriver, but a pistol.
"With this, if you try to escape, I'll be able to kill you without any problem." Zrelekai pointed the gun at Darian's head and started to free him as he whistled.
Darian's heart was beating faster. With Snowy, he wouldn't have any problem killing this creature even if it had a pistol, but now he was alone. Doing anything reckless would make his head blow.
The moment Darian was freed, the thing that was holding him was placed horizontally and became a bed.
"You'll sleep there. It isn't the best comfort… I should have a blanket around here…" With the pistol still pointed towards Darian, Zrelekai grabbed a pillow. "Well, it is better than nothing." Zrelekai slowly left the pillow on the bed and started to walk away.
"If you're hungry, you can always eat the biscuits or drink the tea… I'll come and wake you up tomorrow. Remember… you'll never be alone as long as I am here." With that, Zrelekai closed the door, and Darian heard a key turn. Realizing Zrelekai had locked the door, he couldn't do anything anymore.