I Raised A Black Dragon

“There’s an inspection team at the annex. As soon as I arrived in Tezeba, I sent all the evidence collected by the Angelic to this place.”

The second floor was closer to a laboratory than an office. As they entered the far end of the hall, Noah then took her hood off, peeking inside a room.

The room was divided into two sections. On one side, dozens of recorders projected translucent screens on the white wall, and over the large glass on the left lay a wide iron table. Researchers at the Bureau of Investigation Security busied around the iron table in their white gowns.

As they moved, Noah caught sight of the object on the table. It was the scraps of metal she had found in the mana operating room back then.

“I speculated that it was a bewildering spell but, but they say it’s completely different from the structure of the bewildering magic.”

“Then…”

As Kyle beckoned the researchers, they quickly cleared the perimeter and disappeared over the door on the other side.

“Let’s go in and see. You’ll probably know as soon as you see it.”

Noah carefully stepped into the glass door. On the iron table lay the lumps of metal that were in grotesque shapes. At first, she didn’t understand what they implied, but as soon as Kyle lightly grabbed her shoulders and turned her slightly, a sound of realization fell from her lips.

“Oh, this…”

The scraps, which were similar to a broken machine debris, were all of different sizes. There was a piece larger than her body, a piece as small as gravel, and a piece shaped like a long bat. When Noah first discovered them in the mana operating room, she had never really thought about what they would have been like.

Kyle held a round, spherical scrap of metal on a thick cylindrical scrap next to him. It was then that it became clear. Noah’s lips trembled.

“…A person.”

Yes, when all the fragments were arranged, they took the form of a person. The largest piece resembled a body, the scraps as tiny as gravels seemed like the joints of the fingers, the bat-shaped scraps of metal mirrored an arm, and the spherical and cylindrical bits were the heads and necks consecutively. 

“Oh, my goodness. So it wasn’t bewildering magic, but a machine with human appearance?” Strands of hair on the back of Noah’s neck stood tall and tiny bumps rose on her arms. She carefully examined the machine lying on the iron table with her chilled arms tightly folded.

Although some of the broken cables that were flattened out were sticking out like springs, it was not difficult to figure out how sophisticated the machine was to mimic the human body. Even the knuckles and toes were meticulously imitated.

Noah asked, “How does this work? Wouldn’t it work because it’s already broken?” 

“I don’t know how it is operated. It’s probably as good as being discarded from the moment it came to this state.”

“What do you mean from the moment it came to this state?”

Instead of answering, Kyle manipulated the buttons on the recorder he had brought in. Then, a video appeared in the air. It was an edited version of the evidence had Kyle recorded in the mana operating room.

At the center of the screen was a gun aimed at the left wall pipe in the mana operating room. Kyle’s target was too far away to be seen, but as the clips had already been modified, the screen zoomed in closer at the next moment.

A man? Noah wondered.

It was a man with black hair. Noah squinted her eyes and tried to take a closer look at his features, but the man’s body swung backwards at a gunshot, quivering. Kyle shot his vital point without hesitation.

Then, it was as she expected. At the same time the bullet pierced the man, his skin began to fade. When he lost his balance and collapsed onto the floor, there was no trace of a human body but only scraps of metal lay scattered on the ground.

“Let’s take a closer look,” Kyle spoke dryly and played the next video. In the next video, someone’s face filled the screen.

The man who appeared on the screen was also covering his face with a mask. The video shook unsteady for several times and the continuous jiggle sounded painful in the ears. At one point, a series of gunfire erupted and a bullet struck the opponent’s temple. 

When Noah flinched reflexively, Kyle paused the video. “It’s similar to the previous video. Shot, broken. But that’s not what’s important. It’s this.”

What appeared on the screen was a tattoo on the back of the man’s ear – a lowercase letter ‘r’ which was neatly engraved.

Kyle knocked on the head of a machine lying on the table. As the head turned sideways weakly, there was an alphabet engraved under the spot where the ears would have been. It was the letter ‘r’.