Endless World: The Rise of Leonard Lawson

The test subjects inside twitched unnaturally in the cages. Their veins were glowing faintly crimson, their eyes bloodshot and feral.

As Leonard narrowed his eyes to inspect closely.

He noticed a few of them scratched at the bars with broken nails, leaving smears of blood, as if they were trying to escape their own skin or whatever pain they were undergoing.

Everywhere Leonard looked, he saw fragments of horror: scalpels left mid-operation, journals filled with scribbled notes, and sigils drawn in dried blood to keep the victims restrained.

The atmosphere was oppressive and silent. But the silence didn't take long as it was quickly broken by the sound of low, guttural breaths.

Some of the test subjects in their cage sensed his presence, which jolted them awake. They were like predators waiting for Leonard to slip up and give them a chance to devour him whole.

Although the majority of the test subjects were women, Leonard did notice a few special cages that had men in them. And to his astonishment, these men were dressed in a similar uniform to the deceased guards on the surface.

He calmly approached their cage and witnessed them banging the bars, extending their hands outward.

"ROAR!"

They growled and hissed menacingly, their eyes extremely bloodshot.

"What?" Leonard raised an eyebrow in amusement. "Want to drain my blood?"

He then extended his hand to let them have a chance to grab hold of him.

When one of them nearly reached him, Leonard swiftly retracted his hand, much to their extreme frustration.

They went berserk and banged their head repeatedly on the bar, almost as if they wished to break through to capture him for the tease.

"Serves you right for suffering in misery." Leonard harrumphed. He reckoned these guards must have broken some rules or, unluckily, chosen to become test subjects.

Or there could be more possibilities, in which he had no intention of caring.

All he needed to know was that these so-called guards were guilty and deserved everything that was coming for them.

Looking at their pathetic sight, Leonard coldly laughed.

"Come on! What are you waiting for? Delicious blood is waiting for you." He smirked and lifted his sleeve, revealing his skin. The blatant provocation and sneer effectively enraged the berserk men.

Their eyes burned with a feverish red glow, pupils dilated until nothing human remained.

"GROWL!"

As they hissed in extreme fury, their veins bulged black beneath their clammy skin, throbbing with each heartbeat. The temptation of Leonard's glistening skin and the allure of blood antagonized their temper deeply.

The stench of sweat and iron filled the air when they staggered forward, shoulders jerking with twitching spasms.

Leonard gazed in amusement. Just like how these guards used disgusting eyesight toward the captive women, he was also treating them the same way.

He coldly watched them struggle with their might to try to reach him.

Their hands were calloused, dirt-caked, and trembling with unnatural strength, seemingly tapping into the Wrathbane Extract's effect. They rose slowly, their fingers extended outward in a near impossible action.

Each and every movement of theirs was sluggish at first, but they soon adapted. In less than a few minutes, they became able to control their body parts and behaved like the hunger of starved beasts.

Their nails scraped the stone walls, leaving trails of dust and blood as they lurched closer, their predatory eyes locked solely on Leonard's veins.

"Whoops, I think I played with the fire a bit too much." Leonard chuckled when he noticed their drastic change.

His hand held the journal, which listed possible outcomes of the Wrathbane Extract taking effect faster.

"Whoever scribbled these notes left out that if agitated and provoked enough, the effect could be amplified." He shook his head and wondered who penned this journal.

They were surely some lazy or incompetent journalists!

Or maybe it was the experimenter who failed to even attempt this particular testing to verify the swiftness of the effects.

"Well, it's a given that these experimenters are foolish to begin with. Had it been me, then this experiment would have long been completed." Leonard snorted.

The only difference he would have made was the change of test subjects.

Rather than using innocent women as subjects, he would gladly use these villainous and despicable people as test subjects.

While Leonard was joking about the situation, the berserk men continued their aggression.

Their breath came in ragged gasps, with thick strings of saliva dripping from their cracked lips as they strained forward.

They no longer depicted signs of rage or other reasons. Instead, they were consumed only by the maddening instinct to grasp, tear, and feed until that terrible craving quieted.

"Looks like the researcher whom Claudia killed wasn't lying." Leonard made a mental note of the changes.

The instinctive reaction of a Blood Frenzy Dependency could be hastened if agitated or provoked intensely.

According to the researcher's final words to Claudia, the Blood Frenzy Dependency was a major setback and side effect of the consumption.

After consumption, it would instill a violent craving for blood, specifically women's blood, leading to uncontrollable aggression and predatory behavior.

But when given no choice, any blood work.

And currently, Leonard was the closest target to these berserk men.

"Hmm, let me test something." Leonard rubbed his chin and found an iron spear nearby. He grasped it tightly in his hand before lunging it forward to one of the berserk men in the cage.

SPLURT!

Almost immediately, one of the berserk men splurted out blood from the stab wound.

The blood turned out to be darkish violet, a far cry from the usual crimsonness of blood.

However, the color of the blood didn't matter as Leonard managed to confirm something.

The berserked mode didn't care about what type of blood they saw. As long as it was blood, there seemed to be an extreme signal to their dependency to target the person.

Leonard watched with extreme coldness as the berserk man whom he had stabbed was being devoured by the collective berserk men trapped in the same cage.

"Since you don't treat others like humans, then there's no need for you to receive any humane treatment." He calmly stated.