I Transmigrated Into a Weak Body

Chapter 7

Brandon tasted bitter leather and old sweat. He was biting down so hard on a thick leather strap that his gums were bleeding. He did not know how the strap got into his mouth, but as his eyes snapped open, he saw Veronica’s small, shaking hands holding the ends of a leather belt against his face. She was crying, whispering for him to stay quiet. 

If he screamed, the guards outside would hear him. If he screamed, they were dead. 

So, Brandon bit down on the leather and endured the absolute agony. The glowing red brand—the parasitic magic that had ripped itself from Inquisitor Voss’s dead chest—was digging into the back of Brandon’s right hand. It did not just burn his skin. It felt like tiny, hot wires were crawling under his flesh, sliding up his arm, and plugging directly into his spine and his brain. 

He squeezed his eyes shut, his entire body trembling violently. The magic was forcefully fusing with his nervous system. 

Then, just as suddenly as it had started, the blinding pain stopped. 

Brandon gasped, spitting the leather belt out of his mouth. He lay on his back on the cold stone floor, panting heavily. The ruined alchemy workshop was silent, except for the sound of the rain beating against the high window and the heavy, wet drip of blood coming from Inquisitor Voss’s lifeless body a few feet away. 

"Brandon?" Veronica whispered. She crawled closer, her large blue eyes filled with fear. "Are you... are you a demon now?"

Brandon slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position. "No, Veronica. I am just... adapting." 

He looked down at his right hand. The skin was no longer burned or blistered. Instead, a complex, dark red symbol was perfectly tattooed into the back of his hand. It looked like a jagged star surrounded by sharp, thorny lines. It was glowing with a faint, rhythmic pulse, exactly like a heartbeat. 

As Brandon stared at the brand, something incredible happened. The world shifted around him. 

He blinked. The dark, dusty basement was no longer just a basement. Brandon could suddenly SimmonsseeSimmons the air. He could see faint, glowing currents of blue light drifting through the room. The light flowed like water, swirling around the stone pillars and gathering thickly around the broken blue shards of the Ward-Stones on the floor. 

It was the Aether-field. The brand had forcefully connected his brain to the raw magical energy of the world. He could see it, feel it, and taste it on his tongue like a metallic battery. 

But his scientific mind immediately noticed a terrifying problem. 

The red brand on his hand was acting like a sponge. It was actively sucking the blue Aether out of the air, pulling it into Brandon’s body, and then sending out a sharp, invisible pulse of red energy straight up through the ceiling. 

“A beacon,” Brandon realized, his blood running cold. “It is a tracking device. Voss was a high-ranking officer. When he died, the brand transferred to his killer to act as a homing signal. And it is using my own body heat, my own biological energy, to power the signal!”

If he let it keep pulsing, the entire Imperial army would be at this door in minutes. 

Brandon closed his eyes. He ignored the magic and focused entirely on science. He had to cut the power to the brand. On Earth, he had practiced intense bio-feedback meditation, a technique used by elite military divers and athletes to control their body's involuntary systems. 

He took a slow, deep breath in through his nose. He focused on his heartbeat. 

“Slow down,” he commanded his body. He visualized his blood vessels shrinking. He forced his body temperature to drop, entering a state of forced physical calm. He restricted the blood flow to his right hand, making his fingers turn cold and pale. 

He was starving the magical parasite of its biological battery. 

The red pulse slowed down. Brandon pushed harder, completely separating his mind from his panic. He became as cold and still as the stone floor. 

The red glow on his hand flickered, dimmed, and finally went completely dark. The brand looked like nothing more than an ordinary, black ink tattoo. The invisible signal shooting into the sky vanished. He was hidden again. 

Brandon opened his eyes and let out a long, shaky breath. He had won the first battle. 

"You stopped glowing," Veronica said softly. She tried to smile, reaching out to hug him. "You are safe now, Brandon. We are—"

Before she could finish her sentence, Veronica’s eyes rolled back into her head. 

Her small body went completely limp, collapsing forward onto the dirty stone floor like a cut string. 

"Veronica!" Brandon caught her before her head hit the ground. 

The adrenaline that had been keeping Brandon moving suddenly vanished, leaving him with a harsh, crushing reality. He pressed two fingers against his little sister's neck. Her skin was freezing cold. Her pulse was weak and dangerously fast. She wasn't injured; she was dying of starvation. 

The memories of the original scribe hit Brandon hard. They had not eaten a real meal in over two weeks. The Empire took all the good food as taxes. They had been surviving on dirty water and a few scraps of moldy bread. The intense stress and terror of the Inquisitor's attack had completely drained the last bits of sugar and energy in Veronica's frail body. 

“If I don't get sugar and nutrients into her bloodstream in the next hour, her organs will start shutting down,” Brandon thought, panic finally rising in his chest. 

He gently laid Veronica on the floor and frantically searched the ruined workshop. He tore open the desk drawers. He smashed open locked wooden cabinets with his iron hammer. Nothing. Just old papers, dried herbs with no nutritional value, and broken glass. 

Then, his eyes landed on a heavy, dusty canvas sack shoved deep under a stone staircase. 

Brandon dragged the heavy sack out and ripped it open. Inside were thousands of tiny, black, rock-hard seeds. 

It was wheat. But it was not normal wheat. It was "Blight-wheat." 

According to the memories of this world, a terrifying magical plague called the Blight-Rot had infected the soil of the lower provinces ten years ago. It was an ecological disaster engineered by the Empire to keep the peasants weak, starving, and dependent on the government for purified food. The Blight turned seeds black and hard as iron. If a human ate them, the magical rot would eat their stomach from the inside out. 

The scribe had stolen this sack a year ago, hoping to find an alchemical cure, but he had failed.