Chương 245: Field Trip

Author's Note: I feel the need to preface the chapter with this. DO NOT MAKE THIS ABOUT REAL WORLD POLITICS. There's part of this chapter that is devoted to the mechanics of souls and babies. This is NOT intended to be in any way related to real world politics. Do not take it as such. This is a fantasy story where magic, souls, and reincarnation are easily verified, observable parts of reality. Obviously, there has to be some kind of system governing it.

This is what made the most sense for the story, and is not meant to be related to the real world in any way. It's just what made sense with the rest of my worldbuilding. So no political discussions. Political discussions never go anywhere and just make everyone unhappy. Okay? Time passed, and before I knew it, we turned twelve. Five years had passed since we entered alchemy prep school. During that time, Iselde, Vance, and the three of us from the Market had grown closer. I had also continued my research.

I learned a fair amount about the human body… but much more importantly, I had learned about the soul. With Sallia's help, my research had finally started to advance in the right direction. After a few days of observing souls in the ocean of souls and brainstorming, Sallia had an idea. She suggested that I try observing pregnant women, to see how souls connected to newborns. Doctor Trish's clinic had a few pregnant women as patients from time to time, so I asked for permission to sit in.

I was already a well known healer with an ability, so only a few of them objected to my presence. Through that, I was able to get some fresh data. As it turned out, babies did not have souls from the moment of conception. Instead, when I looked at newly formed fetuses, it was almost as if there was a… tiny void in their brains. It was hard to spot at first, because it was so tiny. As the babies grew larger and older, this void grew more noticeable.

Then, once the baby reached a certain level of development, it started to sort of… tug at something. It was something like a signal beacon. It radiated tiny waves of energy towards the void. It took me a bit of time to realize what was happening. The unborn babies past a certain size were somehow pulling at the ocean of souls. If I used both my sight abilities at the same time, I could somehow use the ocean of souls as a fresh set of eyes. Since my spatial sight let me use nearby water as my eyes...

that meant that I was somehow near the ocean of souls right now. From there, it wasn't too hard to figure out what was going on. Somehow, when babies started 'calling' for a soul, they opened a window to the ocean of souls. It didn't appear to be made of essence, or mana, or any other type of magic at all. It just… existed. I could only see it when I used both of my special visions at the same time, but it was clearly there. And I hadn't the faintest idea what it was or how it was made.

After the little window between the ocean and the fetus was formed, the signal from the fetus grew much stronger. It started trying to absorb a new soul directly from the ocean. In one observation, I saw one of these little windows to the ocean directly grab a soul and drag it into the baby's brain. I noticed something interesting during this process. First of all, the 'suction' force of the unborn baby only influenced souls that were silver-colored.

I had noticed in the past that humanoids always had silver colored souls, while plants and spiders had differently colored souls. Now, it was clear that bodies somehow knew which kind of souls they wanted. It also meant that people wouldn't just reincarnate as random plants or animals from one life to another. I didn't know exactly how much leeway there was for the connection between a body and a soul - but there must be a limit.

Humans would probably always reincarnate as humanoid creatures, spiders would always reincarnate as spiders, and so on. There was never any risk that I would reincarnate as a fish or something in another life. I didn't observe any other changes immediately after I saw a baby's body snatch a soul. But I made a mental note about what I had seen. On one other occasion, I watched a soul get formed instead of dragged in from the ocean of souls. In this case, a baby was born…

and the little void inside of its brain was still empty. The little window between the ocean of souls and reality still hadn't snapped shut, even after the baby was born. There was no soul in the baby's body, either. For whatever reason, this particular baby had exceptionally weak suction force. However, it still ended up with a soul. After a few hours, the void in the baby's brain sucked up a bunch of… ocean of souls water.

Over the course of the next few hours, I saw the water start to go through several processes I didn't understand. Whatever was happening was so alien to my knowledge of the multiverse that I couldn't figure out what was happening. It almost looked like the ocean water was heating up and cooling down... but it also kind of resembled molten metal being poured into a cast. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Whatever was happening on a deeper level, from my viewpoint, the soul gradually turned silver over the course of a few hours. Afterward, it looked exactly like a normal, silver-colored humanoid soul. Apparently, if a newborn didn't have a soul, it would drag in a bunch of ocean water instead. I knew that when souls didn't have enough achievement between lives, they would collapse in the middle of the ocean of souls and turn into ocean water.

The fact that the ocean water could turn back into souls probably shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did. The final thing I learned from observing babies was the time limit. If a baby was born and more than four hours passed without it obtaining a soul, it died. Its organs and brain would all simultaneously fail, and even if I tried to heal it, nothing would happen. I had the strangest feeling that I was trying to pour water into a leaky bucket.

Everything I did just fell out of the baby's body without accomplishing a thing. Unfortunately, while this was interesting, it wasn't quite what I was hoping to learn. I mostly wanted to focus on how souls and brains interacted with each other. This information was useful, but wouldn't help me cure my mother. So I slightly changed the research direction. I knew from the information we had found in the Market that souls had four layers to them.

The outer layer was where Achievement was stored, the second layer contained memories, the third layer helped pilot the brain, and the fourth contained our personality. So I worked hard to observe souls through the images Sallia sent via friendship bracelet, until I finally the third layer of a soul. Eventually, a soul floated near Sallia that had already lost the two outer layers of its soul.

The ocean was eating away at the third layer already, but I managed to get a few glimpses of the third layer before the soul collapsed. From there, I had a better idea what to look for. With Sallia's help, I kept looking at the souls in the ocean again and again, until I found a few more souls with only a third layer left. I compared this with babies I had observed to refine my understanding of souls. However, the opportunity to study souls that were in the midst of disintegration was very rare.

And I felt awful every time I saw it happen. Eventually, I found another way to observe 'weakened' souls. Coma patients. In coma patients, the souls I observed were usually hanging on to the brain by a thread. This meant that more of the soul was exposed for me to analyze. I also didn't feel anywhere near as bad about observing them, since I could actually help. In this world, people didn't have very good treatment methods to keep coma patients alive.

I couldn't do anything to help the coma patients reattach their souls to their brain, but I could help them survive. My healing magic could compensate for most other problems the patients experienced, giving them hope of waking up someday. Through coma patients, I was able to observe many of the tethers that linked souls and brains. My understanding was still shallow, but it was advancing with every patient I saw. Apart from my studies of souls, coma patients, and babies, my shapeshifting also improved.

I corrected the muscle-detachment problem that my first experiment had. After a year of experiments, I completely strengthened my hand. Combined with my own natural growth as my body, my grip strength increased to about 80 kilograms. I was nowhere near the limits of my strength yet, since my body was still growing… but it was still an improvement. By strengthening the fingers, hands, and related muscle groups, I had increased my grip strength by 15% with no obvious side effects.

Naturally, once I confirmed there were no side effects, Anise and Felix also got hand improvements. Felix and Anise's star paper research continued, but had yet to improve beyond 60% efficiency. Whatever we tried didn't solve some sort of fundamental problem with our star paper. Luckily, Anise didn't need perfect starpaper. Her progress in spellcasting was still coming along well, and she had formed a third, more complicated spell map: fireball.

Anise could now lob fireballs, making her much more of a terror on potential battlefields in the future. It was only a poor imitation of the fire magic she'd had access to during {Phoenix's Last Stand}, but it was still useful. Especially since her sword still gave her very weak control over fire, even without {Phoenix's Last Stand} activated. It wasn't even at the level of a basic grade ability, but it let her do things like adjust the trajectory of fireball spells and spend less mana on each fireball.

It was minor, but useful. Of course, Anise using fireballs also presented its own problems. Anise's ability was supposed to be force manipulation. Anise couldn't use fire magic where other people might notice, or we would have a lot of explaining to do. Still, it was better to have the option if it was necessary. About two months after we turned twelve, much to my surprise, our teacher had a new idea.

"All of you are a lot older and more mature now. And everyone has learned how to at least do some basic alchemy," said Mr. Delmont.

"Most of you have even started more advanced exercises." He eyed me. I tried not to blush. My talent for binding essence was truly abysmal.

"Anyway," said Mister Delmont, "I think that all of you would benefit from learning more about the past. Specifically, I want to talk about Old Zelyrian artifacts. Much of what we know about Alchemy claims that the feats the old Zelyrians are impossible. Yet, there are dozens of historical records verifying them. We do not know how they accomplished half of the things that they did. Their artifacts and technology are a source of endless debate and confusion in scholarly circles.

I think that looking at the Zelyrians might give you a fresh perspective on alchemy. How would all of you like to go on a field trip to the Zelyrian museum on Friday?" he asked.