More time passed. We turned fourteen, and began preparing to graduate from school.
Felix was determined to go to the town's alchemy university after graduation. At first, I thought that was because of its proximity. However, I learned that was only part of the reason. The university had offered Felix a full ride scholarship - and something far more important. A research team recruitment offer.
Universities weren’t just centers of learning. They were also research centers. Due to his excellent results in school, two research teams with promising projects wanted to recruit him.
The first research team was researching a new, epoch-making invention: the railroad. Railroads didn't exist in this world yet, but people were already working on prototypes for it. Felix's first life had been in a world where railroads were just starting to develop, and he spoke highly of them. I also vaguely remembered railroads being important in my first life. If Felix contributed to the invention of railroads, he would definitely get a keyword ability. I also imagined that he would get a truly obscene amount of Achievement. I had no idea how much Achievement the invention of the railroad would be worth, but I was hoping for tens of thousands of Achievement. Enough for Felix to buy multiple grades of stats and abilities. If Felix got much stronger, it would be good for all of us.
Of course, it was too soon to expect an amazing result. But all four of us were hopeful about Felix's prospects.
The other research team focused on the human body. They were trying to find ways to upgrade humans beyond their limits. Most prosthetics were created to replace lost limbs, but some people also wanted to replace their weak, fleshy limbs with steel. This team was the natural result of that train of thought. They worked on maximizing strength increases while minimizing essence costs.
Felix felt that it would be a great direction to take binding essence magic in the future. Combat-wise, Felix was going to struggle in future worlds. Creating items let him help the rest of the team - but in an upfront battle, alchemists didn’t have much to rely on. Felix wanted to try to fix this problem using mechanical limbs and subdermal armor. With a bunch of metal upgrades, he might be able to hold his own in a physical fight.
We were more than happy to cheer him on. I wished that Felix didn't have to fight at all, but the multiverse wasn't always kind. Felix having a way to protect himself sounded like a great idea to me.
Amusingly enough, the research team had also contacted me. They wanted me to set up a special limb-regrowth deal with them. The research team often experimented with weird, out of the box modification plans. Having my ability prepared was important if they needed to 'undo' some sort of major mistake. I had told them that I would think about it, but I was leaning towards saying yes.
If Felix and I both worked on the team together, we might get a huge Achievement payout. It could also help Felix form another interesting keyword ability if we got lucky.
Anise didn’t slack off while Felix and I prepared for university. Even though she hadn’t done much research, she had worked hard on improving her magic. Felix and I had never managed to improve her star paper further than 60% efficiency. Still, Anise made use of every single moment of time to grow and improve. She had mastered her most complicated spell yet: a spell called Mend. It allowed her to repair simple damage to inanimate objects. In other worlds, this spell wouldn’t be too powerful. In fact, it probably wouldn’t even be worth the effort to create. The spell map was ludicrously complicated, after all.
But in this dimension, it gave her an easy way to restore damaged prosthetics. Anise and I were planning on registering a second identity for Anise, using my illusion magic. After that, Anise would have a new job as a skilled mechanic. Having a second identity for Anise would also let her register her new 'ability' without any problems.
With any luck, it might even let her form a keyword ability for Zelyrian magic. Even if it didn't work, Anise could probably get some influence Achievement and money out of it. Anise also mentioned that it could help Felix and I with the second research team. That one was a bit of a long shot, since we would need a way to get Anise's name out there... but it wasn't totally impossible. We had been brainstorming ways to help Anise get a keyword ability for a while, and any idea was worth a shot.
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Of course, Anise's main identity wasn't going to go to university. She didn't have outstanding enough results for a research team to recruit her. She also didn't have any real interest in alchemy itself. So she decided that she would duck out of school after this year.
Vance and Iselde planned to go to university with Felix and I. Iselde wasn’t an outstanding student, but she could make it into university, at least. Vance had started to show some interest in medicine and healing over the past year. He wasn't outstanding yet, but he had a good level of diligence and focus on the subject. Apparently, his interest in medicine had started once one of his sisters got injured. It wasn't a major injury, but his sister had ignored it until it got infected. She had gone to Dr. Trish's clinic and got it healed, but the memory stuck with him. I couldn't help but wonder if I had treated his sister, or if someone else had helped her.
Either way, Vance now intended to study medicine with me in university.
As for my own growth over the past year... I had made some progress in healing my mother. With some research and observation, I had figured out a few of the basics behind how souls stuck to brains. My understanding was very patchy… but I was at least able to confirm the existence of 'soul glue' in greater detail. I still had no idea what it was made of or how it worked, but I had picked up a few details about how to move souls around. Even if I didn't know how things worked 'normally,' I could mimic a few minor details after years of study.
With my patchy understanding of how soul-glue worked, I created an inferior version of it. I used my soul-sight and my shaping magic to create a new ability, much like extinguish and renewal. I called this new spell ‘soul clamp.’ It let me move souls around without damaging them. That wouldn't be too important on its own, but I had made another observation. As long as the connection between the soul and the body wasn't totally severed, the connection mended itself. It was an agonizingly slow process, but it did happen. And if I moved the soul closer to the brain it inhabited, the process sped up considerably. I also suspected that I could reduce the impact brain injuries had on the connection between the soul and the body, if I used soul clamp well.
I tested this on a variety of insects and animals, to see if my spell did what it was supposed to. The first time I used soul clamp on a spider, I confirmed that it felt like I had grabbed onto something. When I hit the spider with an extinguish, severing the connection between the soul and the body, I held the spider’s soul in place for over an hour.
Of course, it still drifted off the moment I stopped holding it there. The spider’s body was dead after I extinguished it, after all.
My next test was on a rabbit. I tried soul-clamping its soul, then stabbing it in the brain and healing it. The rabbit spent two days in a coma-like state… but afterwards, it went back to hopping around like usual. The connection between the soul and the body was weakened when I stabbed the rabbit’s brain, but if I held its soul in place, it healed much faster than normal.
After a few more tests, I got confident enough to try it on a coma patient. The coma patient hadn’t woken up in over two years, and his family had lost hope of him ever waking up.
My first attempt at using soul clamp as a healing spell was rather absurd. I took the coma patient’s soul and stuffed it back into the patient’s brain for several hours. Over time, the patient's soul, which had originally dangled half in and half out of his brain, started to reconnect.
It took another two weeks before the connection was even half-rebuilt, but it was progress. Most importantly, the patient woke up afterward.
The restoration process wasn't perfect. The soul-glue between his soul and brain was nowhere near as resilient as a normal soul-glue. I suspected that it would be exceedingly easy for him to slip back into a coma if he got another head injury. He also had a few minor issues, like getting fatigued more easily than normal. It was still better than never waking up at all. I also noticed that coma patients that woke up 'naturally' had the exact same issue, meaning it wasn't a problem with my spell. It seemed that it was impossible to create a perfect soul bond after birth, at least for now.
After another few rounds of tests and observations, I had no clue how to improve soul clamp further. I suspected I needed a higher grade ability to keep improving.
Since I didn’t see any hope for improving my spell further in the near future, I decided that it was time. I was going to try to heal my mother.