Chapter 59 – In which poison is in the invisible places

Crimo and Scarlen stared at each other for a whole minute, in complete silence.

At first, it was just teasing, but when neither of the two men retracted his gaze for a few seconds, the atmosphere started to turn strange.

‘What should I do…?’

Caught between them, Vern had no idea what to do.

In his past life as Vermillian, he felt inadequate to give any advice or interfere in romantic relationships, so he always stepped back, whenever his subordinates or students seemed to have love troubles.

Vermillian always stayed silent about love.

But now he really needed those two to concentrate!

When Vern frantically tried to figure out what to say to get the two men’s attention, while also avoiding embarrassing the two and letting them gracefully escape that situation…

Tok.

Sangria put a porcelain cup before Vern.

“I don’t think Young Master should drink any coffee, but it seems that Young Master isn’t going to sleep regardless if he drinks coffee or not, so…”

He explained it with a soft tone, but in the oddly quiet room, it echoed loud and clear.

The two love-disasters blinked and quickly turned their heads, as if breaking free from being under the spell.

They even had some dignity to look embarrassed.

“Thank you.”

Vern nodded, as he brought the cup to his lips, praising Sangria inside.

He was truly a very nice and considerate person…

Vern paused.

“... Master Sangria…”

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He slowly put down the coffee cup and turned to Sangria.

“No.”

Sangria just glanced into his eyes and said ‘no’ without a second of hesitation.

“But…”

“No.”

Even Vern’s pleading eyes didn’t work on him.

“Master Sangria, that’s…”

“His blood pressure is at risk, My Lord.”

Crimo, who was ready to stand up and fight when he saw Vern’s expression, immediately shrunk down at Sangria’s words.

Scarlen just looked between the three with a confused face.

But no one cared to answer his silent pleading to explain what’s going on.

Vern just gave up, thought that Sangria was a man just as cruel as Am, and drank his unsalted coffee.

“Going back to the main topic.”

Crimo coughed and looked back at the papers.

“Me and Scarlen are investigating mind control, because of the Black Forest Massacre, but the specifics of this case shouldn’t be known. I suspect the seven main guilds’ upper echelons know about it. But that can’t explain why they all are researching a topic related to mind at the same time… nor why smaller organizations are also interested in researching it.”

“The big guilds usually have a few big research projects being carried out at the same time. The research they risked here by selling it to ‘Crow’ would be a big one, but not the ‘most secret’ one.”

“In other words, they sold Vern something, which they planned to sell from the beginning.”

Together with Scarlen, Crimo voiced Vern’s exact thoughts.

And Vern continued those thoughts:

“Someone probably contracted them, but that someone, to hide their intentions, divided the topic into smaller bite-sized research topics and contracted different guilds and people to research. The person researching wouldn’t see anything suspicious about the topic, because they have only a part of the puzzle.”

“And even if someone realized that something is wrong, unless they gathered all those research papers from different, competing guilds, they wouldn’t be able to put that puzzle together.”

“Yes.”

Vern nodded to Sangria’s words.

Usually it would be very hard to procure all that research, but as if it was fated, Vern right now had a decent chunk of that puzzle and was able to see the picture.

Organizing the extracts of all the research papers he got in his head, Vern was certain:

“They’re researching a method for a different mind taking over the body and soul.”

Mind was a link between body and soul.

But it was also a strange place in-between.

There were beings which had a body and mind, but no soul.

There were also beings which had a soul and mind, but no body.

The first ones were any type of elemental or magic beings.

Having no soul didn’t make them in any way different from other beings moving on the physical plane. The only difference was that if they died, they didn’t reincarnate and rather returned to earth. Their minds, though, were usually strong enough to stay as objects in the physical world even after death.

The second ones were spiritual beings like gods or ghosts.

Those beings didn’t have a body, so they couldn’t be seen without special abilities, and their existence often largely depended on the ‘perception’, like in the case of gods being shaped by the perception their believers had.

To put it simply, there were beings without body or soul, but no beings without mind.

The ‘mind’ was a universal constant and held what Vern called the ‘Fate Contract’, the very bane of existence.

So even if someone’s soul was shattered and new creatures were made from their bodies, the parts of their ‘mind’ would still be there, still attached, and their ‘Fate Contract’ would still be there. Still active.

Now, if someone else’s ‘mind’ was to take over the body or soul, it would be equal to replacing the ‘Fate Contract’ of that body or soul.

But because no one knows their own, what’s more, someone else’s contract, there would be very little clues to point that out.

Their body, bloodline and every physical aspect of them would be exactly the same.

Their soul, their spiritual body, would also be exactly the same, so even if gods looked at you, they wouldn’t be able to see the difference.

The only differences would be in mind. In memories, in emotions, in feelings.

Like an actor on the stage.

Their costume and script were exactly the same, but the person under the mask was someone else entirely.

… If that research bore fruits.

… If the experiment was successful.

… If there was someone inhuman enough to carry it out.

Wouldn’t something like the current ‘Vern’ be created?

*~*~*