“Why is it not working, dammit!”
In front of me is a huge glass tank. Inside floats a corpse, but not really. For it to be a corpse it must have been alive in the first place. What I have here is a full body put together from parts of the prior bodies.
There was a thought experiment in my original World, of a Boat made out of a hundred pieces of Wood. Each day a piece gets replaced by a new one and at the end all pieces are replaced. Putting the old pieces together into a new Ship the question is, which is the original?
With my experiment I have the definite answer. The one with the spirit of the original ship as without it, the new Ship is just driftwood…
My rambling makes sense, when seeing the tank in front of me. Ava² is not moving and not even able to move without injecting lightning into the muscles directly. A soulless puppet and not even having strings to move. All parts were originally from Ava, but now put back together… Nothing!
If it would be brain activity, then why can I reconstruct Ava, if he is not living? What does the spirit Body entail, as their knowledge is erased after the first time they get reconstructed. What is going on? Dang it, the whole Magic stuff messes with the rules of this World way too much!
…
“Something wrong?”
“Not really Snow. I just can not get a Body to live without first having a Spirit.”
“Why do you want that?”
“To create and modify a Body, which is more like… ‘me’.”
“Huh. You are you, as a mouse, as a bug, as Ava or as Red. You just look different from the outside, but I always know it is you.”
“I am happy you see me like that. But If the body is dead, then I can not move it.”
“Of course, dead things do not move, silly.”
“That is not wh… hah… You are right, but I still try to make something dead something alive. It is just hard.”
“Can you not just… mush something together, like always?”
Mush something together… The fusion is rather explained crudely by her. Well it is true I just mush everything together. Just I have no way to mush life into it. I already tried, it wants to create just the something right in the middle of the not living body as if it is some kind of parasite.
Seeing an Onion burst out of the chest is becoming old. Also mice or other things breaking out of the skin. Nothing works…
“Maybe you need to look at it differently? When I was small, snakes were scary, but when I got bigger, I could look down on them and they were only food for a time. Now I just see them as something to clean once in a while.”
Huh… Maybe she does not mean what I understood, but it makes sense. Taking time off to see it later from a different perspective might be the right thing to do.
…
How many Months did pass? Three, maybe four? Ah, it is Four. We are officially in the Autumn of this year. Reading books, looking at my diagrams and working on different things I forgot the time. I wanted to be careful with working on things, but forgot it a long time ago, as Snow often throws me out of the stupor.
The creation of a Homunculus is slowly getting better. To have Life you need to first create one live Cell. This Cell then needs to grow in a tank full of Mana into a body.
Here is the Problem. One Cell can not hold Mana. A being must have a minimum of three things to hold mana. Nerves, liquid and circulation. I have still no Idea why, but imagine it has to do with having nerves for infusing the Mana and the circulation as kind of circle to flow inside.
If that sounds complicated, that is the most simple explanation. I have a whole Rack full of analytics about the simple feasibility of something having just Mana. That is one rack for one problem on a project with hundreds of problems.
In front of me is my most recent and most promising work. A blubbery, human looking… thing.
The proportions are mostly right. There are a few problems still… like no eyes, mouth, nose, ears or other orfices… or the fact it has no bones. Or the need of the feeding tube in its belly to even stay alive… Okay it is a failure, but it already looks somewhat human!
Think positive, be positive! Next time maybe I can have him grow five fingers and not three large ones on each hand. Progress is still going strong… yeah…
…
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“Snow I need a vacation. Where do you want to go?”
“Where to go? Um… We could go back to the Orphanage? They wanted to see some of their children, remember?”
Oh! That is a nice idea. Well they all have already gotten Mana burn except two.
Those two… Seems like they have the promise to become Mages, if they would have a teacher. Sadly there are not many, who would take in disciples without long and costly tests, while pushing all the monetary weight on the ones who want to become Mages.
Sponsors are also not really a thing. They get mostly indoctrinated and are bound to their Caste. Is there not a single one, who is free roaming and might want to teach? I will pay double! ...bummer...
“Good Idea, let us ask Katie and see who would want to go back to tell how they are faring.”
…
“I would suggest asking the Children directly, like you always do, Lord Null. Also while choosing you might want to take at least one girl and boy while also thinking of different ages, so everyone sees, you do not have any hidden agenda or otherwise dark secret.”
Why does she say it, like I am some kind of villain? There is neither a strange agenda nor a dark secret… well there are, but that is a different point!
“Okay. Can you pack some things already? I think about taking four of them and you, while we are at it?”
“I go too?”
“Who can tell them better to not worry as someone, who for the reason of the Children even broke off her one year ‘Sister to be’ and visited an unknown place on her own? Just do not talk about the monsters… And not too much about those strange rumors, as they might be spun into folktales.”
“...so only the good parts? That is not really an honest explanation.”
sigh “I do not mean it like that. You can always tell there are some things negative with the place but cannot tell out of security reasons.”
“That does sound way more ominous, my Lord.”
“You can do it. I just don’t want the Mages trying to wring out the Orphanage for information. It might make their life even worse.”
“...So you are worrying about the children still there. I understand. I will try to be cordial but secretive.”
“Thank you.”
…
“Name and reason for entry?”
“Ava, Snow, Katie and some children. We want to visit a few people and buy some supplies.”
“Seven Cop…” “Go right in! My colleague does not know you, I am sorry. Please have a nice visit.”
Woah, suddenly another Guard ran up and just waived the fee. Talking with the other one in hushed tone seems to mean, he told him about what happened last time. I am not that scary, am I?
While walking around we notice some surveillance on us, but they are decent enough not to snoop too aggressively. Just seeing where we go. Hopefully they do not do something stupid.
…
“Sister Katie! Welcome back. Do you want to switch with one of us, or are you only here to visit?”
“I am rather happy with my new place of living. While it is looking dangerous, scary and gloomy, there are more upsides than downsides. At least from what I have seen so far.”
Hey! That was rather mean. I mean yeah, there are Monster roaming around, whimpering could be heard for a while in the Dungeon and I might be a bit eccentric with the design of many Rooms and especially stairs and secret passages, but… um… Okay, you have a point Katie.
While looking at the children, they take off the bandages for the Caretaker to see. They look rather perturbed at the now glowing scars on their bodies, but when they see their nourished cheeks and good hygiene they seem to be appeased.
All of the children talk to their Friends they left. Many questions are asked, but I hope they do not talk too much about the things I asked them not to tell. Children have rather a loose mouth, so please be careful.
…
So why am I here again?
“Would you maybe just think about this proposal? I do not mean you should take everyone. But if there is really enough space, then it would be good for you to have more cleaners, no?”
“And that is why I should do a pilgrimage to every Orphanage and ask for their children?”
“We do not mean it like that! I am just asking if you would like to maybe look for more helpers in other Orphanages, that might give some to you to… have them work for you.”
You wanted to say ‘shelter’ did you not? Maybe even ‘keep’ or ‘protect’? You definitely do not want me to take them for work, you want me to keep them safe against what will happen.
I can somehow understand her, but how much do we talk about here? There are hundreds of Orphans in the resource Towns, and thousands in the inner Cities.
“I can not take every Child there is. You know that as much as I do. I know you are desperate, as I heard of the ‘bait’ tactics some Mercenaries use. I can not just vanish with thousands of children.”
“No, not all children. Just the ones in the Towns directly at the Dark Forest, which means just those three, if you do not take the fortified Villages strewn across the roads into consideration.”
Ugh. What shall I say to deny her request? It seems logical, that taking the children might save them, but the ones who stay will have to work even harder and might be destined to die. Also we can not just take all the children and make them our Servants, that is just wrong!
“We can take some of them with us, right Null?”
Snow! You too? I know you want to help, but we have our own problems. We can not take all of the Orphans over the World and put them just inside our Castle.
Sigh “We can maybe shelter some more, but it means more Caretakers and definitely more of them will become Farmers. The Food is starting to get strained, but the Fields are not fully in use. Can you stomach them working hard hours for food?”
She looks at Katie. Maybe she can help me and keep it at a Minimum. The whole Castle is for her still scary, she will be on my side.
“While the work is hard, it is not unbearable. The Fields are rather forgiving and the work can be easily done by most of the older Children. I am for it.”
You too?!