Chapter 269
"I-I can feel it now, Marshall! It’s somewhere around there!"
"Here?"
"A little deeper... Yes! That’s it! Right there!"
Inside the Cake Tower’s laboratory, Marshall was conducting another experiment on Older Wendy, attempting to locate her First Origin.
The research had previously reached a dead end because they had no idea where to look.
But thanks to the inspiration Marshall gained from Fairy Law, the experiment was finally making meaningful progress.
He had discovered a way to use Magic to stimulate a reaction from the First Origin, and now it seemed he had successfully located the one hidden inside Wendy’s body.
"It’s actually here? How does that even work?"
Marshall examined the unusual location with considerable confusion.
Apparently, a Magic Origin wasn’t necessarily hidden among the body’s vital organs.
It could even exist within seemingly ordinary soft tissue that served no obvious magical purpose.
Magic really was fascinating!
"Are you absolutely sure? Can you try activating the Origin yourself?"
"Definitely! That strange sensation is coming from exactly that spot. Let me try moving my Magic Power around. Keep the connection steady for a moment."
Marshall could clearly sense that Older Wendy had ulterior motives, but he was far too interested in the experiment to entertain her nonsense
He simply ignored her teasing and maintained the magical connection while extending his perception deeper into her body.
For the first time, Marshall was finally getting a proper look at a First Origin that had never been activated.
People born in Earth Land naturally possessed an active First Origin.
Because Magic Power had been present in their bodies since birth, controlling it generally came as naturally as eating or drinking.
Humans from Edolas, however, were born without that advantage.
Before they could even begin learning Magic, they first had to develop the ability to perceive Magic Power.
The situation almost reminded Marshall of the cultivation novels from his previous life.
If Magic Power were treated as spiritual energy, Edolas would be a barren world where only a handful of exceptionally talented people had any hope of cultivating.
Earth Land, meanwhile, would be the legendary continent overflowing with spiritual energy, where everyone was practically born with an extraordinary foundation.
Of course, that was just a joke.
Marshall had no intention of introducing an entire cultivation system into his research, although the comparison did offer a useful way of thinking about the problem.
More importantly, he was now observing what might be one of the greatest mysteries in this magical world.
How did the soul connect to the body?
Nobody had ever provided a definitive answer.
There were plenty of forms of Soul Magic in Earth Land.
Thought Projection Magic was one example, while Bickslow’s ability to possess dolls and Nab’s spirit-related Magic offered other approaches.
Even Take Over Magic could be considered a branch of Soul Magic.
People in Earth Land were thoroughly accustomed to the existence of souls, yet surprisingly few Mages ever bothered investigating the underlying principles.
For example, how could a Thought Projection instantly return to its creator regardless of how far it had traveled?
If a soul could possess a doll, why couldn’t someone use the same principle to resurrect a deceased person?
And why could the souls and bodies acquired through Take Over Magic be stored inside the First Origin’s space?
These were obvious questions, but nobody seemed capable of providing satisfactory answers.
Most Mages who practiced Soul Magic understood how to perform their spells without understanding why those spells actually worked.
As long as the Magic produced the desired result, they were satisfied.
Marshall had never been content with that approach.
And today, he felt as though he was finally approaching the true secrets of Soul Magic.
His inspiration was surging.
Magical perception was far more sensitive than ordinary physical touch.
Marshall guided his Magic Power through Wendy’s body, carefully observing and recording everything he encountered.
The relationship between Magic Power and the body, the connection between the body and the soul, and the mysterious interaction between the soul and the surrounding world gradually began coming together in his mind.
When those elements interacted at a particular frequency, an entirely new space could come into existence.
Suddenly, everything clicked.
Marshall understood!
Without even taking the time to explain his discovery to Wendy, he hurried toward his desk.
Muttering excitedly to himself, he began recording one observation after another, then immediately started calculating, comparing, and organizing the information.
"I get it! I finally get it! So that’s how it works!"
The more he wrote, the clearer the underlying principle became.
But Marshall had no intention of stopping there.
He immediately teleported to the laboratory where Simon’s body was being preserved, grabbed the longsword containing Brain’s sealed soul, and brought along Brain’s skull.
Without bothering to announce what he was doing, he prepared to begin another experiment.
The so-called First Origin was effectively a person’s core.
Marshall suspected that every living creature possessed a similar special point somewhere within its body.
That point contained the complete information associated with the individual and represented an intersection between the body and soul, as well as between the soul and the world itself.
It concealed some of the most fundamental secrets of human existence.
Older Wendy’s First Origin had been there all along.
𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦
The problem wasn’t that she had somehow failed to create one; they simply hadn’t known how to find it.
Until today, that intersection had remained completely closed and had never established a connection with Magic Power.
To truly activate the First Origin, Wendy’s body would need to develop an entirely new pathway that allowed Magic Power to circulate between the Origin and the outside world.
In principle, the process was remarkably similar to opening a Second Origin.
Unfortunately, the First Origin’s unusual location made the procedure considerably more complicated.
Marshall’s relatively standardized Arc of Time formulas couldn’t simply force it open, so successfully activating it would probably require a substantial amount of additional research.
But that was no longer his most important discovery.
What mattered was that he had finally identified the special intersection connecting the body and soul.
Simply observing its structure was enough to restart several experiments that had previously reached seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
In particular, it answered a question that even Marshall’s Apostle experiments had failed to resolve:
How could two completely unrelated entities—a soul and a physical body—be permanently connected?
The concept was admittedly rather abstract.
If he absolutely had to explain it with an analogy, Marshall would describe the soul as a computer and the body as its monitor.
Until now, he had been trying to connect the two without knowing what their respective connection ports actually looked like.
Today, he had finally identified the interface.
His artificial Apostles, meanwhile, were more like all-in-one computers.
Their bodies and souls had effectively been created as a single integrated system, so they didn’t possess the same kind of separate interface.
That was why studying them hadn’t provided the answer he needed.
Now that Marshall understood what he was looking for, he decided to test his discovery using Brain.
Previously, he had manufactured several crude mechanical toy bodies for Brain and experimented with forcibly inserting his sealed soul into them.
Those experiments had achieved limited success.
The mechanical bodies could certainly move, but that was only because Brain was manipulating them directly with Magic Power.
His soul hadn’t actually formed a permanent connection with the artificial body.
Furthermore, in this world, a soul generally retained a form corresponding to its original physical body.
Simply forcing a soul into another container didn’t automatically change its shape.
What Marshall wanted to accomplish now was fundamentally different.
He intended to establish a genuine connection between Brain’s soul and one of the mechanical bodies, creating an entirely new form of artificial life.
If the experiment succeeded, Brain might effectively be resurrected in a different form.
Would his soul gradually adapt to the shape of the mechanical toy? Would the new body develop its own equivalent of a First Origin?
Marshall couldn’t be certain.
There was only one way to find out.
And so his rather sinister experiments began.
This time, Marshall intended to go much further than before.
He repeatedly subjected Brain’s soul to different experimental procedures, testing one hypothesis after another as he attempted to reproduce the newly discovered connection.
As for Brain’s opinion on the matter...
Marshall wasn’t particularly concerned about it.
Unfortunately, something unexpected eventually happened.
Perhaps his experiments had begun approaching a domain that mortals were never supposed to investigate.
Perhaps the mysteries of Life itself were subject to restrictions that Marshall had never considered.
Whatever the reason, after spending another entire night experimenting on Brain’s soul, Marshall suddenly experienced something deeply unsettling.
His vision blurred.
For a brief instant, he lost control of his balance and nearly stumbled to the floor.
The sensation immediately sent a chill down his spine.
Marshall’s body had undergone years of extraordinary magical conditioning.
His physical control was so refined that something as simple as unexpectedly losing his balance should have been practically impossible.
Yet it had happened.
And he hadn’t sensed any external attack.
Marshall quickly steadied himself, his excitement over the experiment disappearing as he tried to determine what had gone wrong.
Then he noticed something.
An unexpected change had appeared in his System.
[Life Magic LV2 (Curse of Ankhseram LV5: 0.1%)]
"!!?"