Saikyou Mahoushi no Inton Keikaku (LN) - Volume 16 - Chapter 89

Eighty-Ninth Chapter

Professor and Puppeteer

Quite some time ago, though harsh cold winds blew in the border region between Clevideet and Iblis, traces of smoke rose here and there from the secret Trojan Prison, built in the Outer World. The prisoners’ riot had come to an end and the clamor of the prison break was finally winding down.

But at the very bottom of the atrium, which gave an overview of the prison, a terrible and gruesome scene unfolded, a far cry from the silence that had fallen on the facility. A mountain of bodies had been piled up from the fifth layer all the way up to the upper layers. Wardens and the other workers had all been killed by escaped prisoners taking out their grudges on them.

The smell of fresh blood was everywhere, but it was still a marked improvement over the rotten smell of dead prisoners that had hung over the prison before. The prison had been left practically deserted; it was like a solemn iron box.

Inside it, the sound of footsteps reverberated from the steel floor and walls. A figure languidly walked with her back hunched and her hands in her pockets. She weaved through the bodies strewn about until she reached a specific ghastly-looking corpse.

She stared at the deceased crazed professor Gordon had once called Professor Kwinska. She had been buried in a wall. Her skull had been crushed. Blood had sprayed all over her white gown and dried into red stains.

The figure sighed and muttered, “They sure went wild. Just what would they take a professor’s important brain for? Still, what a strange feeling...to look down at my own corpse like this. I should thank Warden Gordon for giving me such a rare experience.”

With shaky hands, the new Professor Kwinska pulled out a cigarette from the gown’s pocket. She lit a match and held it to a cigarette. The dirty white gown she wore was the same as the one the slaughtered corpse before her wore. The length and color of her hair, her face, her height, and even her way of speaking was the very same as the late Professor Kwinska.

Rather, the new professor was a little cleaner, having had a bath recently.

“Now then, now that the troublesome Gordon and others are gone, I suppose there was some value in delaying my arrival...oh?” Professor Kwinska muttered before surprise showed on her face. She cast a glance into the darkness of a cell in the distance. “Hmph, did you not escape with the rest, gramps?”

There was no answer. But there was definitely a person’s presence. The cell door was open, but several tubes for the provisional punishment ran into it. It would seem that the captured sinner had been given the heaviest punishment the Trojan Prison gave.

Of course, now that the prison had stopped functioning, the provisional punishment wasn’t draining any mana any longer either.

So it didn’t make sense. The door to the cell was already wide open. Since the old man had been locked away in the fifth layer, he was no doubt a heinous criminal. And considering the tubes, his fate had been nothing but despair. He was never intended to see the open sky again, as his mana would be drained until he died.

Yet the elderly man had chosen not to escape to the surface with the other prisoners.

“Well, no matter, Gram. I recall that you had special circumstances. I pray you will be able to get out of here someday. Now, I have a little more to do, so I will take my leave. Oh and by the way, what’s happened here has already reached Iblis. I imagine it will spread to Clevideet soon too. I’m sure their people will fly here any moment, so you can relax,” the professor said arrogantly, finally prompting the old man called Gram to part his dried lips.

“Who...are...you? What...do you...know.” It wasn’t the voice of an elderly man crying for help but one sharp as an investigator about to reach the heart of a mystery.

“Hmm? So you could still talk. What a shame. As two old people I’m sure there’s much we could have talked about,” Professor Kwinska said.

But Professor Kwinska’s appearance was no older than someone in her thirties, while Gram looked to be past his eighties.

However, the professor paid no mind to such inconsistencies, turned to the old man with a soft smile, and elatedly puffed out some cigarette smoke. “Who am I, huh...? I guess I will introduce myself as someone who uncovers mysteries. A researcher, as you can see. Does that answer satisfy you?”

The man said nothing.

“I don’t mind the silence. So while you’re at it, I’d like you to keep silent about me too. After all, I am currently invested in unraveling the mystery of a foolish religious doctrine of wisdom. What you would call the Four Books of Fegel.”

The moment he heard that, the old man’s eyes opened wide, his emaciated, skin-and-bone body shaking and glaring at the shady professor. “What will...you do...after unraveling that?”

“Nothing at all. Like I said, I am a researcher. After uncovering the truth and taking it in as knowledge, I will name it and keep it in my collection,” said Professor Kwinska. “I don’t know what happens after that, and I don’t care.”

“As if you could...be trusted. Scum...”

“Yes, I suppose it might be strange for somebody who experimented on several of the prisoners here to say such things. Well, if the knowledge I discovered and organized is ever passed on to someone else, I can only hope it will be used well. You can pray for such a future too, gramps,” Professor Kwinska said with a thin smile and a strangely tired expression. She pensively flicked her cigarette away. “Don’t worry. I won’t become one of the seat holders, and I’ve found the ideal individual to take that position. They will become my research partner.”

“What do you...mean by seat holder...?” asked Gram.

“It is one of the people who will know when the time comes, I suppose,” Professor Kwinska answered. “Well then, if you will excuse me. It was fun chatting with you, Gram.”

The old man did not respond again.

Casting one last glance at her own corpse, a clone, Professor Kwinska began walking. She was headed for her laboratory in the upper layers. Her stride as languid as ever, a fearless light filled her eyes. Philosophical questions like who was the clone and who was the original were no longer relevant in her mind.

If they shared the same knowledge, memories, and experiences, the emotions born from it all would be the very same. If someone were to debate with their clone, they would gain and lose nothing, accomplishing nothing but wasting their time.

Professor Kwinska found it a bother. As she climbed the stairs to the upper layers, she brought out another cigarette, but this time she just held it in her mouth, not feeling like lighting it up.

“Still...a seat holder, huh. Dante slipped up in his hurry. In the end, it seemed he never truly realized what I was researching.”

Having examined Dante’s blood and that of all the other prisoners in the Trojan Prison, there was something Professor Kwinska had come to learn.

The Fundamental Words within Dante’s mana information body was truly interesting. Biologically speaking, it was like his DNA was fundamentally different from that of any human in any of the seven nations.

And it wasn’t on the trivial level of racial differences either. Dante’s DNA was strange and abnormal... It was almost as if he’d been born and raised in a magical environment that was completely different from the human domain.

Dante might just be a human from the outside. Or maybe he has the qualifications of a seat holder? No, I suppose not. It might not matter anymore anyways. He has probably only read through two of the four books, she thought.

Professor Kwinska began to mutter as if talking to someone. When it came to organizing her thoughts around the Four Books of Fegel, Professor Kwinska had a habit of putting her thoughts into words.

“But perhaps by understanding the Four Books of Fegel, he learned that parts of the mana information can be rewritten by reading specific sections.”

Nobody knew anything about Dante’s upbringing. With no family register and no relatives, all that existed was an imposing criminal record.

The humanity of today was all squeezed into the seven nations built around the Tower of Babel in order to escape the threat of Fiends. Naturally, that meant that all kinds of people, languages, and cultures were intermingled.

However, the foundation of the mana information body was pretty much the same for all humans. That likely changed in the process of using practical magic for their standard lives, and higher-ranking Magicmasters were even more different...which gave for a form of evolution.

Dante’s mana was different, and it wasn’t just a matter of his upbringing. The professor surmised that it was a difference in roots. It originated from a completely different magical system from that of humanity.

Mana is history. It exceeds the individual and is inherited like blood... Now, I wonder how much the person in question knew. 

However, upon touching a portion of the Four Books of Fegel, Dante had felt like he’d learned the truth of the world and gotten carried away. As a result, he’d grown arrogant and gotten caught up in his own power. He was ruined. As a researcher, she had long ago lost interest in them, but in a sense, they were rivals in search for the same goal.

“Ha ha, then maybe I should at least move a little more cautiously? I may have read the Four Books of Fegel, but I will never become a seat holder. After all, it’s nothing more than a copy of the Akashic Records,” Professor Kwinska continued to mutter as she finished ascending to the second layer.

Suddenly she came to a stop. She looked down to where Dante’s cell had been. Dante had doubted whether she knew about the escape plan, but to Professor Kwinska it would be strange if she didn’t.

The professor was in charge of the mana storage, and she would immediately see through any petty tricks. Everything in the prison followed a strict daily routine. As such, even the slightest oddity would stand out like a sore thumb.

“‘Crazy Professor’ huh...? Ha ha.”

Professor Kwinska knew that Dante had begun calling her that at some point. Before long, the derogatory nickname had spread through the prison, and even Gordon and the wardens would use it behind her back.

“No matter how incomprehensible it may be, it is nothing more than a difference in aim. By the time you simplify the phenomenon and unilaterally decide that the other party’s brain is inferior to yours, you’ve grown too arrogant. You were still so wet behind the ears, Dante.”

The professor lit her last cigarette, inhaling once before flicking it down the stairs. “I guess it’s about time to get going.”

Professor Kwinska headed through the staff entrance before climbing up another set of stairs and opening the door to her laboratory. Since it was built in the Outer World, it was bare-bones and had nothing unnecessary.

She walked through several pieces of neatly lined-up equipment and pushed her palm against the wall in the far end of the room, where she heard the sound of a machine authenticating her identity somewhere.

This was Professor Kwinska’s rear garden, a hidden place that nobody in the Trojan Prison knew about...her second laboratory. The special room was located in a side hole secretly dug by prisoners who had been taken out for research purposes.

Gathering the equipment had been a pain, but having spent so many years at the prison she’d gotten the hang of how far she could go. The government would gladly deliver a wide variety of materials and equipment for any reason, be it maintenance for the mana storage or the prisoners’ mental well-being, as long as they were paid.

With a click the lights turned on, revealing lined-up vats filled with liquid chemicals. Each was large enough for an adult to lie down in, and inside each of them was an identical figure.

Just how many times had her current body woken up one of her clones from one of these cradles? It had begun before the Trojan Prison was built; it was probably around ten of them.

“It’s a bit of a waste, but considering what’s happened...they will need to be disposed of before a survey team shows up.”

The professor input the self-destruct code, causing the chemical tubes to disconnect and the vessels to topple over... And with a bubbling sound and smoke, the clones melted and disappeared.

At the same time, a figure in the back of the room walked forward, shaking away the smoke. She was wearing a rag cloth...the same cloth Professor Kwinska would use when she sat down in the chair on the back of the room.

The professor grinned at the woman and spoke, “So how do you find this body? ...Well, it’s not the original, but that one’s currently rotting in a cell way down there. This is the second time I’ve helped you.”

Scooping up a handful of her soaked black hair and observing it, the woman looked somewhat confused. It was probably because she’d only just woken up. Her eyes were still stern, but there was a hint of compassion or motherly affection to her.

She was tall and slender...however, a single glance made it clear that her soul wasn’t on the side of good. Within the depths of her calm-looking eyes was a destructive impulse on the verge of insanity; it was a dangerous balance.

She didn’t seem to have a clear memory of what had happened in the past, but at the very least, some gruesome incident must have left a deep impression on her. The sight of her surrounded by blood and flames called to mind that she was indeed the mass murderer behind the Vivid Bloodletting Incident.

Professor Kwinska wasn’t one to say, considering her own human experimentation, but there was something fundamentally different about this woman.

“So, how are your memories, Nox?”

“...Yes, they are probably fine. No...I likely remember what I have to do. All according to plan perhaps? With the body of the puppet Dakia, who was so attached to Mekfis, destroyed...all that’s left is Elise.”

Nox put a finger on her temple as she ran through her deeper memories. “Before that is...Alus Reigin. He killed me in the past... No, I managed to use my secret art before that but ended up captured and put in the Trojan Prison...? It’s no good, my memories are still foggy. The only thing that’s clear is that this is my body.”

Professor Kwinska, who’d been looking her over, shrugged her shoulders as if to say that was obvious. “You are a clone, but you are no different from the corpse rotting in the bottom layer—apart from youth and performance. This body has only just recently been artificially created, so some gaps in your memory can’t be helped. But however hastily made it may be, it should be better than this poor body of mine. It should perform better than before.”

“Hmm, I suppose I owe you my thanks, Professor,” said Nox. “Although I can’t say that I’ve gotten a feel for the performance yet.” Nox seemed to be gaining at least enough memory to keep up with what Professor Kwinska was saying.

“In a rush or not, I don’t cut any corners. I even went through the effort of tuning your body, you might even be able to have children.”

“Oh. Is that another portion of God’s wisdom from the Four Books of Fegel?” Nox wiped her body with the rag cloth and surmised that it was knowledge from someone else.

Professor Kwinska scoffed at the sarcasm, put her hands in her pockets, and bragged, “The Four Books of Fegel are just a copy. My interest lies in the original. Did you forget even that?”

Meanwhile, Nox, no longer hesitant, headed for a locker by the wall and grabbed the new clothes prepared for her. “No, I remember. That’s why I need to get my hands on ‘that.’”

Professor Kwinska looked at Nox’s face and probed her intentions. “And what would ‘that’ be?”

“The fourth of the Four Books of Fegel, Audeogecht... I first have to get my hands on that.”

“Why?”

“...That doesn’t matter. I have to get Audeogecht... My memories are still a blur, but that much is clear.” A strong, dark fire burned in Nox’s eyes.

It was a deep-rooted delusion, like someone obsessed with jewels, only her desire was absolute. Even if she didn’t know why, a determination to get her hands on it filled Nox’s body.

That was probably a consequence of the gaps in her memories. But that wasn’t so much of a side effect of her new body as much as it was caused by her own abilities.

Nox had been like that since Professor Kwinska met her in the Trojan Prison. The core part of her memory had already been wiped out, so her recollections of those days were doubtful.

Transferring consciousness into a dead body was a unique technique, something that people in the occult field might call a possession. It was next to impossible for a dark-element Magicmaster to pull off, but since it had been pulled off in front of her eyes, Professor Kwinska found herself very interested in the woman.

Considering that the original body with half of the consciousness left had been left crippled, most of her mana information had likely been transferred to the new body as well. The professor surmised that it was the reason for the gap in information.

I imagine there are other side effects as well. After all, the underlying memory for Nox’s motive to search for Audeogecht is completely missing. That too seems to have been snatched away from the depths of her consciousness. That said, for now... 

It went against Professor Kwinska’s nature to leave the incomprehensible as it was, but considering the being before her, they were still far beyond the professor’s control. Besides, this Nox would likely disappear somewhere soon. She was driven by a strong urge that would never run out.

Exasperated, the professor searched her pockets. When she finally found the pack, all that came out were cigarette butts. When she searched the desk drawers, she realized she’d run out of cigarettes. But having learned from past experience, she thoroughly looked through the drawers. With some luck, she might be able to find at least one.

“Well, do as you please. If I find some information on the Four Books of Fegel, I will let you know. As for your name...will you use Nox as before?” asked Professor Kwinska.

The woman thought for a while and shook her head. “No, I will go by Dakia Agnois. Nox died, and I don’t remember my real name, so I have no attachment to it. Besides, it wouldn’t do to have the name of an infamous criminal. I wouldn’t want the attention that the name Nox would bring me, especially from higher-ranking military.”

“So what happened to Dakia’s body? I imagine it should be rotting right about by now. I kept the embalming to a minimum at your request.”

“Yes, the timing is just about right. Her body was very easy to use, but Mekfis destroyed it. If possible, I wanted it to be rotting in nature.”

“You must have had some emotional attachment to it. I don’t know if you remember, but you came knocking with the body in your arms.”

“Right, I did,” Nox said.

Dakia was the name of a woman from Nox’s past. She was cheerful and charming, beloved by all. However, her body was frail, and while talented, she didn’t walk the path of a Magicmaster. She silently passed away at night at twenty. Her vast amount of mana was likely the reason for her death. She hadn’t tried to master handling mana and was unable to properly release it.

In the past, Nox, who at the time went by a name she could no longer remember, met Dakia—a woman who dreamed of becoming a Magicmaster—by chance.

She had lived happily but was also a pitiful woman who forever dreamed of possibilities that had ceased to exist. Nox wondered what kind of a face she had made when she breathed her last.

When she died, mana started leaking from her body, making it easy to locate her. Dakia’s room had been on the third floor of an elegant apartment complex facing a dirt road. Downstairs there was a bar and a bookstore, where Dakia had worked.

Nox had found her lying dead, covered by a thin cotton comforter, on her pipe bed and thin mattress the woman must have picked up somewhere. Her face was so beautiful it was hard to imagine she’d had any illness.

Nox had opened the window to ventilate the room and sat on the stile in the night breeze for a while. There was no real reason for it; she just wanted to stay in the room for a while after seeing Dakia’s face.

She still didn’t understand why she’d set her eyes on her body and considered it a suitable receptacle. Maybe she wanted to fulfill Dakia’s wish of becoming a Magicmaster...or maybe not. The only certainty was that it was a perfect situation to take advantage of. If Nox used Dakia’s body, she would have plenty of opportunities to use the magic Dakia had wanted to use when alive.

Nox had secretly brought Dakia’s body to Professor Kwinska, and they had used a chemical solution and a specially made refrigerated case to perfectly preserve her body.

That had been twenty and a few years ago.

Through various twists and turns, Nox had ended up in the criminal organization Kurama.

She’d been using an alias before, but in Kurama, she went by code name Nox and caused various gruesome incidents...until Alus Reigin dealt her a fatal blow.

After that, she had been secretly brought to the Trojan Prison, where she was reunited with Professor Kwinska. Because the doctor had been researching the body and consciousness, she took an interest in Nox’s secret art and began making a clone.

Nox’s secret art allowed her to transfer her consciousness, experience, and mana information into another body. Naturally, the core of it used mana as a medium for the process. In addition, Nox was able to link multiple bodies to her core and manipulate them.

However, there was too much noise if the multiple bodies were alive, especially if they were a Magicmaster using their mana. So she needed to use recently deceased bodies as her vessel. In that respect, reuniting with Professor. Kwinska, who tinkered with bodies and handled dead prisoners, had been truly fateful.

With the doctor’s help, she had abandoned her wounded body before her life expired and transferred to a new vessel, namely Dakia.

After abandoning her body and escaping the Trojan Prison, Nox had taken on the role of Dakia Agnois, a female Magicmaster in service of the Hydrange military. That was who Alus had seen at the Friendship Magical Tournament.

She had spent all her time gathering information and mastering the essence of magic to fulfill foolish Dakia’s wish. However, Mekfis had ultimately destroyed her body during one of their encounters. After that, she had had no choice but to operate using several of the female bodies the doctor had made, resulting in several new gains.

The largest had been discovering where Mekfis had hidden the first of the Four Books of Fegel. As a Hydrange Magicmaster, she had access to a wide variety of information through political channels.

It would have been best to recall her real name and discard the name Mekfis knew to take on a new identity, but she found herself attached to Dakia. It was the first alternative that came to mind after Nox, so she felt a connection to it.

The original Dakia’s calm appearance had contradicted the anguish within her. A fatal disease had eroded such strong potential magical talents. As someone who always felt a disconnect between her mind and body, this body felt strangely familiar. That was why she had decided to continue using this name.

But above all...

“I feel more at ease being Dakia than Nox...”

When Nox had decided to identify as Dakia, she felt the tension in her relax a little. Professor Kwinska certainly felt that she was easier to speak with.

“Very well, Dakia. You work toward your goals, and I’ll work toward mine. We only ever cooperated because it benefited both of us,” said Professor Kwinska.

“Ah yes, I know that. So, any fun things happen while I was asleep?” asked Dakia.

Suddenly even the woman now known as Dakia’s way of speaking changed to that of a simple girl. However, her body wasn’t that of a girl but of an adult, so it did feel off.

The doctor’s jaw relaxed, and she soon shrugged as the edges of her lip lifted up. “That way of speaking doesn’t match your looks. To answer your question, naturally there was a big incident. I kept an eye on Vanalis and observed an interesting phenomenon. And I’m not talking about Mekfis’s petty trick of changing his appearance and closing off the area with snow using weather manipulation magic.”

“Hmm, who knows what he was after. But in the end I bet he failed, right?”

“...Who could say. More importantly, somebody accessed the Akashic Records there. Not me, not Kurama, and not Mekfis either. Can you imagine anything more exhilarating? Heh heh heh,” Professor Kwinska creepily laughed.

Dakia regained her composure and spoke. “So your wish finally came true. Oh, is that why you got rid of your precious clones?”

“Yes, what else could I call a junior overtaking my long years of research in a single leap other than exhilarating. Besides, I’m going to leave this place, and I can’t bring the clones with me. I do plan on taking the data with me before anyone from the Inner World shows up. If the clones could be packed up, that would have been fine, but the virtually augmented brains can’t yet store overlapping memories, nor can they operate simultaneously. If not handled properly, it could blow away the entire consciousness, leading to the self-destruction of the nerve cells.”

Dakia’s ability had elevated Professor Kwinska’s clone experiment, but even Dakia herself, a precious sample and collaborator, didn’t know the details of the experiment. What she understood was that it would be dangerous to have multiple clones active at the same time.

“So who was it that accessed the Akashic Records? Someone in Kurama? Mekfis?”

“From here,” answered Professor Kwinska, “all I was able to do was observe the phenomenon that Mekfis caused. All I know is that someone there was able to go beyond the realm of the forbidden and touch upon the knowledge of gods and demons. Regardless, accessing the Akashic Records requires a key. I will need to ascertain that, so there is plenty left to do.”

“It sounds like you have a lot to look forward to, then. Well, I guess it’s about time for me to leave,” said Dakia.

“I agree, but I do need you to bring me to the Inner World. A weak human like me couldn’t walk half a day through the Outer World. This body is not at all suited for combat. I probably couldn’t even last two seconds against the Fiends around here.”

“Yes, that was what we promised, after all,” Dakia muttered, recalling their deal.

After fully dressing, she left the laboratory together with Professor Kwinska. Once they were clear, Dakia pointed her arm behind her back toward the now unnecessary secret room and unleashed a giant magical flame without looking.

And so, two figures set out for the Inner World to make their return to the world of man: a reckless sage with no fear of god, trying to uncover infinite knowledge, and a grotesque Magicmaster, crazed by affection and in search of the origin of the soul.