Chapter 58 - Phylactery

'My body is giving up on me. Thankfully, a byproduct of my research has given me a method to continue living without flesh and blood.

This discovery comes from the phylactery. The soul is quite the strange thing, it is possible for it to exist within a material object rather than the body.

Certain materials are more suitable as a phylactery, though my initial wish was to use an incredibly tough material, it turns out that it becomes a cage for the soul. The phylactery must be made of something soft and malleable to be suitable for magic casting.

My choice was to use a very soft phylactery, but that comes with the inherent weakness, how easily it is broken. But that cannot be helped.

The body is not anything special, it is simply material. The only reason it holds the soul is just by coincidence. One can still pilot the body from a distance so long as the soul is attuned to magic and has access to mana.

With my newfound phylactery, I can use mana to control objects.

However, my old body is still what is easiest to control. It seems there is some sort of synchronization with the body, either from muscle memory or the soul is familiar to that particular body.

My first successful experiment involved this person that saved my life. He was a valiant warrior that had led many battles to victory.

In particular, my life was about to be taken by a monster, since I was wandering around the village, looking for stray people to catch. The man jumped in front of me and blocked the monster with its shield. After killing it with one swipe of his sword, he asked me if I was okay.

The man was very friendly, trying to befriend me. I went along with it, having a nice chat with him.

However, the only thought on my mind was how fitting he would be for my next experiment. It was not hard to set up a poison drink and convince him to have it.

With that, came my first step of success. The soul was bound to a phylactery and was able to pilot the body.

However, this wasn't perfect as it seemed its intelligence had almost completely disappeared. It seemed the soul could not even recognize the fact it was dead, searching around aimlessly for monsters.

Regardless, that was still a monumental step forward.

From there, my eyes were set on more valiant warriors. There was one, in particular, that was quite tall, he relied solely on his greatsword to kill swaths of monsters.

It took quite a while for me to befriend him as he was almost always fighting. He was an easy person to talk to and even easier to trick. The poisoned drink would've worked if it wasn't for this little kid that suddenly knocked it out of his hands.

She had impressive concealment abilities and scurried off after getting rid of the drink. The man simply laughed it off and I promised to send him a drink later.

While the man left, my focus was on that child. The child seemed to be special in a certain sense. In my search, the child was suddenly behind me and had a dagger against my leg.

I berated the child, saying that it was bad to do those things. The child mentioned her suspicions about the poisoned drink and suspected me. Perhaps because of how detached I was from the world, lies poured out of me one after another. From shocked expressions, disbelief, and gratitude.

I pretended to plead to the kid to protect me from whoever was 'trying to kill me'. It was not hard to get it to work. After a while of the kid protecting me from a 'murderer', I was able to convince her to eat some poisoned food.

After killing her, it did not take too long to also poison the man. Though it was not my initial plan to use this girl, she seemed quite special so my next experiments were on both of them.

The experiment was still another success, but their intelligence was still greatly hampered. They had no memories and had no idea who they were though most of their motor functions were fine.

At this point, I wondered what would happen with more intelligent warriors.

My hunt continued. This time, while wandering in the village there was a team of three people working together to fight off a wave of monsters. They stood back to back and slowly thinned out the onslaught that came after them.

They were able to kill all the monsters, but they passed out right after. It was like a piece of meat fell from the sky, the use of formation indicated they did not simply swing their weapons for swinging them.

This experiment was the same as the last one. There did seem to be an increase in intelligence as the skeletons would use the same formation they did before, but it seemed they did not realize that they were dead.

My next wonder was what would happen if the person was not a warrior at all, but a mage. Intelligence surely would be high, and perhaps the warrior aspect actually hampered recovery with memory as those were prioritized.

There was a group of four children that wished to learn magic. They all had decent talents within strong elements, earth, water, and thunder.

Though it would take long, I made the decision to raise these children and teach them magic. My progress in magic was proficient, after all.

Years had gone by and I watched as the four of them slowly grew up. They had grown close to me and made great progress in magic.

It made me wonder if this was what raising kids felt like. There were times where my old goal had been forgotten. Times where life was enjoyable simply because of the many small things.

But I did not give up.

Once the four kids' intelligence had risen to a suitable degree, I killed all of their parents.

While they were grieving I told them about my progress on my project.

Resurrection Magic.

After convincing them, they had come to my lair, where the experiments occurred.

My original intention was to use them as experimental subjects, but if they were willing to help me then they could live.

My expectations were high that they would join me, but they all refused.

They called me a monster, said to bring back the 'old Noah'.

But they were already in my lair.

There was no escape for them.

Unfortunately, this experiment did not provide the desired results.

They showed signs of intelligence. They were able to use extracted mana efficiently and were able to connect the fact the pedestals were outputs for concentrated mana.

The special gathering gemstone found was responsible for this. If only the gemstone had some better use for my goal.

Each body was used for different experiments.

While the first one was proficient in magic and could cast complicated spells, the memories were still gone. The second one could do the same and showed behavior showing possible memories. The third showed signs of recalling things, but not to a significant extent.

The last one showed signs of remembering, but could not register the situation for what it was, that they were dead.

This seemed to be the answer, but it was just out of reach. Though this was in the right direction, it could only work for subjects that just died and with an intact body.

Further experiments showed that bodies that decayed for a few days would no longer work.

At least it would work for me.

Nevertheless, a failure is a failure.

I reached a dead end.

But it is possible, just outside of my grasp.

I saw it happen.

He was able to do it, why can't I?

Maybe the powers he used were some sort of manipulation in space, but that meant it was possible.

Perhaps my method could be modified.

The current experiments all involve forcefully putting the soul into a phylactery.

Perhaps there is another method...

What if the soul naturally was attracted to the phylactery?

That could solve any side effects and lost memories as well.

A more gentle process...

The only question concerns how this could be done.

I suppose it should start at the roots. Lower than humans, lower than animals, are plants.

Do plants even have souls?

Could a human soul be contained within a plant?

It seems this would be the next direction my experiments would go.

I already have the subjects in mind.

You are so close Noah, just a few more steps forward.'

Mark chuckled with derision.

"How heartless. I wonder what else this filth has done."

Leon narrowed his eyes.

"It's hard to believe that a person like this actually exists..."

Osric rubbed his hand against his chin.

"What goal pushed him to go so far?"

My head tilted to the side.

"I wonder what happened to him... to make him the person he was...."