Dr. Zoric entered the lecture hall shortly after, his presence commanding immediate attention from the lecture hall packed with students. There were hardly any empty seats left, which just showed how popular his class was.
The room fell silent as he reached the podium, his eyes briefly meeting Alex's before scanning the rest of the class.
"Good morning, everyone," Dr. Zoric began, his voice carrying easily throughout the room. "Some of you may already know of me, some of you may not. So let me introduce myself."
He paused, his gaze sweeping across the rows of students. "My name is Dr. Arlen Zoric, I've spent the better part of my life studying the nature of souls. For context, I am 126 years old."
The students in the lecture hall gasped in shock when they heard Dr. Zoric's age.
They knew that awakened could live for a long time, as they might occasionally come across awakened over thousands of years old in the Primordial Expanse.
But the Primordial Expanse and the system had only been around in the federation for 100 years or so, so it was rare to see such aged and experienced awakened, as most of them died off in the early days of the Primordial Expanse's appearance.
"I was 24 years old when the Primordial Expanse made its first appearance. At that point, it was still considered a curse, and I was unfortunate enough at the time to become afflicted with it, disappearing shortly after those black lines appeared on my body, you've all heard the same story." Dr. Zoric explained further.
"However, from the moment I stepped foot on the other side and saw the system interface appear before me, I knew from that moment onwards my life would change forever. I'm sure most of you were the same, but you might be surprised to find that I wasn't excited about being able to live out my 'novel-like' fantasies etc, but rather from the few short words I noticed on my Details."
He paused, watching the reactions of the students around the classroom.
He did the same introduction every year, but seeing the reactions of the students never got old.
"'Soul' core, and 'Soul' classification. Those were the words that enraptured me right from the start."
Dr. Zoric's introduction was met with attentive silence. The students hung on his every word. powered-by-NovelFire
Alex, sitting near the front, was particularly interested in hearing more about his experiences.
However, it seemed that this was the point where the introduction would end.
Breaking up the silence in the room, Dr. Zoric spoke, picking out a student at random.
"You there, tell me what you think a soul is." he said as he pointed at a particularly well endowed female student.
She looked a little confused at first, as it seemed she wasn't paying full attention to the class as the other students next to her had to nudge her to get her attention.
After a moment, she realised the Professor had asked her a question about souls, and stammered a little to answer it.
"The soul is an intangible entity, a core aspect of our being that transcends our physical body and its needs."
Her answer earned her some praise from her nearby friends.
"That's a good answer, " Dr. Zoric stated. "But you're wrong."
All of the students looked confused when Dr. Zoric said this, even Alex, as this was the general consensus concerning souls.
But none of them dared to refute back and waited for Dr. Zoric to speak again, as he was one of the leading experts on the subject.
The leading researcher spoke, with the name of the person being censored out.
Immediately after, a bright white light filled the room, blocking out the video feed, until a few seconds later everything returned to normal.
But there were now 11 living people in the room, and 1 less dead person.
The video continued for a little while longer, with the person lying on the table getting up and looking around disorientedly.
The researchers proceeded to ask them some routine questions, like can you tell me your name? Can you tell where you are right now? What's today's date? Etc.
To which the person who used to be dead only a few seconds ago managed to answer these questions perfectly.
It was miraculous, considering that before the advent of the Awakened, people would become brain dead just a few dozen minutes after the brain is starved of oxygen.
The video recording stopped abruptly, as Dr. Zoric had paused it.
But even though the students were interested in seeing what happened next in the scene, they were much more interested in hearing what Dr. Zoric had to say.
"Did any of you notice it?" He asked, not really expecting an answer.
As expected, nobody answered. The hall was completely silent.
But after a few moments, the same female student he had picked on at the start of the class spoke up.
"The test subject in the experiment was perfectly fine?"
She seemed unsure of herself, hesitating whether to even answer.
But contrary to her thoughts, things didn't go as badly as she expected.
"Hmm, it's not quite what I was expecting, but you're close enough. Catch." Dr. Zoric said as he threw the beast core to the girl.
"She's right, the subject was completely fine, but that's only half the point."
Dr. Zoric continued.
"We were closely monitoring the subject the whole time since his death, which we also orchestrated."
Dr. Zoric paused for one final time, taking a look at the faces of all of the students around the room, as they were all surely about to change when they heard his answer.
"And what did we find out? The man's soul never left his body. Not once during the 24 hours he was dead. This only meant one thing for us."
*Cough*
Dr. Zoric cleared his throat.
"There is no afterlife. Death is the end. Death is final."