20 Live & Learn [3]

https://discord.gg/ZrWk2jqjbV

AN: I get that it might seem like the whole Crow Project is being drawn out, and that's pretty much true, but understand that the objective here is quite far fetched, and thus I thought that the length of the learning process should represent how challenging the goal is.

On a side note I fail to understand the whole "Shower thoughts" thing, I think way harder when I'm taking a shit.

Also AU stuff, no storyline changes.

—

The figure hovered its hands in front of its face as if it was playing peeka-boo. Koen internally scratched his head—he could not tell whether it was being serious or not.

And then his pupils dilated in horror.

The figure drew his hands back—and all that remained was a pitch-black face, with the only visible features being the whiteness that surrounded its pupils.

[Image: Warning, it's slightly unnerving]

"What the fuck…" Koen muttered under his breath.

He took a few steps back retreating from the figure, but it was to no avail—even though he felt his body move, his position was not changing whatsoever.

"The hell are you…." Koen's voice was raspy and filled with dread, a cold sweat dripping down his forehead.

That thing was who he was going to be? Impossible—he would never let himself transform into such a monster.

"You shouldn't be asking me that—you're the one who created me after all" The figure slowly began to advance towards him, Koen wanted to retreat, but it was still to no avail.

"What do you want from me!" He became desperate, the longer he looked at the figure the more the sense of terror spread, but for some reason he was unable to look away.

"Why would I want anything from you? Since you brought me into existence clearly you wanted something out of me" The figure's voice had not changed whatsoever, he still held a human-like voice, but the juxtaposition it's appearance provided made it all the more scarier.

"Why would I create something like you…no—you're lying to me, just get out of my head already!" At this point he was practically beginning for him to snap out of whatever this was.

"Look down" It ordered—Koen suddenly felt as if his movements were no longer his own, he looked down into the water and his fear practically imploded.

His face…was the same as the figures.

(Koen's Perspective)

I jolted out of that nightmarish terrain, my body drenched in sweat and my bedsheet suffering from the aftereffects.

I frantically looked around my room searching for anyone—absolutely anything that could have been the cause of that.

But I saw nothing—there was no one, and Grigori's alert system was inactive.

It couldn't be…did I really create that thing myself? No—that doesn't make sense, why would I make such a thing that would terrorize me so?

I don't understand—none of it makes sense.

I just want to forget about it…

I tried to go to sleep, and I managed to get a few minutes of rest at a time before the image of that figure popped into my head once again—jolting me back to contentiousness.

This isn't working—a distraction, that's what I need.

I exited my lab and made my way to the common library—I wasn't searching for anything in particular, just something to take my mind off…whatever that was.

'The Art of Golem Engineering - Entry Level' Golems huh? You hear about them quite frequently in Fantasy novels and things of the sort—this'll surely take my mind off it.

I sat down with a cup of water next to me—I was about to take a sip when out of reflex I flung the cup as far as I could, smashing it in the process.

The face—my face, just like in the dream, I saw it again.

I wanted to go clean it up but I feared that once I got near the water I would see it once again.

Though if the mess was left like this Azazel would surely take notice—and if he checked the cams he would definitely see that I did it, in fact he might have already taken notice. All I can do is hope he isn't awake yet.

I reluctantly picked up a broom and clumsily cleaned up the mess whilst looking upwards, I didn't want to look at the puddle of water at all costs.

After I was done—I went back to reading up on Golems.

Apparently there are two branches towards creating Golems. One is creating one from scratch, and the other is using an already dead lifeform as the basis—although the state of their body has to be in somewhat of a good condition for the process to actually function.

The former is significantly harder than the latter—so I'll read up on that some other time. I looked at the method to use an already dead animal, perhaps that snake corpse the hog gave me has some use to it after all.

Depending on the species—the easier or harder the creation of a golem is, in a sense they're like artificial familiars I suppose.

And apparently the neural network of a human/humanoid is just too complex to be reanimated, unless you're a once in a billion year genius or something I guess, honestly that's a good thing since people can't just go around reviving people whenever.

Something like a regular dog or cat could be done by a complete amateur—whereas something like a dragon would be a challenge for those even with centuries of experience, but shouldn't that be impossible as well since most of them have the same if not greater intelligence than most humanoids?

I doubt a snake would be that hard—when creating a golem out of a corpse, you are essentially making an inactive brain, active again.

And upon completion—you share a link with the species, they sustain themselves through one's own [Mana] I guess that makes them similar to servants, or something along those lines.

I guess even if one does manage to create a golem from the corpse of something like a Dragon or Phoenix, I'd imagine you'd still need to have an insane amount of [Mana] to sustain such a beast.

According to the manual—there's something called a Mana Deficit. If the amount of [Mana] you are providing your golem is higher than the rate at which you replenish [Mana] it will inevitably end up in the user's demise.

Though I doubt a snake of that size could cost that much [Mana], If I go through with this I'll do a quick check with the equipment in my lab to be safe.

Like most denominations of [Mana Engineering] this process requires the use of a Transmitter—however, it's compulsory to use your own [Mana] when wiring to actually allow a connection between yourself and the golem.

So I'll have to ferment my own [Mana]—fermenting [Mana] is actually quite easy, you literally just put a fraction of your own [Mana] into a vial or container of sorts, and chill it for a few days.

Different species require different forms of wiring in order to create a connection—I flipped through the pages and eventually found one for the many types of snakes there are.

Some were ones you could find on the human world which surprised me quite a bit—didn't this mean normal animals had [Mana] too? Perhaps it's a denomination of [Nature Energy] like [Ki].

Though I can't imagine it's a lot, and nor do I understand the purpose of turning them into a golem.

They don't have any "special" properties like the animals in the Underworld, so what would you gain from doing that?

That snake could be quite beneficial now that I think about it—it seemed to be a native species to the Volcanic Marshes, or at least I hope so, because that would mean there's a higher chance of it having a fire-related ability which might be compatible with my [Flame Shake].

'To carry out the process of reanimation—after imprinting the initial seal as shown previously on your desired specimen, create a third-order linkage pathway throughout the brains structure, note that the procedure must be carried out with extreme precision—should the Transmitter cause even the smallest of punctures into any part of the brain, the entire process will be obsolete'

It's a good thing I had all that practice with creating the Resonance Band I suppose—snakes are a fairly simple lifeform, from a biological standpoint—thus just as the manual said, I should be able to do this with relative ease.

And I fail—I guess that's that, I won't be hurt in any way so what's the harm in trying?

I kept reading trying to divulge myself as much as possible into this subject—anything to get my mind off that.

…

As I was reading I noticed that beams of light began to make their way in through the windows. It was day already? It seems I've been reading for much longer than I anticipated.

Dammit—I had failed to get any sleep whatsoever, and Azazel's lessons are going to begin soon.

There was no use in trying to sleep now, I got up and just went for a stroll around Grigori in an attempt to clear up my mind.

As I walked through the halls I was greeted by a familiar face.

Valia had returned.

I waved to her, but to my surprise she just passed me by. And she had a grim expression on her face to, all rather uncharacteristic of her.

I guess we all have our fair share of worries—as much as I want to ask her about it, she doesn't seem in the mood to talk.

And I'm clearly in no state to be offering others comfort, so I just pretended to not notice any thing and continued on my walk.

I'm assuming something went wrong during her mission, either that or the mission itself was not what she was expecting.

I went to one of the study-rooms where me and Azazel usually meet for our study sessions and took the short amount of time I had remaining to try and collect myself.

After a few minutes the door began to creak open, and Azazel had entered, I did my best to keep a calm and collected expression.

"Ah, you're here early—good, enthusiasm is important, now then, have you thought of any new ideas for the Crow Project?" He sat down next to me, and poured me a cup of coffee.

I hesitated to drink from it, so I decided to initiate the conversation to prevent any suspicion.

"Actually I have—you've taught me quite a bit, but I still think I was headed in the right direction with my theory of progressive mutation"

"Hoh, and why is that?"

"The whole thing with creating artificial cells was correct from my point of view, but I just went about it incorrectly"

"Rather than trying to force your nucleus to assimilate with my cells, I think it would be better to combine the tissue of both cells entirely, and make a completely new cell"

"And you believe that way the structure of the cell will hold?" he questioned.

"Mhm, I think the reason the cell ended up rupturing is because of the ratio imbalance between our cell structures, the initial crow cells should have had per say an 8:2 ratio in favor of my composition—which made it extremely difficult for the fusion process to be successful"

"So you're suggesting creating a whole different cell with both of our materials would even it out?" He continued.

"Exactly"

"You understand you'll need to study quite a bit if you want to accomplish something like that?" When Azazel said he would help me—he didn't mean he would do the work for me.

It was more about giving me the tools in order to do the work myself—which obviously contributes to nurturing my growth as a researcher.

"Well that's why we're doing these lessons right?" A pleasant smile appeared on his face as he nodded in approval.

"Now you're starting to get it" and so we continued.

Listening to Azazel's explanations helped me keep my mind clear, he began teaching me the steps necessary to fuse cells of a different kind together.

So far I've learned that the process is basically like taking two different pancake batters—mixing them together and creating one pancake. A very abstract analogy I know, but you get the point.

Obviously it sounds quite simple—but in reality there are a multitude of steps that both require considerable practical experience, and very detailed theoretical knowledge.

He's encouraged me to analyze his cells in more detail than before, not only should I know what the subcellular structures of his cells do, but why they do it—how they do it, how does it link up with the rest of a Fallen Angel's body, so on and so forth.

And with that time passed—and my knowledge continued to expand. But in the back of my mind, my worries continued to linger.