Volcanic Marshes [4]

https://discord.gg/ZrWk2jqjbV

Let's try this once more—I arranged an assortment of pebbles roughly forty feet away from my position.

I adopted a firm posture and kept my breathing steady, I held out my palm and conjured a singular arrow. It was about thirty centimeters in length and unlike before the flames that made up it's body were completely controlled.

They all kindled as if they were in sync.

I fired the arrow and landed a perfect hit—my training had really paid off, but I was not done yet. There were still five more pebbles left.

I conjured two arrows this time and concentrated as much as I could.

I let them loose and managed to hit both pebbles, yet again with perfect aim. A smile crept up my face, although this wasn't nearly as satisfying as making progress with one of my projects, I still savored the feeling.

I repeated the process once more and managed to get rid of the last of the pebbles, I felt satisfied with my progress, but there were still two more things I needed to confirm.

I molded a sphere of flames, merely five meters in diameter and proceeded to imagine the shape of a sword as best I could, the handles, the hilt, the blade—all the basic details that make a sword what it is.

As I opened my eyes I saw the exact same shape appear in the form of white flames, a significant improvement from the childish triangle I had made earlier. As I analyzed the blade I paid extra attention to the third and final aspect I wanted to check.

The raw power of my flames—when I had first begun exploring these marshes my flames required at least ten shots to break through the husk of the trees around here.

I took out one of the berries I had collected much earlier on and placed it on the ground, I took out one of the two remaining vials containing the sap I had gathered and allowed about two drops to land on the berry.

Roughly thirty minutes later I felt tremors from the bottom of my feet and I watched as the tree rapidly came to life—seeing the process as it happens was far more intriguing than simply viewing it's results.

Taking a few steps back I conjured a small pellet from the tip of my finger and aimed it at the tree.

Two shots, all I needed was merely two shots to break through—I had come here wanting at least a 50% increase in power, but to my delight I had accomplished 100% instead. I would definitely be coming back to this area eventually.

As I rummaged through the contents of my backpack my expectations had come to light—I was all out of rations, a week had officially passed since I begun this little training program of mine.

Taking this into consideration alongside what I have learned during this expedition—to say the results were satisfactory would be an understatement.

However it was now time for me to return—I took out the evacuation scroll and tore it.

I felt a slight dizziness invade my mind as my surroundings seemed to warp around me from where I stood, in the duration of a mere blink I was right back inside Azazel's office.

He seemed to be signing away at a pile of documents not to mention that the room reeked of coffee, not even the strongest Fallen Angel can escape the clutches of paperwork. He looked at me with a tired expression and smiled warmly.

"How was your trip?" he asked.

"It's definitely added onto my list of questions to say the least—in a good way however" I replied.

"Haha, that's good to hear, I would like to talk about it some more but that look on your face tells me you want to rush to your lab right this instant, so I'll save it for later"

Am I that easy to read?

I actually had quite the sum of questions I would like to pester him with but for now I'll try see what answers I can find on my own, I just gave him a slight nod and proceeded to make my way out.

Strangely enough I can't hear the sweet melody of destruction coming from the gym as I passed by, has Valia come to understand the concept of mercy whilst I was gone?

I swiped my card on the smart lock and entered what would be my personal workstation from now on, as well as my bedroom. I've grown tired of sleeping in the same room as Valia, I don't even know why I was put there to begin with, Grigori has like a thousand rooms.

Same room, not same bed—pervert.

(AN: I'm looking at you! Yeah you who's pointing your finger at yourself in a questioning manner! Shame!)

She's a good kid and all but she wakes me up constantly asking about Azazel's hobbies, likes, dislikes and all of the above. First of all, it's my role to pester people with questions it shouldn't be the other way round.

Secondly, she was adopted before me—shouldn't she know him better?

I don't have to worry about her sneaking in or anything as the smart lock is reinforced by Grigori's barriers, and even though she has the power to divide—I doubt she's strong enough to tackle Grigori's entire defense system yet, or at least I hope not.

My lab had everything—microscopes, electron microscopes, empty enclosures, refrigeration units—you name it, as well as a whole assortment of buttons that I probably shouldn't mess with, but eventually will anyways.

I also had a whole setup just for Mana Wiring, goodbye musty old workshop, hello sweet comfort of modernity.

I started by emptying my backpack and sorting out everything I had gathered during my journey, I began to slowly sort them in their respective positions making sure to be extra careful not to break anything.

Azazel had already arranged to transfer all my stuff from my previous borrowed workshop to my new setup, namely my blueprints for the Flare Project (Artificial Organ) and my Fallen Angel conversion, which I had named the Crow Project.

I had decided to proceed with the Crow Project first and for good reason—when it came to the actual implantation of the Artificial Organ into my body should the creation phase actually succeed, there was one main problem that stood out.

Once the organ was implanted I would have to restart my heart in order for Flare to actually pump through my body as well as blood.

If I didn't go through with this the Flare would be able to make it's way into my heart just fine, but it wouldn't go anywhere and just continue and continue to build up, and I can imagine how that would end up

Think of it as having to restart your computer after an update. Now humans only have a 3-10% chance to survive such a process, not to mention the fact that I have the body of a child however—with the body of a Fallen Angel I'd have [Light Magic] running through my veins at all times.

The speed of the operation should be relatively quick, so whilst my heart is deactivated I could just let the [Light Magic] be the one to sustain my body for me.

You might be thinking that I can just get Azazel to sustain my body whilst the operation happens and you're half right. He's the strongest Fallen Angel there's no doubt about it, and according to my calculations with his power he could increase the chances of success to 95-98%. How I was going to get Azazel to agree to such a procedure was a worry for another day.

But that's still too risky that 5-2% chance of death is still something I don't want to face—and I have enough self-awareness to know that it would cause Azazel great pain, and after all he's given me I just can't do that to him.

As much as I enjoy taking risks this is my life we're talking about, it's too early for me to be playing around with my livelihood.

(AN: Wait till he gets to the later stages of his career haha)

Hypothetically, the [Light Magic] should be able to carry out the process of my heart long enough to give the operation a 100% of success.

I say hypothetically, as this requires that I actually manage to fully convert myself into a Fallen Angel.

Now onto the Crow Project itself—there were a few ideas I had going around.

The one that stood out most was to flat out create a whole new body for myself, a homunculus if you will—using Azazel's DNA to make it's composition that of a Fallen Angel and transplant my consciousnesses into it.

An added benefit being I could just put the Artificial Organ inside before hand and wouldn't have to undergo the surgical procedure at all to begin with.

But there were so many problems with this idea—firstly, I don't know the first thing about creating a body, the amount of learning and experience one would need to do such a thing was ridiculous, unless you had some bullshit ability to create one out of thin air, which I don't.

Secondly, I'm no Orochimaru so I have no idea how to actually transfer my mind into another vessel or anything like that, if that's even possible in the first place.

Also creating a body is much harder than one would actually think, even if this is a crazy fantasy world. With my lack of broken abilities I would have to create the skeletal structure, which means creating the bone, the marrow, the cartilage—the list goes on.

And then the God-knows-how-many cells a Fallen Angel's body is made of would need to be transplanted, and then comes to the arterioles, vessels, cerebellum—you get the point.

(AN: Get it? "God-knows" hahahahaha I'm so funny)

What I'm trying to say is—that just isn't happening.

Which brought me back to my original idea of changing my current body into that of a Fallen Angel's. For starters, I'm going to carry out a little experiment to see how I'm going to start with this whole ordeal.

I want to see how my DNA would react with Azazel's for starters. I already have a sample of my blood ready to use, now I'm no phlebotomist so doing it myself was slightly stupid, but as long as Azazel's doesn't know what's the problem?

Then again he can see everything that goes on in this facility so he probably already knows, well he hasn't done anything so no harm done.

I started with some basic decontamination procedures, I sprayed the equipment and surface I would be working on with 10% bleach solution, allowed it to sit for about fifteen minutes and rinsed it with clean water, following by spraying the station once again with 70% ethanol solution.

I put my gloves on, and set my heating block at fifty-six degrees centigrade. I had the blood ready in a microtubule which I inverted ten times to make sure the sample would be homogenous.

I vortexed some Proteinase K briefly and allowed the blood sample to be run through the centrifuge for about ten seconds.

I had two microtubules at the ready, and I poured about 20 microliters of Proteinase K into each one, followed by 200 microliters of my own blood.

Now I needed to add 200 microliters of Buffer AL to each sample, capped the tubes and vortexed them for about fifteen seconds.

I took the microtubules that I had set aside on the heating block and allowed them to incubate for about ten minutes.

...

After a relatively short but exhausting process of trying to isolate my DNA from my blood, I could now watch what would happen upon the interaction of the two specimens.

I plopped one drop of my DNA onto a secure surface, and one drop of Azazel's on top of it—now I wait.

---

[Science Jargon]

Proteinase K: If you don't know it basically keeps DNA and RNA from degrading or being damaged, not going to give you a copy paste from Wikipedia as most probably wouldn't get it, but if you're still interested be my guest.

Heating Block: Basically to help maintain the temperature of the sample.

Microliter: Essentially one millionth of a Liter, so very very little.

Buffer AL: Also helps protect the DNA.

I planned to go all out with the isolation process, but I don't think you guys give that many shits so I just cut it short. Anyhow, boring arc finally over yippee, now we move onto the interesting stuff.