The Experiments To Discover The Unknown (2)

"Any aspiring mage will know the basic laws of how to conduct magical experimentation. It's even on the back of every book that the school has ever given out" spoke Cyrus aloud, in a rather odd state.

"First is the hypothesis: The Soul is located within the head. Why? Because the glow of the undead is located within the eyes, and I believe this to be the soul itself. Hence, the first experiment: Confirmation of the location of the soul. Cut off his arms."

One of the Legionaries did as he was told, bringing down his hand across the arms of the prisoner. Struggled the prisoner did try, even though he was muzzled and chained to the wall which made it pointless, all the way up until his arms were severed.

"Not even needing a blade, curious and noted for later" thought Cyrus as he walked over and poured a bottle of liquid death essence onto the arms.

He then quickly grabbed his lab notes, writing down everything that occurred in detail.

"Contact with the death essence has been established, the death essence is acting as expected and stripping all of the life force from the arm. Shriveling, decaying and then eventually nothing but bone is left. All as expected, nothing out of the ordinary" mumbled Cyrus as he wrote.

"Next comes the most important part, will the arm somehow move once more. Is the soul chiefly located in one area, or perhaps diffused throughout the body and that it simply gathers together upon death…"

Watching in extreme attention, only glancing away for a split second to check how much time has passed from the laboratory clock. Seconds turned into minutes, and the minutes quickly added up until a dozen or so had passed.

"Result: Failure to transform into undead, the death essence stripped all life force causing it to grow but stagnated after having nothing but the cold dead stone ground to try to extract something from."

"To confirm I should leave each part I test out overnight in a locked down room. Hm, this room locks with that large heavy metal door so I guess this should work. There are multiple labs anyways, its fine if a little damage happens. It is worth it as I must confirm the hypothesis completely, as there is a chance that it will eventually transform into an undead but that it just needs more time than usual" thought Cyrus as he manipulated the thick death essence on the ground onto his hand for a moment.

"Next: The legs" ordered Cyrus.

As requested, two legs fell to the ground, where the same process was repeated with the arms except this time Cyrus only had to manipulate the death essence in his hand onto the legs.

After the same period of time had passed with the arms, Cyrus noted down the similar results and moved the appendages to a pile in the corner.

"Hmm, still alive somehow. Barely, but I applaud your will to contribute to my research" said Cyrus with a bow.

The prisoner was barely conscious at this point, on the verge of dying from blood loss at any moment.

"All that is left is the torso, neck and head. I suppose I have to do all of these at once, but I do not have enough essence for all three parts. Looks like I have to use the last of the bottle, how unfortunate. When my supplies arrive I can reuse this stuff, but for now it will just have to be wasted" sighed Cyrus as he gave the order for the prisoner to be diced into three.

He then split the death essence from the arms and legs to the neck and torso, then poured the last bit in the bottle on the head.

All that was left was to watch and observe, which Cyrus was more than happy to do so.

Time passed and both the torso and the neck showed no signs of anything much happening, but the head was another story.

"The flesh withered and decayed, but the death essence did not stagnate. No, instead it seems to have been absorbed by something and transformed into something that is death essence but not it. Tainted? Controlled? I am unsure of what I am seeing specifically, but it has changed for sure. Like a hunger has been lit inside of the head, it is absorbing all the death essence from even the torso and neck that is not too far away" noted Cyrus.

He watched closely, and as he had seen many times before at this point, an extremely dull light shone in the hollow eyes of the now skeletal head.

Cyrus noted a small tendril of something spreading out from the head, something that he was unable to see with his eyes or sense.

"I know it is there, but I cannot tell what it is. It is simply moving the essence it runs into aside or sometimes causing it to be absorbed into it if it contains some kind of life force. It could be thought of as knowing the location of an enemy not because you see them, but because they move the bushes as they walk."

Eventually the tendrils reached the other skeletal body parts that had been experimented on earlier, causing them to slowly move on the floor before the very eyes of everyone present towards the head.

"It…it can affect the real world?!" thought Cyrus in both surprise and delight.

"If this is the power of the soul, then this means that after undergoing some kind of qualitative change it can be used to affect reality. This…this opens the door for so much now that I see it before my very eyes. With the night dwellers I was unsure if what they were using were indeed some kind of soul manipulation technique, but this here could definitely be that."

Even the legionaries were somewhat interested, perhaps not having seen the sight of an undead form in front of them before.

Eventually the undead had gathered its pieces, and with difficulty it rose up from the ground like a child that had just learned how to walk not too long ago.

It looked around with its hallowed eyes, the dim light contained within flickering softly. When it looked upon Cyrus, however, the light shone ever so slightly as it struggled to walk towards him with its arms outstretched.

"So weak, the ones I created by feeding them with a massive amount of life and death essence were far stronger. I wonder if the individual used at the start also matters? Perhaps some have stronger souls than others, which would dictate the amount of outside help it needs to reach a certain level of strength. Not only that, why is it so focused on me? If the undead seek things that they can drain, in order to strengthen themselves and prolong their existence, then why go for me instead of the two legionaries that are at its side. They are surely a much 'richer' target…is it a grudge? Do they retain some kind of impressions from their life, or perhaps even full on memories" thought Cyrus wildly, completely ignoring the undead as he wrote down theory after theory on his notes.

"Just hold it back for now, I do not wish to lose research material. This is all costing me you know" said Cyrus quickly, immediately getting back to writing with reckless abandon after wasting just that one moment to speak.

"This opens up the door for many more experiments that I must conduct, but for now let us see what we have here."

"Restrain it, completely. I will be taking a closer look" commanded Cyrus.

The two legionaries obeyed, picking the undead up whilst holding down its thrashing limbs and avoiding the gaping maw that tried to take a bite out of them. They brought it back towards the wall restraints, shackling it to the wall and then tying its limbs with an extra piece of strong leather so that it could not move anything but its head.

One of the Legionaries then grabbed its head and held it back, so that not even that could move. While the other one kept close attention to Cyrus and the undead, ready to eliminate it at a moments notice should something unexpected happen.

"Legionaries make excellent assistants when it comes to manual labor anyhow. I do not think they would be too useful for bouncing theories off or asking them about things magical in nature" jested Cyrus within as he walked forward to inspect the undead.

"The invisible tendrils, which I believe to be some kind of extension of the soul, wrap around the bone and essentially take the place of muscles. Why do they need bone anyways? It is clear that they can use body parts from other human skeletons, so long as the head remains, but could I perhaps give them a body made of metal instead of bone. While the soul extension seems to be able to strengthen the bone as the soul grows stronger, as evidenced by the undead I made during the exam, would it not take less effort to get it to a strong place if the materials used were better?" wondered Cyrus as he noted this down for further testing.

"I will be strengthening it now, to see the change up close. Be on guard" explained Cyrus, as he made ready to use the last of his will to slowly 'feed' the undead.

Activating his Vita domain, he gathered life essence and slowly began to move it towards the undead. Taking to it quite well, it immediately began greedily absorbing as much as Cyrus would give to it.

"Slowly, I need to see every minute change possible."

Playing something akin to tug-a-war with the undead, Cyrus used his careful manipulation to slow the rate of absorption as much as he could without tiring himself out immediately. For he soon learned that while the undead was extremely weak, far weaker than he had ever seen before, its hunger was disproportionately massive and exceedingly strong.

"The light within the eyes becoming brighter as it absorbs more… is possibly the soul being strengthened? Since I can not use both my domains at once the rate of growth seems to be slow, but it is definitely experiencing changes. How odd, when other life forms take in life essence their soul does not appear to grow stronger. Perhaps when death first takes it and enough death essence is around, it causes a reaction of the soul that changes it qualitatively as I had noticed before. This change, while making it able to grow and become extremely powerful very quickly, it causes a constant decay of the undead's soul, or so I have been told."

Having confirmed that it does indeed slowly gain strength, Cyrus stepped back and stopped feeding it. The undead immediately began to try to use its newfound strength to free itself, but it was no match for the heavy metal restraints or the towering Legionaries.

"Now to see if it really does decay and the rate of the decay if it does" thought Cyrus as he quickly wrote down everything he had observed thus far.

After he was done, he returned his attention to the undead. He was paying particular importance to the eyes, to see if it would dim the more time passed.

"The intensity of the light is far too dim to create some kind of way to measure it through description, and I know of no tool that can measure the soul. But it is dimming nevertheless, around every hour or so I can see a difference" thought Cyrus, who had been staring at the undead for two consecutive hours now.

Suppressing a yawn, he struggled to stay focused as the toll from all of the day's activities began to weigh on him. Not only was he physically and mentally tired, but he had only a single drop of unused will left which only added to the amount of strain to his mental state.

"I guess this is enough for today, it has weakened to its previous state by now. I should be able to leave it there all night and see if it…died? I suppose its death, since the state of the undead is neither purely life nor purely death."

"All right, this is enough for today" said Cyrus aloud.

"We will continue tomorrow after breakfast, which should be just after 8 in the morning. Good work" said Cyrus with a salute, as he gathered all his notes together and left the room.

"Just secure it and lock the door on your way out, leave a note or something on it saying to not open it due to the presence of an undead…I need sleep" said Cyrus, ending with a yawn as he waved goodbye.