Volume 2 Episode 13

Lin's Apartment.

The Basement Floor.

After learning the information that was available about the Lindon family, Lin walked to the basement floor. The system gives only information that is known to the public, whether it's the public of the magical world or the normal world, so he didn't have an idea about their secret forces and bodyguards, but he did have a general idea of who the family members and the normal working staff were.

Lin stepped into the basement. After the incident with Richard and him almost burning the whole apartment down, he had renovated the whole room, and it looked like new in a matter of days. He was very impressed with the construction workers of the family. Charles had already moved all the test subjects into separate capsule-like containers, completely unconscious. He had also installed all his previous equipment and setup from before.

"Master Lin, I have returned," Charles, who had returned with the potions requested by Lin. He took the potions, observed them, and put them away. Charles immediately left the basement after giving Lin the items, as he had requested to be alone during his work.

Lin, who had gotten back into his experimental work, pulled out one of the lab rats from the capsule and cuffed her on the bed. Then he took out the dual power machine and started doing the same procedure once again. The process, which lasted for almost a day, finished with the test subject now fully equipped with two magic powers. Her body had increased in size due to not being able to handle the power just like what had happened to Lin when he used it before, and he injected a muscle stretching potion to decrease the chances of her body breaking. Soon, after completely adapting to the new magic power, the body reverted back into its old form. 

'Now, let's start the new experiment.'

Lin put on his surgical gown and moved the surgical instruments over to his side after the sterilization process. He then applied an antiseptic potion on the subject's head and proceeded to cut open the head, cutting open the skull along with the skin and creating a large opening to access the brain. After a lot of learning, and using his perfect memory to his advantage, he had finally perfected his methods. He carefully removed the brain of the test subject, and inserted it into a bowl filled with regenerative potion he had asked Charles to bring with him. He then moved over to check the subject's condition.

'I had a doubt, but this confirms it.' 

After checking the vitals of the subject whose brain had been removed, Lin appeared satisfied with his findings. A usual normal human should've been instantly dead after the removal of the brain or any other important organs, but it seems that the bodies that have undergone dual power procedure do not die even after removing such organs. Almost as if they were immortal or undead. But that was not the case. After all, Lin had used the procedure on countless other test subjects before, and he had killed all of them after the procedure completed. So what was the difference?

Well it wasn't that the subjects were immortal, but the fact that the bodies of the experimental lab rats had created a temporary life support system inside their body to maintain the body alive for a bit more hours. This didn't include small and less important body parts like limbs that didn't contain an important internal organ, but parts like torso and the head. Even the internal organs appeared to have the ability to maintain this sort of life support system on its own. The brain that had been taken out appeared to still be fine even if it's inserted back into the body.

Lin watched the body for a long time, and left the site after a while. It took the body five full days to go lifeless, as the other organs maintained life support instead of the removed brain without any outside help. Of course, the subject was still unconscious and she would still not be able to do anything if she wasn't implemented with anesthesia, as she didn't have a brain. He looked at the brain which he extracted from the subject, which surprisingly hadn't gone lifeless yet. But this was because of the regenerative potion that the brain had been kept in, which caused the dead cells in the brain to regenerate continuously, causing an endless loop of regeneration and maintenance of life.

Lin inspected the brain inside the regenerative potion with curious eyes. He was going to study how to tweak the brain, to change the 'default settings' essentially. But how to do that, when such a method isn't even invented in both worlds he inhabited?

He took out another potion which he had ordered Charles to buy, and poured over the brain. The potion he just used was a visual memory potion, which essentially made the memories of the subject pop up in a puff of smoke. The potion is usually used on figuring out spies and thieves, but Lin found another reason for it. Essentially, he had been looking for a visual representation of the memories so he could alter them. And how was he planning on altering the memories if he didn't have the information about it? He did know that the three areas of the brain involved in explicit memory are the hippocampus, the neo-cortex and the amygdala,while the implicit memories, such as motor memories, rely on the basal ganglia and cerebellum and short-term working memory relies most heavily on the prefrontal cortex, as he had learned them from the system teaching him medicine. But modern science hadn't reached a point where they could successfully alter a person's memory. So how could he actually figure out the way to do it?

'Bingo!'

Lin could see a yellow light emitting from a part of the brain. He knew it. He wasn't sure if it would help but it did.

The information hint.

As long as one had sufficient knowledge about something and was just on the brink of discovering something detrimental, the information hint would help them improve their guesses, essentially making them think of a near accurate guess to ensure success. And it appeared in various forms, whether it be a eureka moment, through an accidental discovery based on coincidences, or even something like a bright light shining only visible to the chosen one's eyes. While the information hint is useful in situations like this, it cannot be used for ideas, as it only provides information during an educated guess. Otherwise Lin would've used it against Lindon a long time ago.

As Lin happily figured out how to alter memories using the information hint, he started implementing it on the brain of the subject, as the popped up memories started to change slowly.