I walk back home with a box in hand.
But it is not what you think it is.
It has been 2 months since my talk with Touko and I've gotten some useful information. Touko needed to do some measurements with me before I could continue with this next plan.
The reason why I needed to do these measurements was so I could get accurate puppet body parts.
The reason is simple.
I chopped off my own limbs to use them as experimental material.
Now before you start nagging me about this, I planned this out perfectly. If there wasn't full confirmation that I could get my limbs back, I wouldn't have taken this path. I had Shiki and Touko both prove it to me.
And getting Touko to agree with my plan took more money than it was worth. It was still worth it though. I place the box on the workbench and open it slowly. Inside are several preservation containers, each carefully sealed. But these limbs are more of high quality prosthetics than actual new body parts.
But we're getting off topic.
Since the body is connected to the Origin, I started wondering what would happen if part of someone's body was shoved into someone else using thaumaturgy.
For example, if I took a piece of someone with a strong Origin. Let's say it is something like "Sword" and I grafted it onto myself. Would my body start leaning toward that direction? Would my circuits adapt? Would my magecraft shift?
The texts I have found suggest yes. Body and soul are linked, so if you change the body enough and the soul adjusts, if you change the soul enough and the body follows.
But I am not that interested in stealing someone else's Origin.
I am more interested in understanding my own.
My left arm, the real one and not the puppet, sits in a preservation jar on my workbench. My right foot sits in another. I have been running Structural Analysis on them for days, mapping every nerve and every circuit. I grab the jar containing my foot and stare at it for a moment.
Touko's puppet limb has been doing excellent work for me. I could even say that it is better than the original. I do not intend to cut off all my limbs like some maniac. But I do intend to use every single body part I have cut off so far. I take the foot out carefully and place it on the table.
For a moment I just stare at it.
There was still faint prana residue running through the bone structure. Even detached from the body, the pattern had not completely faded. If Touko was right, and the body was built along the blueprint of the soul, then every piece of that body should still carry traces of that blueprint.
That raised an interesting possibility.
It also raised a theory on how her puppeteering works. I'm theorizing that her puppets are blank slates. Empty vessels waiting to be filled, and when it's filled with a creature the puppet adapts to the body.. So as long as I can pay Aozaki, I would have an infinite amount of research material. Unfortunately the amount of money I would need to do that could buy a city. So I will hoard any material I get.
I scrape several fragments of bone into a ceramic bowl before setting the rest of the foot back into the preservation fluid. The fragments are ground down until they become a fine powder. Once that is finished, I begin drawing a small alchemical circle beneath the bowl. It is a simple dissolution array, nothing fanciful.
The runes glow faintly as I pour a vial of reagent over the powder. The mixture begins to bubble slowly. The catalyst dissolves the bone fragments into a thin suspension.
This is exactly what I needed. I lean closer and activate Structural Analysis. Information floods into my mind.
The prana signature is still present, it is very faint but it's unmistakeable. The internal structure remains aligned to the same pattern it held while it was still part of my body.
So the theory was not wrong. Even a fragment of the body still leaned toward the Origin that shaped it.
Which raised the obvious question, what happens if something else absorbs it? Would they absorb it completely or would they get killed? Would their body reject it, or would the two patterns fight for dominance?
Only one way to find out. I pour the suspension into a thin glass syringe and seal it carefully. The liquid inside glows faintly under the workshop lights. I turn toward the row of containment cages near the back wall of the workshop.
I do not use them often. But they are useful when I need something alive to test on. Inside them are several small creatures. Rodents and crows mainly, but they're all experimental material regardless.
I open the first cage and grab a rat. It squeaks loudly in protest and squirms in my grip. I inject a small amount of the solution into the base of its spine before placing it back inside the cage. Then I activate a small monitoring bounded field around it.
Now all I have to do is wait. If my theory is correct, the foreign material will try to impose my structural pattern onto the host. But several other outcomes are possible.
The body might force an Origin awakening to counteract it, the material might simply dissipate, or the host might reject it entirely.
I lean against the table and watch where this goes. The rat begins turning white, slowly at first, starting from the injection site. Then spreading outward across its entire body.
My eyes narrow at this. Wait a minute… I recognize that substance. I immediately sprint toward the cage and yank the rat out.
Structural Analysis activates again and the result confirms my suspicion instantly.
Dark Matter.
The moment the white substance finishes spreading throughout the rat's body, it dies instantly. The corpse collapses in my hand. That opens a whole different can of worms.
My Origin was exactly what I suspected. Dark Matter. Although calling it that might not even be accurate anymore. In Academy City, Dark Matter was the result of my Personal Reality. Matter that did not exist in nature. Forced into existence through my will and the city's systems.
But this came from my bones. My flesh. My physical remains ground to dust and injected into a host. This was not Personal Reality. This was me in its truest sense.
Written into every cell of my body. Which meant something very important. I did not need Academy City's systems to get Dark Matter back. I did not need AIM fields. I did not need Personal Reality calculations. All I needed was to understand myself.
The rat proved that much. My Origin could still produce Dark Matter. Even in this world. Even using magecraft instead of esper powers. I raise my hand slightly and activate an alteration spell.
The rat turns into a blob of white matter above my palm. I turn it into several thing's, a cube, a sphere, a blade and a thread thinner than hair.
Each transformation takes barely a thought. Just like in Academy City. But the experiment also answered something else. What happens when you inject your Origin into someone else?
The rat did not just die. It was overwritten, every cell, nerve and part of what made it a rat got replaced by my pattern. Once that happened there was nothing left to sustain it.
No soul or consciousness. Just a shell filled with my signature. So grafting someone else's Origin onto yourself is not power whatsoever. It will not lead you to looking at life in a completely different perspective, but it will do the opposite. It will ruthlessly tear them apart from the inside. Unless someone had an origin like adaptation, but that in itself would be rare. A 1 time find, that couldn't be replicated.
But another thought creeps into my mind. What if I injected my Origin into myself? The rat died because it could not handle my pattern. But what about someone whose body already matched that pattern? What would happen then? Would my body accept it like a puzzle piece? Or would it bind recklessly and fracture the structure completely?
And more importantly. What would happen to my soul? I stare at the dead rat on my workbench. It is a perfect replica of my signature with nothing else inside.
If someone survived the overwrite then something impossible might occur. Two Origins in one vessel.
The texts say that is impossible, but I will not know until I try. And I have one advantage over every magus in this world.
Perspective.
I understand science and magecraft. In Academy City we were taught things like the eleventh dimension, Laplace's demon, and Maxwell's demon. Concepts most magi would only recognize through mystery, but not go into the scientific approach.
Which means my approach to this problem is fundamentally different. And there is something else. Something that places me on a completely different tier compared to the normies in this world of magecraft.
The spear.
That woman turned me into it once before.
I remember the structure.
I remember the formulas.
More importantly I remember what it felt like to exist as it.
A spear capable of destroying the world.
That was the absolute limit of my Dark Matter, so far.
If push really came to shove I could probably recreate it.
Hell, I might even be able to even improve it. Imagine a spear capable of opening a path to the Root when thrown. The thought sounds impossible, but I might actually be able to do it if push comes to shove.
Which creates another problem. The Counter Force. Gaia. Alaya. The world's immune system. Back in Academy City, there was clearly not such a problem because we had fuckers like Accelerator and Aleister that were alive. Monsters among monsters that could destroy the world if they were pushed too.
But if I create something that threatens the planet they will notice. And they will not send a warning of any kind, they will erase me without a second thought. The Counter Force always scales its response. Which means if I build something capable of destroying the world, it will send something capable of destroying me.
I look back at the Dark Matter floating above my palm. If the Counter Force really works the way the texts say it does, why has it not reacted already? Given enough time I could absolutely destroy this world. And yet no one has come after me.
Does it not recognize me as a threat? Or does it simply not care yet? I let the thought fade. That problem can wait. Because I have already discovered something far more important. A way to keep living. Even after death. Dark Matter does not follow normal physical laws. It is defined entirely by my will. Which means if any amount of Dark Matter exists somewhere, reconstruction becomes possible.
As long as Dark Matter continues to exist, Kakine Teitoku will eventually return. Unless someone completely erases every fragment carrying my structure. Which realistically is almost impossible. Especially when Dark Matter does not obey physics. I did not become Academy City's Number Two by thinking small. I will scatter dark matter everywhere I go, and make it so that I can revive anytime I die.
And if anyone ever finds out about this method, I would be designated for sealing immediately. Good thing I am not a fool who tells people how his powers work in this life.
The Dark Matter above my hand slowly reshapes itself again. A spearhead. It is only the tip, but even this much makes my stomach tighten. That woman forced my entire existence into this configuration once before.
The amount of prana needed just to maintain this much structure is ridiculous. Dark Matter itself is not the problem. The material responds to my will as easily as breathing. The real issue is the energy needed to force that structure into existence in the first place.
Back in Academy City the calculations were handled by the system and the power source was my Personal Reality interacting with the AIM field. Here there is no such support.
Everything runs through my circuits and human circuits have limits.
Even maintaining this incomplete spearhead is making my pathways burn like overheated wires. If I tried to construct the full structure right now my circuits would collapse long before the weapon finished forming.
For now I can only build fragments of the structure. Small sections. Pieces of the system that made that spear what it was.
Calling it a weapon is inaccurate. It is closer to a conceptual compression device. A structure that forces every layer of Dark Matter into a single directional function. Information density, Mass density, and Conceptual weight. Everything stacked along one vector. It does not destroy things by piercing them, but destroys the framework that allows them to exist.
If I were able to get a piece of my enemies DNA, I could probably just create a spear made to kill them without fail. The rules for the spear would never be too complicated for me.
It is a set of conditions stacked together until reality itself has no room left to argue.
The spear is nothing more than a structure that compresses intent into a single direction. Every layer of the material is forced into one function. One result. One outcome that reality is forced to accept.
If the target is defined, the vector is defined and if the vector is defined, the result is inevitable.
Information density determines the target. Mass density determines the force. Conceptual weight determines the authority of the strike.
But for some reason it takes an absurd amount of prana. Far more than the structure itself should logically require.
That does not make sense.
The formula itself is elegant. Efficient. If anything, the structure should be minimizing the amount of energy needed by compressing everything into a single vector. Yet my circuits are burning just maintaining a fragment of it.
Which means the problem is not the weapon. It is the power source. That woman had to be a monster of some sort, because this should not be as difficult as it is with my knowledge.
I set the spear fragment down, pushing the thought to the back of my mind. The spear is too complicated in itself right now, I'll check back up on it when I have more material.
There are other problems to solve first.
The rat experiment proved something important. My Origin is not just a conceptual alignment of the soul. It is physically encoded into my body. Even fragments of bone carry the pattern.
Which means the most efficient place to access that pattern is not outside my body.
It is inside it.
My gaze drifts toward the diagrams scattered across the workbench. Anatomical sketches. Circuit maps. Notes I had written during the last two months of experiments.
Bone marrow.
Unlike bone itself, marrow is alive. Constantly producing blood cells and feeding them into the bloodstream. A continuous biological production line running through the center of the skeleton.
If my Origin truly exists at the deepest structural level of my body, then the marrow should be saturated with it.
That means I could theoretically construct a thaumaturgical process that stimulates the marrow directly and forces it to output Dark Matter instead of normal biological material.
In other words, turning my own skeleton into a factory.
The idea is direct but also unbelievably dangerous. Bone marrow is directly connected to the production of white blood cells. Interfere with that system the wrong way and the result is not a failed experiment but death itself.
If the structure destabilizes inside my body the Dark Matter will not politely disperse. It will overwrite the surrounding tissue instantly. Which means my immune system, my blood, and possibly my nervous system would all collapse at the same time.
Unless I can find a way to maintain perfect control of the Dark Matter inside my body.
That means this experiment cannot be done recklessly.
Several conditions need to be satisfied first.
First, the output must be microscopic. If even a gram of Dark Matter forms inside my bloodstream it would immediately overwrite everything around it. The initial production must be limited to something closer to cellular scale.
Second, the structure must be anchored to a stable template. Dark Matter is defined entirely by my will, but the human body is not. If the construct drifts even slightly from the intended pattern it could begin converting surrounding tissue instead of remaining contained.
In other words, the Dark Matter needs a fixed boundary.
A cage.
Third, the marrow itself must remain functional. If I disrupt the production of blood cells too much my body will fail long before the experiment reaches a useful stage. That means the conversion process cannot replace the marrow. It has to coexist with it.
Which creates a fourth requirement.
A monitoring system.
I will need a bounded field capable of constantly observing the internal structure of my bones. The moment the Dark Matter deviates from the intended parameters, the process must terminate immediately.
And finally, the most important condition.
A kill switch.
If something goes wrong I need a method to completely destroy the construct before it spreads. That means forcing the Dark Matter to collapse back into inert matter before it overwrites my organs.
I'm trying to biologically integrate dark matter into my bloodstream. The goal is to integrate Dark Matter into my biological systems, specifically my immune system.
Only after all of those safeguards are in place can this experiment even begin.
I stare down at the notes on my workbench and let out a quiet breath. This might be the single stupidest idea I have ever had.