Capítulo 299: 8
Chapter 8: Progress
Waking up from being unconscious didn't happen to Keijutsu all the time. However, with all the hazards he took in his experiments, particularly when he was younger and just getting started, it happened often enough that he now had an established procedure for it.
The first step, before he did anything else, was to see if he could remember what had sent him into unconsciousness. This time around, the memories came to him easily. He had been trying to answer a riddle given to him by a Sphinx named Fronea and hadn't been able to come up with one. So, she had tried to kill him for his failure, and he had been able to say the right answer just before she succeeded. For having answered her riddles, she agreed to become his familiar, and then he passed out from some venom he had taken in during the fight.
First step, done. Now the second step was to check if the place he woke up in was the same place he had passed out in. The lack of sand underneath him quickly told him that it wasn't, so that was solved.
Step Three was to see if he could figure out where he was before he opened his eyes. A quick sniff filled his senses with the smell of the air freshener he kept in his bedroom, as well as the scent of linen sheets. Given both of those, it was likely he was in his room. With his eyes still closed, he sent out a single pulse of magical energy, one that bounced off his surroundings before coming back to him like a sonar.
The information gleaned by that pulse further confirmed the suspicion that he was in his bedroom, though it also revealed that there was someone sitting in a chair next to the bed he was in. Listening closer, he could make out the regular sounds of someone breathing, proving that fact. And the final step was for him to try and think of how he had gotten from his passing-out location to his present one.
Now that he thought about it, he was pretty sure someone had arrived on the scene just before he passed out from Fronea's venom, so they were likely the cause. Given that there hadn't been anyone else there besides the Familiar Master and the Student Council, it was likely one of them.
With all that data accumulated, it was only now that he opened his eyes, blinking as he let them adjust to the sunlight coming in from the window. His sight confirmed that, yes, he was in his room, and now he used them to see who it was that was sitting next to him.
Looking over, he nearly spasmed in surprise at seeing that it was Sona who was sitting next to him, and that she was asleep. The magic pulse apparently hadn't been enough to wake her, and it looked as if she had actually been sitting there for quite some time.
While he wondered whether he should wake her up, Keijutsu idly noted that Sona looked rather pretty while sleeping. Her glasses were sitting on the end table next to her, enabling him to see what she looked like without them. The serious and stern expression she usually wore when she was awake was also gone, replaced by one of utter contentment. And there was the fact that she inhaled through her mouth and exhaled through her nose. It was… cute.
Keijutsu blinked. Wait. Did he just describe the ever-strict and always-business Sona Sitri as cute? Where had that come from?
Unfortunately, before he could move further down that line of inquiry, the door to his room opened, and Rasiel walked inside. She stopped once she was that he was awake, and the two of them stared each other for a moment. They blinked once, twice, three times, and then Rasiel yelled "Kei! You're finally awake!" and spun around in joy.
The shouting jolted Sona from her slumber, and she looked around. "What the-? What's going on?!" she said in confusion.
"Oh, you foolish girl! Don't you see? Kei's awake!" Rasiel called, leaping onto the edge of the bed and resuming her twirling.
Sona quickly looked at me, and I smiled. "Good morning, Sona-kaichou. It is morning, right?" I asked.
Sona quickly regained her composure and put on her glasses. "Actually, it's Saturday afternoon. Your reaction to that Sphinx's venom was worse than we thought, and we had to bring you back as soon as possible to heal you. Even so, you've been out of it for an entire day," she explained.
Rasiel giggled. "Indeed. And she's been here the whole time, going back and forth between healing you with her magic and sleeping right in that chair!" she added on.
Sona glared at Rasiel with enough chill to freeze the room several times over, while I hummed. "You used your magic to heal me?" I asked for clarification.
Looking back towards him, she nodded, although it appeared she was surprising a blush while she did. "Yes, I did. It required physical contact for it to work, but rather than use my entire body like someone I know, I… held your hand for several hours…. and channeled my magic into you that way."
For some reason, the idea of him holding hands with Sona, even if he had been unconscious, made a similar blush appear on his cheeks. Thankfully, he was able to fight it into nonexistence quickly enough, and bowed his head. "Then you have my gratitude, Kaichou. Without your help, I would have been in serious trouble."
Sona nodded, but then her expression hardened. "And that leads to my present problem. We were all supposed to stay in one group and wait until Saji obtained his own familiar, and then we'd search for your familiar after that. It was also unsafe for you to go through the forest without Zatouji there to guide you. But you defied both of those postulates, and were nearly killed in the process," she told him sternly.
Keijutsu winced at that. Technically, he had broken the rules by going off on his own. But while he was sorry to have caused Sona any emotional distress, he wasn't about to apologize for trying to satiate his own curiosity. Especially when it was that same curiosity that had given him so much success in his work up to this point.
Neither of them said anything for several moments, Rasiel watching the two of them with interest. Eventually, however, Sona sighed. "Normally, for something like that, I'd give you a punishment consisting of magic-enhanced spankings, or something along those lines. But seeing as you're already bedridden, I'll refrain from that this time." Then her expression softened, and she enabled him to see just some of the fear she had felt for his wellbeing. "Just promise not to worry me like that again, okay?"
'She was worried about me? As in genuinely worried?' he thought. The thought made him have to keep from smiling, even if he didn't notice it. Out loud, he said "I can promise you that much, yes."
Sona stood up. "Good," she said. Deciding to let the matter go, she turned away and began to leave, saying "You should be fully healed of any effects from the venom by now, so I'll see you tomorrow at school. Oh, and Keijutsu?"
"Yes?" he replied.
Looking back at him, Sona gave him one of her rare genuine smiles. "Congratulations on getting a familiar."
Keijutsu hummed as he rifled through several books in front of him, trying to glean as much information from him as possible. It was just after school had ended, and he was seated near the back of the library. That meant that there were virtually no other students around besides himself, giving him total peace and quiet.
Seated on the ground next to him was Fronea, though the Sphinx appeared to be only the size of a housecat instead of being large as she had been when he had made her his familiar. According to her, becoming a familiar gave her the ability to change into two other forms, one of which was a human and the other being a smaller version of her usual appearance. He had summoned her so that he could have someone to bounce ideas off of, as well as to give her a chance to stretch her legs.
"Hmm… so not only does the human brain consist of over a hundred-billion neurons, but each of them are connected to thousands of other neurons via synapses, forming over a trillion connections in total. Interesting…" he read aloud.
Fronea nodded. "Exact. The subconscious mind performs countless calculations whenever we so much as look at something, outstripping even the most advanced supercomputers in terms of performance. Yet, in doing all this, it only generates enough heat to cook a hamburger," she told him.
The young Devil groaned. "I know that replicating the body from scratch would be difficult. The fact it took nature millions of years of random mutations to arrive at its current design should have been proof enough. But now that I'm actually trying, I'm starting to fully appreciate how complex my species is," he said. Then, after a moment of silence, he grunted. "Well, my former species. Can't forget that I traded away my humanity in exchange for a longer life," he added aloud.
"Exactly why are you trying to create a human body, anyway? I'd be interested in hearing it," she said, looking up at him from her spot on the floor.
For a moment, Keijutsu pondered whether or not to tell her of his latest idea. There wasn't much harm in it. If anything, her advice could give him valuable information since she would be looking at it from a different perspective than him. His mind made up, he said "You remember how I told you I was trying to use magic to recreate a Sacred Gear, correct?"
When the Sphinx nodded, he continued "That experiment was meant to help answer a larger question of mine. I've become frustrated by the lack of progress that has been made in magic over the last several centuries, especially in regard to its limits. So, I've set out to see what it is that I can and can't do with magic. However, my work into Sacred Gears is currently at a standstill, so I've decided to temporarily switch my focus to another question."
Fronea thought about that, and stood up. She jumped onto the table and sat at the other end of it, flooding her wings against her back. "And that question has something to do with 'making' a human body?" she asked.
"Exactly. I want to see whether or not I can use magic to create intelligent human life, and I'm planning on trying to synthesize a human body to test this. However, like I said, that's turning out to be much more complicated than I originally planned," Keijutsu said.
Fronea didn't have a response to that, and so she sat there and resumed her attempt to relax. Keijutsu, meanwhile, continued to contemplate how to go through with his experiment.
The two of them lapsed into a comfortable silence. Both of them didn't mind each other's company, and in fact found it to be rather pleasant. Keijutsu was glad to be around someone who he could see eye-to-eye with, and Fronea found any conversation she had with him to be refreshing and interesting.
Actually, now that he had mentioned his plans to her, Fronea was now trying to think of ways in which his experiment could proceed. In fact, an idea soon came to her, one that she chose to vocalize. "Maybe you're going about it the wrong way. Instead of trying to work from the bottom up, maybe you could take the top-down approach."
Keijutsu looked up from the neurology book he was still reading. "Top-down approach?"
"Yes. Instead of trying to start from nothing, you could gather several human bodies and, through meticulous inspection and effort, recreate one piece by piece. That way you would be able to have several subjects to test your design against, as well as gather more data before beginning," she explained.
He hummed. That wasn't a bad idea. If he could obtain about three or four bodies, he'd be able to gather enough information about their make-up before he could start making his own. Ideally, they would be bodies of the same gender and around the same age-group in order for his data to have consistency. But the idea did have a problem.
"Where would I be able to get these bodies? No mortuary or university would just hand me a set of corpses with no questions asked, and they'd laugh in my face if I told them I was planning on using them to study magic," he said.
Fronea frowned, conceding the point. He was right. While there might have been ways for him to obtain a set of human bodies, there wouldn't be any way for him to legally do it without raising all sorts of red flags with the human authorities. And that was an annoyance neither of them wanted to deal with.
Speaking of annoyances…. "While I'm thinking about it, who exactly was that girl in your apartment, the one with the eyepatch? She was the one who let your King in after you made our pact, but refused to tell me anything other than her name and that she lived here with you. Is she your sister or something?" she asked.
"My sister?" Keijutsu repeated. When she nodded, he laughed. "Goodness, no. If Rasiel was my sister, we'd have probably driven each other insane by now. No, I am her Keykeeper," he stated.
Fronea raised her eyebrows. "Keykeeper? What is that supposed to be?"
Keijutsu sighed and sat back, knowing that this explanation would take a moment. "Tell me, are you familiar with the story 'The World Inside the Gourd'?" he asked.
"To some extent, yes. An ancient Chinese medicine man carries a magic gourd with him. Night after night, he can jump inside the gourd, and each time he does he enters an entire other world that is kept inside it. But what does that have to do with this girl?" she replied.
"I'm getting to that. Now, how familiar are you with the concept of Phantom Books?" Keijutsu questioned.
She was silent, thinking. After a moment, she said "Not particularly. What are they?"
Sitting up, Keijutsu explained "Phantom Books are books that contain an extremely diverse range of mystical powers, and can do anything from conjuring barriers to temporarily raising the dead. They can grant these powers to whoever reads them, but will only do if that person is the Book's rightful owner. If someone besides the rightful owner tried to use them, it will create all sorts of misfortune and disaster for the user."
"Now, imagine that you are a supernatural being of incredible knowledge, one who possesses an entire library of such Phantom Books at their disposal. In order to keep these books preserved and from falling into the wrong hands, you would need an actual library to keep them in. But no ordinary building, no matter how well-constructed, could never hold the collective magical power of so many texts. Furthermore, you would need someone who can keep an eye on the books, and act as their custodian to make sure they are kept in good condition. So, why not have the library and the custodian be one and the same?"
Fronea frowned. "The same? You mean have the custodian of the Phantom Books actually be the library itself? How would you even do that?" she asked.
"Like I said, the Phantom Books have a wide variety of powers, even ones that can change reality and break the laws of causality. So it would be possible to create a being that could serve as a living 'vase-world' in which a collection of Phantom Books can be stored, just like the medicine man kept an entire world inside his gourd," Keijutsu pointed out to her.
She was silent, processing all this information, before it suddenly clicked and she conjured a mental image of Rasiel in her head. The little girl did look normal for a human on an all accounts, save for her metal eyepatch. And the design of a keyhole on it.
"You mean to say that… that girl is…?" she managed to say.
Keijutsu nodded. "There are, to the best of my knowledge, three such libraries in existence, each of them overseen by their own 'Biblioprincess'. There is the Silver Biblioprincess, who oversees the Long-Lost Library and whose currently location is, rather ironically, unknown. Then there is the Black Biblioprincess, who oversees the Mystic Archives of Dantalian and was last seen living in England," he said.
Suddenly imagining the little girl in a new light, Fronea asked "And what kind of library does Rasiel contain?"
"Rasiel's title is the Red Biblioprincess, and she presides over the Library of the Archangel Raziel. According to her, it contains the 'supreme mystery that no human could ever reach'," he told her.
If it was possible, Fronea's eyes went even wider. Raziel was a name she was very familiar with, and not just he was a prominent figure among the other angels. Raziel was the angel who presided over turning knowledge into practical wisdom, something she could readily respect, and who helped humans ply their knowledge until it became spiritualized and second-nature to them.
And this little girl living with Keijutsu was supposed to contain the angel's entire library of knowledge, including all the knowledge regarding Heaven itself? She could hardly believe it. However, despite her shock, she couldn't help but notice something. "You never said what it meant to be her 'Keykeeper'," she said.
"Well, while the Biblioprincesses can look after the libraries and ensure that the Phantom Books are kept in good condition, they aren't so well-skilled at protecting themselves. So, each of them can choose one being to serve as their bodyguard and protector. That person swears an oath to protect the Biblioprincess who chooses them, even if it means risking their own life. And in exchange, they can use the Phantom Books in the library as if they were the true owners. That person is thereafter known as their Keykeeper."
Fronea looked at him. So not only did Rasiel hold the Archangel Raziel's entire library, but he was able to access it because he swore an oath to protect her? Just the idea of having all that knowledge and power at one's fingertips was enough to make her actively avoid salivating. And Keijutsu was able to avoid succumbing to that temptation? Her respect for him rose just that little bit.
While the young Sphinx was going over everything she had learned, Keijutsu had returned to thinking about his research. After pondering it further, he realized that there was something to Fronea's proposal. The idea of him having a preexisting blueprint for him to work off in making a human body was an attractive one. And while he wouldn't be able to use a set of corpses to make a physical blueprint… there already existed a biological one.
The biological blueprint for the human body was something each human possessed hundreds of copies of, encoded into their genome. And further copies were in fact already ready for use—they were inside the reproductive cells. The body itself was formed from the union of two of these cells, the sperm and the egg, which both carried parts of their maker's genome that then combined with the other to form a new set of genes. If he could use magic to replicate these two cells and one successfully fertilized the other, then that would solve the issue of how to make a human body.
He would be, in essence, copying what nature had already been doing, but he didn't really see a problem with that. Why try to fix something that wasn't broken? And in this way, the question of "Could magic be used to make a human body?" could be reduced to a question of "Could magic be used to synthesize human reproductive cells?". And that was much more possible than trying to make the entire body at once. Of course, if he did go down that route he would, by definition, have to wait several years for him to check if there were any deficiencies in the synthesizing process.
While the idea of waiting several years to see if his experiment would work wasn't so much of an issue now that he was a Devil, he still retained a human's sense of urgency. If there was a way to accelerate the growth process of the body once he made it, then he could obtain results more rapidly.
But then an idea hit him. His watch, and its function as a device that could repair objects by manipulating entropy. He had been able to use it to repair the Bastet necklace for that museum professor, but it had always failed whenever he tried to make a living being younger with it. Instead… it made them older.
'Could I change it so that the device could actually make the target exponentially older, cutting the fraction of time required for them to mature by years? Would that even be possible?' he thought, feeling himself grow more energetic by the moment.
"I have to run more tests!" he shouted, standing up quickly and startling Fronea.
"More tests? What do you mean? Did you think of something?" she asked.
Smiling widely at her, he said "Yes, I have, and it was thanks to your suggestion that I was able to come up with it. Thank you!" Before she could react, he reached over and actually hugged her from excitement, before rushing out the door.
Fronea sat there for a seconded stunned. A human had hugged her. She wasn't sure if she should be more please or revolted. But then she noticed that he was gone, and yelled "Hey! Don't leave me here, you idiot!" and flew after him.
One week later…
The white-haired Artificer stood in front of a small room in his underground lab. Set off to the side, the room featured a small metal table, a sink, a closest where a suit of hazard suits were stores, and a computer. There was a large window that made up one of the walls, a window that had been magically reinforced to withstand anything short of a blast from a tank.
On the other side of the window was a clean room composed of a sterilized metal walls, another metal table, and a currently inactive golem that he could control from the outside. The entire room was something he had constructed months ago when he had started working with volatile chemicals in order for him to test them without blowing himself up. It was also where he was performing his latest experiment.
A regular pocket watch was placed on the table next to a cage containing a trio of small tadpoles, each on their own petri dish. The pocket watch was his first model designed to test his new idea of using entropy-manipulation to artificially induce aging, and these tadpoles would be his lab rats. Of course, he had no reason to believe that he would get the design right on the first try, but he could certainly hope he did.
If both the device's design and his theory were correct, then once he had the golem activate the watch he could watch the tadpoles rapidly grow into adult toads, and he could move to testing the idea on more sophisticated animals, like rats. And once he had established that he could use entropy-manipulation to induce aging, he could see about synthesizing reproductive cells.
Taking out an old-fashioned tape recorder, he said "Keijutsu Hatsume, Experiment Log. I am about to begin testing on the first prototype of a device that will cause accelerated aging in a biological organism by rapidly increasing the net entropy of both the organism and its surrounding within an isolated space. To begin shortly."
He put away the recorder and held his arm out towards the golem. An array of seals appeared on his arm, and the mechanical creature jerked its head up and stood straight. Keijutsu moved his arm downwards and the golem copied the action, grabbing the stop watch and picking it up. He pressed down on an imaginary button in his hand, and the golem pressed the button on top of the watch that enabled it to open.
Then he willed the golem to push down on the face of the watch with its other hand, and placed it back on the table before stepped away. After a few seconds delay, the hands on the watch began spinning and it glowed a light blue. That blue spread outwards in the shape of a sphere, which grew until it contained both the watch and the tadpoles.
Keijutsu nodded. The isolation sphere looked like it was working, so that was good. He was already getting readings from the army of sensors he had placed inside the room, an avalanche of data that he would enjoy going through once the test was done.
The hands on the watch began spinning faster, and the air within the sphere began to shimmer as its temperature was increased. After a few seconds, the tadpole began flailing around, and started to grow larger.
Taking a quick look at his notes, he concluded that, given the usual rate it took for male Japanese common toads to reach sexual maturity as well as the age acceleration brought about by the device, they should reach be fully in about twelve hours.
Just as he was prepared to set himself down to wait for when the results came in, he felt a spike in energy coming from inside the room and looked again. The isolation sphere appeared to have been warped and twisted around in several places, while the thermometer he had placed inside picked up an increase in the room's temperature.
His eyes widened. "That's not good," he said aloud. The isolation sphere was starting to destabilize, which meant that any entropy being create inside would start leaking out. The temperature continued to rise, and the isolation sphere started to bend more violently. The tadpole appeared to start panicking as well, even as they started sprouting legs.
The stop watch began wobbling and started glowing as it heated up as well, some of the heat being absorbed by the metal. The more heat it drew in, the more unstable the sphere became and the more heat was generated inside.
"That's not good at all. It's started a feedback loop!" Keijutsu said. The amount of energy the device was giving off and its instability were being increased by each other, spiraling out of his control. He held out his arm and reestablished control over the golem. Quickly, he ordered it to breach the isolation sphere and deactivate the watch.
But just as it stuck its hand into the sphere, the energy readings from his sensors spiked and the temperature jumped by nearly a factor of ten. The tadpoles burst into flames almost immediately, and the stopwatch actually began to melt. The golem's own hand began glowing red hot, but it ignored that in favor of still trying to deactivate the watch. And the isolation sphere looked ready to burst.
"Shit!" Keijutsu called, and covered his eyes with his arms. He braced himself just before the sphere finally failed and released all the heat and pressure inside one massive explosion, equal in magnitude a kilogram of flash powder.
The blast shook the room and would have potentially damaged his eyesight, had he not covered them. After waiting a few seconds for any potential smoke to clear, he lowered his arms and looked inside.
The testing room was completely trashed. Streaks of soot covered the walls and the table had been broken in half, one end on either side of the room. What was left of his golem was lying against the window, smoldering and twitching every so often. And he couldn't even make out what was left of either the stopwatch or the tadpoles.
Keijutsu sighed, and pulled out the tape recorder. "Conclusion to previous entry: The test ended in abject failure. An unknown design flaw with the prototype caused instability in the isolation sphere as well as an excess amount of heat beyond requirements. The heating of the prototype in turn facilitated further instability, establishing a positive feedback loop that concluded with the destruction of both the prototype and the test subjects, as well as severe damage to the testing area. End log."
Running a hand through his hair, he ended the recording. He knew he shouldn't have gotten his hopes up that it would work with the first model. Very rarely, if ever, did any first design ever work. 'Looks like it's back to the drawing board,' he thought.
But just then, he received a call on his cell phone. Grunting in surprise, he fished it out of the front pocket of his lab coat, only to raise an eyebrow at the number. It was Sona.
Deciding to answer it, he said "This is Keijutsu Hatusme."
"Keijutsu, I'm glad I was able to reach you. I need you to head for the school immediately and meet me in the Student Council room," Sona told him.
He blinked. "This sounds important. Did something happen?" he asked.
"More or less. Rias and her peerage are going to participate in a Rating Game in a matter of hours. I need you here with the rest of the Council when it begins."
Status de energia semanal
-- Ranking de
Poder 
-- Pedra de
Poder