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Serena Snape: Love of Magic - chapter 73
🕑 Added 2025-02-22 01:46:54 +0000 UTCAuthor's Notes: Chapter edited and corrected by Scott Fellman.
February 7, 2008 - Serena PoV
The rest of the date with Enid was truly remarkable and we both enjoyed it. Just as I had said, I had taught Enid the basics of demonic magic. And despite having just been reincarnated, Enid was a bishop piece, so her demonic power reserves were higher than usual. This was saying a lot, because Orihime's natural power, combined with her spiritual power, her reiryoku, was enormous.
So Enid easily learned to control her demonic power to use magic. It wasn't complicated at all, just party tricks. But it made Enid really happy, so that was good.
After that, we enjoyed an underwater trip on the island's lake. The island had a limit of 24 meters, so I took advantage of everything I could, which was precisely the depth of the lake. But it was undoubtedly a big lake. We both enjoyed using gillyweed while diving into the water.
And finally, we went inside the vivarium. Enid was practically going crazy with all the fantastic animals inside it. I had to stop her more than once from removing the animals from their habitats.
When we finally finished our date, it was already getting dark, so we returned to the mansion. And fulfilling what Enid had said, I kissed her without asking her permission, something that surprised Enid once again, but this time she reacted quickly and kissed me back.
But now I was in my workshop, going through all the papers I had collected. The moment I pulled out my phone, I noticed that I had completed one of the mission's secondary objectives.
Objective 2: Reincarnate members for your peerage from as many different home worlds as you can.
Reward [ Others ]: 20 credits x Number of different worlds
A repeatable quest. And it had been completed twice. One for Bellatrix, who was the first in the Potterverse to be reincarnated in my Peerage, and another for Enid, who came from Wednesday's world.
Objective 2 in Extra Devilish + 40 Credits [73];
It was an unexpected but welcome gain. I had gone ahead with the plan to buy Tim Marcoh, and luckily for me, I hadn't had to force Marcoh in any way to share his knowledge about the Philosopher's Stone. We spent hours inside time bubbles, allowing him to explain the entire process of creation and destruction to me.
Tim Marcoh(T 4)[ buy] from Fullmetal Alchemist --SOLD [71]
Turns out, creating Philosopher's Stones was a lot easier than one would think. Once you know the ways to manipulate a soul through alchemy, crystallizing or liquefying them was pretty easy. But it wasn't something I wanted to do with just my clap alchemy; there were too many variables to use something really vague like that.
So now I was writing an alchemy circle on the floor of my workshop. I was truly great to have the manor and all my resources once again. Off to the side were the people whose souls Bellatrix had given me. Not without a bit of persuasion. Really, she had tens of thousands at this point, and she wasn't going to miss a couple of souls.
There were four souls. I had to conduct tests involving hemalurgy and the creation of philosopher's stones. The first was a complete soul, without any signs of tampering beyond having been absorbed by Bella and then released. The others, I had plans to remove essential attributes for a personality before performing the transmutation.
It had to be a few moments before activating the transmutation circle, as it could keep the body alive after being stabbed in the heart to remove the attribute; so, I had already prepared the metal spikes.
One of duralumin, to remove all connections and identity from the soul. Another of copper, to remove all mental strength and memories. And one last one, zinc. I wasn't really sure about this one. In theory, it steals emotional strength. The Kandra used these spikes as blessings of stability, so it's possible it served some purpose.
Well, everything was finally ready, and I brought my whole soul to the transmutation circle. A single soul was enough to create a small philosopher's stone; it was sufficient to use as a sample. I crouched down and placed my palms on the transmutation circle.
Lightning flashed immediately, my eyes never leaving the soul that began to squirm as it rapidly shrank. Before long, a small red crystal formed in the air and fell to the ground. I slowly approached the small stone and grabbed it between my fingers. It couldn't have been bigger than the width of one of my nails; it was completely red, but I could feel it—the power, the energy that radiated from the stone.
I pulled out a piece of metal from my inventory and grabbed it with one hand while holding the newly formed Philosopher's Stone with the other hand. It was incredibly easy to use alchemy; it was a vague wish, a vague intention, before the metal in my hand changed shape into a gun.
My smile grew downright huge on my face.
I could create philosopher's stones.
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4 Philosopher's Stones. Each one is made from a different human soul. They all functioned at varying levels of strength.
The highest-ranked Philosopher's Stone was created from the soul of the one whose mental strength, memory, and intelligence were robbed with a copper spike. Without memories, there was nothing to fight for, only pain. Still, with his mental strength and intelligence also greatly diminished, the soul was broken enough that he was unable to fight against the Philosopher's Stone itself when it came to using it. Thus, it had the smoothest exchange of all the stones.
Next in rank was the stone whose soul was treated with a duralumin spike. By stealing the soul's connections and identity, there was nothing to tie the person to their memories, and being without an identity, they couldn't fight for a sense of self. However, it was still in complete agony; it was easier to utilize and take advantage of, but there was still some resistance.
But I had a theory. I had the duralumin spike with the soul’s identity. If I stuck it in, the soul’s identity would become mine. So I was confident that I could fully utilize the Philosopher’s Stone without any waste. The problem was that it could only be used for lesser stones made of one or two souls. Starting to stick identity spikes in large quantities was a horrible idea, so it wouldn’t work on a Philosopher’s Stone that had many souls inside it.
Thirdly, there was the Complete Soul Philosopher's Stone, which was the standard Philosopher's Stone. There wasn't much to say about it. It was an average Philosopher's Stone.
Lastly, there was the soul without emotional strength, thanks to the zinc spike. Emotional stability is not the same as removing emotions; in fact, without emotional stability, the soul becomes completely unhinged, its agony multiplies, and the effort needed to use the philosopher's stone increases several degrees, only to yield a lower result—a complete waste.
I would feel bad for the dying souls inside the stones if it weren't for the fact that Bella only collects rotten souls, mostly rapists and other such scum. So she didn't really have any sympathy for them and had no problem using and manipulating them in any way.
In total, I had three usable stones and one waste stone. Or not so much a waste, I still had to test if the circle to destroy the philosopher's stones that Marcoh had transmitted to me was usable. I had no reason to be suspicious after the creation of the philosopher's stones was a success, but it was not a matter of leaving any loose ends.
I grabbed the copper philosopher's stone and approached the 2B doll; she still wore her regular clothes, but without the blindfold. Outwardly, she looked the same as the first versions I had made of the automatons, but internally, she had changed considerably.
I had overlooked that the Hemalurgic spikes needed to come into contact with moving blood to remove or add an attribute. At first, I thought that was the main problem with my dolls. But it turns out that there could be no interaction between the spiritual realm and the physical realm for the spike to deform because there was no soul present.
Still, I changed the inside of the dolls. They were now more… anatomically correct. My template memories had vast amounts of information about the human body, so I had little to study to create a body that fit my needs from scratch. Although I took advantage of the moment to… take creative liberties, let's say.
Creating organs with alchemy wasn't difficult, so it gave me a lot of scope to make my own designs. Since the research to provide it with a soul wasn't going anywhere, I had to distract myself with other things.
Reinforced and braided ligaments, enhanced bone structure, her muscles are composed entirely of some sort of middle ground between red and white muscle, which should allow her to seamlessly combine the benefits of explosive strength and endurance if I did it right. Her vital organs are spread out across her torso; they've become more efficient and smaller, and she has multiple sets of them, with two different vascular and nervous systems.
I wanted to put much more durable and resistant materials inside her body. However, incorporating something that wasn't purely organic would mean that I would have to perform frequent maintenance on the dolls' bodies, which would certainly not be ideal.
But I was able to continue experimenting, such as with her spine. It is much more flexible. The skin, muscles, and ligaments in its immediate vicinity are tougher than usual to prevent trauma and other problems. So she was extremely flexible and could move at unusual angles.
I really learned a lot about biology while abusing time bubbles over the last month, but I made no progress regarding soul studies. I'll count that as a win.
I hadn't made any changes to my body or anyone else's yet. I wouldn't know how well the changes I made to 2B performed. Many times, organs ended up failing when I tried to bring dolls to life with my Schiavo, so it's possible they needed some upgrades.
And while I didn't need any of that, increasing my body's base level was always a good backup option. So they were under consideration. I would have to figure out how to make the feruchemical gold healing not reverse the changes I made, after all, gold healing works by aligning the physical aspect with my ideal self as recorded in the spiritual aspect. It was weird.
Leaving that aside, I removed the enchantment I had placed on 2B to keep her body completely preserved and slightly opened the gap in her clothes right at her neckline, and placed the Philosopher's Stone in her chest. 2B's skin swallowed with a slight intention and the stone. I looked expectantly at 2B, waiting for some reaction, but to my disappointment, absolutely nothing had happened.
I wrinkled my nose and started checking 2B out. The lesser homunculi were pumped with liquid philosopher's stones into their veins, or at least their organs; they never explained it properly, but they were people. Or what was left of them once they ran out of souls, or they weren't even former people, but their bodies were designed and created through alchemy.
The creation of bodies should not trigger the rebound necessary for an alchemist to be brought to the Gate of Truth to face God. This was how I was able to experiment with 2B's 'body', again, as long as I did not get into the realm of the soul, I was completely safe from entering the Gate of Truth.
What mostly triggered the rebound were specific manipulations of the soul, primarily attempted resurrections, due to the inherent fact that the soul was no longer present on earth, making it an unattainable goal for everyday alchemy. No kind of force or energy could be used as an exchange to achieve it.
The transmutation of philosopher's stones does not fall into that category, because it was simply condensing the soul and putting it into a usable vessel.
But I had another option to bring the body to life. I got behind 2B, and my tail swung quickly and struck the doll's back as I focused all my power on it. I had learned that Schiavo worked on corpses if necessary, and 2B's body right now was precisely that. I waited a few seconds; 2B began to tremble. I heard cracking sounds coming from her body before lightning bolts shot out from her. My magic had grabbed onto the Philosopher's Stone.
"HNGHYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" Finally, a loud, deafening scream came out of her mouth.
2B's head spun 180° like an owl and stared at me. It was chilling. I'd have to check that neck later. Before I could do anything, 2B lunged at me with her jaw open, trying to bite my neck. I reached out, and a black web caught the crazed 2B. Malice Nest.
Let's see, let's see. That was different from my Schiavos; most of them followed my every command and were completely docile in my presence, but now, 2B was behaving like an animal. It must have been the Philosopher's Stone kicking in. Now the only thing missing.
Kandra Blessings. These are spikes made by Lord Ruler, by Rashek, for the Kandra so that they can be used to make the wraiths gain consciousness and reach sapience. And since I had Rashek's template, I had the method of creation in my head. But it wouldn't be necessary. The spikes for the Kandra were notable for the simple fact that they needed to work especially on the wraiths.
Here, regular spikes would work.
I grabbed the newly created copper and duralumin spikes and two more like them that I had already had from my previous experiments. Giving her mental strength, intelligence, and an identity should be enough to bring 2B to sapience. The four spikes were embedded in blood spheres to prevent degradation. I grabbed the copper ones, regardless of the blood on my hands, and brought them closer to 2B.
My smile grew wider as the pull of hemalurgy latched onto 2B's soul. She had a soul, or as close to one as a Philosopher's Stone could grant. But it was more than enough for me to stab them with hemalurgy spikes, unlike my normal Schiavos.
I headed to the corresponding attachment points and hammered in the spikes without hesitation. 2B's body offered no resistance; the copper spikes were placed on her shoulders, while the duralumin spikes went to her lumbar area on each side.
2B, who had been thrashing, or rather shaking from the effort as she tried to free herself, stopped. She seemed to pass out for a few seconds before her eyes opened once more. I stared at her, her eyes no longer wild, unfocused, or completely animalistic; I could see recognition and intelligence in them now. It had worked, it had finally worked.
"Hello, mother."
