WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ Surviving in the Magic Academy

Chapter 169

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169.

I quietly sent magical power into the mana heart in my hand. The soul inside gave the faintest twitch. It must have sensed the soul fragments mixed into my magical power.

It soon sank back into silence. I turned the mana heart over in my hand. A sensation unlike the puppets I had made so far flowed through my fingertips.

I carefully put it away. Then I looked down at the puppet body collapsed on the floor. The limp monkey puppet lay there, perfectly still.

I slowly picked it up and checked the traces left in its body. The tree branches that had dwelled inside it were gone. So were its mana heart and soul. Without them, the puppet was no different from a hard block of wood.

Its connection was gone as well. I could no longer feel any link to it. It had completely slipped out of my control. The reason was obvious. I was not its owner.

In that sense, this thing had finished its role. After examining the puppet from several angles, I filled it with magical power and restored the open hole in its chest. Then I put it straight into my spatial pouch.

Of course, if I broke it apart and used it for what came next, it might help a little. It was an object that had helped mix souls, after all. If there was even a slight possibility, using it would not be a bad idea.

But no matter how useful it was, I could not treat it carelessly. That puppet was not mine.

I lightly tapped the spatial pouch. This monkey puppet had enough distinct individuality to withstand the mixing of souls. That meant its original owner treasured it a great deal.

So I intended to return this puppet intact to its true owner. Since it had helped me create a soul, I needed to respect that. It would also help me build goodwill with Jugang.

I had already stolen enough knowledge from this monkey puppet. Even if I dug any deeper, only realms I could not understand would open up before me.

Of course, if I fully disassembled it and spent a long time studying its structure, I might gain a deeper understanding. But acting on my own desire like that would be inefficient.

If I took this puppet for myself, Jugang would surely hold at least a small grudge. There was no doubt Jugang treasured it deeply. I had no need to create such pointless debts and resentment.

Wouldn’t it be more valuable to build goodwill than a grudge? That had to suit the meaning of this competition better too. As Mauro had said, this was a festival.

On top of that, judging by the fact that Jugang had held a coin fragment, Jugang also had the association head’s trust. Earning goodwill from someone like that would help my network too.

I glanced over the other puppets. The same applied to them. I planned to return all of them to their original owners as well. I had entered the association to build this kind of goodwill and gain the strength of the group.

In the previous first round of the competition, Ugo had been the most likely winner. No one could overcome the strength of the man who had won the last competition. If it had been a simple one-on-one fight, there would have been no reason for him to lose.

But he had fallen into a trap and been eliminated just like that. Even he had limits. Unless an individual possessed overwhelming power, they would eventually bow before the strength of a group.

That was also the lesson I had learned when my mirror bug was torn apart before. Without Professor Irian’s protection, I would have been ripped to pieces. Through that, I realized I needed backing that could protect me and pressure others.

That must be why people wanted to join organizations. Individuals had limits. That was why I had joined this association too.

So I needed to spread my influence through this association. The owners of these puppets were mages of the fourth floor or below, but they had enough talent for their individuality to show clearly. They were sure to stand out in the future as well.

In that sense, if I interacted with them and built up goodwill, they would help me too. I planned to obtain the association’s strength step by step from the bottom. This was the first step toward that.

That meant I needed to handle those puppets carefully. I had to return them so neatly that their original owners would notice nothing strange even after examining them. With that thought, I headed toward another puppet.

That one had fog rippling through its entire body. I could faintly feel the fierce flow of the soul dwelling inside it. In this shadow world, its body and soul had continued fighting each other.

This puppet had also mixed the soul inside it well enough. Its stability was fairly good. It was the result of further development based on the monkey puppet, which had been an early work.

I approached it and slowly reached out. Then I quickly tore out the mana heart inside it. Once the puppet lost its heart, it collapsed limply to the floor, just like the monkey puppet before it.

From the mana heart in my hand, I could feel a faint flow of soul moving along the magical power. Its form was a little different from the soul held by the previous puppet. Feeling that, I moved on to the next puppet.

After repeating the process of carefully tearing out each mana heart, restoring the puppet body, and putting it into the spatial pouch, I ended up with ten mana hearts in all. Looking down at them on the workbench, I stroked my chin.

The souls inside them all had different forms. Some were like rocks, while others were like shadows. Souls that shared the same root had gained their own individuality from the puppets.

In that sense, these had gained a distinction different from the soul of the woman dwelling in the jewel. A kind of branching had occurred. They could be said to hold a new possibility the woman could not have.

But in the end, they were all failures. I quietly shook my head. Then I checked the largest heart. It was the one that had dwelled inside Jugang’s monkey puppet.

I could easily find incomplete traces in it. Anyone who saw it would notice right away that it was a created object.

These things could not be called single souls. Their forms had changed a little, but their fake nature could not be hidden so easily. They were still nothing more than incomplete souls.

That was inevitable too. No matter how many incomplete things were combined, they would still be incomplete in the end. Perfection was not something that could be imitated carelessly. So this alone could not be called a living soul.

The soul of life had to be perfect. Then how could I make that thing perfect? I knew the method very well. Handling incomplete things like this was my specialty, after all.

Creating this soul had also begun with that kind of trick. And what I was about to do could be called the culmination of those tricks. It was also a realm I was attempting for the first time.

I placed a hand on my chest. I felt the tree inside it and the flow of soul fragments moving along it. Mixed with magical power, they naturally flowed out through my hand.

Using that, I began drawing a giant circle that surrounded all the mana hearts. It was the magic that made up the shadow world I had drawn before. I was simply creating it on a larger scale.

Then I carefully connected the tree branches inside that magic circle. They were the ones I had taken from the puppets earlier. They connected the mana hearts one by one and drew another circle.

The ten mana hearts were connected into one through the tree branches. I felt the connected souls produce a kind of resonance. They had surely sensed each other’s existence, if only a little.

This could be called a kind of ritual magic. It was also a possibility I had created while digging into the thing called a soul. I slowly drew the magic circle around the two circles.

Then I sent magical power into the completed magic circle. A giant shadow world began to unfold. The shadow world rose large enough to cover half the room, and it instantly sank the magical power inside it.

Inside that inverted world, I felt the souls engraved into the mana hearts slowly begin to flow toward the tree branches. This incomplete space had awakened them.

The souls moved along the tree branches. Then they slowly woke. The mana hearts they left behind gradually melted into the circular flow created by the tree branches and disappeared.

The souls that lost their bases formed a fixed orbit inside the tree branches. And within that single flow, the souls clearly recognized one another.

All of them came from the same root, so they could be called the same kind. But they also held different individualities. And they were incomplete.

Because of that, they wanted to eat other souls and make themselves complete. That desire existed in every soul flowing through the tree branches.

Following that instinctive desire, they began merging into one beneath the orbit of the tree branches. They ate one another, mixed, and filled themselves.

Within that circulation, I felt a steady pulse begin to form among them. The tree branches slowly throbbed in time with that pulse. The pulse gradually grew stronger, and the tree branches began to shake.

As the pulse grew stronger, the flow of the tree branches weakened. Then they too slowly mixed into the flow of the soul. They melted under the soul’s hunger to fill its incompleteness.

In the place where everything had vanished, only the soul remained. Ten souls had mixed together and begun drawing a single circle. A steady pulse continued ringing out from it.

It felt as if it were ringing from my own heart. I placed my hand on my chest. Beyond my heart, I felt the tree raise itself as if resonating with that soul’s pulse.

It seemed to feel kinship with that thing. And the same was true for me. That thing was practically an imitation of me.

How could something incomplete be made perfect? That was impossible. Perfection was complete because it was always unchanging. So from a puppet’s point of view, no matter how hard it tried, perfection was an impossible dream.

But even if something could not become perfect, it could still imitate perfection. My existence itself was proof of that. Feeling the soul fragments flowing along the tree, I narrowed my eyes.

As these soul fragments showed, I was a collective body made from gathered soul fragments. It would be right to see me as a kind of collective spirit. In that sense, I could be called an existence that had reached the extreme of incompleteness.

But my soul was very convincing. From the outside, no suspicious feeling could be detected at all. Even if it were cut away and split apart, it would still feel like a single soul.

Professor Irian and the president had both only noticed that I had a past life. They had not discovered the traces of my soul. That was probably because those things were scattered like fragments to such an extent.

Because of that, even I, the one who possessed that soul, had failed to notice my own abnormality for a very long time. If my obsession with Professor had not formed, and if it had not been for the special space called the dream that Koite prepared, I might never have known.

Then how was I maintaining such a convincing soul? I had continued researching that question. And through that process, I realized something.

No matter how incomplete things were, if their number was overwhelmingly large, and if they formed one whole, they could come endlessly close to perfection. That was how my soul disguised itself as perfect.

Of course, that was impossible through simple clumping alone. I glanced at my puppet. Beyond the magic circle, it stood in Cassian’s form, toying with its scabbard. It was wary of anything approaching.

If perfection could be imitated just by clumping souls together, its soul should have been perfect too. Inside it were countless tree branches that had fallen away from me. Countless Fake Souls dwelled within them.

In that sense, it was both the puppet prepared for this competition and the result of an experiment in disguising a soul. But the thing made that way was still merely a puppet. Its soul was incomplete too.

Why was that? I soon understood the reason. The soul dwelling inside it was nothing more than a union of bleached souls. Those weak, freshly made souls held no distinct individuality.

In that sense, it too could be called a failure. Of course, that was also why I could make it into my offshoot body. Since it was a fake that came from me, it could naturally melt into that body.

Individuality. That was what mattered. Even if something was incomplete, it needed a special point that set it apart from others. Likewise, all of my soul fragments possessed separate individualities.

They each held their own memories. The whole created by gathering those individualities together could be called my soul. All kinds of individualities had mixed together, deceiving others into seeing incompleteness as perfection.

And although my puppet was clearly a failure, there were things to learn from it. Even though it was only the body of an offshoot body, mages recognized me as life. In the same way, even a puppet’s body held the possibility of deceiving others into seeing it as life.

I nodded lightly. Yes, the beginning of life clearly came from the body. But in the end, the essence that formed it was the soul.

Because of that, this experiment went a little further based on that fact. I would gather the individualities tied to these hearts into one place and disguise them as a new soul.

Mixing my shadow earlier, and then mixing the woman’s soul, had all been groundwork for that. I would create a Fake Life that pretended to be perfect, something like a living being. That was the path I wanted to follow.

And in that process, the body no longer held meaning. As my offshoot body showed, a body was ultimately nothing more than a vessel that held a soul. As long as there was a body it could dwell in, that soul could seep anywhere.

Just as I had, this soul might also dwell inside another puppet and make others mistake it for life. And right now, that theory was proceeding very successfully.

I saw the single circle created by the soul’s flow slowly begin to compress within a steady pulse. Looking at it, my eyes quietly sparkled.

“Did it work?”

After muttering those words, I hurriedly shook my head. Whenever I thought like that, accidents always happened. I pressed my mouth shut and tried to empty my mind.

But it seemed I was already too late. The flow drawn by the soul’s circle slowly began to twist. It soon rippled unstably.

I frowned slightly at that. Was it because I had pointlessly entertained a strange thought? No, perhaps cause and effect had been reversed.

Maybe an abnormality had not appeared because I was sure of success. Maybe I had instinctively hoped for success because I sensed things were about to fail. Well, either way, a problem had occurred.

I carefully examined that soul. It was growing fainter and trying to break away from the flow. After confirming that, I clicked my tongue. At this rate, everything would scatter before the mixing could even happen.

The cause of the problem was plainly visible. The center of the soul was not functioning properly. That was why the flow was breaking down.

The thing I had meant to use as the center of this ritual was the soul pulled from Jugang’s puppet, that monkey puppet. Since it had the largest and most intense flow, I had expected it to perform its role well enough.

But as it showed now, it was merely melting into the flow. That probably meant it lacked the capacity to devour all the souls. I clicked my tongue lightly.

A problem like this could not be helped. No matter how much I calculated, calculations were only calculations in the end. Once things entered practice, some parts were bound to go beyond my expectations.

I stood up with a bitter smile. If I left it as it was, it would clearly collapse. So I needed to solve the problem.

If the core pillar lacked capacity, I simply had to create a new center. And I knew very well what the best material for creating that center was.

After lightly tapping my chest, I slowly stepped into the magic circle. I felt the tree in my chest let its branches droop.

It must have realized how things would proceed from here. The same was true for me. While planning this ritual, I had kept feeling that something like this might happen.

And it seemed that feeling had not been wrong. The soul had started breaking down. So now there was no helping it. I had no choice but to accept a sacrifice of my own.

I crossed the shadow world and looked at the circle drawn by the soul. Then I stood in the middle of that circle and faced its flow. The flow was rippling violently.

It looked ready to burst at any moment. I released magical power toward that soul mass. I also placed the flow of the soul fragments moving through my tree inside it.

At that, the soul recognized the movement of my magical power. The soul mass quickly shrank its circle and approached my body. It was clearly moving by instinct, searching for a way to maintain itself.

The circle created by the soul mass grew very small and soon took on the shape of a tiny fragment. Then it slowly seeped into my body. With both arms spread, I slowly guided that soul into my magical power.

I felt the soul mass devour the soul fragments that made up my soul. Then it flowed along my circuits and quickly began moving toward the tree in my chest. Feeling that, I quietly closed my eyes.

I recalled the method I had used to create souls earlier. I had used puppet bodies to create a repulsion against the souls. At the end of that, the souls had each gained individuality.

This was the same. I intended to use myself as a mixer to weave the souls together, just like those puppets. My soul and my tree would become a foothold for the soul mass in that process.

Preparing for the pain that would soon come, I slowly guided my magical power. Following that guidance, the flow of the soul mass was drawn straight into my tree. Once it reached the tree, it began tearing into and devouring the tree from the inside.

The pain was unspeakably terrible. Agony surged through my chest, and I coughed. A handful of blood poured out with it.

But I was already used to enduring simple pain like this. I guided its flow straight to the center of the tree. Within that flow, it gnawed not only at the tree, but also at the soul flowing inside it.

Then I poured magical power into that soul mass. Like with the previous puppets, I had intentionally created a kind of rejection reaction. It opposed me and quickly mixed its body.

Within that, the soul’s flow, which had been rippling unstably, gradually stabilized. Through the opposing force called me, the soul began to mix more easily. After confirming that, my eyes flashed open. Then I poured even more magical power into it.

I felt it gnaw wildly at everything around it, struggling under my pressure. My tree and soul fragments were being sucked toward it.

At the same time, a terrible sense of loss began to fill my chest. This was not simply cutting away the tree. It was being eaten. I felt the magical power that formed my realm scatter little by little.

But that was exactly what I wanted. The moment it tore into my soul, I understood. The previous process had no choice but to fail. I was the only one who could complete it.

Suppressing the pain, I carefully adjusted the pressure on it. I kept it from moving recklessly while still allowing it to draw out enough of its power. And at the end, I guided it so it could imitate the same flow as me.

A soul fought the vessel that held it and stole individuality. Then couldn’t I do the same? I would feed it my soul and my tree, and make it steal at least part of my individuality.

As I pressured it, my magical power continued to decrease without end. My body also began to swell. My flesh was breaking down under the rejection reaction I was forcibly creating.

My body twisted, and I felt my magical power begin to run wild as though it would explode at any moment. But this had been inevitable from the moment I used myself as material. With my eyes closed, I quietly focused on my chest.

Nearly half of my tree was gone. That was the result of the soul mass trapped inside it gnawing away without end. And through that sacrifice, the soul was slowly stabilizing. It was becoming more complete.

I pressured it endlessly, as far as my capacity could reach. At this point, it did not matter if I broke. I wanted to see the end of this soul.

So I poured out magical power, and poured out more. My body and tree continued breaking down throughout the process.

And at last, the moment came when my strength ran out. I looked down at my empty chest. I could no longer feel any magical power or soul there. The thing that had eaten enough of me had quietly settled in place.

Feeling that, I collapsed to the spot. I no longer had the strength to stand. Both my tree and my body were half-collapsed.

I felt my mind blur a little from the pain. Even for me, this was the first time pain had reached this level. I felt the magical power flowing through my body twist.

In this situation, death could not be avoided. After checking the state of my body, I placed a hand on my chest. The soul inside my chest was not complete yet.

So I needed to complete it by offering my life. It would be completed through my death. I had that feeling. For life to bloom, shouldn’t a sacrifice of that much be necessary?

I slowly closed my eyes. Then I raised my last magical power and forcibly made it run wild. That magical power soon flowed through my body and drew a single spell.

It was the puppet explosion magic I had stolen a little after observing Ugo’s corpse puppet before. That would become the final pressure for it. Feeling the torrent flowing through my body, I let out a laugh.

It was my first time blowing up my own body. This was certainly a unique experience. With that thought as my last, I detonated my magical power. At the same time, I felt my body melt away in an instant.

And I also felt that rampage of magical power gather the soul mass into one.

It was a success.

With that thought as my last, my consciousness scattered like a handful of dust inside the explosion.

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