Chapter 8: Ten years ago

                                    

                                          
                    
                          
Chapter 8: Ten years ago
                          
"What is the nature of a Soul? 
                          
The Church of Light believes that the Soul is the source of life. According to the old scriptures of the Church, when God created the Primes, he only created an empty vessel of flesh. Not a living being. But then God created the First Flame and gave each one of us a part of it, our Soul. The Soul gives us our intelligence, our conscience. It makes us for who we are. When a person died, the Soul returned to the Flame before being reincarnated into another body. This is the Cycle of Reincarnation as we know today.
                          
Many mages believed that the Soul can be simplified as a mass of mana, much more condense than the mana we are used to in nature. Their proof is that using magic or tools that absorbs mana, such as a mana stone, one could manage to store a Soul inside. This led to the creation of two new branches of magic as we know today: Soul magic and Necromancy. 
                          
Soul magic aims to manipulate the flow of pure mana, not contaminated with any of the elements, therefore able to inflict damage to their opponent while ignoring all kind of defense. This proves to be very useful against opponent with strong magic defense such as dragons. 
                          
Necromancy however manipulates the Soul itself of the living. When a person dies, the Soul leaves the body and sometimes lingers for a time on Earth before going back to the Flame. By retrieving these lost Souls, necromancers are able to put them in a new body and manipulate them to their will. These people are known as undead. While most undeads lost their conscience due to the mediocre way of practice of the necromancer (low quality of mana stone to store the soul, inexperienced necromancer), there are cases of some powerful souls who are able to retain their conscience and a part of their formal power.
                          
In my opinion, there are both truth and flaws in these theories. If the Soul is what makes us intelligent, then what keeps us alive? Necromancy has once been mistakenly as resurrection magic. But the undeads who come back no longer possess the power they use to have. Therefore this is not a complete resurrection. Many have tried to preserve the body of the deads and even in perfect condition, what comes back is still not the same as before.
                          
Thus I concluded that there must be a third factor aside the Soul and the flesh that make us who we are as a complete set. I will call this factor Essence. To me, the Essence is what keep us alive. It's the life energy that was given and flow inside our body since birth. Much like mana, this energy is inside every living being, including the monsters. But while we could increase our mana pool with intensive training, this energy will stay the same amount, or rather will only decline as we grow older. When nothing is left, our bodies fail and we die as a consequence of this.
                          
I believe that if we manage to manipulate this energy, a true resurrection magic will no longer be just a dream. We may one day surpass the immortal celestial and dragon. 
                          
As a final note of this research, I have personally tested necromancy on a few demons. I observed that necromancy worked on demons just like any races of the Primes. Does it mean that the demons too have a soul? If yes then are we really that different from each other?"
                          
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Alastor's POV
                          
"What is the meaning of this? Why are the heroes buried here? Why is my mother Lakyus?" I yelled at Noroeth. Why would the hero and the demon lord have a child together? 
                          
"About that even I don't understand. First she wanted to become the hero to defeat the demon lord. The moment she met him, she told me that she wanted to marry him. What was I supposed to do? Can you imagine what went through my mind at that time? I thought she was under a mind control spell but no, she was too powerful for that sort of spell to work on her. I even personally check myself but there was nothing." Noroeth started to gush out angrily.