Time passed once again, another month. I'd like to say I made progress in my research, but in truth, only "The Root" advanced—because I redesigned everything based on what we achieved with "The Source."
So what did we do in these last three months? Basically, a complete modification of the soul to the point it could be called "Soul 2.0."
How and what does it do? First, I used the ability to anchor a spell to another being's soul. The spell itself could be anything, but in this case, it was an alchemical transmutation spell that allowed me to "manipulate" the soul it was embedded in, because it treated the soul as alchemical material—something I could interact with. Otherwise, soul manipulation would be impossible.
So, did I succeed in "modifying" a being's soul? The truth is, the first four hundred thousand, three hundred and fourteen attempts were a complete failure. Any time I tried to "change" one of the soul's aspects—"weight," "color," "shape," "density," or other practically infinite variables that human language has no words for—just moving a single thing would cause the entire soul to collapse and distort into a twisted version of itself.
This wasn't good, because it meant my final goals would remain out of reach for a long time. But after a brainstorming storm with myself at a speed no organic brain could process, I reached the conclusion that the reason this happened was because I was modifying "only" one variable at a time, when I should've been changing everything simultaneously so that the esoteric system that is the soul wouldn't collapse.
So did I finally do it? Yes, after the death of a couple dozen more individuals, I was able to at least "get the hang of it"—figuring out what I needed to do to apply certain changes to a soul.
Of course, this wasn't easy. It was a one-shot-per-soul deal, so things either worked or they didn't.
Now, the good part—how did this affect "The Root"? At first, I thought of designing a reinforcement magic like the one used in the Fate universe, but based on runes—just like the ones powering my physical enhancements on my back. And sure, it's useful… but only if you have a lot of magic to spend. Think about it—a normal human with barely any magic energy couldn't do much with it. The spell itself consumed very little energy, but if you used it like that, you wouldn't get actual "strength." At least not enough to compete with other races, which I only vaguely remembered from anime. God knows I never watched the whole show—God was only there for the boobs in the first season, everything else? Not a clue.
Anyway—what I did with this soul-transmutation ability was give it a new "form," one more efficient for gaining power. And here I really went crazy, trying everything—from compressing the soul, expanding it, shaping it to match the body… but you know what? Nature is wise. The most "efficient" form was a tree-like one, generated by "branching" sections of the soul and extending them into the material plane of being (the body).
Because if the soul wasn't truly in the body, but instead in a metaphysical place, then the soul present in the body was merely a representational shadow of the true soul of a being.
Anyway, lots of words—why did I want a soul that overlapped with the material world? Because I wanted the true "being" of something to actually interact with the "world," allowing it to bypass certain laws by sheer "intention." The stronger the soul became, the more the physical world would try to push it away. But since it was so "weak," the world would end up applying a "pressure" that only made the soul grow stronger—thus creating a cycle of constant soul improvement.
So what were the benefits of a stronger soul? The potential of the being would increase.
Remember when I theorized that the percentage of mana recovered after being drained was higher in other races? It could be due to soul potential or strength—but here, it's the same concept.
That said, I wasn't going to test this directly with my own soul—especially since this was just the prototype version of "The Root."
As for "The Source," I realized I had no idea where to even begin—aside from integrating spells into the soul. But what spells? The only ideas I had were far too complex and rigid… but still feasible.
The first thing I created was something to manage everything that would come after—basically, a "Kernel."
So, what made up this Kernel, in my case?
What made up the Kernel was human magic. Let me explain—it contained all the "laws" I knew of, and "processes" that used those laws for more than just language. This allowed me to integrate more "processes" from outside—processes I created myself. The ultimate goal? That the Kernel would become automatic, capable of "generating" skills on its own—without me having to craft them manually for each user.
Like I said before, I hadn't tested any of this on myself—since I didn't want to destroy my soul or mutate into some unrecognizable creature.
Aside from that, the nature of this place had started resisting my attempts to industrialize the entire region once we hit the 8.5-kilometer mark. Most of the "strong" beings I'd encountered were now trying to damage parts of the factory—especially the sections where the living materials entered.
They mostly didn't do more than destroy outer facilities or break basic patrol golems. At first, they'd die from the traps, but recently they'd been avoiding them—which was annoying, because I had to divert one of my many minds from more important tasks just to deal with it.
That's why I started experimenting with the biological creation of humanoid beings—in other words, homunculi. I should mention I used my own genetic material to create them. But since there were no ovaries from my own species, I had to use the "eggs" of an avian creature, rewriting part of its genetic code so its eggs would act as passive receivers, replicating the donor's genetic material.
That means these eggs didn't do anything on their own, but allowed for cloning from the sperm donor's genetic material. Of course, it still followed the fifty-fifty rule for creating "males" or "females"—in this case, clones of me, either male or female.
I also had to further modify the eggs so the resulting being was already "mature." That wasn't too difficult—after some of them died for being too young or too old. Just defective products.
Let me clarify that the genetic material I used was cerebrospinal fluid, since sperm only contained a fraction of the full genetic map needed to make a human. That's why I had to use something else.
They served as better test subjects—being basically "human" and, more importantly, biological versions of "me." So I tested "The Root" and "The Source" on them.
The Root being the new soul, and the Source the magic Kernel layered on top of it.
I should mention I had to manually embed knowledge into them via telepathy and a few spells. The first batch was moderately successful. Sure, they could think, like humans, but they were more like biological machines than anything else. They lacked many human psychological traits—like creativity—and only operated under my orders. That is, if I didn't tell them to do something, they did nothing. They barely had a sense of self-preservation.
But hey—they were useful, and that's what mattered.
Plus, the girls found it funny and cute to see my female versions walking around.
Meanwhile, Formín and Heartbreaker were eager to test their strength against some of my male clones.