Chapter 248 - Mind and Space! Part-2

{15th July 1992}

{Rigel's POV}

The tome's glow shifted once again, and I was pulled into the next seam of memories. My instinctive shock at the was a lot muted now—I'd seen far too much already. Flesh, blood, sinew, even the smell of rot—Still, the images of dissected and sometimes living brains, the structure of and the paleness of it felt a bit wrong. It was not a logical response, but seeing them falyed open just felt...

—

The slab returned. Another head shaved clean, opened with careful strokes. Another pair of eyes staring at nothing. Dhanvantri didn’t begin with healing this time, as he was searching. His notes already covered the flesh, the organs, the nerves. Now he wanted to explore the mind. That phenomenon that had occurred due to the mana of the ritual. A brief look at his own memoirs had revealed that the ritual had interacted with his mind before the connection between them allowed him to experience the same phenomenon within the ritual circle as well.

His fingertips hovered above the grey matter, and fine threads of mana extended outward, delicate as spider silk.

He brushed the cortex in thin arcs—mapping reactions as he knew his task was clear, he just had to map what interacting with that mana would do, as the mana of the ritual circle was nothing special. The first with the mana thread contact made the patient’s hand twitch. The second, their jaw clenched. The third, a laugh that broke into a sob. Each movement was noted, categorized, and measured. A sickening scene as he was able to manipulate the body like a puppet.

But when he reached deep enough—past the outer lobes, toward the brain’s base—there was a flicker. The patient went still, with eyes wide and a shallow breath. Dhanvantri froze as he noticed the same phenomenon, at least he hoped it was the same.

He leaned closer as he let the mana thread go, pupils narrowed, his mana swept through again. The reaction repeated. Heartbeat slowed. Breath stuttered. Consciousness wavered. Not death. Maybe he found his answers, but before trying anything, he had to be sure.

—

Another patient. Another brain. He began the incision with mechanical calm. This time, he went straight for the same spot, guided by instinct and observation, it was not hard to find it even if it took him a moment. The same result: a sudden absence. The body continued its rhythm—heart, breath, nerve impulse—but the person was gone.

When he withdrew mana, the consciousness snapped back. The subject blinked in confusion, unaware of the gap, but the clearly panicked eyes told him everything. A brief use of legilimency revealed the truth. The body's consciousness had indeed snapped out of the body.

He leaned back, breathing shallowly. A low chuckle escaped him, brittle but genuine. He had broken one of his own rules by experimenting on someone who was unharmed, but at least his conjecture had been correct.

'For some reason, a point exists in our brains that binds our consciousness to our body.'

—

He didn’t stop. He tested more—ten, twenty, thirty patients. Some young, some old, some human, some part-creature. Every mind, every skull, no matter how different the size, shape, or origin, the point remained constant. Even in the brains of different species, it was located in the same space, at a specific depth ratio from the top of the brain stem. Always reacting the same way to any concentrated mana.

—

The series of visions ended softly, fading without pain or panic this time. I exhaled, my own pulse matching the tome’s faint rhythm. The horror was gone. In its place lingered something colder, sharper—fascination.

The knowledge sat heavy in my head, as though a piece of that mapping had been carved into my own skull.

I looked at Nalini’s trembling form, her breath ragged, and she was unconscious. Her mind gave up in the end, and my own relentless stamina was ending. I could feel myself softening inside of her, and as his arms let go of me, I pulled back. The ritual connection got faint until it ended. I paused, waiting for something to happen, and as my lingering mana slowly filtered out of her system, she vanished.

'Mana huh, is this chamber able to tell that I'm a descendant just based on my mana. Or is it somehow related to the anchor points as well?'

“Anchors,” I murmured quietly, my hand tracing invisible lines in the air. The new knowledge enabled me to pinpoint its exact location. “Every mind has one… but what is its significance? What function does it provide?”

The tome pulsed as I was pulled into the next memory. This one hopefully had the answers to my questions.

--

Dhanvantri was older in this vision, or at least he felt older. The lines at the edges of his mouth had deepened, not from laughter but from obsession. His robes hung loose on his frame, his hair streaked with white, and his voice, when he spoke, trembled from sleeplessness rather than age.

He stood alone in the chamber I had seen a dozen times before, the air humming with mana, the faint ring of wards overlapping in geometric patterns. On the central table, no body lay this time—just his own open notes, pages filled with sketches of brains and mana-thread trajectories drawn in precise ink.

“Thirty-seven subjects. All identical. All reacted the same way. The point is universal. So… what happens when the point is mine?”

He had taken all the precautions. Now he just needed an ounce of courage. He took a slow breath, fingers steady despite the tremor that ran through him. His hand rose to his temple, just behind the ear, where he had inked a mark the color of dried blood.

Mana gathered in his palm. The flow entered his head, following the path he had drawn over and over again in his notes. His body jerked. His eyes rolled up. For a moment, the vision blurred—and then steadied.

He was standing above himself.

The body still breathed, faintly and shallowly, its eyes open but glassy. But the Dhanvantri who watched was translucent, made of fine motes of light and slow-moving mana currents. He could see himself, but nobody else could. At least he was not able to see any of these apparitions from his previous experiments. He lifted his hand, and the body’s fingers twitched in delayed echo, but thankfully didn't move.

“Success…” he whispered, his voice both distant and near, “Partial separation confirmed.”

He looked down at himself, studying the shell with clinical detachment.

“Mana distribution— almost equal. Fifty-two percent to the main body. Forty-eight to soul-form. Link stable.”

A subtle thread of silver mana ran between the two—thin but taut, vibrating with every breath attached to the back of his head. The first step of his new discovery, and he named it even as he observed it.

'Soul Clone… That seems reasonable.'

---

[Learned Secret Mana arts: Soul Clone]