Chapter 56: The Principle of Lich (Part 1)
——I have to say that Andre’s name is still a little bit useful.
As a newly appointed honorary member of the Witch Forest Commune, Takumi Yuu is finally able to learn the magic she longed for, free of charge. However, the witches in charge have also made a reciprocal request: while Takumi Yuu is residing in the Witch Forest and learning magic, she must be responsible for improving the culinary skills of Aunt Jasmine, the Witch Forest Commune's official cook.
In return for improving the diet in the Witch Forest, the black magician Polina will also help Takuyu improve her minor taste problems.
The witches believe that this is an extremely beneficial investment for both parties.
The bouncy Lolisa took Aunt Wolf and Jericho to their residence to settle down first. Jiangyou, who had only a skeleton [transformed by space magic] except for the cloak given by Andre, was not in a hurry to settle down. Learning magic first was the top priority.
She first followed Polina to the small house on the west side of the village. This was Polina's cabin, and also where she studied the black magic. The first floor of the cabin was divided into two rooms, the outer one was the living room, the inner one was the bedroom, and all things related to the black magic were kept in the basement.
Polina was the first to lift the trapdoor on the ground and crawled down. Jiangyou followed and climbed down the ladder. He found that this place was a bit similar to his own basement. There were large magic books piled everywhere, and a slightly small black crucible.
Polina snapped her fingers a few times, and the candle on the wall lit up automatically. She turned around and pulled the rope to close the trapdoor, and then pulled a rope hanging from the wall. Jiang You heard something buzzing in the wall, and the air in the basement began to circulate gradually.
"Ventilation device." Polina explained briefly, then walked to the bookshelf and looked for something carefully. After a while, she shouted in surprise, "Here!" and half-pulled, half-hugged a super thick magic book from the bookshelf.
Jiang You hurried over to help, and together they placed the book on the desk. In the flickering candlelight, Jiang You could clearly see the title: "Lich, a Soul Wandering Between Life and Death."
"Lich formation is a top-level dark magic. Simply put, it uses magic to forcibly bind the soul of the deceased to a body prepared by the caster, creating a living corpse that is essentially indistinguishable from a human." Polina said, "Simply put, the reason liches can't 'die' is because they're already dead and can't die a second time."
Takumi Yu: “!!” How weird! But why does it sound so reasonable?!
"Normally, souls enter the underworld after death... Legend has it that the underworld is a melting pot of souls, where all souls are mixed together in a large crucible, condensed and boiled. The turmoil and grudges of past lives are boiled into the pot, settled to the bottom, and turned into charcoal.
"Souls will break and reassemble during the constant boiling. Strong souls can last longer, while fragile souls are more likely to break... When the souls are mixed together, the crucible will overturn, throwing these souls into the reincarnation pool, and they will be reborn as humans.
"So sometimes reincarnated people retain a soul similar to their previous life, but more often they are completely unrecognizable..." Polina shrugged. "But I've never really died, so who knows if these legends are true or not~"
Jiang You: "..." She did die once, but she didn't remember anything.
"In short, this legend gradually spread, giving new inspiration to magicians pursuing immortality. After all, stopping the aging of the human body is a very difficult task. Time is an irresistible blade, constantly scraping away at people's flesh, organs, and bones. Human vitality and the body's ability to recover have limits. Once they reach a certain limit, even healing magic loses its effectiveness.
"So, some magicians proposed treating the soul and body separately. Since the body can only last a few hundred years before dying, preserving the soul in some kind of object that is not easily eroded by time can prevent the soul from returning to the underworld and being shattered and reassembled. As long as the soul is immortal, it is equivalent to gaining eternal life."
"That makes sense." Jiang You nodded vigorously.
"Attaching a soul to an inanimate object is easy, but a new problem arises. The soul is indeed bound to the world, but after attaching to an inanimate object, it loses all human functions: it cannot taste, cannot breathe, cannot see or hear anything, and cannot even move if it wants to...
"This isn't living; it's a form of eternal imprisonment for the soul. This was the earliest [failure]. Learning from this failure, the magicians began to refine their craft, crafting a 'shell' to house the lich's soul. After years of effort, they finally achieved a [finished product] that was indistinguishable from a real person, retaining all the functions of a living person.
"Later, magicians began to call all incomplete liches 'failures,' but there's a huge difference between failures... You're one of the lucky ones. Although it's also a failure, from a practical point of view, it can only be considered a defective product at best."
"I see!" No wonder Jiangyou felt that her "failure" did not affect her life at all. She imagined herself being locked in a small box, with no one to help her and she couldn't help but shudder.
——It seems that although the owner of the house is not good at black magic, he is really trying very hard!
"The reason for the [failure] is mainly because the soul and body are in different planes," Polina said. "The soul is in the [Netherworld Plane], where the underworld resides, while the body exists in the [Real World Plane] of the living. The two planes overlap and exist in the same world, but are isolated from each other to a certain extent. They can only connect under certain conditions."
"So, I can taste the soul energy, but I can't taste the food itself."
"Yes, because soul energy also belongs to the [Netherworld Plane], while food and its taste belong to the [Mortal Plane]. The [Complete Product] lich has broken through the shackles of technology and can realize the conversion of matter and energy between the [Mortal Plane] and the [Netherworld Plane] - mainly converting matter from the [Mortal Plane] into energy from the [Netherworld Plane]. However, the [Failed Product] lich cannot do this."
Polina walked over to a wooden box in the corner, squatted down, and rummaged through it for a long time before finding a piece of wood. "There are many ways to change this situation. The simplest one is to use this [Spiritual Wood]."
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