Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (86/?) WiP 1 (Patreon)

Hey everyone! Here is the Work in Progress for Chapter 86 I hope you guys enjoy! :D

“Death is a story told in threes.” Professor Belnor proclaimed with a swish of her hands, reconjuring the humanoid mannequin from before out of thin air. 

“The death of the corpus.” Her voice echoed, causing the standing mannequin to quite literally keel over and ‘die’. 

“The death of the Ure.” The mannequin remained prone, motionless and lifeless, whilst the space above it erupted into a magical holographic display. Within which was an animation of a rapidly-magnifying picture, moving from organ, to tissue, to cell cluster, before finally… zooming into and focusing-in on just a lonesome cell. One that seemed to ‘pulse’ with life, until finally, it stopped.  

“And the departure of the soul.” A shadowy, wispy, ephemeral cloud of ‘smoke’ emerged from the still and lifeless mannequin, rising up higher and higher until finally, it simply disappeared from view. 

“The bodies which our souls inhabit are not merely biological vessels of flesh and bone. Nor is it merely a vehicle through which the irreplaceable soul of a sapient resides. No, these bodies which we call our own, are not at all bereft of the complexities of the soul which we otherwise hold in such high regard. For there is magic in the most fundamental building blocks of our material form, the result of the abstract processes of life, forged through factors both arbitrary and extraneous. We, or rather, our bodies — are both magical and biological. Which results in the phenomenon we now understand as The Three Death Principle.” The professor paused, tapping her feet several times in rapid succession, and prompting the recessed surgical theater to lift up to ground-level. 

“Allow me to elaborate.” She once more gestured towards the hologram, which now grew so large that it took up much of the glass dome of the elevated surgical theater. Within that projection, was the cell from before. Except this time, the clock had been reversed, and it pulsated with life far more vividly than even before. “Within our bodies, comprising our very being, is the fundamental organism known as the Ure. It is within this Ure, that the biological meets the magical. As it is a well known fact that it is only with mana, that life is even possible. The integration of which however, is often overlooked, if not entirely misrepresented by many a misinformed scholar. It is as such, my responsibility to correct those misunderstandings. Starting now.” The professor snapped her fingers, zooming in close enough that the various organelles of the cell could be seen. 

There, we were treated to what was the most prototypical looking eukaryotic cell imaginable, as the EVI began furiously cross-referencing this to our internal databases; highlighting everything that was comparable from the large and universally recognizable nucleus, to the ever-important bean-looking rockstar that was the powerhouse of the cell — the mitochondria. 

[CROSS REFERENCE ANALYSIS] Notifications dotted my HUD, absolutely filling up my available visual real estate with annotation after annotation of nth tier scientific analyses. However, as much as those successful cross references were made, so too were several regions of the cell quickly demarcated in yellow and red circles, annotated in question marks, hinting at what were ostensibly foreign and unknown constructs that were incomparable to any known cell in the database.

It was this region of the cell that the professor began honing in on, as she began pointing at the anomalous cellular components, and describing them simply as: “-the magical aspect of the otherwise biological entity. The fundamental components of the Ure that gave it life, and the sole reason why death is the way it is. For you see, students, life is a careful balance, a marriage of two forces — the biological, and the magical. Your biological processes are one half of the equation, the magical being the other half. One cannot exist without the other, nor can one sustain themselves without the other. These two forces must always be in balance, in equilibrium, in [homeostasis].” The EVI quickly chimed in, providing an annotated comparatively similar descriptor of the professor’s otherwise long winded explanations. 

“Some processes may exist independently, whilst others are intertwined. It is however, with the death of the corpus, the first death, that the biological ceases to be.” The professor once more paused, displaying a great many ways a person can die ‘biologically’ on a second hologram. Most of the examples of a ‘biological death’ were quite bland, consisting of old age, accidents, or some combination of bog-standard deaths. Though some that came up consisted of what I could only describe as scenes pulled straight out of an AMV of some hyper-realistic medieval fighting game. “The death of the biological, however, does not immediately mean the death of the magical. The magical, in fact, manages to persist for some time; its independent processes being the last vestiges of life to persist until finally… it too dies due to the death of its other half.” 

A hand was raised from the crowd at this point. 

It was, surprisingly, Qiv’Ratom.

“Yes, Lord Ratom?”

“Professor, if I may interject, is the corpus not dead at this point in time?”

“Indeed it is, Lord Ratom.” Belnor answered with a firm nod. 

“If that is the case… then how is it that the Ure is still, in a sense, alive?”

“That is an excellent question, Lord Ratom.” Belnor acknowledged with a warm smile, before turning to the rest of class. “Is there anyone who believes they may have the answer?” 

A few eyes glanced down towards Qiv at this point in time, many of which were accompanied by the tentative twitching of hands and arms. It was clear there were some who wanted to try their hand at hypothesizing an answer. Though many simply refused to do so, clearly out of a concern that doing so would be an encroachment of the great Lord Qiv Ratom.

Belnor, either not noticing the trend or choosing to simply ignore it, chose to move on. “Well then, I will be more than happy to answer, Lord Ratom.” She continued with that amiable demeanor. “The death of the corpus, is in a sense, a purely biological affair. As despite the magical aspect of the Ure acting as an integral partner in a body’s homeostasis at a [cellular] level, it does not play a vital role in the gross processes of its overarching physiology. Moreover, it is important to note that it is more often than not the biological that fails before the magical. But that is another matter altogether."