Chapter 1071: The Doctor’s Immortality
"Now why’d ya have to go and take a look where you’re not supposed to be looking." The Doctor sighed.
Alice wasn’t even sure what she should say to this man.
His pursuit of immortality had led him down a path that many would not even consider to be an option.
This... insanity is beyond anything a mortal should be capable of.
His original experiments were rather ’simple’.
He explored the paths towards immortality already achieved by the people in this world.
The Vampiric beasts who could constantly ’refresh’ their lives by consuming blood. Though... that had a limit.
Hunters who focused on regeneration in order to achieve immortality, though... certain skills could bypass their defences and render their regeneration null.
If even Gods can die, there’s no reason not to believe that an Apostle couldn’t.
No matter how inconceivable it may seem.
Soul magic eventually deteriorates the mind. Even if you are ’immortal’, you are nothing but a shell. That wasn’t what he desired either, so the Moon had little importance to him.
He spent years in his early life delving deep into the research left behind by his predecessors. Ancient records of people succumbing to their imperfect immortality.
Some even trying to use their records as a trap in order to usurp the vessel of an unlucky explorer. All so that they could free themselves from the prison they built with their own hands.
But the Doctor persisted.
There are many long living people in their world. Remnants from ancient nations and even the Old Lords sealed in special prisons tailored to them.
But they weren’t immortal.
No, far from it.
They were merely long living. A far cry from true immortality.
If he had to use an example... he had only one that he could look towards as the closest demonstration of his ideal.
The immortal Vampire created by a certain woman’s hands. A ’thing’ removed from the cycle of life and death where even the Reaper had to kill his own contractor in order to fulfil the ritual.
But even with Caelan as an example, the fact that he was restricted by ’something’ couldn’t be ignored.
What use was immortality when his movements were watched oh so carefully?
The Doctor simply couldn’t accept such a result.
To achieve his ideal immortality, there were several requirements that must absolutely be met.
But the two most important aspects were the issue of vessel and soul.
If his ’immortality’ was too reliant on the vessel, unique skills that could negate the reinforcement would easily cause his immortality to fail.
In which case, it couldn’t exactly be called immortality. At best, he was just a really resilient person. Not immortal.
On the other hand, if his immortality was too reliant on the soul, he faced the issue of being severely weakened with the lack of a compatible vessel.
Each person has a certain... limit that they can unconsciously reach with their soul.
Live long enough and one must start removing information from their mind or soul, or else they’ll overload themselves.
And even then, even with careful filtering, the limit will still be reached.
To become the ideal immortal, the Doctor wanted a soul that could automatically maintain the optimal balance while ensuring that he could easily access the information he required. Even if it was from long, long ago.
These two were the hardest hurdles that he had to overcome to become the ideal immortal.
Without perfectly overcoming these two issues, his foundations would be filled with gaps that could be exploited.
His first experiment was on the soul. There was research retrieved from the branches of the Moon, but...
As a scientist, he wasn’t satisfied with just accepting results. He needed to see for himself, to recreate and experiment.
To see the changes with his own eyes and to fully understand the phenomenon on a deeper level.
It was the difference between knowing how to cook and being a chef.
One simply threw stuff into a pot because that’s what they’re taught. The other? The chef understood the purpose of each tool. Each seasoning.
The Doctor wanted to understand the soul on a deeper level.
He spent his time dissecting souls. Using old methods and even developing new ones himself to expose the soul during the instant between life and death. Splitting them into sections to see what governed memory, identity, emotion, and will.
If the memory is artificially removed, would the remaining parts of their soul lead them to the same conclusion? Or would they become a new person entirely? What was required to ’reconstruct’ the person they became, and what could be removed?
He studied everything from scratch.
He stitched souls together from different sources.
What if he took the purest soul, a boy who knew naught of the world’s pain, and stitched it with the worst criminals who wanted to inflict pain as much as possible?
The resulting shattered mind quickly self-destructed as the horrifying realisation struck the boy when he saw what he was committing. The countless killings, the desires bubbling inside that he could not hold back.
His mind was still the same. Or at least it should’ve been. But the burning, sickening desires inside his mind couldn’t be held back.
Most of the experiments should’ve ended in complete madness, then death. Should’ve.
Death was not the end. Oh no, far from it. Even when the physical body died, the soul could still be observed.
Physical death was not the end of their torment.
How much use could he get out of one soul?
That was the question he put to the test every time he got his hands on a new subject.
For a long time, his research stagnated.
Tens, hundreds, thousands. The number of subjects kept climbing, but he was no closer to achieving his ideal immortality.
He had to be careful as well. To make sure his research stayed below the radar so that society couldn’t stop his pursuit of the truth.
The noble families of Extalia made for the perfect breeding ground for his tests. He would switch identities and infiltrate different families, making use of their resources until...
He found the Zenia family.
Or more specifically, when he was preparing to move on, he found ’Alice’.
He thought she was a mistake of the world. An anomaly that simply couldn’t be. Yet there she was, in all of her radiant beauty.
A step towards what he considered to be the truth of his world. Unbound, untethered to its laws.
But... something was still missing. She was in her incubation period. The product was incomplete.
A mere taste of what could be...
That’s when he realised.
Alice wasn’t a miracle. She wasn’t a coincidence born of nature.
She was man-made.
Tailored.
Crafted.
The result of countless years of experimentation in a different direction to his own, yet approaching the same conclusions.
The creation of a perfect vessel and a perfect soul.
The very foundation he needed to fully understand in order to achieve his ideal immortality.
His experiments had been numerous before he met Alice.
And her arrival was a gift he had not anticipated.
The Zenia family collapsed from the inside. There was no need for him to hold back any more.
No need to scurry around like a rat, disguising his victims as unfortunate accidents reported by the guards. No, now he could use the Zenia family however he wished so long as it ’benefitted’ the Zenia name.
He couldn’t ask for a better laboratory.
"Can see it, right? I can see it. See the traces of my experiments in your eyes. You hate me don’t you? Loathe the things I’ve done." He laughed, adjusting his glasses.
Alice had to hold back the urge to throw up.
A mere peek into his history showed the long unending list of victims she didn’t even know about.
Each one recorded in such... horrific detail. Scenes that she couldn’t put into words.
Such clarity, all carefully preserved in his mind so as not to forget a single moment.
Pure insanity.
That’s all she could call it.
With Alice’s blood and her own body acting as the blueprint, his experiments grew exponentially.
What was once simply thousands of victims quickly spiralled into the tens, then hundreds of thousands.
The different departments he would open in order to experiment on a larger scale.
It reached a point where he would even experiment on himself, mutilating his own soul in order to achieve maximum efficiency when it came to collecting results.
This imperfect immortality was simply a taste of his true desire.
All of his creations, his crimes, the Hybrids, everything was for the sake of one purpose.
Perfect immortality unbound by the laws of this world.
He wished to transcend everything. Even the Gods.
A burning greed that knows no bounds.
Alice had thought that Nyer’s obsession was beyond anything in this world. She was wrong.
"They say birds of a feather flock together. No f*cking wonder. Tell me, do you really believe you can win this ’race’?" Alice clenched her teeth.
Killing the Doctor was still within the realm of possibility.
His imperfect immortality was a result of artificially splitting his soul and carefully maintaining the fragments in several different vessels. Each one synchronising to a ’template’ of his vessel so that no matter what kind of damage he sustained, he’d be able to reconstruct it.
It wasn’t quite the same as abandoning his vessel like those of the Moon.
In a strange twist, he was maintaining the perfect balance between soul and body.
"Of course I believe I can win. If I don’t believe in my own potential, who will?" The Doctor tilted his head as though the answer was the most obvious thing in the world.
"And who’s to say I can’t achieve my desires while also helping Nyer achieve his goal? Our goals are not mutually exclusive after all."
Alice took a deep breath.
A man-made Outer God that harmonises with their world.
An insane doctor willing to go to any lengths to achieve his perfect immortality.
The grieving Slayer who was willing to do anything in order to resurrect his loved one.
And the Betrayer who has overturned countless laws in this world in order to bring back a fallen Goddess.
She couldn’t let any of them leave. But even she knew that was getting too greedy.
So if she had to pick her target...
"No matter what..." Alice created a sword as her eyes burned with rage.
"You’re not f*cking leaving today."
Her blade was aimed towards the Doctor.
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