Chapter 39
Indecision
Mary frowned as she considered the second mind's proposal.
“You want to bind your spell matrix to this virtual representation of yourself?”
Said Mary, asking for the doppelganger for confirmation.
{Placing their respective spell matrices inside their buildings has halved the energy costs of both the simulator and the library. We’ve already been thinking of those buildings as a representation of the spells' existence, so it does make some sense to install the spells inside of their walls, no matter how metaphorical they might be.}
Retorted the second mind, becoming more intent on reminding her creator of the benefits they were already enjoying due to the new matrix placement.
{It is logical then to assume that my own energy costs might plummet if we did the same to me.}
Mary nodded; at the very least, she could not find any flaw in the reasoning of her clone, but then again, why would she? In the end, they were the same person with the same logic. Because of this, finding flaws in her own reasoning had proved increasingly difficult over the last few months.
“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt us to try; binding the matrix to you should be a simple thing to do anyway.”
{I agree, but it’s not something I can do myself.}
The second mind reminded her creator again, tactically acknowledging one of the few true limitations of the second-mind spell.
{Besides which, we need to renew my spell anyway, due to this newest version of the second mind spell.}
The doppelganger stated, gesturing toward the holographic representation of the two mental spells.
{Between an increase in efficiency gained from relocating the spell matrices and the improved spell logic that we have attached to the second mind and the library spells, so long as it has a similar mana cost to the second mind spell, then we should be able to maintain a third passive spell.}
The second mind explained her success firmly.
{In fact, due to the simulator, I already have what I am certain is accurate data already in hand, and as such, I have projected that we could just about handle a fourth passive spell.}
Mary sighed in appreciation at the second minds' continued work; even better, if the data from the simulator turned out to be correct, then they could further perfect their current mana data models.
An important improvement going forward.
However, Mary noted that they now had something of a developing problem.
Currently, they didn’t have any additional spells that they could run passively.
It was a difficult position to be in; the benefits of passive spells had been made abundantly clear over the last few months, and she had significantly increased her rate of learning due to the library and second mind.
Finding some spells to take up their extra mana throughput could further enhance their progress.
But on the other hand, the simulator could be used far more regularly until she had new passive spells to maintain permanently. Perhaps their goal could be to make the simulator their next passive spell?
The second mind, having followed her creator's train of thought, chooses to opt in.
{In fact, we should be capable of keeping it active for over half a day. If you concentrated solely on meditating to replenish our reserves, then the simulator could in fact be made permanently active.}
Mary looked at the second mind, shocked by the outrageous statement.
“Are you sure? That’s a massive leap in capacity.”
Reflexively, the reincarnator reaches out to her memories to double-check the second mind's assumption. She was shocked to find that the second mind's assumption was at least close to the truth; this was the conclusion she reached after double-checking the data presented to her.
{The simulator might be an intense mana hog, but with energy to spare for two extra passive spells and dedicated effort on your part, it’s possible.}
The second mind stated again, having felt the original check her memories; this time the second mind's voice was much firmer.
Mary frowned as she considered the further data and ultimately conceded the truth, albeit with some caveats.
“I would only have six, perhaps seven spare hours per day. But it does look like it’s possible.”
They wouldn’t do it, of course; the simulator was useful but not worth dedicating most of her day to having it running.
For the most part at least.
Mary shakes her head, dismissing the thought for now.
“You called me for a reason; I assume we’re going to reinitialise our spells with the new logic and location?”
The second mind nodded in agreement; yes, that was why she had called for her creators’ presence.
“Then let’s do this.”
Mary stated, reaching into the databanks of the simulator to grasp the new spell matrix of the second mind spell.
In short order, there was a third Mary standing in the virtual simulator building; if someone were to look closely, then they would immediately notice that this one was somehow different from the first.
Mary, of course, understood immediately that unlike with the original model, a second mind with an external spell matrix, there was no ethereal light flowing towards the avatar.
The mana that gave the second mind existence instead came from within; following a suspicion, the princess gazed intently at the eyes of the new avatar, and she was unsurprised that she could see the spinning circle of a spell matrix within it.
All three Marys smirked at seeing the cliché in action; in the case of the princesses' duplicates, their eyes were indeed windows to their very souls.
“The library?”
The real Mary asked the third rhetorically, causing her to nod.
{This won’t take long.}
The third Mary stated.
With the three Marys working together, they had quickly created another, new iteration of the mental library, this one bound to the new avatar, and moved all of the books from one to another.
Part of Mary felt that this action was redundant, and since they would ultimately be improving the library spell several times in the future, they should focus at least some time on finding a way to transfer the library spell without having to move every book within it.
Otherwise, the time they would have to dedicate to a move would only ever increase exponentially.
But, with their task complete, they stopped and stared at the second Mary duplicate considerately, all of them agreeing that the move had been much faster than it would have been if the first second mind had been dismissed before the move.
Mary considered the situation further for a moment before admitting to herself that the extra hands had been very useful.
“We don’t have a new spell to take up a passive slot.”
The original Mary reminded the pair, her voice thick with a dawning comprehension, causing them both to smirk knowingly.
{But there’s no reason why we can’t use multiple minds now, is there?}
{Or we could upgrade the second mind spell further, for instance, a thought acceleration spell.}
Mary nodded at the reasoning; having additional hands and minds to work with could only help to hasten their plans further.
Perhaps they would eventually encounter some sort of limit, other than one that was caused by energy constraints, where increasing the number of minds she had available would no longer help with studying.
Although, considering Alexander's experience with multi-tasking, it was much more likely that the only thing stopping her from benefiting from an ever-increasing degree of massive parallel processing over the coming years would be energy constraints.
A common enough problem on Earth, too.
Before the Marys could entertain the thought further, the now redundant second mind opts to interrupt.
{Well then, talk to you later.}
The second Mary stated sardonically, and then she promptly disappeared as she voluntarily shut down her own spell matrix outside the new library that they were standing in; the simulator that she had been running in the background along with the library disappeared.
Now once again alone with merely one duplicate, Mary stops to consider her next steps.
She could, as had been suggested, create some means of thought acceleration. Such magic could benefit Mary's physical self as well as any second minds that she was running.
But doing so would involve the creation of new runes, a task that had proved reality simple thus far but would nonetheless take up at least several days as she tweaked the rune and its attached spells.
Day that could be spent on more important matters.
Or they could commit to pulling information from Alexander's memories; that section of their library was still conspicuously empty, and yet, Alexander's knowledge had continued to prove to be their greatest asset.
“Alternatively.”
The princess muttered to herself, considering.
{We could switch our focus to the physical world.}
The second mind finished for her creator, causing Mary to nod in agreement.
Mary considered her two options for a moment longer before committing to her newest course of action.
“We’ll focus on obtaining copies of Alexander's memories. After we have all of that information on hand and can no longer lose it, we can switch our focus to the physical world.”
Mary's newest second mind adopted a pensive look; part of her had wanted to pursue some sort of biomancy magic, but she ultimately agreed that securing Alexander’s legacy was the more important option.
{We’ve already done some experiments, but none of them seemed to work.}
The second mind reminded its creator of the unfortunate truth, the truth that indicated that the task they had now set for themselves would not be as easy or as fast as they might have hoped.
Mary nodded in acknowledgement; they had worked on this ability before, and it had ultimately been trivial to create books from the memories of Mary Midgard, but currently that ability was useless to them, as Mary apparently did not have any memories worth saving.
{It’ll be useful as we get older.}
The second mind reminded the princess.
“But it also means that Alexander’s memories are not considered mine. At least not by whatever laws govern magic.”
The second mind sighed. Yes, that was the problem, wasn’t it?
{We used the [Mind] rune to create that spell.}
The second mind stated consideringly.
{But what if we’ve been misunderstanding that rune to a degree? Perhaps its main focus is on the physical mind, what is attached to our brain, rather than the spiritual one.}
Mary frowned for a moment, visibly turning the phrasing that her second mind had chosen to use in her head.
If the [Mind] rune is dedicated to the physical aspect of the brain, then the spiritual aspect would, of course, require some sort of [Soul] rune, wouldn’t it?
“It makes sense, I suppose.”
Mary conceded reluctantly.
Perhaps her reluctance was strange, Mary thought; after all, Alexander had been something close to a casual atheist before his reincarnation, such a thing having, of course, depended on the time of day and how well his day was going.
“And of course, the most important part of all, the alignment of the stars and the moon.”
Mary remarked to herself sarcastically, having gained a somewhat dim view of Alexander's atheism after being reincarnated into a world of magic, where souls and gods were apparently real.
Nonetheless, depending on all of those factors, he might very well have dismissed the existence of the soul entirely.
And yet, when Alexander had first woken as a baby in the womb, he had almost instantly become a believer in the soul if not in God in general.
After all, he had been given visible proof that his identity had not been completely linked to his physical brain, and of course when he had first woken up, at that time his old brain may very well have outweighed the body he had woken up in.
It had logically followed that the soul was a seat for memories and thus the mind; as far as he had been concerned, it was the only rational explanation for his new situation.
But this potential misunderstanding was ultimately where Mary had taken her concept of the [Mind] rune from.
And what if that concept was wrong?
Mary had never considered herself perfect; she could be incorrect about things and often was.
However, this represented a fundamental misunderstanding of one of her most frequently used and important magic runes.
Mary allowed herself to grimace; there was another problem with basing a spell off a [Soul] rune.
{We don’t know anything about souls.}
The second mind stated the obvious, causing Mary to reluctantly agree.
“It’ll be our lowest level rune, no questions asked.”
The princess continued.
“We can assume that the mana cost is going to be extremely high due to the low efficiency.”
{Quality is also likely to be a problem. Not only will pulling memories take time, but we will also have to renew everything as we gain a greater understanding of the [Soul] rune.}
Should they focus on the physical world after all? It sounds like this will be a great deal of wasted duplicate effort.
{Our memory is imperfect.}
The second mind reminded her creator of a fundamental truth.
{Worse, we don’t know if Alexander’s memories will slowly disappear or if they’re safe in the depths of our souls. And there are many useful facts that Alexander forgot about, but that we could potentially recover.}
Mary nodded in agreement; everything that the second mind had said was true.
“And then after we start pulling memories we’re going to focus on our current biology; every scrap of data we can pull from his memoires will help us understand what we’re seeing.”
{Of course, something we want to learn about is Sylvia's biology, the augments that she has inherited from Sakuya. Those are Earth augments, as far as we can tell, likely high-level military ones even.}
{So, if we can magically give those augments to ourselves…}
“Alexander might not have had any of those augmentation packages, but he did research them. Although we cannot remember the details, the information should still be available.”
The two Marys spent a short amount of time essentially reminding each other of the tremendous benefits that could be gained not only from being able to understand and manipulate a person’s biology with magic but also from how useful Alexander's partially remembered knowledge would be for such a task.
Now that they had truly set their course, they both turned their attention to something they had quietly dreaded.
The creation of a [Soul] rune, and all that it might imply.