Bloody Mary and the Magical Revolution

Memories?

“Phew.”

Mary looked down at the book she was holding in her currently virtual hands and could not help but sigh despondently.

Overall, it had taken her two full weeks of dedicated effort; those two weeks had felt long to Mary. They had been weeks of intense frustration, of finding out that many of her assumptions regarding magic were not as correct as she had hoped.

However, the princess ultimately succeeded in creating the [Soul] rune she needed.

And yet, Mary could not bring herself to celebrate that success.

After all, while the young princess could not realistically justify calling the entire effort a failure, she was, without a doubt, currently holding a book that had been created on Earth.

It was still not the success that she had privately been expecting.

Upon reflection, Mary had been forced to confront once again the fact that she had been extremely lucky thus far with her magical studies. If she thought about it rationally, her most recent experience with magic and rune formation had likely been a far more typical experience for mages in this world.

And there was no question that Mary absolutely hated that experience; the feeling of being so thoroughly stymied in her studies was not one she was familiar with, and she did not enjoy it at all.

If she stopped to consider it rationally, the reincarnator should be celebrating at this moment; in the end, her new ability to pull information directly from Alexander's memories is objectively a significant success.

One that will benefit her immensely in the difficult years to come.

‘And yet.’

Mary bitterly remarks internally, looking down once again, almost seeming to check that reality still conformed to her memories.

Sure enough, in her metaphysical hands, there was still a book that was quite literally out of this world; it was a book of science and reason from a world without any magic. There could be no doubt that it was a book from Earth.

Mary remembered the entire process vividly; she had created this book in her virtual world by pulling the memory of its existence from her very soul, from the only place in the world where Alexander’s memories still existed.

But the more she stared at it, the more complex and morose her mood became.

Once again disliking her renewed melancholy, the princess instead forces herself to read the book's title again, for a short moment feeling warmth at the reminder of her old, much less complicated life.

An Introduction to Human Genetics by Amelia Harper

To the reincarnator, it was a familiar book.

How could it not be? She had, after all, copied it from some of Alexander's most recent memories.

Despite everything that had happened to Alexander in the hours following that final class, Mary could still remember it with perfect clarity.

It had been the final virtual class that Alexander had taken before being so pointlessly murdered. Doctor Amelia Harper, a world-famous geneticist known for her controversial reputation, had taught that class.

Mary felt her thoughts drifting again as she reminisced.

The doctor had been held up as the primary creator of what Earth had come to consider modern gene crafting.

Not everyone was pleased with Amelia’s efforts; in fact, she was an incredibly polarising figure.

Her creation of gene crafting was something that had garnered her a tremendous amount of hate from traditionalists around the world; in the end many of those people had accused her of flagrantly stepping into the domain of God and profaning his work.

And if Mary were being entirely fair, which for traditionalists, due to her current situation of being potentially suppressed by Midgard’s own local traditionalists, she was increasingly unprepared to be, it might even be true.

Even Alexander would have tentatively admitted that those traditionalists were at least partially correct when making such accusations.

It was something worth considering, or so Mary thought.

Were the Gods of Earth, those that existed, frustrated by the march of progress?

Is that why there had been no intervention against the clearly otherworldly murderer that was Leslie? Or the apparently frequent abduction of Earth's residents?

But from what Mary had learned, the abductions had been happening for millennia, and people of Earth were without a doubt much more faithful centuries ago.

For the princess, someone with the memories of an aspiring scientist, it was an intriguing thought experiment. On one hand, it could be argued that everything Mary had experienced so far suggested the existence of the supernatural, even to some extent on Earth; and if the supernatural, or magic, exists on Earth, then it follows that deities should also exist.

Mary had heard enough of Terra to know that people certainly seemed to believe in a goddess here, one that could actively empower her servants.

So then, Mary wondered, what did that say for Earth?

Alexander might have been something of a casual atheist, but even with his limited knowledge of Christianity, he should have still theoretically counted as a child of God. Surely, Mary thought to herself, if the gods of Earth had existed, they would have prevented their people from being summoned or, rather, to be truthful, kidnapped to other worlds.

But clearly, they hadn’t, and it had left Mary increasingly uncertain about what she knew about Earth, about what was truth and what were lies.

Mary frowned and shook her head dismissively, privately acknowledging that this type of recrimination served no purpose and, worse, was a waste of time.

Whatever else can be said of divinities, it did seem evident that such a being did exist on Terra; after all, the Church of the Goddess was real and supposedly had access to Terra’s only true healing and holy spells. It was logical to conclude that some form of deity must exist for such a thing to be possible.

At least, Mary assumed so. She couldn't investigate or be sure, and doing so would likely be dangerous.

Nonetheless, Amelia's work in genetics had gained her far more admiration than it had scorn, and the increasingly vast number of possible treatments had ultimately generated a massive amount of wealth for the doctor, regardless of the existence of God or how the doctor might have profaned his work.

It was fortunate then that Mary had inherited so much of that famous woman’s work, and in the fullness of time, she would be capable of using it for herself.

That was an advantage that nobody else in this entire world had access to.

When Mary thought of it like that, it almost cleared her of her despondence.

After all, no matter what else happened, she had succeeded in recovering virtual copies of Alexander's memories, and that was an achievement that would aid her in life.

Why then was she despondent? At the mere thought of it, Mary found herself glaring at the current cause of her misery.

The level of the rune glinted back at her, seeming to mock her effort.

{It’s not mocking you. And you really need to calm down; you’ve been thinking in circles for hours now.}

Mary twitched in annoyance at the interruption. Why weren’t the second minds as annoyed as she was at their abject failure? They were copies of her!

Objectively, her problem despite all appearances was not that she had created a [Basic] level rune; that would be childish, and Mary, despite what she might currently look like, was not a child.

Her issue was that this was her first significant failure, and even worse, the extent of her failure was truly disheartening.

Two weeks, two of her precious weeks, had been wasted on a task that they could have completed in just one afternoon.

{We are artificial beings, unlike you. Our lack of complex biochemical systems, even infantile ones, is apparently muting our reaction.}

The apparent spokesperson of the second mind explained what they had discovered about their situation in a distant and cold tone.

{Rest assured, we are annoyed at the wasted time. But it’s not as bad as you’re making it out to be.}

Mary frowned at the second mind's explanation; in the end she would have to ignore the fact that they were unaffected by biology. It wasn’t something that could be easily addressed, and if Mary were being honest with herself, it really shouldn’t be addressed at all.

But how could this waste of time not be as bad as she thought it was?

{First of all, we have learned something very important about the nature of runes.}

Mary nodded in agreement at the second mind's point; they had admittedly erred by making assumptions based on Earth fiction. She would strive to never repeat that misstep, lest she waste even more of her limited time.

Mary grimaced as she took the thought further; while there was clearly some degree of overlap between what Earth's fictional fantasy authors had written and the reality of magic in the real world, it had proved disastrous to take that fiction as gospel.

{And because of that, we’ll want to revisit our [Ambient Mana] rune as well. While I doubt we can push the level to the next tier, we should be able to squeeze out some additional efficiency now that we know about the mistake that we have made.}

Mary blinked in surprise at the presented diversion; the young princess hadn’t considered that her [Ambient Mana] rune would be a problem. But even a moment of thought meant that the second mind's suggestion had serious merit.

Now that Mary thought about it, their Earth-based assumptions had probably dragged them down with the [Ambient Mana] rune, hadn’t they?

{The overlap between Earth's assumptions and the facts of Terra saved us there. If that overlap had been less significant, then we might have failed in that rune creation as well.}

The princess nodded consideringly, an idea slowly forming as she thought about the problem further.

“If we can better understand the marginal gains in rune level, we can investigate which of our guesses are wrong and which are facts.”

The second mind hummed in agreement, acknowledging that it was a beneficial idea.

{It would be helpful to work that into the simulator as well; eventually, such research being internal would help us out immensely.}

Mary feels the second mind smirk as she switches tracks.

{The second thing is that even though it took time, we still succeeded and we now have proper access to all of Alexander’s memories.}

Mary snorted derisively, moving to counter what she regarded as an incorrect opinion.

“You’re wrong. Look at the poor quality of this book! Some of the words are wrong; others are smudged and difficult to read! We failed.”

The second mind scoffed back and retorted.

{A problem that can be solved with time. That we have access at all is the important part.}

Another of the second minds interrupted in agreement.

{We still have access to Alexander’s memories; if necessary, we can physically edit the books and create our own correct copies. We have more than enough idle hands to do something like that; in fact, once we finish reading Elizabeth's entire collection, that is certainly something that we should look into doing.}

{And besides, while improvements to the [Soul] rune may be infrequent, they should still be possible. We can and will develop that rune further.}

Mary felt her face twitch in anger; they didn’t have the time for that!

“You heard Sylvia; without the advantages granted by Alexander’s education, even reaching level five could be our life’s work.”

The second minds sighed in sync, finally letting out their own frustration at their main bodies’ stubbornness.

{Irrelevant. In the end, being able to comb through Alexander’s memories, and especially his forgotten ones, is the true advantage. We’ve achieved that; making use of it is just a matter of time and effort.}

{As far as we know, increasing the level of the [Soul] rune would simply make it more affordable and decrease errors in the duplicates; there might be other benefits, but in the end you're angry that we can’t use the spell more often than we currently can.}

{And that we will need to dedicate effort to editing the results. Both problems can be solved with time and effort.}

Mary nodded resentfully; it was true that the real advantage of the spell was the ability to access memories that even Alexander had forgotten and that she was frustrated about what was ultimately an inconvenience.

Alexander had spent relative years trawling through articles and websites; he had witnessed all sorts of information but had not bothered to commit much of it to memory.

With this newest spell, as long as they put in the work, they could now learn about anything that Alexander had so much as glanced at, regardless of if he had even read it. All they would need to do is access the relevant memory and go from there.

But therein lies the problem for Mary: the spell had nearly exhausted her entire mana reserves. Worse, the resulting book had been of abysmal quality.

Distantly, Mary felt the second minds exchange frowns as she began to spiral again.

{Are you trying to imply that you lack the dedication?}

They asked Mary challengingly, causing her to flinch and consequently knocking her out of what would have been another spiral.

“I’m sorry, ok? I’m just aggravated.”

{Clearly.}

The second mind agreed bluntly.

{We can move on now anyway. It’s time to start looking into our biology.}

Mary sighed in relief, glad that the argument that she had inadvertently caused was over.

“So, what should we do? Do we create a [Biology] rune and start our investigation into our and Sylvia's biology then?”

The second minds muttered among themselves before tentatively reaching an agreement.

{On our part,we’ll start checking through Alexander’s memories. I’m certain that there’s something in here about gene-crafting babies.}

Mary frowned as she tried to remember anything regarding that controversial topic before asking.

“Wasn’t it forbidden to gene-craft babies?”

{Yes. But that doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen and that Alexander didn’t learn it.}

Mary made a face at the rebuttal; while it was true, she also remembered that Alexander had very complex feelings about it.

{How Alexander felt about it is also irrelevant. The fact is that we are a baby, and if we want to augment ourselves while we’re still young and can easily maximise the benefits, then we need that information.}

“And so, what? We need vast amounts of mana in order to pull memories from Alexander.”

Mary heard a sigh, and she immediately understood her misunderstanding, causing her physical cheeks to brighten in embarrassment.

{You said it yourself, Alexander had complex feelings about gene-crafting babies; as such, we can remember most of the details without our spell. Once we know what we want to pull from our soul, we can use the spell to get a proper copy.}

The second minds all exchanged nods.

{This is how we circumvent the spell's cost and quality issues. We have access to multiple minds and can view the memories directly; primarily we needed the spell quickly, just in case the memories disappeared on us. But also, so that we could look at things that Alexander no longer truly remembered.}

“And gene crafting is not something that he had forgotten, exactly the opposite.”

Mary answered in realisation.

{Exactly. We’ll work on that; you get to work on our [Biology] rune.}

Mary could only agree with the order.