Bloody Mary and the Magical Revolution

Biology Rune

An observer might have rightly claimed that Mary had learned her lesson from what she still considered her most recent mistake, the mistake that had cost her a full two weeks of very precious time when she had attempted to create a brand-new runic concept.

The observer would have been right to do so; with the memory of her recent failure still firm in the princess's mind, there was no way she would allow herself to potentially waste time like that again.

This time, the young princess quickly decided to focus on forming a basic version of a [Biology] rune before attempting anything else, unlike her previous experience with the [Soul] rune, which she had struggled to create for weeks.

The idea was that such an action would quickly grant her what was ultimately a functional, although inefficient, rune. This rune could be used in the early biomancy spells that her second mind was already evaluating for logical consistency.

It was, Mary hastily assured herself, the rational way to go about spell creation; this was especially true considering the largely mental advantages that she had crafted for herself over the last few months.

This time, she would do some basic experimentation with one of her early [Biology] rune variants; she would take a few hours to confirm that the basics of biology were the same, walking away with a high-level [Biology] rune. And that would allow her to find out what basic spells could be made; she would then leave the complex details to her second minds while concentrating on other things.

More importantly, some limited experimentation would to a degree allow her to confirm which of Earth's theories remained true and, perhaps even more crucially, what former facts needed to be discarded or modified.

With a deeper understanding of mana-enhanced biology in hand, Mary's physical self could work on applying Alexander's knowledge to the runic concept, and over the course of what would likely be a few days, the princess would be able to create a much higher-level rune that she could work with from then on.

It was, Mary could admit, a far slower and much more cautious way to go about the creation of new runic concepts; that was an unfortunate given. But the princess had already been burnt once with the [Soul] rune, and above all else she did not want to waste further time like she did then.

Of course, it could be said that biology was one of the few areas in which Mary could confidently claim to have extensive knowledge; after all, Alexander had specifically focused on those subjects through all of his schooling and had even started a university-level genetics scholarship on the back of his success.

But how true was that assumption really?

If Mary was lucky—an element that she was increasingly reluctant to rely on—it was entirely possible that the reincarnator had far more knowledge on this subject than anyone else in the new world she had been born into.

It was something that the young princess had thought about constantly. And while the notion that she would be peerless in at least one matter straight from her birth was certainly a nice dream, it was one that she had no intention of deluding herself into.

After all, there was a glaring problem in making an assumption such as that.

In the end, Mary could not allow herself to be lied to on this matter; no matter how optimistic the young princess tried to be, she could not force herself to believe that she knew a wonderful deal about Terran biology. At least not anymore.

More specifically, Mary had forced herself to dismiss any notion that she knew anything about Terra's magical biology; this was extremely unfortunate, as Terra's biology was liable to involve essentially everything that had magic.

Which was to say, if some basic observations proved correct, seemingly everything.

And, to do otherwise, to allow herself to believe that she understood this new phenomenon and its impact, would have been completely deluded. Mary would not fool herself like that, not for a second time, and certainly not for something that should have been her speciality.

After all, Mary thought to herself bitterly, there was a big difference between Earth, where Alexander had learnt about biology and genetics, and Terra, where she now lived.

And that big difference was the presence of mana.

It went without saying, but Earth in all likelihood did not have any mana, or at least that was the case as far as Alexander knew. Reasonably, Mary thought, it could be assumed that at the very best, Earth only had tiny amounts of mana, perhaps focused into specific places, but it would nonetheless be to the degree that it had a negligible impact on the wider world.

Mary had already seen the effects of mana with her own still-infantile body; she had also seen it with Sylvia, her maid who could apparently disappear instantly and through mysterious means that the maid still refused to share.

She had wondered to herself often over the last months, which of biology’s basic facts, if any at all, are different due to the inclusion of mana and magic into a person’s body?

Mary did not know, and thus far none of the books that she had inherited from Elizabeth spoke on this area at all.

That absence of knowledge was suspicious, of course; after all, the people of Terra knew that Earth lacked magic. Surely somebody, likely a so-called hero from Earth, would have attempted to figure out the differences between magical and non-magical biology before?

If not for reasons of health, then for curiosity's sake.

But thus far it seemed that there had been no such investigation, and it left glaring gaps in the information available to her.

Normally Mary would have asked her teacher about this glaring absence and many other things. And to be fair to the princess, she absolutely had asked her maid, but Sylvia was unfortunately not the most bookish of people.

Mary withheld a smirk at the thought and reflected that it was an incredibly polite way to say that the maid was a bit of a meathead.

Mary shook her head and dismissed her wool-gathering, instead focusing on the task at hand.

It was not long after that Mary had rather quickly created the most basic form of her newest rune.

It was rather intriguing for her; she had initiated this rune with no knowledge of biology whatsoever, and yet it firmly existed, albeit at the lowest level.

The feeling that her newest rune gave off was, as the old saying went, icky. Sensing the mana radiating in fragile, almost imperceptible waves reminded her of nothing less than plunging her hand into an unidentified biological mass.

The feeling of wetness and a pungent smell made the princess shiver in quickly concealed disgust.

Instead, Mary attempted to ignore the mana and scrutinised the rune before her, noting that it was a healthy green colour; this did not surprise the princess at all. After all, her newest rune was supposed to embody the science of life, and if there was any colour that had long been associated with life and nature, it was the colour green.

{Life green was some of the first mana that we saw when we woke in the womb, wasn’t it?}

One of the second minds reminisced, causing the princess to nod absent-mindedly.

“So, how do we go about this? Seeing how far we can push a rune's development, I mean?”

The second minds collectively hummed.

{It was a good idea to restrict the power as much as possible, considering we’re going to be creating perhaps dozens of this rune today.}

Mary grimaced; it was a necessary expenditure of time, of course. They needed to confirm what Earth-inspired biological facts were still true on Terra.

And that meant dedicating a lot of time and effort to what would be an extremely tedious act.

{We still haven’t figured out how to do rune creation internally. You’ll have to bear with it for now.}

One of the second minds answered apologetically.

The following hours passed surprisingly quickly for the princess; she had created her newest rune dozens of times in quick succession, slowly adding the Earth-based facts, the scientific theories and observations that had been inherited from Alexander.

The reincarnator had been mildly shocked to find that she felt somewhat relieved when the first earth-inspired truth was rejected by the [Biology] rune; this rejection not only confirmed that her worries were justified but also provided her with an enjoyable topic to investigate, allowing her to indulge her passions while training.

But, unsurprisingly, that relief was extremely short-lived.

Slowly but surely, more and more facts of biology, truths that Alexander had held as fundamental, were continuously rejected, slowly reducing her hopes regarding the final level of her [Biology] rune.

By the end of her effort, Mary's face had descended into a near death mask, a look of anger so great that had Sylvia seen it, she may very well have flinched.

Although Mary thought sardonically, whether that flinch would have been theatrical or not was something that Mary forced herself not to consider.

The princess attempted to grit her teeth and was once again reminded that she still had none; instead, she found that she had almost begun to injure her still-fragile gums.

{Calm down. This is good news.}

Mary flinched before nearly exploding in anger.

“How is it good news?!”

The princess retorted, sending a glare of abject fury at the interface before her and the rune just beyond it.

“Biology was supposed to be one of our best subjects! Look at this!”

Mary waved her hand furiously in the general direction of the rune.

“Level two!”

She spat furiously.

{A strong level two.}

The second mind corrected her main self curtly.

“Oh well, that makes it better, doesn’t it!”

{Stop letting things get to you. We expected this.}

“But not to this degree!”

Mary mentally shouted, her anger slowly becoming incandescent.

{You’re concentrating too much on what might have been rather than on what is.}

The second mind retorted calmly.

{We were always going to use this [Biology] rune to investigate our biology. Clearing most of the facts up will be a relatively quick endeavour.}

Mary twitched in aggravation.

“I have your memories too, you know. You think that this will take years.”

{So what? Physically there is little we can do for the years that it’s going to take.}

One of the second minds said chidingly.

{We’ll still be learning either way. The benefits we would otherwise have gained from a higher-level [Biology] rune aren’t really going to impact us until we start to properly grow anyway.}

Mary frowned as she considered the second mind's excuse. That was true, wasn’t it?

Most of the benefits that they were aiming for wouldn’t be truly relevant until their first true growth phase; at most, they would be missing out on being able to properly walk by a few months.

If even that.

As the princess reflected on the situation, she ultimately understood why the second mind remained calm about what she had initially perceived as a disaster.

Mary started to truly calm down from her fury, and her mood immediately switched into shame at her outburst.

The second minds hummed in consideration.

{You’re much more emotional than I would have expected given our past. Is this instability caused by the presence of mana? Or is it the fact that we’re now female? Or is this normal, and there was something objectively wrong with Alexander’s biology?}

Mary frowned at the questioning.

“How could something be wrong with Alexander’s biology? He had been gene-crafted to near perfection for years…”

Mary allowed the thought to trail off briefly as a degree of horrified understanding dawned on her. Of course, the princess had no means of truly confirming that large parts of Earth's population had been rendered more cooperative through the use of gene-crafting.

But the possibility was there, and from her memories, nobody on the usually conspiracy-theory-filled internet had ever so much as raised the issue. Not even the traditionalists ever mentioned such a thing, instead choosing to rant about God.

After all, Alexander and, indeed, most of Earth’s population had been altered so that, among other things, he was more emotionally stable than a baseline human would have otherwise been.

Emotional stability would certainly make a population more controllable, or so Mary assumed.

{That is certainly something to consider. But it also means that despite having the memories of an adult, we have less experience dealing with emotions than might have been expected.}

The second mind stated, but even the somewhat emotionally numb second mind could not hide the degree of shock evident in her voice.

“We’re only doing changes to our biology that we fully understand. And that goes double for our brains.”

The princess announced firmly, causing the second minds within her to nod with absolute fervour.