Chapter 43
Biology Scan
Sooner after that Mary had hastily dismissed the existential dread that had been created by her suspicions about what might have been done to her predecessor, Alexander's brain.
Instead, the princess had switched her focus back towards the new and hopefully important [Biology] rune that she had created.
With an irate twitch, Mary began to force herself to get over what she would begrudgingly concede was an unnecessary temper tantrum. The young princess instead attempted to move on from her continued childish tantrum with what an observer would consider an almost unseemly degree of haste; instead, she began to construct what would be her newest spell.
It was a spell that had, of course, been created with her brand-new level two [Biology] at its centre.
At the time, she had assured herself that it was an inspired choice to use the [Biology] rune in conjunction with her existing [Scan] rune.
These two magic runes, once used together, had allowed her to quickly create what she would in later years learn was considered a genuinely revolutionary spell; it was a spell that could scan an object's biology.
To the Mary of the present day, it was merely her first attempt at clawing back some of the capabilities that she once took for granted on Earth.
Worse, an older and more experienced Mary would find herself completely baffled at the notion that the spell she was only now creating would be in any way revolutionary; after all, even as she was first forming it, she regarded the biological scan spell to be incredibly primitive, almost worthless as anything other than a capability demonstrator, a prototype spell.
In the end, the version of the spell that she was currently crafting would only be used once, and its primary purpose was ultimately to understand some of the differences created by mana so that she could update her [Biology] rune to a superior and more useful form.
Her very first use would also provide the princess with much-needed experience on what to expect from a biology scan spell and thus allow her to properly develop the magic logic necessary to make a more competent version later.
For the princess, both from the present and in the future, it would only ever be thought of or mentioned as one of the earliest of biomancy spells anecdotally, and so the thought that it could be revolutionary in any way would forever more be comical to a person who was ultimately something of a perfectionist.
A future Mary would find her opinion of mages drop immediately if they were to even hint at admiration for the spell she was at this moment casting.
While some mages, whom a future version of Mary would often consider ignorant, came to laud the spell for its foresight, it was ultimately the later versions of Mary's biological scanning spell that became incredibly famous not just in the kingdom of Midgard but throughout the world.
Or at least, this was the case once the world knew that the basic biology scanning spell existed at all and that fame would be almost irrelevant in the face of what would become an entire branch of magic, which would come to be called 'biomancy', of which the biology scanner would both inspire and be a part.
All of that, however, was in the relatively distant future, when Mary had become a renowned and even legendary mage.
In the present, when the young princess was taking her very first tentative steps into forming the discipline of magic that she would, of course, name Biomancy, the first attempted biology scan spell would be held back terribly by the low level of her [Biology] rune, as well as what was a clear lack of specialisation in the spell’s runic matrix.
For the princess, the lack of specialisation in the spells' runic matrix was an eminently solvable problem; even as Mary was crafting and using the first iteration of the biology scanner spell, the second mind within her was working on figuring out how to properly form and channel the spells' energies and focuses.
The outcome of all of this had frustrated the princess tremendously; after all, she had inherited a great deal of knowledge regarding biology, and that knowledge should have allowed her to create a much higher-level [Biology] rune than she was currently using.
Mary found herself once again bitterly glaring at the level two [Biology] rune within the spell structure that she was currently using; the lacking magic logic that should have been guiding it would be solved quickly, in just a few days’ time no doubt, but the pathetic level of that rune would be holding her back for years to come.
Mary was sure of it.
The princess should have been looking at high-fidelity scans of her own infantile body; she should have been able to pinpoint and identify the differences between what would be a baby on Earth and what is a baby on Terra.
But, the princess bitterly repeated to herself, that was not the case right now.
Given enough time, the princess would be able to use the – admittedly fascinating – results of her first biological scan to hopefully improve herself, if not simply understand what was going on with her body; after all, in the case of this first scan, it was a scan of her.
And yet, Mary could not restrain the uncomprehending stare as she looked at the data before her.
It was true that she did not have a direct Earth comparison to work with, but even so, the data that she was seeing was just too peculiar. And perhaps even worse, these strange readings would soon be joined by the scans of Sylvia, whose biology, Mary would assume, was even more confusing and absurd than the scans of the infant she was currently scrutinising.
Or at least, that would be the case once the princess actually got around to asking her maid to let Mary scan her. In this situation at least, Mary could be certain that her maid would accept her request; the princess had already hinted at what she would be doing, and Sylvia had seemed accepting enough when they had talked about this magic before.
It was Mary's hope that those scans would ultimately help the former aspiring biologist to determine the differences between Earth-based non-magical biology and Terran-based magical biology. In the end, Alexander had been much more familiar with the biological data of adults than infants, and this was especially the case with augmented adults.
This had to be the case, at least; that was what the princess assured herself as she looked at her own data and didn’t know where to even begin to start in the slightest.
But in the here and now, as Mary stood in her mindscape, in the simulator room, with only one of her second minds next to her, she could not help but be frustrated as she glared at the frustratingly fuzzy readings of her body being projected into one of the simulator rooms' holotanks.
{The readings are fascinating though.}
The lone second mind casually remarked, finally pulling her physical self out of what was becoming an annoyingly common self-recrimination.
Mary sighed, both physically and in the virtual world.
“We underestimated how difficult this was going to be.”
The princess answered with a large helping of bitterness.
The second mind hummed thoughtfully in answer.
{We need to increase the power of the spell; you rushed things.}
The second mind said this carefully, ensuring that her voice did not sound accusatory, as she had become somewhat aware of the unexpected emotional instability displayed by her physical self.
Mary frowned at the words.
“Both runes are as powerful as we can make them.”
Mary snapped back irritably, having still taken the words as an accusation.
{Yes. But we can add additional runes to the spell matrix to increase the power of the spell. Or I suppose we could try to add modifiers instead; either would increase the overall power of the spell.}
The second mind sighed warily.
“We have a [Biology] rune and a [Scan] rune already. What else is there to add?”
The princess answered in frustration.
For a moment, the second mind thought that her physical self was being obtuse, but after a short pause, she realised that the question had, in fact, been sincere.
The second mind turned toward her physical self and frowned thoughtfully.
{A [Human] rune? Or perhaps a [Human] modifier? The latter would hyper-specialise the runes, of course, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.}
She said questioningly, in a tone that suggested that it was obvious.
Mary blinked, surprised at the statements that were phrased like a series of queries. For a few moments the question dug into her psyche, the proposed concept practically echoing off the walls of her skull, and the princess began to frown, this time in indignation.
But it was not aimed at the second mind; instead, the indignation was at her for missing what should have been the plainly obvious.
“How did I miss that?”
The princess asked, muttering to herself despondently.
The second mind motioned towards the holographic representation of Mary's infant body by way of explanation.
{Look at those readings. Poor as they are, they do give us a decent enough explanation as to what’s going on in our body.}
Mary frowned in surprise; she had not seen anything that indicated such a thing.
Nonetheless, she turned again towards the somewhat blurred data on the display, intensely scrutinising the data she had dismissed as so distorted that it was almost irrelevant. But it was quickly apparent that Mary's attempt at scrutiny was futile; no matter how hard the young princess tried, she could not see what the second mind seemed to regard as obvious.
The second mind's frown deepened as the princess continued to overlook what should have been blatantly obvious, seemingly ignoring the very alarming readings that were clearly visible to them.
As minutes passed, the second mind eventually grew tired of waiting for what became clear was impossible and instead moved to explain.
She motioned to a particular set of graphs in the display.
{All of the biochemicals in your body are hypercharged relative to Earth. Not only are they barely recognisable due to the mana changing them, but look at those somatotropin levels.}
The second mind stated, finally pointing out the obvious.
Mary flinched, again scrutinising the readings and finally seeing what should have been, to her, an obvious and alarming metric.
In truth, it wasn’t that the biochemicals running rampant through Mary's body were completely unrecognisable to Earth science; even though they had clearly been enhanced and it seemed somehow changed relative to Earth, their makeup was still mostly recognisable to the aspiring biologist.
Mary looked again at the readings and forced herself to remember what little Alexander might have known about infants of her approximate age.
For the princess, this was difficult because Alexander had not been interested in such matters, and generally speaking, augmentation—his primary interest—was focused almost exclusively on adults.
Generally, it could be said that his knowledge only reached as far as young teenagers.
Which made the data that much more alarming, because if Mary were forced to guess, what she was seeing should have been more reminiscent of a child several years old, not several months.
“Oh.”
The princess said breathlessly, causing the second mind to nod, this time in agreement.
{By our standards, it's bad. I imagine that babies in this world, if this is normal and not restricted only to us, or at least restricted to hero descendants, are incredibly active compared to babies of a similar age on Earth.}
The second mind grimaced at her physical self, and Mary had a vague impression of infants learning to walk and talk in a third of the time that it would have taken on Earth.
And then the second mind continued by adding another comment.
{Not to mention both are far more temperamental and absent-minded.}
Mary flinched again, having partially taken the last two qualities as another accusation. Despite having the mind of an adult, her mind had constantly wandered, and yet she had proven to be remarkably prone to temper tantrums.
Part of Mary felt relieved that she had an excuse for the problems caused by her biology.
But mostly she felt that she should be above something as base as being controlled by her body's demands.
The second mind, noticing the flinch and interpreting the thoughts of her physical self, mutters to herself.
{And apparently much more sensitive to potential criticism as well.}
Mary exhaled, attempting to ignore the sensations that she now knew her body was forcing upon her.
“What do we do?”
She asked with a degree of desperation, causing the second mind to glare at her in disbelief.
{What? You want to mess with our complex, barely understood, biochemical systems? We could invent spells to do that, no doubt, and I’m sure that nothing would go wrong whatsoever. Indeed, it can only end well!}
The second mind said sarcastically.
{We need to create and add a [Human] rune to the spell; modifiers specialising our runes for better outcomes can come later. If we do so, then that should increase the fidelity of the readings that we can gain, perhaps enough to actually do some proper work.}
Mary nodded, accepting the orders.
“And then?”
{We spend several weeks scrutinising the data and create a proper magical biology model. By the end of it, we should be able to push our [Biology] rune to something more appropriate for a former genetics’ university student.}
The second mind instructed, with what to Mary sounded like total finality, and for a brief moment, the princess deluded herself that it had been an order to reality itself, proclaiming that they would create a higher-level [Biology] rune, rather than the fragile hope that it really was.