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Moriarty's Mental Plane
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While Moriarty was having his fun little reunion with his father, I took my sweet time to research the different properties of wisdom and apply it through my mana.
It surprised me when I found out how many things I could do with this, wisdom has the widest variety out of all the different mana colours.
Wisdom has six main forms; those forms create a lot of sub-forms by combining with one another.
This means that this mana had over ten properties, to begin with; although it's not a bad thing, it would be tough to use them all in a battle without practising with each of them individually and synchronizing with them.
The properties of my mana also determine the variety of spells I can learn from. Currently, creation type and manipulation types will be my main focus as I have some mastery over them.
Creativity, let me create anything that I could imagine, but I needed enough mana to create it, if it was too big or too strong, my spell would fail due to my lack of mana.
Manipulation, on the other hand, lets me connect any matter and manipulate it however possible; I think it might work on puppetry spells; I will have to test that later on.
But before I could learn any spells, I would have to experiment on my body. Two hearts might come with benefits... Should I try to drink poison? Hm... I should try out non-fatal poisons first. I thought, opening a book on poisons. The Cyrus stone isn't harmful to regular humans but due to my weird constitution, I am reluctant to try it. Unless I am certain that there won't be any side effects, I won't use it.
"Time to join in," I spoke, closing the book I was reading and putting on the sunglasses.
***
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Allen Family's Laboratory
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After having a conversation with Grey, Moriarty returned to the lab once again as we agreed. Once he was inside, he turned on the security lock from inside and sat in the chair where we decided to switch out.
Since we weren't aware if we would face any side effects by controlling the vessel together, I decided to switch with him after he had his little reunion with his father.
After closing his eyes, Moriarty calmed himself and detached his consciousness from all the distractions in his mind.
He gathered the mana in his heart and moved it up to his brain, entering his mental plane and letting me take over.
"How does it feel, sharing a vessel with someone else?" Ryuk asked, standing over Wally.
"Better than I expected; I don't think we need to rest our minds as long as we keep switching out occasionally. Except for the second heart, I don't think it has any cons. It feels like having a multiple personality with some benefits," I replied, looking at the finger that I cut during the ritual. "Do you think dad found out that I did the ritual? His perception and mastery over the Science of Deduction is a big problem. If he saw even a drop of wax on the floor and my finger, he would easily make the connections. However, he wouldn't know about the incantation I used which is a relief."
"I believe if he found out, then it wouldn't take him long to find your mana path either. You could ask him about it," Ryuk suggested, as I got up from my seat and picked up my vision-enhancing spectacles. "... What are you doing?"
"Poisoning myself," I mumbled while bringing out a set of test tubes full of non-lethal poison from a storage unit.
"Pardon? What do you mean by that? Why are you suddenly poisoning yourself?" Ryuk asked, confused by my sudden actions.
"New constitution? I need to see what kind of effects poison will have on me. According to Wally's DNA scan, I am two hundred percent human. I don't know how that works but I would like to find out," I answered with a light smirk, putting the poisons in syringes. "Every main character from the novels I read in my last life always had some sort of poison resistance at one point in their lives. So, it does make me wonder if I have any."
"Sometimes... I truly don't understand where you get those unnatural ideas from..." Ryuk heaved a heavy sigh, touching his head with his right wing.
I took a low-grade paralysis poison syringe and held it against my left arm before pushing in the needle.
I could feel the poison sweeping inside my body, but I could also feel something else trying to control its actions.
The poison didn't create any immediate results and... It felt like I could move it... Was it a new anti-body reaction?
Guh...
It felt as if some of the poison passed through the barrier created by my antibodies, so it did have a time limit, good to know.
"So, you aren't poison-resistant after all, it's just that your antibodies produced by the WBCs have just improved," Ryuk commented, looking at the state of my vessel. "Can you move them out?"
"I don't think I can; the poison seems to be stuck in the same place; however, maybe I can use an antidote... Guh... Why are antibodies so hard to control?!" I groaned, knowing that I asked a stupid question.
It was already a surprise that I could control my white blood cells but that won't change anything if the poison kept leaking out through their gaps.
I sat down on the ground and took out the antidote from the storage unit before drinking all of it in one gulp and keeping the empty test tube on the floor.
Then I let go of the poison, and the antidote did its work by getting rid of it in the same instant.
Phew...
From this experiment, I figured out a lot about my vessel. Although I am a bit sad that I am not poison-resistant, the fact that I could keep it contained inside my body in a single place is also helpful.
Simply directing my antibodies doesn't help much but since I can feel the foreign substance invading my body and contain it with antibodies, I can buy myself enough time to take an antidote and subdue it, this is better than I expected.
"... Wait a minute, if I can keep things in one place inside my body and mix them, can't I create an antidote inside my body?" I asked abruptly, looking at Ryuk who seemed confused by my sudden question.
"Where do you keep getting these ideas from? Did the wisdom path enhance your brain or something?" Ryuk asked back, wearing a blank expression on his face.
"Seems possible enough, should I test-"
"No."
"But you-"
"No."
"Fine, I won't test my brain... But if I can create an antidote inside my body, I think it's possible to get rid of any side effects of the Cyrus stone if there were any," I explained, getting up from the floor. "Wally was the extraction successful?"
"Yes, sire," Wally replied, handing me over a test tube containing the liquified Cyrus stone.
In the original story, the wizard used an unpurified version of the Cyrus stone to create a golem that could rival the team of main characters by itself. The Golem was able to copy their abilities for a limited time, but the number of abilities it copied didn't have a limit, which made it hard to counter.
If it wasn't for its stupidity, it could have wiped them all out by itself.
However, the liquified version that was later discovered by a villain in volume five was different from the unpurified one. This version gave the user the ability to permanently copy two abilities from someone or something and turn them into a metahuman if they were born as a human, changing their DNA completely.
It was never tested what would happen if something different than a human consumed it but I had to take this risk.
In this world, nothing was free of risk. Everything had a price to pay, a cheap way to power was nothing but a lie told in fairy tales to not scare the children.
The Cyrus Stone also needed me to pay a price, my personality. The Cyrus Stone cleans the emotions of its user from their souls to allow them to copy the personality of the person from whom the ability is copied in full detail.
It tortures their mind by making them remember their personality and making them remember that they are no longer themselves but a different person. It plays with the feelings of its user until they somehow break free from it or die trying.
I opened the lid of the test tube and brought it before my mouth before gulping it down with a single sip.
As soon as I drank the potion, a black screen with a message appeared in front of me.
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It seems that there was an error in the system's data, please wait a moment, dear sir, we will allow you to access the system after reorganizing the data correctly.
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"It looks like the Cyrus stone worked... But why does it feel like nothing has changed?" I wondered, giving the test tube back to Wally.
"Maybe the side effects were only for humans?" Ryuk tried to reason, his eyes glowed with a purple glint for a moment before it reverted back to normal. "Where is your soul?"
"In the mental plane... Oh, it couldn't find my soul, that's lucky, I never thought this could happen," I replied in joy.
To wipe the personality from my soul, the Cyrus stone had to reach it first but since the mental plane is in a place that isn't connected to the body directly, it couldn't find it.
"Sometimes, I can't help but worship my intelligence," I spoke in a proud tone.
"I call that luck," Ryuk complained.