Chronicle of the Eternal: Volume 1 (7 page)

The second section is a
total of ten questions that he needs to provide short answers of a sentence or
two relating to the general rules of the world. The third section is the
hardest, only consisting of two questions that require a descriptive summary of
various aspects of Immortalis history.

With absolute confidence,
Regal finishes all the questions with time to spare and flips his test upside
down to signify that he is done. Most students who finish early revise their
answers to try and correct any mistakes, but being a Soulless, Regal has already
decided on the answers and will not make any changes.

Ten minutes later, Mr.
River stands up and stops the test. Any students who are still working on the
test have nervous expressions as they are forced to stop.

Rather than handing their
tests to the teacher for marking, they are automatically corrected as the
teacher presses a few icons on a translucent display in front of him. Piora and
Hazel shine above the rest of the class, getting scores in the high nineties
out of a hundred. Regal’s score pales in comparison at 74, a little higher than
the average in the class.

During lunch the four
Soulless students share their scores, and it turns out that Regal scored the
lowest of them all. Once again, they cannot help but think of Regal as a little
brother to them all.

“Regal, next time, we must
study together!” Veronica says obstinately to Regal.

“But Veronica, I am fine
studying by myself. I will just study harder next time.”

“No! We will study
together and I will help you get a better score. Also, call me big sis.”

“It’s fine, big sis. It
fine.”

“I said no.”

This conversation is a
collision of determination between two Soulless; two people that will make an
instant decision on what they think of as best and will not waver. The result
is Regal dropping the conversation seeing no reason to continue a fruitless
argument.

The remainder of the day
is review on what the students learned throughout the week. Mr. River
particularly focuses on information that the class didn’t understand as much,
based on the results of their tests. Despite being a person with no motivation,
he is an outstanding teacher that correctly identifies where his students are
lacking and directly focuses on that.

Being a Friday, the next
two days are the weekend, during which all the academies are closed, so the
students have a longer farewell out in front of academy before heading home.
Some new friends even make plans to meet up in their free time, having their
parents register their transmission plates so they can contact each other.

Regal leaves with the
other three Soulless and it is his first time seeing their parents. Klide and
Astore’s parents are two loving couples that appear to dote on their sons a
little too much. Both parents enthusiastically run up to their children and
give them big hugs, which causes an embarrassing scene.  Veronica’s
parents are more refined, patiently waiting for her and sharing a few words
while warily watching how close she sticks to Regal.

Many of the normal
Immortalis students only have a single parent come to pick them up. Some are
because the other parent is either a hunter that leaves the city to earn money,
or are busy working various stores. Others are because they only have a single
parent. Regular Immortalis are born through the digitizing of newborn babies in
the real world and adopted into various families, so it isn’t uncommon for them
to only have a single parent.

Grand City Theore is a
safe place and there is no need to personally pick up their sons and daughters,
but it is a custom passed down from the humans to the first generation of
Immortalis. A few students, including Regal, still travel home by themselves
however as not everyone follows this custom. Of course, Regal’s situation is
that there is no one to pick him up in the first place.

Rather than heading home,
Regal walks toward the Market Street, the busiest business area near his home.
Squeezing through the crowd with multiple apologies for bumping into people, he
eventually finds a store selling basic alchemy skill books.

A cheerful girl with a
lustrous body in a short red dress with long silver hair is in the shop waiting
for the next customer. She wears an exquisite top hat with a blue velvet band
and a gold pocket watch tied around that catches the eye of several men in the
crowd, yet they still hesitate to enter.

“Welcome young master, is
there anything I can help you find?” The alluring store owner asks.

“I’m looking for a fire
element alchemy skill book.”

“We have several of those.
What level are you?”

“Level 1.”

“Oh! So young and innocent!
Well, this young miss has three to choose from!”

The store clerk bends over
the counter in a position that is a hair’s breadth away from exposing her
underwear. This is an excellent sales tactic to enamour male customers and
entice them to buy her goods. It is only a shame that Regal is a Soulless and
has no such desires within him.

The lady brings up three
books she spoke of. They are ‘Illustrious Flame Alchemy’, ‘Hundred Palm Flares
Alchemy’, and ‘Flame Forge Alchemy’. Their prices are respectively 3 gold, 4
gold, and 2 gold.

“Young master, I strongly
recommend ‘Illustrious Flame Alchemy’. You should definitely pick that one,”
the lady employs her best sales tactics to increase sales, while not obviously
recommending the most expensive item.

As Regal is only planning
on purchasing a skill book to test out his aptitude, he insists on purchasing
the cheapest ‘Flame Forge Alchemy’ despite the owner’s protests that
‘Illustrious Flame Alchemy’ is much easier to learn and has better benefits.

After purchasing the
cheaper skill book, he leaves the store owner who is pouting inwardly
dissatisfied.

‘What a stubborn
little kid, I almost got one more gold coin?’
she inwardly sighs and watches him vanish into the crowd.

Regal brought four gold
coins with him as he was unsure on the price of skill books. Two gold coins is
still exceedingly valuable, as that could feed him for two entire years, but at
least it was less than he anticipated.

He also purchases five
‘Mana Rations’ from a nearby store for ten bronze coins before heading directly
to the training hall. Being late in the afternoon, there are still several
hunters training their skills or practicing new ones, so Regal chooses to enter
a private room on the second floor.

Immediately learning the
new ‘Flame Forge Alchemy’ he chooses a Tier 1 Divine Art from one of the three
paths, ‘Radiant Flame’. It has a range of ten meters and can be used for
multiple purposes. Not only can it be used to attack others, it can also be
used to smelt and refine low quality ore. However, it is too hot to cook food.

Regal casts the new divine
art, which uses five mana every minute. By continuously using the skill, he can
constantly analyse the alchemical formulae to further his comprehension.

After nearly two hours of
continuously using the skill, he manages to raise the alchemical skill by a
single level, but still cannot find any understanding within the alchemical
formulae. Regal also has no more ‘Mana Rations’, meaning he has no further
method to replenish his mana while using the skill. He can cook at home for
food, but it is not specifically meant for increasing mana regeneration and
will not supplement it enough to support the skill.

Regal helplessly sighs to
himself and is thankful that he bought the cheapest skill book. He already
understands that his talent is not in fire element alchemy

***************************************************

At the same time as Regal
is in the training hall, the planet Earth is beginning to undergo changes.

Several locations on the
surface have formed fissures erupting with magma. This scorching hot inferno
destroys everything it touches. Despite barely touching a millionth of a single
percent the planet’s surface, it is only the beginning.

When the molten material
touches the manmade structures covering the surface of the planet, it melts the
metals, ceramics and glass and breaks them down to their molecular structure.
These minerals fuse with the magma’s earthly compounds and return to being a
part of nature.

This process will continue
to repeat as the high pressured magma within the planet breaks through the
weakened crust, which is gradually compressed and swallowed within the planet
by a new crust forming on top. The combustion of plant matter also releases
carbon dioxide and moisture into the air, beginning the recovery of the
atmosphere. The oceans are still drying up, but rainfall will eventually begin
to replenish these as well.

Nobody knows how many
millions of years this process will take as there are no humans left alive on
the planet. The only survivors of this world wide purge are minute life forms
within what’s left of the ocean. They are the very basis of the evolutionary
chain, and unknowingly one of the most resilient forms of life.

The compound containing
the server of the world the Immortalis reside within is hidden deep within the
earth’s crust; a rectangular box structure of staggering proportions and made
out of a metal not even the Earth’s molten iron core can melt. In this place
devoid of air, pollutants, or any compounds that can cause decay, thousands of
pseudo artificially intelligent androids carry out their programmed duties.

They monitor incubating
fetuses that rely on artificial oxygen and nutrients. They also perform the
digitizing of these infants and connect them to the virtual world. Every four
years, enough of these artificial products are produced to develop 170 thousand
babies, creating ten thousand more Immortalis for each grand city.

Factories create new
robots as the previous ones break down, while the currently operating machines
maintain the factories before they too are recycled into new machines without
any wasted resources.

In this subterranean
bubble that holds the remnants of civilization, the grand cities are seventeen
cylindrical towers, each three hundred feet wide, that pierce the darkness
above. Recesses along the walls of these towers are for the artificial brain
storage devices, the Mind Bubbles, to be inserted and connect to the virtual
world. When a new Mind Bubble is connected or removed, small flying robots
appear to carry out this task.

A slight tremor causes the
area to vibrate slightly despite the liquid shock absorbers around the complex.
Two of the Mind bubbles suddenly fall from one of the arrays, splitting from
the cords connecting them to the network and crashing into the ground, breaking
into several pieces. A thick, silvery liquid flows out from the wreckage and
onto the ground.

Several robots responsible
for the cleanliness of the subterranean area arrive at the wreckage and clean
up the mess before leaving as if they were never there. Today is the day that
two Immortalis disappeared from the world.

These Mind Bubbles are
cubes small enough that they could be grasped within a child’s hand. Inside of
it is a super conductive ball filled with a mercury like substance. This
substance is what stores the digitized infants’ minds, creating a medium for
them to grow and form personalities and memories of their own. Each one has a
randomized codex that is used to organize the data and access memories in a
model similar to the human brain.

What isn’t known is this
is where the difference between the digitized Immortalis and artificial
Immortalis, ‘Soulless’, resides. When a Soulless is artificially created, a
blank mental map is inserted into the mercury like substance and becomes the
foundation of their soul.

A digitized Immortalis’
Mind Bubble has a unique difference within it that, even though the scientists
discovered the flaw, it was never fixed as the experiment was already a
success.

A human fetuses’ mind
contains several unregistered memories as it is forming, which are inserted
into the Mind Bubble. These forcefully implanted memories cause the
mercury-like substance to expand, splitting the superconductive sphere and
entering the mind bubble. An adult human could not be digitized because the
volume of memories they contained were too much, causing the mercury like
liquid to explode and completely destroy the device.

When a new born child is
digitized, the damage from the expanding liquid is minimal. This is then
registered by the device and dormant nanomachines activate in response,
repairing the sphere as the internal pressure subsides. Despite this, half of
the mercury-like substance is already outside the internal sphere. Each section
of the liquid is a part of the contained soul, connected to each other via the
superconductive material and forming a unique negative feedback loop, allowing
the soul to question itself and its decisions by creating a paradox of the
mind.

The Soulless are not like
this. All of the mercury like liquid remains within the sphere as no memories
are forcefully inserted, preventing the mind paradox to form and causing their
souls to become logic based existences. Their souls also appear to lack in
other areas that no one seems to understand. If the scientists who created them
still existed and studied this phenomena, they would have made the final step
in understanding the human soul and have become capable of creating the perfect
artificial intelligence.