Chapter 124: End of the Bet

"How close is he?"

"Don’t ask if you already know the answer."

"Just play along..."

Letting out a sigh, Ravena looked at the elf sitting in front of her, drinking something from his cup, that infuriating smile plastered on his face like always. She leaned back on the couch and turned to the side, looking out into the cosmic window in Sylas’s office.

"He’s close. He just needs one last push."

"Mmh-hmm."

Sylas just let out a soft hum and opened his eyes. The silver ring inside his golden eyes rotated faster than usual as he looked into thin air, before a toothy grin appeared on his face.

"How long have we known each other, Ravi?"

It was a sudden switch of topic, but Ravena had long been accustomed to the randomness and strangeness of the elf.

"For about 3,000 years now."

Sylas looked into her silver eyes. To him, time had long lost reason, and the years just blended into each other. But he could clearly remember the day he had met Ravena, back at the church...

---

Valerian left the shower. He had just come back from training with Ravena, and today was a special day. It was the last day of the game he had with Seraphine.

The two weeks after they became a couple had been filled with the same routine: wake up, maybe make out a bit... then training with Ravena. Sometimes Seraphine would cook something for them after classes, then research. Some days she would spend the night, some times go to her own dorm.

But since today was the last day, she had skipped classes and locked herself in one of the rooms of his dorm. She wouldn’t let him go in there and told him to wait until she got him.

So with nothing left to do, he found peace in the stillness of his soul space. The endless cosmos, the glowing stars that represented his affinities always left him speechless when he saw them.

But lately there had been a slight change; there was a new star forming along the constellation that held his affinities, and he already had a guess as to what it was.

His meditation was interrupted when he heard Seraphine’s voice coming from the outside world, and he left the soul space.

"Valerian, I said you can come in now!"

She was yelling from the room she had barricaded herself in, not stepping into the living room.

"Coming!"

He quickly stood up and walked to the room she was currently in. When he stepped inside, he was surprised to find that it was dark and he couldn’t see anything.

Purposefully not activating his spatial perception, he walked through the dark room and found a chair standing in the middle.

"Sit down."

Seraphine’s authoritarian voice came from the darkness, and he obliged. When he was settled in his chair, a bright light turned on behind him, casting light onto an empty white wall in front of him.

Seraphine stepped out from the darkness and turned to Valerian.

"Welcome to my presentation about the examination report of Valerian von Astrea’s physiology."

Valerian looked at her and couldn’t hide his smile, because his girlfriend wasn’t just wearing normal clothes.

She wore a tight pencil skirt that reached her mid-thigh, with black stockings underneath. She also wore a white shirt that was tucked into the skirt with her sleeves rolled up. Her silver hair was tied in a messy bun, and a pair of glasses rested on her nose.

She was fully dressed as a teacher for this presentation, and Valerian was all for it. Seraphine noticed his gaze and how it would wander to her legs; as much as she enjoyed the way he looked at her, this wasn’t the time.

"Attention, Subject A! This is an important matter!"

Valerian turned to her eyes and sat up straight in his seat. Seeing him ready, she began her presentation.

"First off, let’s start with the basics. What is the body made of?"

A light mana hologram appeared and displayed an image of a normal body on the right and a version that resembled Valerian’s on the left.

"Normally, a body consists of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, cells, tissue, organs, and different systems. All of these things work together to make life sustainable and possible."

She pointed to the body that represented Valerian’s.

"Subject A’s body doesn’t work that way. Through my research, I found out that the body is 100% made from mana: every cell, every drop of blood, and even every strand of hair."

The body representing his physique enlarged and displayed in the air in front of him.

"But something like that would take constant mana manipulation to keep the body up. And that is if we ignore the other problems, like how sight works, or hearing. If the body is fully made from mana, there is no brain to send these signals to, so how does Subject A live and think?"

It was a question that made Valerian himself think. He had never thought about the missing piece that was his brain, and how these normal things worked.

"This starts a whole other chain of problems. How does Subject A breathe in air? He has displayed the ability to survive without breathing, but what creates the sucking force to take in air without lungs? Or where does food and liquid go when the subject swallows it?"

"My research points to one certain thing: Space. The subject’s body is deeply intertwined with space as an element and concept. And space could solve some of the issues that appear around the subject’s body. Food that gets swallowed? Transported into a void. Air getting sucked in? A vacuum opening in the subject’s body."

"And the subject doesn’t seem aware that these things are happening. Another problem is that the body of the subject is capable of creating fluids on its own. Tears and saliva are the two fluids I was able to observe being secreted by the subject, but where do they come from?"

Valerian was fully focused on the presentation. His physique was something that confused him sometimes, and maybe this was an opportunity to learn more about it.

"Moving on from the answerless questions, I want to focus on another part of the subject’s body that is most interesting."

The floating image changed to a picture of Valerian’s bare chest as it was closing from one of the injuries Seraphine had inflicted on him during the research.

’Wait, when did she take that? I never saw her use a camera.’

Seraphine felt his gaze on the back of her head, but she ignored it and continued.

"The subject’s body displays regeneration that borders on immortality, being able to recover from wounds that would normally kill someone in mere seconds. The regeneration itself is not a topic I want to focus on too much, since there is little to be said. The body basically just reconstructs itself to the prime state by using mana."

A grin appeared on her face, like she had just caught Valerian’s body slipping.

"But then the question arises: How does the body know what to rebuild the body into? And shouldn’t the subject have the ability to change the form of the physical body by simply controlling the mana and forcing it into a different shape?"

’Wait, she’s kind of right. Why can’t I do that?’

Valerian raised his hand and tried to change the shape by manipulating the mana in his body, but nothing happened. Seraphine only grinned when she saw Valerian try that.

"My theory on that is that the body uses a pre-saved blueprint of the physical form and rebuilds it based on this information. And if my theory is correct, then the subject has the ability to alter this blueprint and therefore change the physical form into anything it wants."

Valerian raised his hand, and Seraphine pointed at him, excited.

"Yes, handsome man in the front row."

"How do I do that?"

She pushed up her glasses and looked at him deeply.

"I’m glad you asked that. Are you single, by the way?"

She clicked her fingers, and a new hologram appeared, showing the form of Valerian overlaid with a blue light.

"My current leading theory is that the subject needs to go into their soul and change the properties of the soul itself, though that could lead to soul damage, so it’s not advised. Did that answer your question?"

"Yes..."

Valerian looked down, disappointed.

"Moving on, I want to highlight another topic: Where does the mana come from?"

"The subject does not possess any kind of mana reserves inside the body, so where does it come from? After some research, I managed to find out that the source of the mana is from inside the soul itself. But that raises another question then: Where is it? Where is the soul?"

Valerian leaned forward in his chair. It was another topic he wanted to know the answer to. When he channeled his mana, it just appeared in his body, and he couldn’t feel a connection to his soul.

"Is the soul the brain of someone? That can’t be, because the subject doesn’t have a physical brain. Is it in the heart? Impossible for the same reasons. Maybe it’s the mana core, the vital organ that allows us to become godlike beings! No, also not possible, because the subject doesn’t have one."

"So then, where?"

She asked the question and looked straight at Valerian, her excited and playful face turning into a serious one as she stepped closer.

When she stood before him, she dropped to the ground and buried her face in her knees.

"I don’t know. That’s the wall I reached. In all my research, it all went back to the soul, and I just can’t find anything about it."

She sounded sad, vulnerable, and most of all, disappointed. Disappointed in herself for failing so close to the finish line. Valerian looked down at Seraphine, his heart aching when he saw her so sad, but it wasn’t something he could help her with.

She wasn’t mad that the divine awakening had happened and his body had changed in the middle of the bet, or that she had only had two weeks to find everything out again.

She was mad that she wasn’t smart enough to crack this mystery. She was the greatest genius in all of Eldoria, not just in mana, but in intellect as well. She was the [Pride of Eldoria], for heaven’s sake!

"So I guess I win, then."

Valerian’s voice came from above her, and she only nodded, not wanting to let him see her face as tears formed in her eyes.

"For the request that I have, and let me remind you, you can’t refuse."

Valerian stood up and knelt before her, placing his hand under her chin, guiding her face up. Her barely contained tears threatened to burst out, but she held them in.

He raised his other hand and took something from his pocket space. The moment it appeared, the ambient mana became erratic, and the hologram stopped working.

Seraphine’s eyes widened, and the thick mana coming off the thing Valerian pulled out made breathing hard, while the surroundings began to boil as the temperature rose drastically.

"W-What is th-that?!"

Her eyes widened as she looked at the thing lying in Valerian’s hand.

"This..."

"Is a phoenix heart."