Ch.182Soul Binding

“…As expected. Not a chance.”

After struggling for a good three hours to somehow open the door—the only passage separating the room’s interior from the outside world besides the window—I finally gave up and resigned myself.

On the surface, it looked like an ordinary door. There wasn’t any particularly complex locking mechanism, nor was it made of especially sturdy material.

But that small entrance would never open. Not if I threw my full weight against it until my shoulder bones shattered, nor if I kicked it until my leg bones broke.

This wasn’t just any random place, but a room created by none other than Olivia for the purpose of keeping me captive for eternity. Naturally, someone like me had absolutely no chance of doing anything about it.

With that thought, I formed a bitter smile and looked at the decoration attached to the door at about my eye level. It was a woman’s face, just the head, hanging there with eyes wide open.

Her blonde hair barely reaching past her shoulders and her expression contorted in agony clearly revealed what torment this head had endured before becoming a decoration here.

It was Helena.

My first companion during my time at the magic tower, and Olivia’s first victim.

A pitiful woman who, even in death, couldn’t truly die—because Olivia had continuously replayed her torture sessions as “music” while having sex with me.

Momentarily suppressing my twisting lips, I reached out and closed her bulging eyes. The closed eyelids reopened in less than a second. A futile gesture.

All the while, thousands of eyeballs stuck to the ceiling and walls stared at me without ever looking away.

The eyes monitored my every movement meticulously. When I lay on the bed, they watched the bed; when I got up and walked around the room, they followed my movements.

Being constantly monitored by thousands of bloodstained eyeballs was quite chilling, even for someone like me who had seen all manner of horrors.

“And Olivia is probably watching my every move even while fighting those three.”

Those eyes fixed on me were proof. Though extracted from Olivia, they remained connected to her. If she wanted, sharing vision through them wouldn’t be impossible.

This room was entirely made of Olivia, so sharing sensations would be as natural to her as a person unconsciously controlling their fingers and toes.

Of course, she must have noticed that I spent hours trying to escape at the door. She left me alone because she was confident in her creation.

Olivia was the being who toyed with Serena, Charlotte, and Christine as soon as she regained her power. How could someone like me possibly do anything against a space she created?

And honestly, even now I couldn’t guarantee those three would defeat Olivia.

If the three cooperated, they might have a chance against Olivia, but I doubted it. This was something I was certain of:

Serena, Charlotte, and Christine weren’t the type to join forces with other women, even if they were pushed to the brink of death. They’d rather die.

No doubt they were each contemplating how to use their newly acquired powers to kill the other two and have me all to themselves.

In such a situation, it was only natural that facing Olivia alone would be impossible for them, even if they had reached transcendent levels.

After all, Olivia was literally equivalent to the world itself.

“…Is there really no other way?”

I paced around near the wardrobe, slightly away from the center of the room. This area was the farthest I could get from Olivia.

Didn’t I mention it? Everything here was made of Olivia.

I had no desire to touch that carpet woven from hundreds of Olivia’s tongues, or the bed made from her processed bones and pillows stuffed with her entrails.

I struck the wardrobe in frustration. Of course, it was my hand that shattered. With a crack, my fingers that had hit the wardrobe broke and bent in an unnatural direction.

Since there was no need to preserve my body anyway, I didn’t bother controlling my strength during such self-destructive actions.

Even in this situation, my ultra-regeneration ability—or rather, something that could no longer be simply called ultra-regeneration—emotionlessly restored my broken fingers. My shattered hand returned to normal.

Watching this filled me with a sense of futility. I had lived for hundreds of years believing I had ultra-regeneration abilities, but it turned out that wasn’t the case, and Olivia was behind it all.

“…What exactly did she do?”

My question remained shrouded in mystery. Understandably so. After that shocking confession, Olivia never again mentioned anything related to my ability.

More precisely, I gave up first, seeing through her obvious ploy to make me speak by using this curiosity as bait.

Olivia, of course, twisted this too, claiming that I understood her intentions because I loved her and could read her mind.

As a result, I could only formulate hypotheses in my head, point out their flaws myself, and discard them myself—a ridiculous method.

It was my desperate effort to keep my resolve from breaking.

Every time I recalled what kind of being Olivia was, gauged her abilities, and experienced fragments of her power, my will to resist diminished bit by bit.

To prevent that, I had to cling even more to my thoughts.

‘Since it wasn’t ultra-regeneration, there’s a high probability that something else caused me to lose my ability to use mana. And even if ultra-regeneration was involved, that wouldn’t explain why I can’t use mana.’

Among my many speculations, what complicated my thoughts the most was the reason why I couldn’t use mana.

Until now, I had believed that my ultra-regeneration ability was blocking my mana circuits, preventing me from using mana.

But now that the fundamental cause had been proven wrong, I had to uproot my previous thinking and piece together a new reason.

‘…Draw mana from the heart.’

I closed my eyes and tried to draw out mana as Charlotte had tediously taught me.

For a magician of Charlotte’s caliber, it would be a meaningless act, but placing a hand on the heart and drawing out mana was a fundamental step before learning magic.

However, no matter how much I tried to draw mana from my heart, my body wouldn’t respond. It wasn’t that I couldn’t draw out what was there; it seemed there was no mana to draw out at all.

‘Same result again.’

I released the tension in my body. This was an attempt I had made dozens of times, and failed dozens of times. Since it never succeeded, I had tried opening the door instead. Of course, that failed too.

It was strange. If I couldn’t use mana because I was fixed in time, or because my mana circuits were damaged and immediately repaired, then my body should behave the same way.

I grabbed my right index finger with my left hand and bent it backward. With a crack, the fingernail touched the back of my hand. One second, two seconds passed, and only after nearly ten seconds did the finger return to normal.

Normally, I shouldn’t have been able to delay recovery at will like this. Yet I could still delay the healing process.

‘It’s not regeneration after damage, but more like an inability to draw it out.’

No one exists without any mana in their body, and before being fixed in time, I could handle mana at the level of ordinary people.

Since I became like this after Olivia fixed me in time, it made sense that some additional process must have occurred during that event.

There’s something. There’s definitely something, but I just don’t know what it is.

“In the end, there’s only one thing to solve.”

There was only one method left. I turned my attention to the truth I had been trying to skirt around until now.

The truth I had pondered for a long time but thought I could never solve.

“Why was I able to use soul binding?”

Yes, soul binding was, strictly speaking, one of the techniques that used mana. The very developers of soul binding were magicians, and those who banned it were also magicians.

The reason why I could use soul binding despite being unable to use mana—if I could find that cause, I might find a clue.

It was truly strange. Once the question arose, it led to more and more questions. Doubts that I had previously dismissed with “I guess that’s how it is” now emerged uncontrollably.

I brought my right hand to my heart—the organ where most people store mana and where the soul is presumed to reside. The source of human life.

But for me, it was just an organ that rhythmically beat, unable to perform any other function. Because no matter what happened to my heart, I wouldn’t die.

I placed my hand on my left chest. Through my palm, I could feel the regular heartbeat. It was doing its job, even though it didn’t need to.

‘Even magicians never discovered the location of the soul.’

Even the magicians who developed soul binding couldn’t precisely define the concept of the human soul.

Even now, the soul remains a very vague concept. While its existence is certain, how it exists and where it exists remain largely unknown.

This was true even for Charlotte. Even Charlotte, who had directly experienced the forbidden magic of soul binding, couldn’t provide a proper definition.

The only thing known was that placing hands on each other’s hearts during the ritual was virtually the only way to successfully perform soul binding, suggesting that the heart is somehow connected to the soul.

‘It doesn’t matter anyway. Why fear this when I can’t die?’

I gathered my thoughts. I was already filled with doubts about my own abilities and the magic of soul binding. Now, there was a possibility that something might change.

The difference between knowing and not knowing was immeasurably vast by human standards. An inexplicable confidence welled up within me.

I concentrated the conclusion I had reached after weeks of thinking into my palm. My heart pounded violently. I wasn’t sure if it was nervousness or excitement.

One thing was certain: my heart was beating much more fiercely than usual.

I didn’t care that the eyes decorating the walls and ceiling were focused on me. There was no chance Olivia would return here seeing me like this.

Not almost none or virtually none, but none. This was a certainty. Because Olivia trusted herself as much as she loved me.

This spell was placed by none other than Olivia herself. She must believe it’s impossible for me to break it.

“No, you’re wrong, Olivia.”

Perhaps the old me would have thought so.

Even if by some stroke of luck I had realized this fact earlier, the possibility of achieving anything through soul binding would have been practically zero.

No matter how much I tried and tried, I would have eventually given up after repeated failures, believing it impossible. Just like the time I spent in the magic tower.

But now it was different.

There was Serena, Charlotte, and Christine. There were three people who had achieved soul growth enough for even Olivia to notice, if only briefly.

Conveniently, Olivia had said with her own mouth that those three hadn’t yet reached the level where they could elevate their souls. That was enough. No, it was even better.

I would be the one to guide their souls to a higher realm.

Just as I did with Charlotte, with Christine, and with Serena. I drew out my soul from my heart. The soul that was trying to emerge seemed to halt as if blocked by something.

Ignoring that, I poured all my energy into my heart. My body couldn’t withstand the recoil and I vomited blood. I struggled to delay the recovery and continued the process.

My vision blurred. Blood poured from my nose, then from my ears, eyes, and every opening on my face.

Judging by the fact that my body could delay recovery, not even 10 seconds had passed yet. Time seemed to flow more slowly as it progressed.

My throat suddenly felt completely blocked, and I coughed harshly. Something that was blocking my throat shot out of my mouth. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth.

‘Just a little more.’

I forcibly straightened my knees that were about to buckle. The blood flowing from my mouth showed no signs of returning to normal.

‘Just… a little more.’

Has it still not been 10 seconds? It feels like almost 10 minutes have passed, yet my body is still like this?

‘Just a little…’

My thoughts cut off there. I hadn’t even managed to extract my soul when my forcibly straightened knees gave way. My body, pushed to its limits, collapsed forward. A ringing sound filled my ears.

A blue light enveloped that body.