I Raised A Black Dragon

As Noah had expected, each section of the third floor was used for different purposes. As Pecker led her through the corridor, they passed through automatic doors similar to those found in Eleonora’s mansion. Noah breathed a sigh of relief at the familiar technology, when she was completely blinded by a flashing light. She blinked the dots away from her vision as the screen on the door started beeping and flickering. An eerie message with red letters appeared up on the screen:

[UNKNOWN]

“What was that about?” She asked as she faced Pecker. He only shrugged as tapped on a keyboard to dismantle to open the door leading into the main laboratory. The door slid open, allowing Noah to walk in and stare in awe at everything.

She let out a low whistle at the sheer size and scale of the place, as it easily spanned the fourth and fifth floors. To her right, thousands of huge blueprints were pinned up on a wall. A few of them were even familiar to Noah. Blueprints for magic turbines like the ones in Adrian’s library at the imperial castle, airship designs using steam engines, propulsion propellers…

She took a couple of steps back, enabling her to see the largest print in the centre of it all: the design for the ‘Replica Project’ which had disappeared from Adrian’s library. 

When Noah closely examined the design, she saw a drawing that looked like the anatomy of the human body. The only differences were the use of refined ores placed where the organs were supposed to be, and the iron cables replacing the blood vessels. 

Below it, the ores had been organized according to the content range of the magic. In front of Noah, the processes from manufacturing magic ores to the assembly of human-type replicas were all detailed.

The remaining two walls–the one behind Noah and to the left–were filled with completely different research. Noah spun round to see that the space above the door was a huge blackboard. Magic formulas were scribbled on it, enough to make Noah’s brain like it had stopped working. Some errors had occurred in the calculations, since some formulas had been crossed out and there were traces of things that had been erased. And finally, the wall to the left was full of bookshelves that were crammed with books. 

It soon became clear that the wall filled with designs and processes was Eleonora’s work, and the wall filled with magic formulas was Adrian’s work. Like a space that was a concentration of all the pure magic and manufactured magic in the world.

Noah reflected on what Adrian had said, about how perfect replicas were modelled not only after the human body, but after the human soul.”

Which meant that somewhere, there had to be a method of that written down.

Noah summoned a fireball and let it hover over her head, allowing her to search the laboratory for any sign of Adrian’s work. 

“Pecker? I’m looking for a way that a soul can be injected into a replica. Do you have any idea where to look?” She said, turning to face Pecker. He rubbed his arms and looked down at his feet. 

“Master Adrian hasn’t given me permission to read them”

“Who says you are going to be reading them?” Noah smiled sweetly at him and batted her eyes. “You just show me where they are, and technically you haven’t broken any rules.” 

Pecker, seemingly defeated, picked up from the messy desk a thick bunch of papers tied loosely with a cord.

“Here. Adrian was holding onto this. You might find something useful.” He dropped it onto the table in front of Noah. 

 As soon as Noah looked at the cover, she noticed it was what she had been searching for.

<Replica Project by A.R.>

She flipped open the pages, reading the first page to herself. 

04.17.578

Eleonora has died. However, a piece of her has been kept safe. The damage is already so severe that it took a long time to find a witness and bring them back to the laboratory.

“What is the ‘piece’ secured in a safe place? And what witness?” Noah muttered as flipped through the stack of documents. She read on to find that some impurities that were not in the calculations had intervened, but there seemed to be no harm. “Don’t tell me that this ‘impurity’ is me who’s stitched to Eleonora’s body. Adrian, that bastard. Where do you get off treating humans like germs?” She slammed her fists on the bench, sending papers everywhere. As she bent down to pick them up, it dawned on her that if this had happened, the ‘piece’ that was also stored in a safe place must mean Eleonora’s soul, which had exited her body. 

With everything back on the table, Noah continued to read down the pages.

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