Chapter 456: Chapter 444: The Secret of the Soul

BANG!

Rhine’s metal body was slammed viciously against the alloy wall, leaving a clear, man-shaped dent.

He slid to the floor, his bionic skin ruptured, revealing the metal skeleton beneath.

Ten meters away, Number 18 slowly retracted her right leg.

Not a single strand of her smooth, blonde hair was out of place, and her delicate face remained devoid of any expression.

Pfft.

Rhine spat out a mouthful of black lubricant, his eyes losing focus.

’This woman is a monster!’

Every one of her attacks was like a perfectly executed script, precisely striking within the one-ten-thousandth-of-a-second gap in his Magic Circuits’ operation, leaving him unable to exert his power.

"Again," Number 18’s voice was as cold as frost.

Rhine gritted his teeth, a blue light once again glowing in his palm.

This was already the fifth day of "Hell Week."

Every day, he was like a punching bag, getting completely thrashed by Number 18 for a full hour.

At first, he’d foolishly tried to create distance and trade blows with Magic, but every single chant was interrupted by her ghostly speed as she closed in and sent him flying with a kick.

He could only be forced into high-speed, close-quarters combat, frantically honing his long-neglected fighting instincts.

...

Number 18 stood silently in the shadows.

Her blonde hair was perfect, her black, form-fitting inner armor was free of a single wrinkle, and her eyes were unfocused, in low-power standby mode.

On the repair platform, Rhine lay in silence, like a broken toy.

His dark silver armor was covered in dents and cracks. His left arm was bent at a twisted angle, and several scorched fist marks on his chest seemed to mock his powerlessness.

Several nimble robotic arms were replacing his damaged armor plates and repairing the warped structures.

A Rune self-repair module covered his damaged chassis, emitting a faint sizzling sound.

"Boss."

Rhine suddenly spoke, his voice filled with exhaustion and confusion.

"I feel like... I’m just an expensive punching bag."

He began to doubt the value of his own existence.

This powerful body, which had cost over five million Magic Stones, was as fragile as a toy in front of that woman.

His experience and combat skills seemed utterly laughable in the face of pure speed and power.

Allen stood beside the repair platform, calmly watching the fluctuating parameters as he replied nonchalantly:

"A punching bag?"

He turned his head, his deep gaze seemingly able to pierce right through Rhine’s soul.

"No, you are a breathing miracle."

"It’s just that right now, this miracle still needs to be precisely polished."

"You’ll understand in the future."

"For now, initiate a voluntary shutdown. I need to inspect your core."

Hearing this, Rhine could only reluctantly close his eyes and sever his consciousness.

A probe rose silently from beneath the platform and inserted itself into the port at the back of his head.

[Low-level protocol access successful.]

[Extracting Puppet Zero core interaction logs... Extraction 100% complete.]

[Extracting combat parameters... Extraction 100% complete.]

Ten floating light screens appeared before Allen, with massive amounts of data cascading down them like waterfalls.

[Subject Zero’s Soul Energy fluctuation frequency: Peak reached 17.4 Hz, activity increased by 17.3% compared to silent state.]

[Mental stress threshold: Breached critical point when the core was hit at 3 minutes and 17 seconds, soul luminosity instantaneously increased by 0.08%.]

[Prototype Will Rune interaction log: Interaction depth with the Palace of Thought increased by 0.04%. 3 new micro-Rune nodes added. Structural stability is slowly improving.]

Allen’s gaze locked onto the structure of the Will Rune in the center, magnified tens of thousands of times.

Every heavy blow, every last-ditch dodge, every indignant roar, every survival instinct...

All these intense emotions and willpower acted like the finest carving knives, etching new patterns onto the prototype of this Rune.

None of Rhine’s beatings were in vain. They were squeezing out the deepest potential of his soul, accelerating this grand process of reverse construction.

This was Allen’s true objective.

He wasn’t just training a soldier.

He was using expensive materials to conduct an experiment that led to the realm of gods.

And Rhine was the core of this experiment!

Allen’s cognitive sub-threads operated at full power. Massive amounts of information were rapidly integrated, analyzed, and modeled by his immense computational ability.

The mysteries of the Will Rune were peeled back, layer by layer, in his mind.

The process of a Will Rune manifesting within the Sea of Spirit was a process of changing the soul and changing the Sea of Spirit.

By observing this mutation, Allen gradually deduced the fundamental model of the "soul" in this world.

"Jarvis, establish a new theoretical model."

Allen’s voice held a trace of barely perceptible excitement.

"Define the soul as a high-dimensional, self-referential information processing system."

[Command confirmed. Constructing model...]

Allen discovered that in this world, the soul could be understood as a high-dimensional information processing system. Its operating medium wasn’t just electrical signals; it also involved Spiritual Power and Magic Power.

These three elements combined to form a mixed field whose full picture was difficult to observe—the Sea of Spirit.

In this model, the Sea of Spirit was the soul’s storage and computation space. It couldn’t be touched or seen, and it couldn’t be found even by dissecting a brain, yet it truly existed.

Therefore, Allen believed it might exist in a higher dimension.

"And the Will Rune..."

Allen’s fingertip touched the increasingly complex Rune model on the light screen. "...It’s not some mysterious totem. It’s an ’operator,’ a ’function’ solidified within the Sea of Spirit!"

"Input Spiritual Power, and it outputs ’regularized’ spiritual force. Its existence permanently alters the structure of the Sea of Spirit, allowing Spiritual Power to efficiently interfere with Magic Power, which in turn interferes with reality!"

Allen believed this theory was part of the system used by Dawn Star Level Wizards, a form of advanced knowledge they monopolized.

In this Wizarding World, most Wizards regarded the soul as a mysterious, unanalyzable, metaphysical concept.

Bloodline Wizards plundered physical bodies, and Mind Mages manipulated emotions, but very few had ever truly deconstructed the soul’s underlying code.

But in the eyes of a Transmigrator who possessed knowledge of computer science from a past life, anything that operated must have logic. And if it had logic, it meant it could be traced and understood.

This time, he had touched upon the truth of the soul through data.

"So, what is the fundamental difference between life and non-life, between a soul and artificial intelligence?"

Allen muttered to himself, as if questioning the ultimate truth of the world.

He performed a final comparison between Rhine’s soul fluctuation data and the data from Number 18’s "pseudo-soul," which was modified from a remnant soul and was absolutely obedient.

A startling difference presented itself before his eyes.

Rhine’s soul, while spontaneously inscribing the Will Rune, produced an imperceptible, low-frequency oscillation.

"A self-referential Spiritual Power oscillation..." Allen’s breath hitched slightly.

Self-reference, a concept spanning multiple disciplines, refers to the ability of a concept, system, statement, or object to point to, contain, or apply to itself.

"Spiritual Power can ’see’ itself and ’modify’ itself!"

’I modify myself!’

’That’s the key!’

This is the "uniqueness" that makes a soul a soul!

Only a true soul can produce a "self-referential Spiritual Power oscillation" within the Sea of Spirit and possess "self-awareness." It can be aware of the existence of "I" and, based on the will of "I," change "I."

—In other words, it can use Spiritual Power to modify the structure of the soul.

This is precisely what artificial constructs (Puppets, Golems, Elemental Creatures) lack.

When Rhine was being thrashed by Number 18, his intense will to survive and his indignation were driving his soul to perform this "self-modification," forcibly inscribing his own rule—the Will Rune—onto the foreign object that was the Palace of Thought!

He wasn’t adapting; he was devouring, transforming, and turning this body of steel into a true extension of himself!

The truth was revealed.

Allen leaned back slowly in his chair, a terrifying light glinting in his eyes.

"So that’s how it is..."

"I’ve obtained the secret of the soul."

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