The Lost Doctor's Soul - Chapter 30 - Knowledge and Rhetoric
“Do you know what the purpose of knowledge is?” When I walked through the large wooden door and entered the dimly lit library, those were the first words that greeted me. “It’s… to share experience?” I answered, not having a better way of putting it. I wasn’t sure why she asked that question, but there must have been some meaning behind it. Her face didn’t change, there was no indication of if my answer fitted what she wanted or not. Instead, she just nodded to the seat opposite to her as she reached out and picked up a teapot and a teacup from the table next to her. I had no reason to decline, so I sat.
“A lot has changed over the course of a day.” she finally said after pouring out some tea. “Do you know where we are right now?” she asked another vague question. I took in the tea’s pleasant aroma while I thought. I couldn’t quite place it, but it reminded me of chamomile tea. “We’re in your soul-space, the Auroral library. Though I assume you’re being a bit broader than that. I don’t know where exactly we are, the world’s a large place I don’t know much about, does all of this exist in a sub-dimension, or is it in a physical place in the world?” I asked back, making her shake her head in response. “You really know nothing.” she clicked her tongue as she glared at me. She then leaned in. “You made a promise. Tell me everything you know about your soul-space.” I wasn’t sure if it was because I couldn’t feel fear, I had some amount of power, or it was because I could evaluate her logically, but this devil seemed adorable in a pathetic way rather than intimidating even with the full force of her glare. Still, a promise is a promise.
“My soul space is a mostly empty hospital corridor a bit more than half a kilometer long (about one third of a mile). It runs off and can be upgraded through some currency that has the same alchemical symbol as soul… or sulphur, but I doubt it’s being used to represent that.” I started explaining, and she just quietly listened. “You know about the guard… but I was reached out to by the person I believe put me in this world and gave me the soul space to begin with. His name was signed with several mathematical symbols, but I decided to nickname him Endro. He gave me more souls as a ‘welcome gift’, and I used the ‘soul power’ to create new facilities in the hospital, including a reception desk that allows me to bring people in and out of the hospital.” I explained, catching her up to speed with everything. The more I spoke, the further I saw her sink into her chair, still she finally just shook her head.
“What a scam.” she groaned, placing a hand on her forehead. “Someone like you shouldn’t have been brought to this world, it’s just insanity. Of course it was an outer god that did this.” she quietly mumbled complaints to herself, but I could hear her just fine. “What do you mean? What do you know?” I asked back, and I could tell that she didn’t want to explain everything, but like a child she put up a vain struggle before submitting to some unseeable force and just sighed like she gave up. Was this a part of her morals? Knowledge for knowledge?
“Follow me.” she said, before standing up and walking to the edge of the bookshelves, where there was a small, maybe 15 cm gam (~6 inches) between them and the wall. Without slowing down a single step, she entered the small gap in the blink of an eye. It didn’t seem possible, but soul spaces were hardly normal so I followed behind, and found myself in a large empty corridor, with an annoyed Starlight waiting for me. The walls to either side looked like bookshelves packed so tightly with books that there was hardly a single gap to be seen. The books also had no discernable markings and other than the size being variable, were mostly identical.
“This is the outer edge of my soul-space.” she explained as she continued walking. I said nothing and followed, trying to take in any information I could from all of this. The thought of looking through one of the countless books crossed my mind, but Starlight shot me a glare as if she knew and I pushed down that thought. We walked for around a minute before coming to a large door that must have been at least 3 meters tall and a bit more than half as wide, covered in chains and locks. “Does this lead to another soul-space?” I asked, recognising it as the door between my hospital and her library.
Rather than saying anything, she simply reached out to the door and pressed against it. All of the locks and chains came undone like the door to the library, then it pulled open. Instead of a room, corridor, or any kind of landscape on the other side of it… I don’t know how to describe what I saw. It was like I was looking out into the night sky, everything was a dark but vibrant blue or purple, and in the middle of this night sky was a dazzling circle of bright colours drifting around an enormous hole devoid of even the slightest bit of colour.
“What… is this?” I could only ask in astonishment, turning to look around and noticing that there was no ground under the door, and I could actually see stars far into the distance. Was this what space looked like in this world? No, we must have just been high up? No, then there would be wind. Was this underground then? Everything could be an optical illusion? “This is the Astral Realm.” she answered, casually taking a step through the door into nothing. Contrary to my expectations, she didn’t fall, simply floating there as she held a hand out. Curious, I took her hand and followed out into the purple and blue nothingness, surprisingly still able to move despite having nothing to gain traction on. I felt… light.
The Astral Realm was the realm of the soul, so was it another dimension of the world? Or was this what outer space was like for this Earth? No, there’d be no way I could travel to space in an instant without incredibly powerful magic, right?
“How does any of this work? Is this some kind of subspace?” I asked, not sure if I could believe something so enormous could just be a subspace. “A superspace would be a better word for it” she replied. Superspace… a space of infinitely many dimensions postulated to contain actual space–time and all possible spaces? “That’s a difficult concept to grasp.” I replied, my eyes wandering back towards the enormous hole in the ‘sky’. “Well, perhaps calling it the barriers between worlds would make it clearer?” she replied, using the same words that had antagonised me all this time. It seemed incredibly wrong that I couldn’t feel anything at that, just being consumed by the thought of how incredulous such a thing was.
“Yes. If you want to return to your own world, you need to learn how to break through a near infinite space filled with things far beyond your comprehension. Monsters that eat worlds, sleeping gods, entire civilizations… you reached the start of the problem faster than I ever thought possible, because I didn’t know what kind of creature you were, but this is as far as you get without our deal.” she explained, before giving me a sadistic smile. “Of course, if you want to start floating away on your own, I wouldn’t mind. If you die so worthlessly, I’ll get back my warlock slot.” she added. There was obvious vitriol in her words, but I brushed it aside. The infinite sky was overwhelming enough. “Who would get back your precious sword, then?” I asked back, contemplating just how insane it would be to travel such an infinite space with no directions.
Clicking her tongue, she grabbed my arm and pulled us back into her library, shutting the door and locking it behind us with a wave of her arm. “How is any of this even possible?” I asked as I stood there staring at the door, overwhelmed with so many thoughts and doubts. While I had seen the powers my hospital had and its future potential first hand, was it possible to create a space as big as the hospital in the barriers between worlds and travel to and from it in the blink of an eye? Why did I have such power?
“At first, all Merydian were little more than animals. Greater consciousness, better intellect, opposable thumbs, none of it made them any stronger, until the first idiot decided their hands weren’t hard enough so they picked a rock up and beat some animal to death with it.” Starlight suddenly started explaining. “Do you know what happened after that?” she asked. There must have been a point to the sudden topic shift, so I tried to think about this seriously. “People… Meridian learnt that weapons gave them an advantage?” I asked, trying to connect the logic. The purple haired woman opposite to me chuckled at that, slowly starting to walk around me. “Long term yes, but what happened was that the idiot learnt the knowledge that ‘rocks are stronger than hands’. From that point on, Meridian tried different rocks, larger rocks, even throwing rocks, before they learnt that ‘You can tie a rock to a stick and it reaches further and hurts more!’ From that knowledge, they started making weapons.” she explained.
“What does this have to do with anything?” I asked, still not understanding the reason for this history lesson. “You answered that the purpose of knowledge was to share experience.” she pointed out, shaking her head. “That is simply communication. The purpose of knowledge is to change the world.” She leant forward grabbing my collar and lowering my head so we were face to face. “I despise the kind of ignorance you have. You know everything yet you act the fool. You may be fooling yourself, instead of just putting up a front like that damn snake, but I refuse to play along with this any further.” she slowly said, word by word as she stared daggers into my eyes. “I want you to think long and hard about this, and you had better give me the answer I want to hear when you come to your senses.” saying that, she let go of me and started walking back down the corridor, leaving me to mire in my own thoughts for a moment.
The purpose of Knowledge is to change the world… and I know everything but I’m just fooling myself? If I consider the soul-space to be a part of the world or a world in and of itself, I was definitely ‘changing the world’ without actively knowing anything, just using an interface to create things. If I take her words as the complete truth, then maybe the computers and all other interfaces are simply proxies of my subconscious knowledge? It was complicated and I would have to think more about it later. I started walking again, there was a lot I needed to do.
“Then, why don’t you learn directly from my soul-space? It must have more answers than I do.” I suggested as I caught up with her, earning a glare in exchange. “Not everyone is as stupid as you to just wander into someone else’s domain.” she scoffed, though it was obvious she wanted to. I supposed she just didn’t trust me enough, and I couldn’t blame her considering I went from an ordinary man with anti-magic to someone with the same kind of power as her.
At a stalemate, I spent some time chatting with her about other matters as we made our way back, like how we could use my blood’s anti-magic or about learning alchemy and came to an agreement that I would be allowed to come to the library to learn alchemy from her. We also decided to experiment with the waiting room when everyone left the hospital to see if it could store items, considering how it had empty cupboards. “I’ve been wondering. You should exist in the same state as me, nothing more than a soul with substance in this soul-space… yet why do you seem to have your full range of emotions?” I finally asked, not able to wrap my head around all of the rules of this space yet. “That’s because I still have a body.” she answered, confusing me. “But I have a body too? And didn’t you say that vessel was just a high level illusion?” I asked, not following. “No, my true body is the core of this space. That was the method I used to create it.” she explained, as we exited the gap between the bookshelf and the wall, returning to the two chairs and teapot. She then glanced towards the endless bookshelves framed the path deeper into the library, where the ‘core’ and her body might be. “And you don’t truly have a body, you’re just inhabiting a corpse.” she added, dropping a bombshell.
That was right, my body was once Millar’s. Was it still his even with me ‘living’ in it? “Entering the soul space should not leave your body vacant. It doesn’t work that way.” She shook her head. “But that’s a matter for another day. Run along and check up on your patients, ‘Doctor’. We need them ready for when we retrieve what’s mine.”
I turned to leave but paused. “What happened to the other temple guards? The ones you made disappear?” I asked, curious about that. “They’re somewhere safe… for now. Why do you ask? You aren’t planning on begging me to let them go are you?” she sneered at me as she asked that. “Are you planning on consuming them to fuel your soul-space?” I prodded, making her frown. “Consuming them? I may be an infernal, but my library was made through pure magic, none of that sacrificial rubbish. I’m not going to let some higher power meddle in my affairs.” she retorted. That seemed to be a sore spot for her, maybe there’s a deeper story there. “So you don’t use souls to fuel the library like I do for the hospital?” I asked, glancing back at the door that led to the hospital. “No.” she sternly replied, not adding any more.
Seeing that she didn’t want to say anything else, I turned and went back to the hospital. After checking in on everyone to see how they were doing, I found Vildost and Kanako in my office. “W-where did you come from!? Can you teleport!?” Kanako asked as she stared wide-eyed at my sudden appearance. Vildost seemed too quiet as he just observed. “Not exactly, but I can move around rather quickly.” I vaguely explained, not entirely sure about the limitations just yet. “Were you able to use the main system?” I asked, gesturing towards the computer. Both of them shook their heads. “No, I can tell it’s important, but it’s like there’s a solid wall between me and it.” Kanako replied, staring at the monitor. “Same, it’s like some crazy magic stuff going on there.” Vildost added, waving his hands and starting to act like his ‘normal’ self again.
Sitting down at the computer, I took a moment to look around the mostly empty room and noted that I needed to use the space for something. I wondered if I could use the printer, but I couldn’t figure out how since there weren’t any buttons for it. “Your office is… kind of lonely.” Kanako murmured, looking around. I hadn’t noticed that she wasn’t wearing her hood till now, and wondered how I had managed to miss something like that. “It’s a copy of my office back on the Earth I came from.” I replied, accessing the computer and looking at the same options. “It used to have a lot more in it. Family photos, books, medical records, and so on. None of it copied over, however. But I might be able to retrieve them later on, if the hospital stays in operation.”
Noting that they couldn’t see my monitor even after I started using it, I decided to ignore the two as I looked over a few small things I had to do. First, I tried moving the reception desk and had no issues or delays. I moved it far closer to the only three rooms in the hospital. I then clicked on the corridor itself and saw that I could change the size. Shrinking it cost nothing, but making it bigger had costs. Seeing that, I held off for now, just in case the extra space was ever needed.
Finally looking at the settings icon, I wasn’t sure what I even expected. It had sliders to change all of the colours, generic backgrounds, a dark mode, sound settings, font settings, and even a text size slider. There weren’t sounds for any of the options so I clicked into the sound settings to find a very small list of one option: Patient needs assistance and the sound was Doctor’s beeper. Of course.
Done with everything and having no funds to buy anything more, I checked in on the others. Arashi had woken up and was confused, but Nisha had been there to explain the situation to her. “Thank you for everything… I apologize for my actions.” she said as she bowed towards all of us. I didn’t speak on the matter as I couldn’t accept the apology on behalf of the two people she killed and Nisha, who was hurt by her, but I also acknowledged that it was a fight where we might have died if we were careless.
I spent some time explaining the situation to her before we all ate some food then tried to sleep through the night. While food was something I could obtain through the hospital supplier, I didn’t have the funds to squander and food was something we could get from the shelter outside. Vildost and Kanako went to collect some food and according to them, they believed some wild beast got into the shelter and was fought off by an adventurer or guard.
After a modest dinner (that I could ‘eat’, but wouldn’t fill my body’s stomach), we all went to sleep. The four of them had their beds and I was going to sleep in my office chair, but Kanako opted to share the bed with Arashi to give me a bed to sleep on. I couldn’t say no to her and thankfully accepted. That was when I realised that not only could I not feel tired in the soul space, but I couldn’t sleep either. I just lay there, wide awake, thinking about… everything. So much had happened, the past few days felt like months.
To avoid being crushed by my thoughts, I left the bed and returned to Starlight’s library, where I asked her to start the alchemy training we had planned. She didn’t look pleased, but she relented fairly fast. The night passed quickly as she started with explaining the bare basics.
…
By morning, everyone had gathered at the front desk. All of them took advantage of the hospital bathrooms to shower, which was a minor luxury the storm shelter couldn’t offer. Nisha’s arm was still in a splint and injured, but I didn’t expect a bone bruise to heal overnight to begin with. If he healed in a week, it would be an insane enough healing rate. Vildost was fully healed, but his injuries weren’t very serious to start so it was reasonable. Arashi was the fastest to recover, however, going from bedridden to being in fighting form overnight. Given that the muscle strain and fever were likely caused by berserking within my antimagic field, she couldn’t tell me how long it would normally take her to recover from an injury like this.
Checking their status from the reception desk computer, I noticed that there was no medical fee listed for Vildost, likely because his injuries were minor enough, but I received 10🜍 each from Nisha and Arashi. That was 5% and 10% of their totals, respectively, so the amount changed based on the amount of treatment? I didn’t give Arashi too much more treatment, however, so I wasn’t sure why the number was bigger. Maybe the hospital helped in some way, which is why she recovered so fast? I didn’t know, there wasn’t enough data. Either way, I had 28🜍, half of what I needed for the monthly payment. If I kept this pace up, I could unlock some of the other features soon.
When everyone left the hospital, we took a moment to experiment with the waiting room. It wasn’t possible for me to bring anything into the room from the hospital or put things in and out myself. However, the others could put things in the waiting room and take it out. If there was no one inside, it could close and open and the objects were perfectly fine. Another interesting note was that only some things could be taken out of the hospital, including the splint on Nisha and Vildost’s bandages. If someone brought something into the hospital, they could take it out as well, but they couldn’t leave items behind or leave with anything that shouldn’t be taken out of the hospital. It seemed that there was no easy work around for not having the Storeroom.
Closing the hospital and waking up in my- Millar’s body, I had to just sit there and process for a few minutes as the flood of chemicals that made up my emotions hit me all at once. I felt like I wanted to throw up, I was overwhelmed! My hands wouldn’t stop shaking when I thought about how I was using bits of people’s souls like nothing more than currency. We were about to go to a place filled with strong people who might kill us and who we might have to kill… and if I do kill anyone, then I’d actually profit from it. That was one of the most terrifying thoughts…
Jesus, and what about the people Starlight had!? What was she going to do with them? Were they going to die too? Aren’t their deaths on my hands too, then? And… the more I use this strange power I was given, the more I feel like I’m getting further and further from being Armin Fisher from Earth and… that I’ll never see my old life again. That I’d never meet Anneliese again…
“A-are you alright, Armin!?”, “Woah, you good there buddy, need some water?”, “Sir Fischer, are you hurt?”, “Need call doctor?” My four companions rushed over in concern, and that made me feel a little comforted, knowing that I wasn’t alone in this strange world. “I-it’s alright.” I replied, holding up a hand. “I’m cut off from my emotions in the hospital, so it’s just… a lot, now that I’m back…” I tried to explain, taking deep breaths to center myself. At this point, I realised that I urgently needed to resolve this before it became a huge issue. Thinking through the list of things I had, Continuous operation and Remote operation could be the solutions for this. The first would let me leave the hospital so I didn’t have to let all of my emotions be bottled up for hours and hours, while the second would ideally let me do things in the hospital while still awake. That said, those were only guesses, and both were expensive options, costing a total of 210🜍 .
Tomorrow’s problems are for tomorrow… I hated that saying, but I had no choice but to follow it for now. “Okay, I’m good now. Let’s go get the sword back.” I said, standing up and focusing on today’s problem. It was time to begin the operation to stop a holy war.
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