"Master..." Diana's voice was weak and ethereal, as if she were trapped in a nightmare from which she would never wake.
Manuel's weathered amber eyes held unexpected pain and horror. He had thought that no matter how stubborn his teacher was, after three years of gradual preparation and cushioning from all sides, the worst that could happen would be the shattering and solidification of his Cognitive World — nothing that would endanger his life. With his own strength as a ninth-circle Grand Mage, even when his age approached three hundred, he could still transform into a lich or use other methods to extend his life, and there was no shortage of slim chances to reconstruct his Cognitive World. But now...
"No! Master isn't dead! Master definitely isn't dead yet!" Christel shouted, unable to accept the reality. His white hair was disheveled from his violent shaking, accentuating his wrinkled and twisted face into something almost monstrous. "Master used Life Concealment!"
As a ninth-circle Grand Mage, Roland had more than enough ability and knowledge to prevent accidental "death." Although it wasn't as convenient as a lich's phylactery, Life Concealment was sufficient to handle the vast majority of situations.
Diana buried her face in her hands, mumbling in anguished despair. "It's useless, it's useless. This is the complete destruction of his Cognitive World. Even with a phylactery, he can't be revived..."
For mages at their current stage, the soul and the body's life force could be separated through magic such as phylacteries and Life Concealment. As long as the phylactery or other secretly preserved items remained intact, the person would not truly die. But the Cognitive World was an existence even more ethereal and illusory than the soul — it seemed to be rooted in a mage's consciousness, unable to be attacked by Arcane Magic, Divine Arts, or knightly techniques, and naturally unable to be acted upon by them either. It could not be separated, could not be duplicated. Once the Cognitive World collapsed and was destroyed, it meant death in the truest sense.
For instance, a legendary mage's demiplane was formed by projecting their meditation environment into the real world. Changes to the Cognitive World would bring corresponding changes to the demiplane, but the reverse was not true. Even if the demiplane were forcibly destroyed by an enemy, it would not affect the legendary mage's own Cognitive World. Similarly, in an illusion, one could collapse an enemy's Cognitive World through constructing subversive theories — making their head explode — but this would at most leave the victim dazed and bewildered in reality, temporarily falling into a vacant, sluggish state. To make the Cognitive World collapse and head explosion from within an illusion fully manifest in reality, only the "Nightmare King" could accomplish such a thing.
As for reviving from the "collapse and destruction" of the Cognitive World, there was only one possibility: his Cognitive World had not completely collapsed in the first place. When one had psychological preparation or had already been weakened and wavering, the Cognitive World existed in a state between "shattering and solidification" and "collapse and destruction." One could seize the opportunity before the destruction spread to transfer the soul, using the explosion of the head to neutralize the impact. For mages without a phylactery or any other means of resurrection, however, this possibility was equivalent to the complete destruction of the Cognitive World.
"How could this happen to Master? Who did this to him? Was it Lucian Evans? Did he want to prevent Master from completing the experiment?" Christel roared in a crazed voice, stepping over the brain matter and blood scattered across the floor and rushing toward the experiment table.
Watching Christel, who seemed to have lost his mind from the enormous blow, Manuel and Diana were momentarily stunned by his frenzied, violent behavior. Coupled with the shock and horror of witnessing Roland's headless corpse, their reactions seemed to dull. They watched in a daze as Christel picked up the experiment notebook and read through it, watched as he looked at the magic circle and alchemical apparatus in disbelief.
"It must have been tampered with! It must have been!" The maddened Christel activated the magic circle and began conducting the final set of data experiments.
Tampered with... Manuel thought numbly. After an unknown amount of time, he suddenly snapped to his senses. Even as he began casting a spell to try to stop Christel, he shouted, "Stop! Stop right now!"
The words had barely left his mouth when everything before him turned red and white. Something warm and wet hit his face, and a metallic, bloody smell filled his nostrils.
Ah! Diana, a fifth-circle mage, screamed like a helpless little girl. Christel's headless corpse thudded to the ground.
"Another one..." Manuel thought in a daze. "...In a situation like this, shouldn't I go find an illusionist for psychological crisis intervention..."
The fifth most popular program on the "Truth of the World" channel was "Soul Chicken Soup" — a mental health lecture series. The first was, without question, "Alingna Weekly News Review."
Taking a deep breath, Manuel felt he had already guessed the outcome and accepted the possibility. He walked to the experiment table and picked up the experiment notebook, which was already splattered with red "jam" and milky white "cream."
Suppressing his nausea, he used magic to clean them off, then carefully read through the experiment records. Afterward, he let out a long sigh.
"It conforms to the light quantum hypothesis?" Diana was a fifth-circle mage after all. Her helpless state didn't last long, and she managed to recover her ability to think and speak. Her face was filled with grief as she asked.
Senior Mage Manuel nodded with an expression that was impossible to read. "Yes. You could say the light quantum hypothesis has been preliminarily confirmed."
This was consistent with the gradual shifts in his own understanding over the past three years. Seeing this result should have filled him with elation, because it meant he could potentially advance to the eighth circle within the next five years. But now, with two headless corpses on the ground and brain matter and blood splattered everywhere, he couldn't bring himself to smile.
"This is Master's final paper. Should we publish it for him?" Diana's response was completely stream-of-consciousness, bearing no logical connection to the previous question.
Manuel nodded. "We'll say Master's experimental results confirmed the light quantum hypothesis and that he accepted this hypothesis, but unfortunately he met with an accident and perished. At the very least, we can't let Master's reputation be tarnished after death. After all, Lord Brooke is conducting this experiment too — we can't conceal the results..."
"Will Lord Brooke be all right?" Diana didn't ask how many Archanists would believe their account of Roland's cause of death. Instead, she asked in alarm about Brooke.
Manuel also suddenly became quite alarmed. "We need to return to Alingna immediately and deliver the experimental results to Lord Brooke. I hope he hasn't started the experiment yet... If even he falls, this will become truly terrifying..."
"Then should we... for Master's sake... Lucian Evans..." Diana mumbled ambiguously.
Manuel gave a bitter smile. "If Christel were still alive, he would certainly choose revenge. He was the only one among Master's descendants who showed any promise, and the one who received the most care. Personally, while I do feel a deep, genuine hatred toward Lucian Evans because of this, to say that he bears the responsibility... that doesn't really hold up. It wasn't his experimental design, and it wasn't his experiment. Perhaps in the future I might oppose his theories or proposals because of these feelings, but taking direct revenge — I can't do it."
Most importantly, he himself had already wavered and tried to persuade his teacher.
"I feel the same." Diana's thoughts were much the same as Manuel's, but she had additional considerations. Lucian was a sixth-level Archanist and a sixth-circle mage. Rumor had it that due to changes in his influence factor, his Arcane Score was approaching nine thousand — in less than two years, he would become a seventh-level Archanist. How could someone of that caliber be someone a fourth-level Archanist and fifth-circle mage like herself could hope to take revenge against? And behind Lucian stood high-ranking classmates like Tangpu and Chloe, and even the Grand Archanist, the Storm Dominator himself!