A Sorcerer's Journey 251 Self Rebirth

"Where is this? What happened… to me?"
Wrapped around by dark murky liquid, Grimm opened his eyes as he gradually regained consciousness. He felt a sense of familiarity in his surroundings. It was during the time when he was still a sorcerer-apprentice, mixing poison under Master Peranos' guidance. He had wrongly consumed Lymphatic Parasitic Poison, which forced him to soak in an aquarium in his weakened state.
Now that he thought about it, life was indeed happy when he was an ignorant sorcerer-apprentice. Every day was filled with an indescribable excitement as every moment in the future were filled with surprises and anticipation.
Feeling groggy, he felt his cells absorbing nutrients and energy in this liquid and fainted into oblivion immediately after.
It was as if he went into hibernation.
***
This is a spacious enclosed room in the interiors of the Void Fortress. A set of highly specified rules restricting energy were found surrounding the metal walls.
Inside the room were six transparent glass cylindrical medical facilities, each fifteen meters tall, seven meters in diameter and were connected to a dense pile of tubing in both ends of the structures. These structures were filled with a murky, viscous liquid.
In these six cylindrical medical facilities, three had human-shaped silhouettes within its transparent walls—soaking inside.
Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip…
Suddenly, the massive door burst open following a series of alarm waves being emitted from one of these medical facilities. A few Bright Sorcerers surrounded the medical facility, observing calmly.
***
On the medical bed, a layer of transparent barrier quarantined Grimm from his surroundings. Beside him, a Bright Sorcerer lowered his head as he reported in a congratulatory stance to the sorcerer in front of him.
"This Grimm sorcerer has a very resilient Cell Life Force, and has achieved the first level of wild self-breakthrough. As a result, in the process of rebirth, he has used up three thousand two hundred. For now, his Soul Memory has passed through the shadow transmission device, and has been successfully transferred to this clone body, meaning we carried out a regular self-rebirth.
"Hm."
The Great Sorcerer that was receiving the medical report from this Bright Sorcerer nodded his head.
Donning a circle of colourful bells on her head, her eyes were masked under a red ribbon and emerald-green hair grew down to her waist. She had a pair of long pointed ears akin to that of an elf. She was clothed in a layer of white mist covering her entire body like an ethereal veil layer.
This was the Great Tomb Segja, who came to this room to oversee Grimm's condition in person.
Behind the Tomb Segja, Deidarion, who was clad in a blood-red suit of metal armour stood up. He had a head of flowing long hair, and stitch scars tattered his face.
Even for a Level 3 Demon-Hunter Sorcerer who had three Rank 3 Honor Badges, he had to act accordingly in a respectful manner in front of the Great Stigmata Sorcerer.

Myna stood on Master Deidarion's shoulders, looking to the left, then to the right, observing the situation.
The Tomb Segja glanced at the medical sorcerer and asked, "If so, when will this Demon-Hunter Sorcerer fully regain consciousness? When will he make full recovery?"
The medical sorcerer contemplated for a moment before saying, "Even if he wakes up, we still have to do an elemental analysis on his body, do some phase conditioning and proceed to electrical stimulation to wake him up. And after that, he still needs a few months of basic therapy before making a full recovery."
"Phase conditioning and electrical stimulation? Hm, allow me to finish the process myself."
Before any elemental analyses were made on Grimm, the Tomb Segja stretched out a white, slender index finger. Slowly, a Symbiotic Insect with a bright flower petal growing out of it crawled out. It ignored the quarantine barrier and flew over to Grimm's chest.
Zap!
A stream of sparks flowed, followed by Grimm's body twitching uncontrollably. He started a fit of coughing, then spat out mouthfuls of dark, viscous liquid from his mouth.
***
Grimm slowly opened his eyes as he regained consciousness, peering at the foreign environment from his bed before jolting upright. "Hm? The Great Tomb Segja!"
He struggled as he attempted to stand up and salute with his frail body but with the wave of a hand, the Tomb Segja stopped Grimm from doing so by manipulating the Force of Nature.
"That's enough, it's good that you were able to self-regenerate. You were clinically dead for the past seventy-nine days and five hourglasses, reason being that your body's cells collapsed on itself. I used the remaining functioning cells in your body to cultivate this cloned body to which your Soul Consciousness was transferred.
Dead? Self-rebirth? Soul transfer?
Grimm mouth hung open as he stared at the Tomb Segja in disbelief.
Grimm had a hard time accepting the truth as he was suddenly loaded with these information barely after he regained consciousness.
The Tomb Segja shook her head, causing the ring of flowers on his green, silky hair to wave around as she turned around to leave, "The 'Investigation of the Infinite Crimson Sun Seal's Coordinates' mission that I entrusted you with failed due to my errors in consideration. The compensation for my mistake is already within you, it can grant you three chances of access to the Tomb Segja secret area at the Tomb Segja Sorcery Academy. That or you can offset a hundred years of work at the Tomb Segja Sorcery Academy as an Arcane Sorcerer."
Finishing her sentence, The Tomb Segja left the room.
Grimm felt a presence within his body. He found that it was a Symbiotic Insect that looked like a flower, resting in dormancy inside him.
"Caw, caw, congratulations young master! After all the hardship little Myna has gone through, almost breaking my wings from flying so fast, I finally brought you back to life. Young master Grimm, the fact that you aren't dead even after such a great disaster means there's great prosperity right around the corner. You're gonna get big in the near future, caw, caw, caw!"
Myna was jumping up and down on Grimm's blanket. His appearance reflected his weight and the fat bird was not a lightweight one.
Clink, clank!
Deidarion, whose armor rattled as he walked over, gazed at Grimm with a sorrowful and apologetic look.
Sorrowful, because of the six Demon-Hunter Sorcerers that were highly-experienced in Void Sorcery, only Grimm came back alive from their mission, 'Investigation of the Infinite Crimson Sun Seal's Coordinates'. The others lost their lives in the Crimson Sun cataclysm. It seems that the apprentice of his third comrade had an exceptional ability.
Apologetic, was naturally because he had to go through self-rebirth.
Self-rebirth was a life-saving method for low-level sorcerers, that was highly regulated by high-level sorcerers in the Void Fortress. It had many restrictive requirements, so only low-level sorcerers were suitable.
"Grimm, a Level-1 sorcerer. A body transplant shouldn't be too taxing on the Void Fortress, just that a lot of precious resources were exhausted in this process, not to mention the fact that the Tomb Segja had personally paid for it to be done."
Pausing for a moment, Deidarion continued, "In regards to your psychology after rebirth, please don't feel too pressured. According to an ancient sorcerer theory, we are dying at every moment. The "us" from just a moment ago has already died. As for the sorcerers' life as defined by the modern sorcerers, consists of just knowledge and Soul's Will. That is how we live on eternally."
Grimm opened his mouth, about to say something but changed his mind at the last minute. Instead, he asked in a weak voice. "Master, what was the Great Tomb Segja referring to when she talked about a hundred years of working as an Arcane Sorcerer?"
Seeing that Grimm wasn't so preoccupied with the self-rebirth incident, Deidarion sighed in relief.
A sizable portion of low-level sorcerers couldn't face the fact that they had received this kind of sorcery psychologically. There was even one incident where a Bright Sorcerer committed suicide due to being too worked up over the matter.
"It's a tried and tested method for Arcane Sorcerers from the Sorcerer Continent to earn Sorcerer Essences, that is to mentor apprentices to become Demon-Hunter Sorcerers and to hunt down Black Sorcerers. Then you can retrieve Sorcerer Essences as a reward from the Holy Tower. Apart from this, Arcane Sorcerers can easily be hired by negotiations with Demon-Hunter Sorcerers. There are some Arcane Sorcerers that sell their time and help substitute Demon-Hunter Sorcerers to observe experiments, or to trade laboratory equipment. Usually, the rate comes to one Sorcerer Essence for a year's worth of transactions…"
Grimm was shocked when he heard that.
No wonder why Demon-Hunter Sorcerers that were always actively in battle were becoming increasingly stronger despite not having the time for research and development as a result of the Demon-Hunting Expeditions. From the view of uninformed observers, these Demon-Hunter Sorcerers should have grown even weaker than Arcane Sorcerers.
So that was the reason, it was right here all along.
After a moment, Deidarion left the room.
Grimm was left in silence, then he remembered the Mask of Truth. He looked up at Myna but as if his mind was being read, Myna said, "I have already stored it in the Dimensional Gap, don't worry about it."
Slowly, Grimm calmed down again as he collected his train of thought.
Regardless, Grimm couldn't ignore what the Tomb Segja had just said. He had died and consequently, was reborn?
Myna had a look of dissatisfaction as he said, "Some sorcerers have conflicting consciousness after the process. Let me ask you this, are you still you as of now?"
"Of course I am still myself!" Grimm affirmed as he looked at Myna in confusion.
This type of question is pretty dumb.
Myna blinked a few times and said, "Yup, to me, you are still you; to your Master Deidarion, Milly, and even to this Void Fortress, this Sorcerer's World, this Eternal World, you are still you so don't fuss too much over it."
Grimm replied in dissatisfaction, "But why did the Tomb Segja say I am already dead?"
Wrapping its two wings around, Myna said, "In this endless world, only one thing is sure that you are dead, that is the individual cells in your body that collapsed on itself. Perhaps from their point of view, you are just a clone graft, a living vessel that continues the memory from before. The sorcerer's will was born out of the conflict of the self-rebirth sorcery.
Myna continued, "Before the old bastard died, he too said the same thing. For a sorcerer, the Soul's Consciousness and knowledge is the source of life. Cellular memories of the body are merely traces in the Material World. This point was proven just after the first civilised war in the Sorcerer's World."
'Self-rebirth sorcery?'

Chapter end