Chapter 276

Chapter 276: Chapter 276

Marshall actually knew about the girls’ little strategy meeting.

After all, he had informants planted right beside them.

Namely, the Apostles.

The girls might have thought they had excellent relationships with the little Apostles and that the girls would never lie to them, but they had overlooked one fundamental detail: the Apostles’ deepest operating principle was absolute obedience to Marshall.

If Marshall needed them to lie, then they would lie.

Which was why none of the girls knew that Little Lucy—Greed—was currently staying with Marshall.

He was using her for an experiment.

After discovering that a Thought Projection would trigger the curse simultaneously with his real body, Marshall began wondering whether there might be some other way for him to leave the island.

For example, could he possess one of his Apostles remotely?

Naturally, he wasn’t going to test that by sending himself back into Magnolia and potentially killing everyone nearby. Instead, he had Greed teleport to the deserted island.

Once she arrived, Marshall transferred his consciousness into her body and simply waited for the next unpredictable eruption of the curse.

The answer came soon enough.

Bad news first.

Even when Marshall was only possessing an Apostle, the curse still activated through that body at the same time.

The good news, however, was far more interesting.

His Apostles didn’t "die" and return elsewhere the way Celestial Spirits did.

The reason seemed to lie in their souls.

Each Apostle’s soul copy had originally been constructed using Marshall himself as the template, which meant their spiritual structures were perfectly compatible with his.

More importantly, the curse appeared to recognize the Apostles as extensions of the same individual rather than separate targets.

As a result, Marshall’s Apostles were completely immune to the Curse of Ankhseram.

Marshall had once heard Lullaby explain that Zeref created his demons for the purpose of killing himself.

Back then, Marshall had dismissed the idea.

Now?

He was starting to believe it.

If Zeref’s own creations were similarly immune to his curse, then they really might possess the ability to kill their creator.

Not that Marshall intended to test whether his own Apostles could kill him.

He didn’t want to die.

More importantly, he hated pain.

Marshall wouldn’t even willingly cut himself open for an experiment, much less commit suicide.

Absolutely not.

Since the Apostles were immune to the curse, however, Marshall immediately began considering making a few more to look after him on the island.

Virgo was staying with him now, but every curse eruption still "killed" her manifested body and forced her back to the Celestial Spirit World.

Even if she could simply be summoned again afterward, the process was inconvenient, and Marshall felt rather guilty about repeatedly putting her through it.

He had already created the Seven Sins.

Maybe it was time for a matching set of Seven Virtues?

Unfortunately, obtaining suitable materials while stranded on an island was inconvenient.

Marshall thought for a moment.

Then his eyes lit up.

’Oh! Right!’

That smaller Ultear clone was still sitting in storage.

With a little modification, it would be perfect.

The miniature Apostle-version of Ultear had originally been created for his soul-possession experiments. Its body currently contained no soul at all and was essentially an empty shell.

Now that Marshall had acquired an entirely new level of technology, however, he could rewrite the Book of Ultear.

Perhaps...

The Book of Diligent Ultear?

...

Marshall’s first generation of Apostles had been Guga.

Her body was formed entirely from Magic Power.

She required little energy and possessed relatively low output, making her more of an early practice project than a truly sophisticated artificial life-form.

The second generation was the Seven Sins.

Their bodies were constructed from Curse Power and a variety of specialized materials.

Their internal energy cycles had already become self-sustaining, allowing them to absorb emotional energy from their surroundings and use it to maintain their own existence.

By the standards of artificial life, Marshall had already crossed the threshold into serious mastery with them.

What he was building now would be his third generation.

One of the Seven Virtues—Diligence.

For this generation, Marshall intended to incorporate Life Magic into every stage of construction, making the Apostles much closer to genuine human beings.

After realizing that he had probably acquired the Curse of Ankhseram, Marshall had searched ancient texts for everything previous scholars had written on the subject.

Their warnings were remarkably consistent.

According to those old records, whenever humans attempted to study the forbidden domain of life, peer into the laws governing life and death, or deliberately violate them, the enraged god Ankhseram would cast a curse upon them.

Marshall had read that explanation with a completely expressionless face.

He had heard the story before.

And he had always classified it as superstition.

After all, nothing had happened to him when he first began researching artificial life.

The curse only appeared after he started investigating the First Origin.

Admittedly, the First Origin might lie much closer to the fundamental nature of life, but that still wasn’t enough to convince Marshall.

If humanity refused to investigate anything labeled "forbidden," how was anyone supposed to make progress?

Someone said life was taboo, so he was just supposed to stop researching it?

Please.

If this Ankhseram god ever showed up with a visible health bar, Marshall would happily find a way to kill the bastard sooner or later.

Besides, he was already cursed now.

Didn’t that mean there was even less reason to hold himself back?

The traditional explanation was contradictory from the very beginning.

Supposedly, Ankhseram became furious whenever mortals dared trespass upon his domain, so he punished them with immortality and condemned them to an eternity of being unable to die while everyone around them perished.

Marshall found the entire idea ridiculous.

Put yourself in the god’s position.

Suppose you governed the laws of life and death, and one day a mortal began making impressive progress within your own field.

You noticed this mortal and decided to respond.

What would you choose?

A. "Who gave you permission to walk my path?" Drop a divine thunderbolt on them and kill them immediately.

B. "Not bad. You remind me of myself when I was younger." Reward them and invite them into your divine realm.

C. "You wicked mortal! I’ll make you regret this for eternity!" Then grant them eternal life and make them impossible to kill.

See the problem?

Wasn’t option C basically the left side of the brain fighting the right?

Accidentally killing innocent people would only torment someone who possessed a conscience.

What if the cursed person had no conscience whatsoever?

Imagine someone who had deeply researched the secrets of life, possessed overwhelming power, had no moral restraint, and had now become completely impossible to kill.

Were you sure immortality was a curse for someone like that?

It sounded suspiciously like a blessing.

That was why Marshall refused to accept the traditional explanation.

If some god were genuinely furious, surely it would be far simpler to strike the offending mortal dead rather than bestow this bizarre supposedly punitive immortality upon them.

Marshall had grown up in an information age.

Questioning the information itself was one of the most basic habits he possessed.

Never blindly believe something simply because other people repeated it often enough.

That was how you got scammed eight hundred times a day online.

So Marshall spent precisely zero time trembling in fear over having supposedly offended a god.

Instead, he decided to continue charging full speed ahead along the path of Life Magic.

It would be rude to disappoint Ankhseram now, wouldn’t it?

Marshall had already been researching Life Magic before receiving the curse.

If he stopped now that he was actually cursed, then hadn’t he suffered through the whole thing for nothing?

No.

If anything—he should go harder!

’I’m going to make a genuine artificial human!’

’Android 18—’

’Wait, no!’

’Eighteen of them!’

...

And so Marshall enthusiastically began working on Little Ultear.

Previously, the body could only really be considered a sophisticated doll.

This time, Marshall intended to give her a real soul.

He wouldn’t use his own soul as the template.

Nor would he simply reproduce the lingering Ultear soul template already embedded within the body.

Instead, Marshall intended to combine the available information and construct something genuinely new.

An entirely original soul.

He paused halfway through his preparations.

’Hmm...’

’If I combine my work with Ultear’s template to create a brand-new life...’

A strange thought occurred to him.

’Does this technically count as the two of us having a daughter together?’

Marshall stared at the unfinished Apostle for a moment.

’...Hopefully Ultear doesn’t mind.’

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