Dr. Zoric entered the lecture hall shortly after, his presence commanding imdiate attention from the lecture hall packed with students. There were hardly any empty seats left, which just showed how popular his class was.
The room fell silent as he reached the podium, his eyes briefly eting Alex's before scanning the rest of the class.
"Good morning, everyone," Dr. Zoric began, his voice carrying easily throughout the room. "So of you may already know of , so of you may not. So let introduce myself."
He paused, his gaze sweeping across the rows of students. "My na is Dr. Arlen Zoric, I've spent the better part of my life studying the nature of souls. For context, I am 126 years old."
The students in the lecture hall gasped in shock when they heard Dr. Zoric's age.
They knew that awakened could live for a long ti, as they might occasionally co across awakened over thousands of years old in the Primordial Expanse.
But the Primordial Expanse and the system had only been around in the federation for 100 years or so, so it was rare to see such aged and experienced awakened, as most of them died off in the early days of the Primordial Expanse's appearance.
"I was 24 years old when the Primordial Expanse made its first appearance. At that point, it was still considered a curse, and I was unfortunate enough at the ti to beco afflicted with it, disappearing shortly after those black lines appeared on my body, you've all heard the sa story." Dr. Zoric explained further.
"However, from the mont I stepped foot on the other side and saw the system interface appear before , I knew from that mont onwards my life would change forever. I'm sure most of you were the sa, but you might be surprised to find that I wasn't excited about being able to live out my 'novel-like' fantasies etc, but rather from the few short words I noticed on my Details."
He paused, watching the reactions of the students around the classroom.
He did the sa introduction every year, but seeing the reactions of the students never got old.
"'Soul' core, and 'Soul' classification. Those were the words that enraptured right from the start."
Dr. Zoric's introduction was t with attentive silence. The students hung on his every word. powered-by-
Alex, sitting near the front, was particularly interested in hearing more about his experiences.
However, it seed that this was the point where the introduction would end.
Breaking up the silence in the room, Dr. Zoric spoke, picking out a student at random.
"You there, tell what you think a soul is." he said as he pointed at a particularly well endowed female student.
She looked a little confused at first, as it seed she wasn't paying full attention to the class as the other students next to her had to nudge her to get her attention.
After a mont, she realised the Professor had asked her a question about souls, and stamred a little to answer it.
"The soul is an intangible entity, a core aspect of our being that transcends our physical body and its needs."
Her answer earned her so praise from her nearby friends.
"That's a good answer, " Dr. Zoric stated. "But you're wrong."
All of the students looked confused when Dr. Zoric said this, even Alex, as this was the general consensus concerning souls.
But none of them dared to refute back and waited for Dr. Zoric to speak again, as he was one of the leading experts on the subject.
"To put it simply, the soul is indescribable. It is both tangible and intangible, it is both a part of you, yet separate. While the concept of souls has existed in various cultures and philosophies for millenia, it wasn't until the advent of the system and the Primordial Expanse that we had concrete proof of its existence. Even then, we still know barely anything about it."
He gestured at a holographic display that appeared behind him, showing a diagram of a human figure with a glowing orb at its centre. "This is a simplified representation of the soul. In reality, the soul is far more complex and intricate. It is the essence of who we are, encompassing our consciousness, mories, and emotions."
Dr. Zoric paused to let the information sink in before continuing. "Past studies into the soul, just after the federation stabilised from the apocalyptic advent of the Primordial Expanse, used advanced techniques to bring back a dead person hours after they had died, previously impossible without the special help of a certain individual with an S ranked healing talent."
"Would any of you like to guess what we learned from this experint?" Dr. Zoric asked.
Alex looked around, and seeing that nobody had answered, he took a guess at it himself.
"Nothing?" Alex replied.
His reply was sceptical as he didn't know what Dr. Zoric was getting at, but considering the fact that he had already emphasised that humans still knew very little about the soul, he hatched a guess that this experint was useless.
"A decent guess, but no. We were fortunate actually to have discovered sothing — sothing that the old religious factions weren't particularly too happy about." Dr. Zoric fiddled with the hologram a little bit, and showed a recording, with the faces of every person in the video being blacked out.
"Watch this. Any student that can figure out the point I'm trying to make will get a Mutant class D rank beast core as a reward." Dr. Zoric said as he pulled out a beast core from thin air.
The mont it appeared and the promise of a reward was ntioned, many of the student's faces lit up with greed, even the ones that weren't paying proper attention.
Such a thing wasn't easy to co across for these students, and even the more talented ones who were already Mutant class were interested in this lucrative reward.
Seeing that everyone was now paying very close attention, Dr. Zoric smiled and started the holographic video recording.
A scene opened up on the stage at the front.
A dead body with its face blacked out lay on a dical table in an empty room, surrounded by around a dozen different people wearing white coats.
Each one of them had their face blacked out, except for one.
'Dr. Zoric?'
Alex recognised him imdiately.
As it turned out, Dr. Zoric himself was a part of this experint he was making an example out of, to the surprise of the many students in the room.
It was once again a reminder that Dr. Zoric wasn't just so nobody professor, but a leading researcher in the subject of souls.
"Is the procedure ready?" One of the blacked out figures asked, his voice being distorted too, to further protect his identity.
"Yes, sir." Dr. Zoric, the one in the video, answered.
None of the others in the room spoke from that point onwards, as they all turned to look at one person, who looked just as inconspicuous as all of the others in the room.
However, in reality, they were probably one of the most high profile people in the federation, let alone that room.
"Ti's running out #@$%, you can start already."
The leading researcher spoke, with the na of the person being censored out.
Imdiately after, a bright white light filled the room, blocking out the video feed, until a few seconds later everything returned to normal.
But there were now 11 living people in the room, and 1 less dead person.
The video continued for a little while longer, with the person lying on the table getting up and looking around disorientedly.
The researchers proceeded to ask them so routine questions, like can you tell your na? Can you tell where you are right now? What's today's date? Etc.
To which the person who used to be dead only a few seconds ago managed to answer these questions perfectly.
It was miraculous, considering that before the advent of the Awakened, people would beco brain dead just a few dozen minutes after the brain is starved of oxygen.
The video recording stopped abruptly, as Dr. Zoric had paused it.
But even though the students were interested in seeing what happened next in the scene, they were much more interested in hearing what Dr. Zoric had to say.
"Did any of you notice it?" He asked, not really expecting an answer.
As expected, nobody answered. The hall was completely silent.
But after a few monts, the sa female student he had picked on at the start of the class spoke up.
"The test subject in the experint was perfectly fine?"
She seed unsure of herself, hesitating whether to even answer.
But contrary to her thoughts, things didn't go as badly as she expected.
"Hmm, it's not quite what I was expecting, but you're close enough. Catch." Dr. Zoric said as he threw the beast core to the girl.
"She's right, the subject was completely fine, but that's only half the point."
Dr. Zoric continued.
"We were closely monitoring the subject the whole ti since his death, which we also orchestrated."
Dr. Zoric paused for one final ti, taking a look at the faces of all of the students around the room, as they were all surely about to change when they heard his answer.
"And what did we find out? The man's soul never left his body. Not once during the 24 hours he was dead. This only ant one thing for us."
*Cough*
Dr. Zoric cleared his throat.
"There is no afterlife. Death is the end. Death is final."
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