1 Vegetable

Darkness and loneliness, these were the only companions it knew for a long time.

The existence had no knowledge about who or what it was. A disorganized mess of concepts and ides appeared in its thoughts but they were jumbled and messy, any semblance of meaning gone the moment it came.

This carried on for some time, the small consciousness harboured thoughts which would disappear the moment they formed, allowing new thoughts to come in which would evaporate just like those before them; he was getting tired of this

Oh? The small speck of being suddenly realized it was not an it, it was a he. And he wanted answers.

Before he could adjust to the shift in state of being, the man found himself looking at an endless, pitch black expanse from a bird-eye's point of view. In the centre of this abyss, the man saw an obsidian coloured jello-like substance. A random blob which had found its way to this hellhole, and the feeling he got from the blob was on of familiarity.

'Me, that me.' Was the first thought that came to the mind of the blob. He felt bubbles dancing around his innards, tickling him and making him jiggle. The man wanted to play with the bubbles but his burst of constructive thoughts was gone as quickly as it came, leaving him to return to the semi-lucid state of the blob.

He would sometimes be jolted back to the bird POV but the moments were few and far between, and with time, feelings of depression and being locked in a cage started to form, but thankfully the full gravity of the situation was lost on him; what with having no brain or functioning cerebral system.

And so the days go by, and the only thing the blob knew for certain was that he was a stranded blob, locked away in this god-forsaken abyss.

But the winds of change carry with them even the most stranded of blobs, and it was on one inconspicuous day that everything changed when a surge of power awoke his mind, allowing him to have concrete thoughts and the ability of recalling information; he even regained his sense of hearing.

Silent whispers were starting to be heard from time to time, rising in volume until he was able to discern some words.

"… inner realm has finally started to adapt to… last week's adjustments have…"

"Mana core isn't expected… more drastic measures…"

"No! It's too risky, not to mention illegal."

He couldn't understand most of it, hell, the vocabulary they were using was something only an experienced scholar would understand.

But over time he managed to learn the meaning of many words and realized some facts about his situation.

Firstly, he was a man. A near-dead man whose only signs of life was, as the voices put it: "His consciousness is located in the inner realm, so he isn't dead per-se."

He was currently in some hospital or laboratory undergoing medical treatments by highly trained professionals. From the tone of their voice, the people treating him had friendly relations with him in the past.

As the days rolled by he achieved the cerebral capacity of a late teenager, allowing him to make rational judgments and insightful assumptions,

His first idea was that he was in a coma, couple with his lack of knowledge regarding, well everything, hinted that he was in some sort of serious accident which damaged his body and brain.

'Most likely a physical injury which resulted in this case of amnesia.' He thought to himself. 'Oh, looks like I can now think about things, neat.'

'My name is Delvin and I'm currently a vegetable.' Del thought to himself, depressingly.

'These people are trying to wake me up, I have to somehow signal that I'm awake.' But he was still just a blob in the abyss ocean, and the tides were high.

Delvin tried yelling, screaming, wailing, and even thinking really hard; none of it had any effects on his presence towards the people in the lab and their whispers which were becoming more understandable and more grievous with each passing day.

"There's a speck of consciousness in there, but we still have to connect the channels to the core; it seems our only option is the procedure suggested by Christy weeks ago." A mild and tempered masculine voice said, the one Delvin heard the most apart from his sisters

"Dean, I've been telling you this since we first awakened the Mana Core!" A soft but unnerved female voice added before continuing

"It won't link with his channels because there is no fuel in the core, my brother's soul has been nearly destroyed after all this time, we need to use MERI one more time!" The tone of her voice was quite distressed.

"This could attract the attention of the ERB and result in all of us getting arrested, I have to check with the others and see if they would agree to take part in this" The mild voice, apparently called Dean said.

"Dean is with you on this, don't worry Chrissy." The owner of this voice was a person named Maya, Dean's fiancée and the woman he heard the most during his tenure as a jello person.

"I know that Maya, what I'm saying is that we should've installed that piece of hardware in Del's core months ago…" Chrissy said before Del heard the sound of sliding doors opening and closing.

"She's really been worse as of late, the two-year mark since Del and Matt's deaths is next Friday… coupled with the Theocracy's recent provocations, I can only imagine how much it weighs on her..." Maya said in a defeated voice.

"It's weighing on all of us, which is why we have to pull this off. Not to mention getting Del back, if we pull this off, the academic and scientific landscape of Noth would evolve to the next stage!" Dean said as sounds of computers beeping and doors opening were heard by Del.

"I'll visit Rasuu and his team to see if they're on board for the procedure, you go to the R&D department and tell Upalj to come to my office in 30 minutes." Dean added while moving towards the hallway.

Before leaving the room he turned back towards Maya with a look full of meaning and conviction. "On your way back go to Main server room 2 and retrieve the object from MERI, if she raises any question say these words "Project ZX triple O has started."

Maya quickly left the room, leaving Del to his own devices.

'Looks like the plan is to put some kind of object in my "core"... this inner realm, mana core and mana channels are still a mystery to me,' Del pondered.

'I have to wait and see what they have in store for me, I'm just hoping it won't be painful.' Del thought to himself; a thought which would soon be proven very wrong.

---

"Bastaaaaards!" Delvin screamed to himself.

One tends to do so when exposed to excruciating pain.

During this so-called "Integration initiation" Del was exposed to searing pain almost day-in day-out, his inner ponderings were basically grinded to halt but he managed some semblance of thought when the scientists stopped their operations.

During these short moments of rest, Delvin figured out the scientists were placing a piece of a supercomputer into this Mana core in an effort to boot up his body and re-awaken the link between his mind and soul.

Delvin was confused by the concept of the soul; an incorporeal, energy-like substance which filled the nucleus of someone's mana core, effectively acting as an engine for every living being.

It was his soul that needed saving, it was his soul that was inert and dormant… his damaged soul was a product of his own actions as he found out through the scientists' tales.