I am a mage, with an infinite mana bar!

Chapter 231 The Object Within a Shell

"Eli, why are you crying?"

Leon Frey looked at his sister in surprise, unable to help but guess the contents of the letter.

Since the night of the evil spirits' rampage and the assassination attempt, when his father Lawrence and older brother Raymond died one after another, he had rarely seen Eli's face show any obvious expression.

Count Lawrence Frey was said to have been assassinated by Luke Gattuso, the butler of the Golden Tower, while Raymond died in the bed of a dissolute lady in Roan, his heart shattered by assassins from the Iron Blood Brotherhood.

Lyon sighed. He never expected that after such a huge turn of events at the banquet, he would still have the mood to do such a thing.

The eldest brother's last act of bringing shame upon the family before his death overshadowed the grief of his siblings.

That night, if it weren't for the timely activation of the magical mechs distributed throughout the city by the White Tower Society, coupled with the tireless efforts of other mage towers, the losses would have been even more severe.

But the two Ironblood Brotherhood prisoners who were captured by sheer luck committed suicide in an inexplicable manner before they could even be interrogated.

It was as if they had completed a self-sacrifice ritual in a very short time, their flesh and blood condensing into two tiny figures.

One shouted, "Long live the King of the Hills!" while the other yelled, "Down with Francis the Long-Legged Toad and his whore queen!"

They then collapsed on the spot.

Of course, these two declarations did not reach more people's ears.

After the night of the assassination, Eli seemed like a different person. She became taciturn, spending most of her time on magical research and frequently traveling between the Green Tower and the depths of the Whispering Forest where they were now.

Eli quickly stopped crying and looked ahead. There was nothing there, but she could tell that Lynn was still there.

When she first met Lynn, she noticed the abnormality in him; the magic net connecting him to the outside world appeared as strands of light in her eyes.

At this moment, those radiant lights also appeared here.

She turned around, looked up at a weeping willow tree that had just sprouted new green leaves, and upon closer inspection, she could see that each leaf emitted a faint, strange light.

"Thanks to the help of Professor Farino and Charlotte, the branch of this Tree of Life has actually sprouted."

Three months ago, she watched her father fall in front of her, but Luke did not continue to attack her. Instead, he ran away as if in a daze.

She desperately cast spells to heal him, exhausting all her magic, but Lawrence Frey's injuries were not physical.

His soul was torn to shreds by Luke's sudden magic; the annihilation of his spirit left him utterly sane, his very being vanished.

This caused him to completely lose contact with the outside world, and the depletion of his magic caused his body to wither quickly, eventually leading to his death.

Eli was in a state of utter disorientation. Her entire life had been spent growing up under the protection of her father and brother, but now that strong support had crumbled, and despair was overwhelming her.

But what runs deeper is hatred.

Just as she was weeping in sorrow, a black cat, head held high, strode in through the treasure vault door.

He still had a letter in his mouth.

Eli watched it warily; after a series of unexpected events, she was now hostile to everything.

But the little guy was like a simpleton; he walked up to her, dropped the envelope, snuggled into her arms, yawned, and fell asleep.

It was well past midnight after all.

Eli paused for a moment before remembering to put down his staff and pick up the letter to read it.

When she saw the contents of the letter, she was plunged into a huge shock and disbelief.

In the letter, Lynn explained in detail his plan to perish together with Adonis's evil spirit, and also revealed his backup plan: to seal himself and the residents of Colin Town who had been banished by the evil spirits with the help of the witch of fate, Eliora.

Just as Eli had just witnessed his father's soulless death, Lynn also had his own guesses in mind.

He hoped Eli could find a way to heal those who had perished from losing their souls.

This letter undoubtedly saved Eli from the brink of collapse.

She found a goal she had to achieve, and in an instant she made up her mind that she had to spare no effort to complete Lynn's plan and bring back the victims of Colin Town.

Moreover, she longed for Lynn's return.

She hoped that day would come as soon as possible.

From that night on, she was a completely different person. Before, she was always somewhat undisciplined and lacked motivation in learning magic. In the eyes of teachers such as Barton and Farin, Eli was wasting her talent.

But with Lynn's appearance and her invitation to join the Magic Network, her attitude began to change.

And now, he's practically neglecting to eat or sleep.

She practically lived at Green Tower Camp, spending her days either discussing topics related to magic, soul, and life with Farin, Charlotte, and others, or burying herself in books, making up for much of the knowledge she had previously missed.

It was a conversation with the old rabbi, the gatekeeper of the Tree of Life, that truly inspired her.

For the first time, she clearly understood the relationship between the spellcaster's body and soul.

In the modern world of magic, the soul is a wondrous entity composed of spirituality, mind, and magic. Spirituality and mind are possessed by all intelligent beings, including all humanoid races, regardless of whether they are spellcasters or not.

The mind controls the self, and spirituality communicates with the outside world; together, they constitute human wisdom.

It is the existence of magic that creates the chasm between spellcasters and non-spellcasters.

If we use an egg as a metaphor for an individual in an intelligent species, then the physical body is the sturdy eggshell, while the spirituality and mind together constitute the yolk at the core.

The magic, on the other hand, is the egg white that fills the space between the yolk and the shell.

This analogy is not entirely accurate, because Eli, as a spellcaster, subconsciously thinks from the perspective of the spellcaster himself, imagining himself as a more complete being.

But this also clearly shows that the soul is what is inside that shell.

This evil spirit invasion was caused by Adonis's lambs forcibly taking over the bodies of those who were not spellcasters. The two merged and transformed into half-human, half-demon monsters.

They were like eggs without egg whites, filled with something whole inside a shell. When Lynn forcibly expelled this thing from the shell, because they had already merged, the original yolk was also taken away.

The final result was just a complete eggshell, which could not be called life at all.

"So I need to find a way to replenish their spirit and spirituality—" Eli thought intently.

She and the rabbi were in the space of the Tree of Life. Looking up, the enormous sacred tree resembled a wall standing at the end of the world.

She suddenly realized.

"The Tree of Life's power can trace the trajectory of all things; it is itself a history book of life. If I can read the knowledge it records, perhaps I can find those people—and awaken their spirit and spirituality!"