The Rolling Forward Era

Serim Zolgen's Research Notes:

August 30, 1794. Didn't pay attention to the weather. Probably sunny.

The new homunculus experiment had failed again. An unquestionable failure.

Even with an artificially created gemstone body, collapse could not be avoided. Not only had the body collapsed, but the magecraft circuits within the gemstones—already fully inscribed and activated—had also vanished. All that remained was a gemstone body that had lost its magical power, making even reuse impossible.

An analysis of the gemstone body after it lost its affinity for magical power revealed that this was likely a linked reaction. The magecraft circuits came from the same person, and it was in that same person that they lost their activity. The loss of activity was equivalent to "killing" the body, and because the gemstone body had been regarded as a body due to the magecraft circuits, it had been "killed" along with it. This manifested as the loss of affinity for magical power.

This news was utterly dreadful for me. The size was manageable, but even my father could not produce multiple gemstone bodies of such precision in a short period. The inability to reuse them was an enormous blow to us.

I needed to alter the direction of my research somewhat. This laboratory could not sustain itself if we continued using gemstone bodies that were so difficult to produce and relatively precious.

October 9, 1794.

The third homunculus of the second batch collapsed on the operating table.

But this time, something unexpected happened.

The little assistant named Tver Zolgen involuntarily dropped to his knees the instant the homunculus body collapsed. He knelt in the pus that had flowed across the floor after the body's collapse, unable to stop himself from bursting into tears.

"Why—why did it fail again?!" His hands clutched tightly at his