Interlude - Chouryou

"A splendid question. Allow me to return that question with another question. A creature, one that completely lost his original body, tries to restore itself with its own power. What do you think it is that returns its flesh to its original state?"

"The flesh is recording one's own flesh. Whether skin peels or flesh is lot, the body is restored because in the body lies the design schematics."

"Yes, the configuration map recorded in DNA. But my case is different. I have lost the flesh that had recorded how my body was composed. I cannot restore my body with a design chart. In my case, what do you think it is that remembers oneself, that returns me back to my original 'form'."

The answer was obvious. It was the soul. Not of the laws of the material world that the flesh belongs to, but what lies above, the record of the object that is part of the concept that is called the Astral Plane, the memory body kept by the world itself......As long as the soul was intact, he could regenerate his former self, should even his flesh, genes, cells be lost.

Therefore, the elder Magus is,...

"I see. You keep only your own soul alive and assimilate the flesh of the living....that is the secret of your immortality, Magus? And so, you cannot take any other form. What is keeping you alive is not the flesh, but the soul.
And so, you cannot take any form outside of your own soul, I trust?"

"Of course I can't. I am not using the bodies of the feeble because I want to.
....Hear me. This is the only form I can make and even then if I don't change it regularly, it is a mangled job that is doomed to rot. In older times, 50 years I could go by with one replacement, but now I am forced to take another body once every few months in order to survive......No one can understand that patheticness, that pain of rotting! Do not confuse me with being immortal, the Assassin of this cycle. Never call that immortality again!"

Aggitation was mixed in the voice of the elder Magus. 3 days since he was summoned. The assassin had finally uncovered the truth of his summoner.

"....I see. What is rotting is not the flesh,"
".....What is rotting is the soul.
The accumulation of time can affect even an astral body. For that reason, my body is rotting. If the configuration map that is the soul rots, then of course the flesh would also rot."