[Book 1 Completed] Industrial Mage: Modernizing a Magical World [Kingdom Building LitRPG]
B2 | Chapter 31 – What does it mean to be human?

Theodore POV

With a groan that came from deep within his chest, Theodore struck the bed face-first like a bag of rocks.

He turned over on his back and gazed up. The pain in his body wasn't just physical, and it also wasn't the good kind of exhaustion that comes from working hard.

Almost without thinking, he raised his right hand and watched it fall apart. The flesh melted away much like candle wax, revealing the translucent blue slime underneath. When he lost focus, the palm turned into an amorphous blob of slime, the fingers into tendrils, and eventually the hand started to lose its shape, and soon it didn't resemble a hand at all but rather a tendril of slime. Like a tentacle, of sorts. However, it quickly snapped back into a slime hand when he willed it to.

It was just... different, even though it was still his hand and entirely within his control.

It was really different.

He stretched what had been his fingers, stretching and moving the slime around as he pleased. It was strange how it felt. If thick honey had consciousness and the ability to sense itself, it would feel like this. He could feel the individual particles that made up his new form and could sense how they flowed and merged and separated according to his thoughts.

Theodore had to admit that the slime's ability to absorb the dim light that leaked through the tent walls and create refractions that changed and evolved with every movement was fascinating—beautiful, even. Like looking through blue-tinted water, the scene appeared distorted but still recognizable.

Nevertheless, fascination didn't make it any less weird as hell.

This kind of transformation might be normal for people in this world, he supposed. Body mutations were common enough, and he'd seen plenty of adventurers with obvious alterations to their basic human form. These changes appeared to be accepted by the world as a normal aspect of getting stronger and evolving.

For him, though, losing his humanity felt like losing part of his identity.

He had been a human all his life, after all. He had at least kept that fundamental link to his former self here in this weird new world even after transmigrating from Earth.

Now even that was gone.

He let his hand return to its natural shape, seeing flesh and bone come back together as if they had never been separated. Despite the smooth and easy transfer, he felt empty in a sense that was unrelated to his new slime physiology.

He turned into a puddle of slime and relaxed, letting his mind wander.

What did it even mean to be human, anyway?

Was humanity just a matter of species? Having the right DNA, the right biological markers, the right collection of organs and bones and blood? If so, then he'd lost that the moment his body had started incorporating slime into its basic structure. He was something else now, something new that didn't fit into the neat categories that defined normal people.

But that felt too simple.

A mother clutched her dying child in the ruins of her home with smoke still rising from the ashes of everything she'd ever built. The soldiers who'd done this were human, every one of them. They had human hearts that beat with human blood, human brains that processed human thoughts, human hands that had held human-made weapons when they'd decided that conquest mattered more than the lives standing in their way.

That was human.

A beggar shared his last piece of bread with a stray dog, both of them shivering in an alley while snow fell on the city around them. The man had nothing, owned nothing, and meant nothing to the people who stepped over him on their way to somewhere more important. But he saw another creature suffering and chose to ease that suffering with the only thing he had left to give.

That was human too.

In the royal court, nobles schemed and plotted and smiled with perfect teeth while planning each other's destruction. They spoke of honor and duty and the greater good, but their eyes calculated profit and political advantage with every breath. They'd sell their own children if the price was right, justify any atrocity if it served their ambitions, and sleep soundly in beds bought with other people's blood.

They were human, all of them.

A farmer worked his fields from sunrise to sunset, hands cracked and bleeding, back bent under the weight of endless labor. He did it to feed his family, to keep them safe, and to give them a chance at something better than the grinding poverty that had defined his own life. He asked for nothing except the opportunity to keep working, to keep struggling, and to keep hoping that tomorrow might be easier than today.

That was human.

A scholar burned books because they contained ideas that threatened her worldview, destroying centuries of accumulated knowledge because she couldn't bear the possibility that she might be wrong about something important. She told herself she was protecting people from dangerous thoughts and preserving truth against the corruption of heresy, but really she was just afraid. Afraid that learning something new might force her to change, to grow, to admit that the comfortable certainties she'd built her life around were nothing more than castles made of sand.

She was human.

A child gave away her favorite toy to another child who was crying, not because anyone told her to or because she expected something in return, but because seeing someone else's sadness made her own heart hurt. She didn't understand why it hurt, but it did. She didn't understand economics or philosophy or the complex social structures that governed adult behavior. She just knew that sharing felt right, that kindness was better than cruelty, and that making someone smile was worth more than keeping something for herself.

Humanity wasn't a species designation, was it? It wasn't about having the right number of chromosomes or the correct arrangement of internal organs. It was something deeper, something that transcended biology and reached into the messy, complicated, beautiful disaster of consciousness itself.

But if that was true, then what was it exactly?

Maybe humanity was the capacity for choice. The ability to stand at a crossroads and decide which path to take, even when both options led into darkness. Animals followed instinct, machines followed programming, but humans could choose to act against their own nature, against their own survival, and against their own benefit if they believed it was the right thing to do.

Or maybe it was the ability to create meaning from chaos. To look at a universe that seemed random and cruel and indifferent and decide that some things mattered anyway. To build cathedrals and write symphonies and fall in love and have children, all in the face of the absolute certainty that everything would eventually crumble to dust. To keep building beauty even when you knew it wouldn't last.

Could be it was the capacity for empathy. The strange miracle of being able to feel another person's pain as your own, to understand that the consciousness looking out from behind their eyes was just as real and important as the one looking out from behind yours. Most creatures cared about their own survival, their own offspring, and their own pack or herd or colony. Humans could extend that caring to complete strangers, to people they'd never meet, and to generations not yet born.

But then again, humans were also capable of stunning cruelty. Of deliberate, calculated evil that went far beyond anything necessary for survival. Animals killed to eat or to protect their territory, but they didn't torture for entertainment. They didn't build systems of oppression designed to cause maximum suffering while maintaining plausible deniability. They didn't create elaborate justifications for why some lives mattered more than others based on arbitrary characteristics like skin color, birthplace, gender, or religious belief.

Denying that darkness was a part of humanity was hypocritical in and of itself, especially considering that humans, unlike animals, had free will and yet frequently chose cruelty anyway.

Maybe that was the real mark of humanity: the capacity for both transcendent good and absolute evil, often existing within the same person, sometimes within the same moment. The ability to rise above base instinct or sink below it, to choose enlightenment or choose destruction with equal facility.

A soldier could commit atrocities during the day and then go home to read bedtime stories to his children at night, feeling genuine love and tenderness for them while compartmentalizing away the horror he'd participated in just hours before.

A saint could dedicate her life to helping the poor and sick while harboring secret resentments and petty jealousies that ate away at her from the inside.

A tyrant could weep genuine tears at a piece of beautiful music while signing death warrants for thousands of innocent people.

The contradiction, was that what made someone human?

So where did that leave him?

A human hand emerged from the slime puddle, and Theodore flexed his fingers, feeling the slime beneath his skin respond to his will. His body emerged from the slime next, and he was human again.

He was still capable of making decisions, giving meaning to the world, feeling empathy, and grappling with the age-old human dilemmas of right and wrong and the ultimate meaning of everything. Although his body had transformed and his powers had grown in ways that defied conventional understanding, the core of who he was remained the same.

Maybe that was enough.

Or maybe he was just rationalizing.

He'd probably never know for sure.

As he lay there in the dark tent, feeling the weariness finally start to pull him to sleep, Theodore told himself that it might not even matter.

His wandering was cut short by a gentle rustle, then by the sound of something heavy hitting the floor close to his bed. Theodore sat up, already reaching for mana before his brain caught up and he saw who it was.

Miss Bodyguard was standing close to the tent door, her face as unreadable as ever. She may have been carved out of stone for all the emotion she displayed, but there was something in her posture that suggested satisfaction. Much like a cat that had just brought its owner a dead mouse and was waiting for praise.

Looking down, Theodore saw what she had brought him.

A severed, bloody arm.

Wearing the bracer he had seen on Velka during their brief encounter, the arm appeared to have been cleanly cut off just above the elbow.

"Velka?"

"Yes. She attacked while you fought that man."

That made sense, he supposed. He had suspected Velka had been lurking around the edges of the situation, though far enough away he couldn't detect her.

"And you stopped her because?"

As though she was perplexed by the question, Miss Bodyguard cocked her head.

"You'd have died."

"Huh."

They stared at each other for a moment, Theodore trying to read something in her blank expression while she seemed to be waiting for some kind of response.

Finally, he shrugged. There wasn't much point in getting worked up about something that had already been resolved, and he had more pressing concerns anyway.

"So is she dead?"

Miss Bodyguard's expression shifted just slightly, just enough that he could swear he saw the ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. It was there and gone so quickly that he might have imagined it, but the amusement in her voice was unmistakable.

"Of course not."

"Huh."

"Why would I kill your enemies? Isn't that your job?"

Theodore's eye twitched. It was her job…

This woman had just created a whole lot of trouble for him, hadn't she?

Velka would be furious at losing an arm and would surely return, most likely with reinforcements this time. And when that happened, Miss Bodyguard wouldn't intervene again unless his life was directly threatened.

Which meant he'd have to deal with an angry, one-armed assassin who had legitimate grievances against him and nothing left to lose.

Perfect.

Theodore let out a long, suffering sigh and fell back onto the bed, throwing one arm over his eyes to block out the dim light.

Whatever. He'd deal with it later.

For now, he just wanted to rest.

As he closed his eyes, he felt himself sinking into the darkness.

***

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