"Urrrgh... Of all the things you could have asked... In short, I don't know. Well, I can tell you what we, me and the rest of the research team, have found out until now. Though it isn't all that much.", James said, sporting a complicated expression.

"Ok.", Dexter answered.

"Good, let me think for a moment... Where should I start? Very well, let me start from the beginning. First of all, magic. Normally, everything in the world acts according to the laws of nature, meaning, things like the first law of thermodynamics and gravity, the whole Physics stuff. Oh right, just ask if you don't understand something, ok? Anyways. As I said, that's normally the case. But that is where magic comes into play. Magic, or to be precise, mana, is a kind of 'energy' that any being with a soul can use to bend or break these laws to their own convenience. That is what we call magic.

Next, the soul. The general consensus is that only something with a free will has a soul. Though, that too isn't completely clear. Pretty much every human has one, but, while extraordinarily rare, there are also some without. There are even some animals that have souls and, this is where it gets a little weird, even rarer than humans without a soul but definitely confirmed, there are even some plants and even rocks and other miscellaneous objects with souls. The reason souls are important is that they act as something like a gate through which a magician can draw mana to use magic. What that means is that only something with a soul isn't bound by the laws of nature, and that is why only those with a soul are considered to have a truly free will.

Anyways, I'm getting off track. Until about five years ago, the only way to get your hands on mana was by drawing t through your soul. But five years ago, the first 'mana outbreak' happened. Basically, a huge amount of mana appears in an area without any apparent reason. While mostly nothing much happens, sometimes these areas change in all kinds of weird ways.

And finally, almost four years ago, a man with the name Alexander Kingsley had the bad luck to be right in the middle of such an outbreak. While nothing changed in the surrounding area, the man himself completely disappeared, only leaving behind what we called 'the anomaly' back then. It was pretty much just a big mass of mana, big enough that it became visible, with a soul. It was actually quite the hassle to find a way to move it away from that place.

Well, As you may be able to guess already, that 'anomaly' is you.", at that moment, James got interrupted by the sound of the door slamming open.

Through it, came a small, redhaired woman wearing glasses and a lab coat. From the sweat on her forehead and her panting, one could clearly see that she had been running all the way here. Behind her were a few more, similarly clothed people, all sporting different degrees of dishevelment.

"Ah, Kate, are all of you finally here? Well, Dexter, this is Kate, the leader of this Research group. Kate, this is Dexter.", James calmly introduced the woman.

"Hello.", Dexter greeted her, even though it was still just an indistinguishable groan.

The woman's eyes became big from astonishment.

"2õU'XÇwi IðÂÜ t‡bØÑJŠ ÓK7üUp3 úr7q õ¼ññ áýmqóoÌ4häïêëô. $õFÍËÿóƒD Ôöð% Ëîh0¹Ÿöë Âüp°løB ñlþë­3ÕÙæ%!", the woman, Kate, said something in an excited voice, with wild hand gestures very similar to what James had done before.

"Calm down.", Kate looked at him with an expression that seemed to say that he shouldn't be stupid and James continued: "...Or not. I'm currently telling Dexter a bit about our research. It's actually quite astounding, it seems like he understood almost everything that I explained until now. As ridiculous as it sounds, you could say that he has 'common sense'. I mean, with the help of 'soul translation', we can even talk without a problem.

Hmmm... Dexter, would you mind if they make some tests while I continue explaining? It won't take long."

"Ok."

A group of three women, including Kate, and five men entered the hospital room and started to work on the different machines that were standing around in the room while talking to each other in low voices, throwing a glance at Dexter every now and then.

"Where was I? Right, the anomaly. Originally it only looked like a colorful cloud without any specific form, but as time went by, it slowly started to take a humanoid shape. Well, long story short, over the time of almost four years, it slowly took the shape of your current body. Although, until yesterday, you didn't move even a single millimeter.

And as frustrating as it is, we still have no idea why or how any of this happened. Any more questions?", James finished his explanation.

"Why are you calling me Dexter?", he asked.

"You mean why we aren't calling you Alexander? That has actually to do with where we currently are. We are currently in the Academy of Raiklas, the greatest, and only, magic academy in the entire world. Let's just say this place has some very unique features. Whenever a person who is capable of using magic enters the academy, their name automatically appears on the door of one of the academies' dorm rooms and only disappears with their death. And, although the number has risen since the mana outbreaks started, there are only very few people who fall into that category."

"Yes."

James looked surprised for a moment, it was the first time Dexter had said something without being forced to react, but soon he continued: "In addition, the entrance to the Academy is strictly regulated. But, a few days after you were brought into the academy, the name 'Dexter' appeared on one of the doors. Well, within several weeks before the name was found, only a total of three people who potentially could have been the cause, had entered the academy grounds, but none of them had been able to open the door of that room. Meaning, it wasn't theirs.

Well, that actually isn't the whole story. At that time, you were still just nothing but a cloud of colors, so we never thought that it could be you and the whole thing became something like an urban legend after a month or two. It took almost half a year before you started to take a more defined shape and another four months before it became clearly humanoid in appearance.

It was only then that Kate called you 'Dexter' as a joke, after the name of this research project. Its called 'Project Dexterity'. And by the way, this name has been given to it by the higher ups and no one understands why. That name is pretty much completely unrelated to the theme if our research. It actually took embarrassingly long before anyone remembered that urban legend and made the connection."

"But how..."

"No, stop!", James interrupted him: "I know what you want to ask, and my answer is: I have no idea. As I said, Raiklas has many unique and magical features of which most are still being researched. The whole thing about the rooms is actually one of the greatest mysteries."

Jeanean

Just in case it wasn't clear: Dexter and Alexander Kingsley are two completely different people.

Jeanean

Laplace's demon

We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.

— Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities