You can't escape Death <Frans>

CHAPTER 36: Failure

"Are we just about ready, Doctor Alphys?" The king waltzed into the laboratory, bearing a child in his arms. Still asleep, she hung solemnly, as if a rag doll compared to the superior Gods before her.

The Goddess of knowledge jumped slightly at the sudden voice of the king. "J-just finishing up some of the final touches, your majesty." She said, the quiver was apparent within the short Goddess' voice at the mere presence of her king.

"Please finish up soon. The child may be starting to stir." The king replied, looking down at the human girl with nervousness. He himself did not know what to expect from his experiment and feared the life of his beloved and the little one he carried.

"P-Place the child here, on this table" Alphys stuttered once more, waddling near the large, metal table in the center of the room. She patted it softly as the King placed the girl down gently, as if she were his own kin.

The was a moment of hesitation within the King's voice as he tried to visualize the right words to say. "Are you sure this will not harm the human?" He said.

This sentence surprised the small Goddess, for she had never seen the King so vulnerable since the Queen's death. Could he have cared about the human girl? She did not know why you could have sympathy for such a corrupted creature. "I c-can't guarantee anything during this process. It's a new experiment for a-all of us here. We will see once the extraction takes p-place." She said, moving back to tinker with the last few things on the machine surrounding the human girl.

"And how will the extraction procedure take place?" The king said, watching Alphys finish up the last preparations.

"W-Well, once we harness the human's soul, the Queen's powers will already b-be apparent to those of us inside of the room." She explained, filling his barren mind full of knowledge. "Y-You see, forcefully taking a soul out of an organism leaves a s-special kind of vulnerability towards the soul. I-It shows the given trait and any other substance within the soul as a p-physical form that we can obtain." She said, pausing from her work to focus on the explanation at hand.

She did not want to misguide the king through the process and focused on her speech with incredible concentration. "H-However, we must proceed with caution once the soul is out of its given vessel. It cannot be exposed to anything that could p-potentially damage the soul either, or it could possibly kill the current h-host." She paused to catch her breath. "We do not n-need an airtight room, however, It is wise to have as few m-monsters in the room during the experiment as p-possible."

There was a moment of silence as the King took in the information given to him. "I see." He replied, awaiting a further explanation from the Goddess.

"O-Once the soul is lifted from the body, we will be able to i-isolate the Queen's force inside of the human's soul. We can separate it by m-moving the nature to a controlled, compact area within the soul, where it is easily e-extracted. Since it will be taking the physical form of the Queen's soul, in t-technicality, we will be able to remove her from the h-human's soul. The only way I see the best fit o-outcome is using a syringe for a gradual withdrawal of her nature; only taking a small a-amount over a period of time." She spoke fluently, as if this was second nature to her. However, it was not hard to notice the quivering tone in her voice of nervousness. Her self-doubt was far too immense for such an in-depth explanation. "I-If too much is taken out at once, the host may go into shock from the rapid d-depletion of the size of the soul."

"Won't the needle hurt the soul?" The king quickly asked, questions arising into his head. He did not know what was going to become of the girl after the procedure takes place and he was curious to find out.

"Y-Yes." Alphys said, with a bit of hesitancy as the King's eyes held the string of doubt within them. "However, there is no painless way of e-extracting a part of the soul. O-Once a part of the soul, it fuses with the given soul trait and is v-virtually impossible to remove from the body."