An Unbound Soul

Cluma was fidgeting, repeatedly sitting down, standing up, wandering around the room, and sitting down again.

"What time is it?" she asked, for the millionth time of the morning.

"Ten seconds later than when you asked ten seconds ago," I answered, invoking [Clock]. "You still have more than a minute to wait."

"Argg! Why can't it just hurry up?"

"Calm down. What's the worst that's going to happen?"

Cluma didn't answer, but continued to shuffle around. Meanwhile, I kept an eye on [Clock], watching as it ticked towards midday.

ding

Skill [Clock] advanced to level 16

"There, it just passed fifth bell," I said, watching Cluma carefully as Dawnhold's timekeeping bell sounded outside.

She stopped fidgeting, carefully inspecting herself, and taking a few deep sniffs. "I feel... normal?" she tried, before sagging in disappointment.

"You were hoping it wouldn't work, weren't you?"

She twitched, looking guilty. "Maybe just a little bit?"

"You never know. It might kick in randomly a week from now."

Cluma pouted cutely before giving a big melodramatic sigh. "Well, since mating season has been cancelled, I suppose we should get back to doing something useful. How about helping you get over your problem with bugs?"

I shuddered, but I had promised, before our plans got radically screwed over. Besides, I'd had enough of snakes for a few days.

"Fine. To Synklisi, then," I reluctantly agreed.

A quick outfit change and teleport later, and we were on our way to the great dungeon. I didn't want to spend all day zapping bugs though, so we stopped off at the general store for maps through to floor twenty. A quick glance at them was enough to show that the dungeon's theme of having no theme continued. Floor eleven was non-aggressive kobolds. Twelve was very aggressive wolves. Then there was some type of small dinosaur, something the map called a 'twisted crawler', and for floor fifteen, spore throwers.

The pair of us were getting some odd looks as we walked around, and it took me far longer than it should have done to notice the streets were completely devoid of adult beastkin. I kept my [Mana Sight] off, concerned that if I used it, I might accidentally find them.

"Why am I getting stared at too?" I muttered.

"Your helmet, silly," giggled Cluma. Right. Dressed like this, I looked like a beastkin myself from front on. From the back, my lack of tail was more obvious.

"At least the dungeon will be a little quieter."

"True," she said, with another little pout that made it obvious she'd prefer to not be in a dungeon either.

I had to admit; I was starting to come around to the point of view of this mysterious beastkin progenitor. Humans were over-complicated, and sometimes I wished I didn't need to bother. What would her opinion of the System messing around with Earth have been?

Could I build a metaphor for the Law that I could explain to Cluma without it being immediately wiped from her mind?

"Cluma, remember the Emerald Caverns' dungeon break? If you could have snapped your fingers and replaced everyone's classes and skills with high-rank combat related stuff, letting them defend themselves, but leaving them stuck with the new classes, would you?"

"Huh? Why?"

"Well, Erryn saved everyone that time, but she won't be able to a second time. Lots of people would die."

"But it's not possible to give someone high-rank skills."

"I know. It's just a thought experiment."

Cluma's look of confusion made it obvious she didn't understand where I was coming from, which was fair. I hadn't exactly given a great explanation.

"If you don't do anything, lots of people would die. If you did, even more people who had deliberately chosen non-combat classes, who had no intention of becoming delvers or fighting, would be forced to do something they didn't want to. You'd save lives, but the price would be the freedom of more people than you saved."

"Huh? Of course I would! Lives are far more important! There isn't anyone who would refuse to fight in that situation."

Bah. That metaphor slipped past the Law, but the Law still coloured her answer; she'd specifically referred to 'anyone', despite the fact that without the Law, that would certainly not be true. I needed to build an example that didn't involve people. Dragging not-Blobby out of her room to defend the town when she didn't want to? That was just getting further away from what the Law actually was... How about something less concrete?

"Do you think that's okay in general? Taking away someone's ability to make a choice to help someone else?"

Cluma gave me the confused look of someone who knew what choice the people involved would make in that situation. This line of questioning really wasn't working.

"What's going on? You have something on your mind, so why not come out and say it?"

'Because you wouldn't remember, and I don't like watching you lose memories,' is the answer I didn't give.

"You know how there are monsters that use soul affinity, that can send you to sleep, or cause confusion, or show hallucinations?"

"Yeah?"

"What would you think if there was one of them around, but it didn't want to hurt you? Instead, it would make you forget everything sad, and stop you thinking sad thoughts or even realising that anyone else could be sad."

Cluma's eyebrows knotted together as her confusion grew. "Seriously? What sort of question is that? What's going on?"

"Give me an answer, and I'll try to explain."

"Well, I don't want to be sad, but some things are. Like... Mum and Dad in the Emerald Nest. It was sad, but I don't want to forget it. Now what's this all about? If you're just trying to procrastinate..."

"Maybe a little, but mostly I'm just trying to work out some things. That monster is real, and it really is messing with your mind. It's not sadness that it makes you forget, but I can't tell you what it is doing because it won't let me. Remember the thing with the twins at the start of the year? The monster was starting to affect them, and I was looking for a way to protect them, but it turned out they didn't want me to. And now the monster has its sights set on Earth, and I don't know what to do."

Cluma stared at me in horror. "There's a monster making me forget things?" she asked, somewhat panicked. "Since when?"

"Since the day you were born. You don't need to worry about it; for this world, it's normal, and it's us reincarnates that are odd."

"Don't worry about it?! You can't tell me a monster is messing with my mind and then tell me not to worry about it!"

Had I pushed things too far by telling her that? I didn't think so. It wasn't a monster, but other than that, I hadn't said anything inaccurate, and Cluma was panicking about it. Then again, all she knew was that it was messing with her head, not what it was doing. Would that make any difference?

And now I was going to make another decision for the sake of my own comfort, rather than stopping to consider what Cluma would want.

"It's not really a monster; the one who set up the mind control is Erryn, the earth mother. It's because of her current absence that it's going out of control. And what she makes you forget is that you can hurt people. Look around; most people on the street are weaker than you. What's stopping you from drawing your daggers and stabbing them in their hearts?"

Cluma's face flickered through several expressions, from the previous horror to confusion, then to emptiness, then to a more normal smile.

"Come on, let's get you used to the bugs."

"Sorry," I said.

"Huh? What for?" she replied, completely unaware that I'd just deliberately triggered our previous conversation to be purged from her memories. And to think it had been only a minute earlier I'd told myself I didn't want to cause her to get memory wiped, but it was better than watching her panic without me being able to explain anything.

"Never mind."

And so we registered as usual at the entrance before teleporting ourselves to floor six, where it didn't take long to encounter one of the grotesque creatures.

"That was very impressive," commented Cluma, once I'd killed it.

"Thanks."

"Now, why couldn't you do that to the hydra?"

"Whatever do you mean?" I asked innocently.

"You just blatantly curved the lightning bolt around the corner, so you didn't have to look at the monster."

I maintained my look of innocence. To be fair to myself, it was more of a gentle curve than a corner, so there wasn't much bending required. It wasn't as if I'd just pulled a stunt I'd never been able to do before. I hadn't even had any skill levels for it.

"Perhaps the lightning hates these things as much as I do?" I suggested.

Cluma blew a raspberry. "Okay, next one, no lightning glove or [Far Reach]. Fight properly!"

We located the next monster, and as requested, I fought at melee range, albeit at the maximum reach of my sword-staff.

"Better," said Cluma carefully, "but for the next one, how about you keep your eyes open?"

"Sheesh, you're just adding one condition after another," I moaned.

I'd just had a slightly weird conversation with her about forcing people to do things they didn't want to do, but who was this benefiting? Her, I suppose; if we went delving and I froze up on sighting a particularly nasty monster, she'd be in as much trouble as me. And yes, of course, I'd also be in trouble.

It wasn't as if I needed to get over my giant-bug phobia. The monsters in a dungeon never came as a surprise, so we could just avoid dungeons that had them. But since the great dungeon had them, I suppose that would be tough; I didn't really want to avoid the great dungeon.

The maps didn't have diagrams on, but the name 'twisted crawler' sounded like it might have far too many legs for my liking.

We spent an hour hunting individual centipedes, during which time I managed to grow my tolerance considerably, before we returned to the floor's entrance and teleported to floor ten, bypassing not-Blobby.

I stared at the massive nest of centipedes, shuddering, wishing I had something bigger than my lightning glove. A bomb of some sort.

... Wait.

What would happen to a lightning glove if it overloaded? With the new knowledge from [Advanced Runecrafting], I knew it would explode. How big an explosion?

Erryn had asked me not to introduce Earth weapons, but had been okay with Earth knowledge inspiring the lightning gloves. Could I build a magical grenade? Something with a mana battery in its core, then a mana collection layer on top, then mana shielding on top of that. Peel off the shielding, let it start gathering mana, and when the battery overloaded it would explode. Maybe put another layer in between the receiver and battery, filled with nails or metal shards. It would be nice to slap a sharpness enchantment on them, but each shard would need to be done individually, so it wouldn't be practical. I could at least use one of the mana-steel alloys, though. How much damage would it do? I knew from experience that fast moving bits of metal wouldn't always beat out stats.

How did my endurance compare to the hydra's? Could I make some mana-material bullets for Earth to shoot me with on their next visit, to see what difference it made?

"Umm... If they're that bad, we can skip them and try again another day," said Cluma.

"Huh? What?" I asked, having momentarily forgotten about the nest of centipedes.

"Your face. You looked... scary."

I let my grin widen. "So I should; I was having very scary thoughts. I know how you're going to beat the hydra."