An Unbound Soul

I poked unhappily at my status as Cluma disinfected my spilt blood, just in case. [Test Subject] hadn't fired. I hadn't got any skill or class levels. Heck, I hadn't even got a [Xenophilia] evolution. Surely I was due one of them by now? Then again, as Camus had pointed out with such vitriol, beastkin were not humans with extra fluffy bits, whereas that was all I was. My mindset was probably wrong to upgrade that trait.

At least my tail made more physical sense than my ears. It had connected itself properly to the base of my spine, and using [Mana Sight] to conduct some internal investigation, I couldn't see any difference between mine and Cluma's. On the outside, my fur was the same brown as my hair, with mottled lighter patches. I swished it back and forth experimentally, and while I was a bit clumsy with it, the fact was that I could. My ears were twitching around in excitement.

"(I'm worried about you,)" sighed Harry. "(I thought you were odd from when we first met, but now I see that was you trying to behave. Now that we're stuck together, you seem to be showing your true colours.)"

"(Huh? Are you calling me crazy?)"

"(Being murdered has to have some psychologically detrimental effect,)" he half-answered, which was as good as a yes to my ears. All four of them.

"(Being murdered, being reborn with memories intact and having to breastfeed, not to mention the d-word, then discovering the world was mind controlled and having no idea who did it or when they would come for me. Then Erryn started 'encouraging my growth', which was pretty darn terrifying. Going through puberty for a second time wasn't helpful, either. I think I'm doing quite well, considering.)"

"(Yeah, his craziness is what makes him interesting. It would be boring if he behaved like everyone else,)" interjected Cluma in almost perfect English. [Analysis] showed she'd gained a level at some point in the last day. No wonder the others had been able to hold conversations with her in depth enough to uncover the Law.

"(You are not helping...)" I muttered. I wanted to claim sanity, not that my insanity was my most interesting point.

Abigail burst out laughing. "(Well, I for one am up for trying it. I've always wanted cat ears.)"

Cluma stared, as did Cara, Harry and the guards. Meanwhile, Calvin's expression went complicated.

"(So, who's developed any traits yet?)" I asked in what, despite appearances, was not at all a change of subject.

All six hands went up.

"(And how many of them are [Xenophilia]?)" I added.

Four hands went down instantly. Two hesitated, but nevertheless quickly followed. Thought so. Didn't even need [Eye of Judgement].

"Aww," went Cluma, disappointed, before sniffing and looking around in confusion. They didn't have the same Law patch to let her know they could lie.

"Don't worry; there's still time," I whispered to her, refraining from warning those two that Cluma could literally smell the trait on them. It would be a source of amusement later on. "(Anyway, everyone is awake, has full health pools, and no-one is involuntarily ejecting biological matter through any orifices. Well, except for sweat and stuff, but that doesn't count. I know we're going to keep up the quarantine for a few more days, but that doesn't mean you need to stay cooped up in this one room.)"

"(We wouldn't turn down a tour,)" replied Harry, adding, "if you yes," towards Raymond, which wasn't great grammar, but still got his question across.

"Huh? You mean agree? Agree to what?"

"These six having a tour of the institute."

"I have no objections. [Diagnosis] still shows no sign of disease in anyone from this world, and while I can't be certain the skill would accurately name an unknown disease from another planet, it should show me something."

Of course, despite me making the suggestion, I was hardly best placed to give the tour. I knew the route from reception to Grover's workshop, and from there to the fenced-off, cratered field. I could probably find Kari's office if pushed, and I could vaguely remember where Vargalas's was. That was about it, though. I had no clue where Simon's workshop was any more, or if he was still working on bicycles.

We found a receptionist, who had little to do with the place closed to visitors. Raymond tagged along too, ostensibly to check everyone with [Diagnosis], but really because he was equally interested.

Things had changed a lot since my last tour. The glass workshop had gone; glass was a solved problem, subsumed by the System. Simon had graduated from bicycles to airships; the local mastery of engineering was not yet at the level required to build complex machines like helicopters or planes, but a supply of air-touched steel and wood with the structural integrity advantage that came from carpentry skills was more than sufficient for a lightweight structure that could be lifted by a large balloon packed with fire and ice crystals, with a small amount of mana control circuitry to control their output.

Of course, the balloon itself was made of monster skin, even if the cabin wasn't, but I'd long since got used to monster bits being used for that sort of thing. The Earthlings, on the other hand, hadn't.

"(What's this?)" asked Cara, stroking the folded hide. "(It feels rubbery, but there's almost no weight to it.)"

"The skin of a swamp floater," replied Simon, once I'd translated for him.

Her hand froze. "(A what?)"

I had to rely on Simon, never having heard of the type of monster before.

"They are, basically, living blimps. Except that they're full of poisonous gasses. They hover over their prey, eject their poison downwards, then sink on top of the corpse, engulf and absorb it."

Cara removed her hand very quickly.

"(Don't worry. I'm sure there's no poison left,)" I reassured her. To me, they sounded kinda like slimes. Maybe they were; I knew slime specialisations that made use of magical affinities existed. Maybe this was an air variety.

The possibly-slimes aside, I was impressed. I had no idea they'd been working on airships, yet it seemed they were almost ready to go. A cylindrical construction—shaped like a jet engine but filled with bands of fire and air crystals instead of blades—provided thrust. The small cabin provided somewhere to sit. The blimp was ready to inflate. As far as I could see, they only needed to take it out and put it all together. It was very small, and obviously a proof of concept rather than an end product, but it was still cool. Perhaps they'd have issues with enlarging the blimp, but even if there were issues with structural integrity, I didn't see why they couldn't use several smaller ones, or ask Grover to put a rank five durability enchantment on it.

The next workshop we visited was Kari's, where I finally got to learn what it was she actually did.

"I'm researching the interactions between the System and plant-life," she explained.

"Like, the size of the boost from farming skills, all else being equal?" I asked after translating for our guests.

"No. Well, maybe a little. But mostly, it's questions like 'can you selectively breed plants for a larger health pool or higher stats?', 'can a plant gain levels' and 'what do stats actually mean to a plant?'"

"Wait, what? Plants have stats? And levels? But... they don't interact with the System in that way..."

I flipped [Soul Perception] on to check, confirming that no plants in the room had a System shard in them. Besides, the size of the unfiltered list of System shards back in the ark would have been a lot longer.

... Hang on. Monsters had levels and stats too, along with all three types of pool, and they certainly had no System shards. They had no soul into which to embed them. What would [Eye of Judgement] say?

Begonia (Level 1)

Health: 7/7

Strength: 1

Dexterity: 2

Endurance: 2

Intelligence: 1

Wisdom: 1

Charisma: 1

This species of perennial plant is inedible and has no practical applications, but is often grown for ornamental purposes.

No abilities, and it was lacking a stamina or mana pool, but as Kari said, it had health and stats. And a level. Yes, it was mostly full of ones, but even so...

"Any findings so far?" I asked, suddenly a lot more interested in plants than ever before.

"Stats certainly seem to be inherited; the seeds of plants where both parents have one dexterity are over ninety percent ones, with the rest getting twos. If one parent has two, it's more like eighty/twenty. Both parents, and it's fifty/fifty. I've even had one three. I've never managed to get a plant to gain a level, though."

Perhaps that was what separated something with a System shard from something without; the potential for growth. Or at least, artificial growth. My stats were far beyond what a human should be biologically capable of. The plant was just growing normally, and the System display was based on its regular biology. Maybe I should ask not-Blobby if she'd ever levelled, or would she consider that rude?

"Monsters have stats and levels too," I pointed out, "but they never level up, and their stats don't increase. Only people showed up in the lists in the ark. You probably need to be fully attached to the System to level."

"Maybe, but remember that when you detach someone from the System, all skills ceased working on them, yet skills work fine on my plants. There must be some level of attachment."

I had to concede the point. It was interesting research indeed, albeit a bit time-consuming for me to want to join in. Preservation enchantments were a thing, creating time-stopped storage. Was the opposite possible? Temporally accelerated storage, in which her plants could undergo a week of growth in a day?

We left Kari's workroom and went on to visit Grover, who had successfully built several internal combustion engines and was now trying to improve them with magic. There was the mildly cheating version, which was simply a regular version with a durability and comfort enchantment slapped on, rendering the pistons nearly frictionless with zero oil required and able to handle more fuel safely. Then there was the blatantly cheating version, which used no fuel at all, with air crystals at the base of each piston instead, and a complex arrangement of mana pathways injecting each one with a burst of mana just as the piston reached the bottom of its stroke. Another one worked in a similar manner, except with a pair of fire and ice crystals, and completely sealed pistons.

"(What are you staring at?)" asked Russell, who lacked [Mana Sight] or any other skill to see the inside of the box.

I left Grover to explain, struggling to translate his enthusiastic torrent as quickly as he emitted it.

"(This sort of thing would solve so many problems on Earth,)" opined Harry.

"(Pah. The oil moguls would do their best to stop it. The internet would be full of stories about how mana-powered machinery causes cancer before you'd even finished your first demonstration.)"

"(Yes. Vested interests will always try to preserve their market, but at best they'd slow it down.)"

"(And how many mobs will they incite first? How many factories would be firebombed? I'd stake my life that at least some of the opposition to wormhole technology was controlled or funded by energy companies.)"

"(Yes, yes,)" interrupted Abigail. "(No need to spread your cynicism; we have enough of our own already. Don't forget why we're here. Besides, Earth has no mana, so these inventions wouldn't work.)"

We moved on once more, and our tour guide opened the door to Vargalas's workroom. We spent a few seconds watching the elf laughing maniacally, standing in the middle of a circle of sparking pillars. Dominic closed the door again.

"(Sorry, but in my capacity as your guard, I must insist we skip that one,)" he said. The others nodded in wordless agreement.

"(He's just a bit funny about lightning,)" I said, feeling a need to give the man at least some defence. "(Okay, a lot funny,)" I added, to make the statement less factually inaccurate.

Another room that caught me by surprise was a library. A real one, with real books. Some of those books came from Earth, admittedly, but not all. The researchers here had been compiling their own notes of their work, and it had all ended up here. A group of three people were crowded around a university-level physics textbook, which was open to a page about Maxwell's equations, and were debating how they could go about measuring the speed of darkness. When I started translating their conversation, Calvin immediately pointed out the obvious, that darkness was simply the absence of light and hence asking about its speed wasn't sensible.

Then I reminded him what planet he was on by taking a darkness crystal out of my [Item Box], which shone its darkness over our corner of the room.

The tour ended rather abruptly as the researchers joined in the conversation, leaving me desperately trying to keep up with the translations. An hour later, they had an experiment planned.