An Unbound Soul

As I woke up in a jumble of limbs, I realised a rather large flaw in relocating cuddle-time to the bedroom. My bed was where I left the speck of toe I used for teleportation purposes, to ensure a soft landing, but I was currently in my bed. My teleport beacon was thankfully hidden with [Shelter], but using [Redistribute] now would result in an even bigger tangle than I was already in. I could teleport elsewhere, but as long as Cluma was still in my bed, I couldn't get back here. I'd just have to escape manually.

She had her arms wrapped around me, pinning my right arm to my side and nuzzling her face into my chest. Her tail was wrapped around my left leg. My tail was wrapped around her right leg, which was resting on top of me. How in the hells was I supposed to disentangle myself from that? My left arm was simply draped over her, so that was easy enough, but everything else was locked.

... Wait, she wasn't purring.

"You're awake, aren't you?"

"Of course. When have you ever woken up before me?"

"Well, do you think you can let me go?"

"No."

I considered that answer and drew up my list of available options. It wasn't a long list, so I employed my free arm to yank at her tail. She yelped and let go very quickly. And then, of course, took her revenge by grabbing hold of my still-new and very sensitive tail.

Five minutes later—a very eventful five minutes, in which much fur was shed—we were both left panting and giggling, but at least I was no longer a prisoner. "Success!" I declared, having freed myself from my captor.

"So, what's the plans for the day?" asked Cluma, struggling to get her giggling under control. "Institute again?"

That cut off my mirth, replacing it with a series of sighs... The declaration of Harry was still fresh in my mind. The outcome of the conversation was that he would lead a group at the institute to defend against unwanted interdimensional incursion, and in return, I'd tell him everything I knew about the Law and aid him in finding both a defence and a cure. I wasn't happy about it, but the main problem was that I wasn't convinced he was wrong. The sight of my former parents unable to remember one of their children was one that would stay with me forever.

Harry's immigrant group deserved a defence; I'd have agreed with that even before the debate. I was less certain about a cure, but if I was honest, I couldn't see how they could do it. A defence would be hard enough, but at least it could be approached from the side of the System, and if nothing else could be delayed by refusing to buy skills or change class.

For a cure, though, they would need to research soul magic from first principles. None of them were attuned and, aside from me, anyone who was attuned had that fact hidden from them by Law. Everyone would tell them it was impossible for humans to use soul affinity, but I'd already let them know it was soul magic that had ended the previous civilisations, so they wouldn't be fooled. Unless perhaps they assumed Erryn had changed something when recreating the races.

Putting aside whether I wanted to aid them in their goal, I knew the side effects of soul magic. If they did find some way of messing with it, they were likely to end up dead long before countering the Law. Possibly to not-Blobby, if the soul magic backlash didn't get them first.

It was a situation with no right answers.

But... I was an adult. A responsible adult. I'd shared a bed with Cluma, and yet the world hadn't ended. I could cope with this, too, so I wasn't going to shove my head into the sand and ignore the problem. In the absence of correct answers, I'd pick the least wrong one, or at least the one I considered least wrong. I wasn't arrogant enough to believe myself infallible, but if I let myself be stuck in indecision in case a decision turned out, in retrospect, to be incorrect, I'd never do anything.

I'd refused to answer Erryn when she'd first asked, but I'd finally made my decision. It was one of saving lives; not bodies, but minds. I'd tell them of the dangers of soul affinity and what I understood of the Law, and aid them in defending themselves and the children of Earth. I wouldn't help them 'cure' this world, because it was my decision that it didn't need curing. To remove the Law from this world would destroy the culture and kill the peoples Erryn had created, replacing them with a new population.

It was unlikely they'd be able to do anything with the information, and more likely it would find its way back to Earth and cause us problems in the future, but that was still my choice. They deserved a chance. But that would come later. They were currently getting the full Kari experience, having levelled [Language: Common] enough to get by without translation, but still needing some basic magic tuition before they could start on either of their main projects.

... And that was the first incongruity, right there. They knew levelling [Language: Common] brought them closer to the day the Law would bind them, but they did so anyway for the convenience. That was human behaviour to a tee. Short-term gains at the expense of long-term sustainability.

"No. Unless they call for us, we aren't needed back at the institute for the next week. All that time spent in quarantine means the foundations of our new house will have cured by now. Let's head over there."

"Oh, that's a good idea. We did have rain a few days ago, though. Will the wood be damp?"

"Should be dry enough, as long as the hides we put over everything are still there."

They were, leaving me cursing at past-me for spotting the issue of attaching a wooden construction to concrete foundations but not having done anything about it. Past-me had been distracted by the idea of building the place out of mythril, if I remembered correctly. Actually, that seemed a reasonable idea. Why not?

Bah, it was happening again. Why was I so easily distractible?

This house would be wood. The wooden huts back in the village didn't have foundations at all, but just drove wooden stakes into the soil.

I peered at our supply of wood, and then at the foundations. I had [Advanced Carpentry], but lacked [Advanced Masonry]. Stuff I made out of wood—like stakes—would get a bigger System integrity boost than stuff I made out of stone, or stone like materials such as the foundations. I also had [Advanced Runecrafting].

Ten minutes later, I had a pointed stake enchanted with rank two durability and sharpness. The enchantments would decay quickly, but they held long enough for me to aim the thing point downwards and get Cluma to jump up and down on it. It sunk straight into the concrete.

"I feel that were our scientist guests to watch that, they would definitely complain about it," I commented while sharpening a second stake. I'd place them periodically where I wanted walls to be, then nail planks and boards between them.

"Yes, they'd complain about the way you didn't do this before the concrete dried."

Yes, that too. Nevertheless, despite my cluelessness, by the end of the day we had all the posts in place and had started on boarding them up. The next day we'd finished that and started laying trusses for the roof. The weather remained dry, saving us from needing to protect the half-finished construction from the rain, and within the week, we had a complete shell for our house. Admittedly, I'd had to order more wood at one point, and I'd vastly underestimated the number of nails and fittings I needed and had to keep stopping to forge more, but for a first attempt, I'd say it looked pretty good.

ding

Skill [Advanced Carpentry] advanced to level 2

Skill [Advanced Carpentry] advanced to level 3

Skill [Advanced Carpentry] advanced to level 4

Class [Artisan] advanced to level 9

"Is it my imagination, or is that window wonky?" asked Cluma.

Pretty good for a first attempt, anyway. Heck, I'd claim that for a first attempt it was bloody marvellous, especially since it was only me and Cluma building it. Fortunately, I hadn't tried installing glass windows, because it was unlikely they'd have fitted.

"Yes, but I'm fairly sure the wall is skewed in the opposite direction, so they'll cancel out."

"I may have no relevant crafting skills, but I know rubbish when I hear it."

"Tell you what. There's plenty of space here. Once I max out [Advanced Carpentry], how about I build a new place next door, and we hand this one to Darren for fire magic practice?"

"Seems a bit wasteful, but... do you at least promise it's not going to collapse on us?"

"..."

"We're sleeping back in Dawnhold. This place is for day trips only."

"... Yeah. That's probably advisable."

Well, lessons learnt.

ding

New skill acquired: [Advanced Masonry]

I closed my eyes and let the information flow in. Next time, I'd have a much better idea of what I was doing with the foundation, but it would still be advisable for me to pick up more [Advanced Carpentry] levels. My current level of four, even with the extra two from my bracelet and the boost from my enchanted overalls, was insufficient for building a decent quality house on my own. Had Cluma had the skill at the same level, we'd probably have been fine.

Still no boost to [Versatile Crafter], though. Getting that would have given me some extra carpentry levels instantly, if everything leapt to the level of [Advanced Runecrafting]. I had nine skills now, and the only one left, [Advanced Glasswork], only came into existence recently. It wouldn't make sense for the title to require it. Were there other crafting skills I didn't know about, that [Artisan] didn't let me buy because I'd never unlocked the rank one versions? Maybe it simply required all of the skills, no matter how many there were? Or another option was that skills like [Hunting] and [Foraging] counted towards the title, even though they didn't get rolled up into [Basic Crafting]. Or yet another option was that the rank two title had higher requirements and I needed to buy a bunch of the support skills, or maybe it didn't exist at all.

Getting that upgrade would increase my chances of getting an unknown rank three class, with [Eye of Judgement] not yet showing anything unexpected, but with only one level to go until my next class change and only a single soul point banked, it wasn't looking likely. I could always hold off on my class change, but there was a danger of falling for the sunk costs fallacy. The nine skills I'd already bought all had legitimate use cases, but I wasn't likely to be making my own windows, so buying [Advanced Glasswork] would be a soul point expenditure and delay to my class change in the hopes of gaining a title upgrade that may not even exist.

With the house complete, we spent the last couple of days before we were due back at the institute in the Obsidian Spires' dungeon, where, on floor twenty-four, Cluma took great care to keep well away from the tentacles. She fought much more conservatively against the boss, with me dealing most of the damage via lightning. We beat it uninjured and teleported out of the dungeon at the entrance to floor twenty-five, having finally recovered our lost progress.

Getting further would need to wait, though. For the safety of this world, it was time to put aside my indecision and face the Law head on. Cluma, deciding she wasn't needed, went out with some friends. Admittedly, that description covered Dawnhold in its entirety, but she probably had someone specific in mind. Meanwhile, I entered the institute and met up with Harry and Calvin in their dorm room.

"I trust you know a lot more about magic now than a week ago?"

"I'm not convinced we do," replied Harry with a scowl. "As far as I can tell, no-one here actually does any magic, or has any idea how it works. They just ask this System of yours nicely, and it does magic for them. Kari had much to say about affinities, classes and skills, but nothing whatsoever about how a durability enchantment makes things tougher, or why [Fireball] costs ten mana, or even why mana regenerates at the speed that it does. Supposedly having both affinities of a pair is impossible, but you do, and you use spells from both space and time with no apparent ill effects. It all sounds completely artificial to me. You said the System downloads occupational knowledge into your head, but as far as anyone here could tell me, it does nothing of the sort for magic."

That was... a very good point. Yes, I'd had my own thoughts about mana recovery rate, and the way it should increase in denser mana but didn't. The way the quantisation was probably artificial. I'd even suspected the way that spells were cast was faked, with the System doing the actual magic and draining my mana reserves as its payment. I'd never before contrasted magic skills with crafting skills, though. Each of my crafting skills had downloaded knowledge and experience into my head. So had combat skills, although artes hadn't. No magic skill had ever done anything similar.

With my [Advanced Runecrafting], I knew how to make a preservation enchantment. I'd also seen Erryn's version, back in the ark, and I had no clue how it worked. Come to think of it, I hadn't seen any runes around the perception enchantment she'd used to hide the Dawnhold core room, either.

It wasn't all doom and gloom, though; Grover's mana engineering wasn't completely System orchestrated. When I enchanted Cluma's steak, there were no runes involved. And there was Darren.

"Right. The System is designed to restrict knowledge and advancement... And in general, it's done a pretty good job. We started up this institute, but it's not like it's been around for long."

"Yes, this 'research' institute... Now that I've been able to talk to a few people, it's become increasingly obvious how little anyone knows what they're doing. Like the way you told them about the speed of light and how darkness crystals were unphysical before this place was built, yet no-one had ever asked before what the speed of darkness was until a couple of weeks ago, prompted by reading Earth texts. They don't understand the process of research. We're literally starting from nothing here. You can't possibly expect us to research mana and magic from first principles. Forget two years, even two centuries wouldn't be enough."

Well, yes, they'd only just started. The locals weren't just working out science from first principles, but also how to do science. You couldn't just put a bunch of people and money into a building, shake it up and expect science to come out the bottom.

They needed more knowledge about magic if they were to help defend us against invasion—and yes, to defend themselves from the Law—but what did we have that could accelerate a scientific understanding of magic? Darren's magic was external to the System, but he was limited by his age. He could follow instructions, and was very good at magic, but he'd need more than two years before he matured enough to be a useful member of a research group. Were there really no better options?

... Yes. Well, I wasn't certain about 'better', but I did have another idea, precipitated by the fact that [Analysis] still wouldn't work correctly on them.

"Can you buy skills from the shop yet?"

"No. Which is another point of annoyance."

"Maybe. Maybe not."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"It means you're still in your trait formation stage. Would you like to play a game of catch-the-mana?"