An Unbound Soul

I hung back while Serlv carefully questioned some of the older children. The younger ones had been herded into the village tavern, bringing back memories of the time my village was attacked by slimes.

There hadn't been so much crying going on in our tavern, though.

Krana was keeping an eye on them, and I'd been happy to leave him to it despite his obvious lack of experience babysitting kids. Serlv had handed me the excuse that I shouldn't be exposed to whatever Maximilian had done, and I intended to make full use of it, wandering aimlessly out of the village.

"Hey," came a voice from behind me, making me jump. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."

I turned to find a group of beastkin of all ages, thirty strong. Most looked frightened or confused.

"Hey?" I tried. I was too distracted; this wasn't Cluma—it was a large group making no effort at stealth—yet I'd completely missed their approach. Now that I considered it, the villages in Dawnhold were roughly fifty-fifty between humans and beastkin, but only a few of the corpses here were beastkin. Why had the mismatch never occurred to me? The others must have fled and survived.

"Sorry. You're obviously torn up there, but you aren't from this village. Did you come with the dragons? Do you have any idea what happened?"

He thought I was torn up? He was right, though, wasn't he... But it was his friends that had died. Maybe even family. What right did I have to be upset, compared to him, who lived here?

"Yes, I came with the dragons. It was all over by the time we arrived," I lied, unable to explain that a human had been responsible. "Some sort of disease that turned humans into monsters."

"I never would have believed such a thing was possible, had I not seen it with my own eyes," said another of the beastkin, her ears lying flat and tail hanging limply in an obvious sign of depression.

I checked with [Mana Sight], and yup, mine were flat too, and my tail just as limp.

"Is there anything you can tell us about what happened?" I asked, determined to be at least a little useful, and gather whatever information I could.

"There was an outsider. A man. He came and said..." The man tilted his head, confused. "Sorry, I can't remember. It must be the shock. Something about an opportunity?"

"I'm fairly sure he mentioned glory," said the lady.

"He must have been trying to warn us," continued the man, who [Eye of Judgement] identified as Krail. He was also bereft of status conditions, although I wasn't sure how much I trusted that right now. "He was too late, though. Only an hour after he arrived, people started screaming in pain. Then they lost their minds. Still, we should thank him for trying."

I felt the bile rise up in my throat, nothing to do with my travel sickness this time, but at the way the Law had twisted this man's perceptions and led him to believe that the murderer should be thanked.

"I'm afraid he died, too," I said, doing my best to keep my voice level.

"Oh. How unfortunate."

Unfortunate indeed. I wished I could bring him back to life simply to kill him over again. Repeatedly. Preferably in a unique, agonising way each time.

My daydreams were ended by a wave of heat, a pillar of flame erupting from behind me. [Mana Sight] showed Krana cremating the village, while Serlv enclosed the tavern in a dome of ice.

"Hey!" exclaimed Krail. "What's happening?"

"Kranakellicium is sterilising the village," I answered.

"Indeed," agreed Serlv, landing next to me, then raising up another wall of ice, enclosing the village and closest surrounding fields, trapping the beastkin party within. "I am greatly sorry for your loss, but I must ask you to remain here while we confirm you aren't infectious."

... And if they were, would she kill them, too, just like she'd threatened to kill the children?

"We must return to the ark," declared Krana, his cleansing operation completed.

"Why? What did you learn?"

"Very little. The Law has taken most of the relevant memories from the children, yet it is obvious that they were the focus of our enemy, rather than the dead adults. All members of the village, regardless of age, were injected with something that they were told was a (vaccine). An implausible claim, in the circumstances, but the Law compelled them to believe it."

This time, I failed to keep down my stomach contents, throwing up for a reason other than travel sickness for the first time in a long while. As if it wasn't enough that the group of beastkin were thankful to the murderer, his victims had lined up and helped him do it.

This village was a stunning example of how the Law could be taken advantage of by evil. Never again.

Ignoring my distress, Serlv grabbed me once more and took off. I wanted nothing more than for the day to be over, but it turned out we were just getting started. Today was definitely a contender for most miles travelled, even if I included portal trips. Thankfully, my stomach freshly emptied, I had nothing left to lose on our latest journey.

This one ended back at the ark, where the door was already open when we arrived, without even needing prompting. "Thank you," I called back to it as we hurried down the corridor and back to the System.

"System, what was Maximilian's goal?" asked Serlv.

Information: No information available.

"System, are the children of... uh... the village we've just return from infected with anything?" I tried.

Information:

"I suppose that if [Athena's Insight] failed, asking directly isn't going to help."

"System, are you currently processing the events of the village?" asked Krana, taking his turn.

Information: Yes.

"System, notify us when processing completes," said Serlv, before she folded her forelegs beneath her, lying on the floor to wait, showing far more patience than I had. There was no way I could just sit and do nothing; my mind was likely to self-destruct without something to distract it from memories of the village.

"System, what is the current status of Blobby's and my souls, and what are you doing to stabilise or heal them?" I asked, causing Serlv to perk her head back up.

"What?" she asked.

"There was an... incident. She tried to kill me, I defended myself in a rather foolish way, we both ended up hurt."

Serlv frowned, but acquiesced to my questioning.

Information: Soul bond and shard recovery successful. System shard #1978846 now wholly present in entity 'Peter'. Bond stability at 40%. Anima transfer at 64%.

That didn't exactly tell me much.

"Is that... good?"

Information: No information available.

"Fine," I muttered, trying to stay focused and not revert to computers-are-evil mode. I couldn't rely on Serlv to take over from me this time. "Explain the meanings of bond stability and anima transfer, and what actions you're currently taking and have taken in the past."

It took some time, rephrasing the same question dozens of ways, before I managed to extract all the information the System would give me. Or at least, the portion of it I could understand. Thankfully, the complexity and the fact I was dealing with a stupid computer did help take my mind off the village.

When I'd blasted off a portion of my soul and glued it to not-Blobby, some branches of my System shard had gone with it. That was the portion the System viewed as an error, rather than anything to do with the fact I'd blasted part of my own soul off.

It had never tried to fix my soul. It had fixed the broken shard, and the effects on me and not-Blobby were mere side effects. It had bonded our souls together in order to get the parts of my shard that had ended up in the slime back into my soul, and then stabilised us because of its programming to do no harm. All this time, I thought I was getting better at ignoring sensations from my finger, but it had actually been the bond stability growing.

Not that the increasing stability separated us. It was the opposite; our souls were becoming more inextricably linked. It simply gave a corresponding increase in control.

But bonding souls like that was hardly a natural process, and the System downtime had disrupted it. In the hours the System was broken, stability had practically halved, undoing the System's hard work as our souls uncontrollably bled into each other. It explained why I knew some of what had happened while I was unconscious; her surface thoughts were bleeding over, just like mine were to her, forming memories that felt like my own.

Now the System was back and restabilising things, but the brief stint of uncontrolled merger had left its mark, and indeed, my [Soul Bound] trait had updated its description.

[Soul Bound] - Your soul is bound to another. You can share your senses, thoughts and memories. (Rank 3)

It no longer talked about a distance restriction, although I would bet that me stepping through a portal to another universe and closing it behind me would be a terminally bad idea.

Thankfully, it didn't seem to matter. Since not-Blobby returned my finger, neither of us had any problems with oversharing. There seemed to be no negative health effects. The entire thing with not-Blobby having to follow my orders was completely artificial, with the System not being permitted to generate custom traits for monsters, and deciding that the situation's closest match was a monster taming. Since monster taming had been disabled by Erryn, I got the customised trait instead, explaining the mismatch in our status. Another administrative command to the System, and not-Blobby was free of my influence. Even if I'd never actually used it, she'd appreciate the gesture.

I was less inclined to order it to disentangle our souls, though. It seemed to think that such a move had a high probability of incapacitation. As things were, we could both get on with our lives without issue. It didn't seem worth risking ourselves when the bond didn't impact our day-to-day lives.

It was when my life was over that problems would arise... Would I take not-Blobby with me? I'd watched Maximilian's soul just... vanish. Surely that wouldn't be good for her? The System didn't know.

"That conversation was equal parts fascinating and terrifying," commented Serlv, once I was done. "I see it is not for no reason that Erryn restricts access to soul affinity."

"Oh, I haven't told you why Erryn had to recreate the population of the world yet, have I?"

Yes, I'd given them a brief overview of the Law, but the operative word there was 'brief'. This was the first time since I'd freed the dragons that we weren't rushing somewhere. Yes, it had only been a few hours since I freed them, but still...

"Indeed you have not," confirmed Krana, looking intrigued.

That gave me something else to talk about while we waited, even if I couldn't do much other than repeat information Erryn and not-Blobby had shared. And, eventually, our patience was rewarded.

ding

Notification: Processing complete.

"System, report the cause of death of today's fatalities in the village," requested Serlv immediately.

ding

Information: Forty cases of multiple organ failure precipitated by old age. Three cases of multiple organ failure precipitated by heatstroke. Eight cases of blood loss precipitated by violent trauma. Three cases of immolation. One case of incineration by dragon breath.

Old age? The heck? I suppose the gaunt appearance I'd noticed did look similar to the skin of the extreme elderly, but only a few of them really were that old. Some of the victims had otherwise looked in their twenties!

"System, list all status conditions of the survivors in the village."

Information: Thirty entities have no status conditions. Twelve entities have status condition [Diseased].

Damn.

"System, describe the disease afflicting the village."

Information: A viral carrier, artificially designed to modify human DNA sequences for an unknown purpose. Analysis indicates multiple flaws in operation, giving the infection an exceptionally high fatality rate. Viral carrier is not contagious.

Not contagious? Then it was safe to get a healer there!

Alas, with all the time we'd wasted waiting for the System to subsume Maximilian's creation, by the time we'd picked up Jason and returned to the village, ten of the fifteen kids were dead.