An Unbound Soul

Erryn had spent a month attempting to apply Peter's new perspective to her understanding of the System. The time was fruitful, and she'd been able to integrate her newly obtained knowledge into its databanks far more seamlessly than her usual attempts at modification. The information was incomplete, of course, but the System could learn. As the knowledge spread and developed, the System would fill in the gaps as required, and automatically form up the data into new skills. Erryn still wouldn't dare to claim she could rebuild the System from scratch, but neither did it any longer seem like such an insurmountable task to one day comprehend it.

This work was interrupted by a System glitch. It was the first one since Peter came into the world, excluding the buggy [Unbound Soul] she had hacked in, which was entirely self inflicted and didn't count. On inspection, the glitch was familiar. The System was attempting to add a blacklisted trait to someone; [Abnormal Soul] again, this time in a fishing village on the northern coast.

That was concerning. One individual was bad enough, but as long as it was a unique occurrence, there were no long-term effects to be concerned about. Now a second soul had fallen into the world less than a decade after the first. When would the next be? Next year? Tomorrow? If it became a regular occurrence, Erryn would not be able to keep track of them all. If possible, she would need some way of erasing their memories and applying the Law prior to their birth. Forgetting their previous life was what was supposed to happen after death, after all; Erryn wouldn't be changing people, just restoring the natural order. Erryn decided that understanding where these souls were coming from and learning what could be done about them was more important than her System research.

At least this time Erryn knew what she was dealing with, and quickly made the required adjustments to strip the baby of its problematic trait. There were still a few weeks until the baby was due to be born. Having caught it this early, and having had experience of the process with Peter, the baby's mind should be open to her within the first few years of life, without the need for proximity to a core.

The baby, Daniel, was no Peter. By six months old, he still showed no comprehension of the local language. Maybe this one didn't have his previous memories intact? It had certainly looked like he had when Erryn tried to poke at them before his birth. She had tried to make the same adjustment of relocating familial feelings as she had for Peter, but had little idea of its success. It was essentially a blind operation. Maybe the memories were broken and fragmented to begin with, or else had been damaged by her own attempt at modification.

Then he tried to murder his older brother. There was no other word to describe it. The six-month-old baby deliberately took a fire affinity crystal and attempted to force it down his four-year-old brother's throat as he slept. It was blatantly a deliberate act.

Erryn acted immediately, teleporting the baby into the closed off core room of the nearest dungeon, and safely restoring the magic crystal to its storage. Why had he done that? It was completely unprovoked; Daniel's family were every bit as loving as Peter's. He had no reason to retaliate.

In the core room, it took only a matter of days to strip Daniel's immunity and read his mind. And what was there was... disgusting. This was a soul from the same world as Peter, and yet it was so different. So full of hate and anger. So broken. Erryn couldn't even bear to finish reading it, struggling against the urge to tear the soul to shreds there and then. Instead, she erased every last memory and bound it tightly with the Law. She returned the baby to his family, needing to adjust the memories of the whole village to hide his temporary absence.

If souls like that were going to fall into this world, something needed to be done. Erryn was no closer to finding out what was happening than she had been half a year earlier, but had at least made preparations for the next time. If a third foreign soul found its way here, much more data would become available.

She checked in on Peter, who was frankly being ridiculous. He'd followed through on his intentions of spreading Earth knowledge in spectacular fashion, although Erryn would admit the local ruler needed to take much of the blame. Left to his own devices, Peter would not have been so... thorough. Two new skills had been created already, and they had barely scratched the surface. Who knew what would happen in the future? Perhaps this world would eventually rise to the heights of the civilization that had created the ark.

There was also his new lightning affinity weapon, which was hard to categorise as anything other than cheating. Despite the already high power of the prototype, there were even more refined versions in development. If they started spreading, Erryn might be required to boost the lightning resistance of monsters, or otherwise discourage their use. She had requested that Peter not develop Earth weapons, but this wasn't anything from Earth, and although the idea was his, the development was not, leaving her no room to complain.

Finally, there was his use of mana manipulation to recharge his own mana pool and to produce mythril, both of which Erryn found highly nostalgic; she'd done exactly the same thing in her own youth. Peter hadn't spread his mana recharging trick yet, apparently deciding on his own that it was too much of a System bypass. He'd kept no such secrecy around his mythril production, though, and the results would be felt across the economy of the whole world. Erryn didn't foresee the consequences as being destructive. If anything, it was useful; if Peter became used to causing large changes across the world, and was able to see that it continued to turn regardless, it might encourage him to be less conservative about forming views on the Law.

Not that the changes he had wrought were completely free of unfortunate side effects. Erryn checked in on a certain pair of catkin in the Emerald Nest, a mother and daughter who were closing the doors of their restaurant with frowns on their faces. How much longer would they last? Would Peter feel responsibility for their fate? It was certainly true that without the influence of the new technology appearing in the world, they wouldn't be in so much difficulty.

Erryn heard someone call her name at the bottom of one of her dungeons and looked over just in time to see Peter collapse against the pedestal. That was surprising; Erryn hadn't originally been expecting him to complete the quest at all, only bumping things up to an even chance after he'd obtained his cheat weapon, but yet here he was more than a year before the deadline. Something serious must have happened for him to push himself that far... With her focus on the System and the second stray soul, she hadn't been paying attention to every minutia of his life, and had apparently missed something not just important enough for him to come here in person, but vital enough for him to risk making the journey on his own.

Weren't there several parties in Dawnhold capable of clearing the dungeon that he could have joined, however much of a rush he was in? She poked at his memories as he slept, discovering that the lack of a group was his own fault. Another subtle and unfortunate side effect of his actions. And the reason he was here was for his brother? He couldn't strip the memory modifications Erryn had made? His mind wasn't exactly clear in his current state, so Erryn left him to sleep.

The next day, she discovered that the baby she had abducted had been Peter's brother back on Earth. Had she fully read Daniel's memories, she would have realised far sooner. That was... interesting. It implied that the whole attempted murder had been Erryn's own fault. Peter wasn't the only one causing unintended consequences; Erryn had only wanted to help, but in doing so had transferred the hatred Daniel held for Peter, and endangered an innocent four-year-old child as a result. Had she not been looking at the time, he would have lost his life... Not to mention the risk to Peter himself, who had put himself in great danger to clear the dungeon simply because Erryn's attempt to 'help' had left him unable to get near his new brother.

Erryn deemed the memory modification procedure unsafe and decided not to do it in the future. At the minimum, she would need to be able to read someone fully before making any modifications.

Erryn didn't admit that Daniel had crossed over, although given the relationship between them, Peter might not be upset at his fate even if she did share the truth. Was there something special about their family? They had no other siblings, so was this the end of it?

Before she could contemplate too far, Peter provided another stunner. "And who tells you what dungeons are? Surely that's your decision."

Of course Erryn knew what a dungeon was. She knew all the rules. She'd rewritten half of them.

Then why was it that despite removing the rule that a dungeon core must be accessible, all of hers still were? 'It helps keep the mana flowing', was the excuse she'd used to herself. It was true, too; completely encasing the core room in dungeon stone would never work. But why a door? Why a door that opened when the boss was defeated? Why not an immovable grate? Tiny channels? A solid block of a mana-transparent material? A doorway and normal sized passageway had just seemed right, despite the fact that she'd then needed complex soul affinity enchantments to hide it, and then had to memory-wipe a bunch of people when they started taking too much interest.

Erryn spent some time in introspection, and for the very first time, glimpsed the chains that bound her own soul.