Chapter 238: Chapter 220: Guests

The remaining visitors—three members of Doctor Withermark's research group and a pair of guards who I assumed were part of some secret service or military—were far more loath to remove their protective outfits. The researchers did, but hesitantly, taking slow, shallow breaths. Of course, their nervousness boosted their heart rate, undoing most of their efforts.

Not that Doctor Withermark was any more trusting of our air than they were; he simply preferred it to the alternative. I'd retrieved my early failed mist generator from my [Item Box], using the accidental pressure washer as an impromptu shower, which he was taking fully clothed. They all had plentiful changes of clothes in their baggage, but he wasn't about to strip in front of Cluma. Oddly, Serlvrenalliacta's presence didn't bother him, presumably because she was too inhuman to register as female.

He could have just dived into the sea, but even if he was willing to breathe our air, he wasn't willing to go quite that far. Thankfully, he completed his two-minute wash without keeling over and dying of any horrible diseases.

The two guards made no move to remove their protective gear, which I found a little unfair. If they were guards, shouldn't they be the ones taking risks?

"So, how are we getting back to Dawnhold?" I asked. The dragons certainly could carry everyone, but I didn't want to make assumptions.

Serlv sighed, seeing the writing on the wall. "Very well. I shall lower myself to the role of a steed once more."

"Hey, I didn't say anything about giving them a ride!"

"You did not, yet I feel certain you were thinking it."

"Well, it'll be a lot quicker than walking. I can't share [Weft Walk] with more than two people, and they'd all just fall over, anyway."

Actually, could I share it with them at all, now that they were detached from the System? Appraisal skills didn't work, so why would [Weft Walk]? That was going to cause further problems, too; they would never gain skills or stats. Grover could quite happily walk around with backpacks full of ingots, but these guys couldn't. The institute didn't have fork-lifts or powered transport. When Grover wanted to bring a new engine outdoors to protect his workshop from the inevitable explosion, he just carried it. These guys would struggle in that sort of working environment.

... Wait, if my [Weft Walk] didn't work on them, would healing magic?

"(Hey, can I try something a second?)" I asked one of the researchers, suddenly in a bit of a panic. "(I want to make sure skills still work on you, now that you're detached from the System.)"

The guards peered in suspicion, but the researchers obviously had them beat in the intelligence stat. All three paled instantly as they realised the implications. Or paled further, anyway. None of these people seemed enthusiastic about their presence here to start with. I'd assumed the small number of people were volunteers, but perhaps it wasn't quite as consensual as that. If Doctor Withermark felt he was in danger on Earth, the same likely applied to the rest of his team.

"(Shouldn't you have done that earlier?)" one demanded.

"(I only just thought of it!)"

I reached out with [Weft Walk], but it found nothing. It was like they weren't there.

"(Uhh...)" I started, causing them all some agitation.

"(What's happening? Explain,") demanded one of the guards.

"Yes, please do," added Serlv, apparently able to follow enough of the conversation to voice her agreement.

"Skills don't work on them. It's very likely healing magic won't work either," I answered Serlv, before repeating in English for the guards, who both started patting the seals of their protective outfits to ensure they were still secure.

Doctor Withermark, having successfully changed his clothes while protecting his modesty with one of my towels, chose that moment to return, requiring me to repeat my worries for the third time. Unlike the others, he just shrugged.

"(We knew the risks,)" he said, simply. "(For all we know, long-term exposure to this 'mana' you keep talking about is fatal, too.)"

"(Even if healing magic doesn't work, there are other things to try,)" I said. Would a regeneration enchantment have any effect? A potion? Raw life affinity? Death magic targeting the disease instead of the patient?

Could I regain access to the ark if I told the door I wanted to reattach them to the System? I could abuse that to detach a round of newborns, but that wouldn't help going forward, and would likely mean I'd never get access again. Assuming whatever intelligence controlled the door understood the concept of trust, and breaking it. Maybe it didn't have a memory?

"(Putting that aside, now that the Doctor is done cleaning up, we have other questions to ask,)" said one of the guards. "(What did you do after the last time we left? Everyone on the planet heard a ding, even those who weren't previously infected.)"

"(The System learnt how to...)" I started, before realising yet more implications. The System had opened portals to Earth. Here this team was, in heavy, pressurised hazmat gear, and there were multiple open pipes leading to who knew where! Was the System chamber sterile? Why would it be? Where were the other ends of those portals? Were plagues sweeping Earth as we spoke?

The System chamber looked sealed, and had never seen a human in centuries. Maybe even millennia. Anything living in there wouldn't have any reason to thrive on or in humans. Heck, given the amount of time and space mana floating around, they had probably evolved in a direction that couldn't even survive in boring Euclidean geometry.

Or so I hoped.

"(What is it this time?)" asked the guard, his patience wearing thin.

"(The System learnt from the portal experiments,)" I answered, unwilling to throw my brother under the metaphorical bus. Or myself; it was my mind the System had probed to learn Darren was its solution. "(It opened portals to Earth in order to infect everyone. I detached everyone it infected, but I couldn't close the portals or remove its influence from Earth.)"

Doctor Withermark swore.

"(And why did you disregard the request to leave five individuals attached?)" continued the guard, not spotting that a pathogen-filled tunnel was open to Earth as we spoke.

... I was far too reliant on appraisal skills. How much longer would I have to call this guy 'the guard'? Given that there were two guards, it wasn't even unique! Was he ever going to introduce himself? He wasn't linked to the System, so he shouldn't have had his name wiped. Was he part of the last group of people, and expected me to remember him?

"(Because I was trying to detach almost eight billion people all at once. I wasn't in a position to add 'except those five' to my criteria!)"

"(Any other bad news you feel like sharing? Might as well get it all over with,)" sighed Doctor Withermark.

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"(Uh... The System was trying to spawn a dungeon on Earth, if that counts? It wasn't working, because of the lack of mana, but you may well have a pile of dead dungeon cores building up somewhere.)"

"(I don't even know what that means. But your dragons are looking impatient, so why don't we discuss it after moving,)"

"(Good idea. Also... anyonebornafterIdetechedeveryonewillstillbeinfected.)"

Pretending I hadn't just blurted out such a bombshell, I started power-walking towards Krana and my ticket out of here.

Doctor Withermark swore again.

"(Well, why not just detach them once a year? It's not like babies will be doing anything,)" commented one of the guards.

"(If he could do that, he wouldn't be acting like that,)" accurately pointed out Doctor Withermark.

"(The System is... kinda intelligent, in a mechanical sort of way. It has one directive to infect everyone and another to give me limited access via the control crystal. It knows I want to prevent it infecting Earth, so it reconciled its conflicting instructions by locking me out from the control room so I couldn't reach the crystal. But it's not as bad as it sounds, honest!)"

"(You're telling us we're going to have superpowered toddlers running around. A decade from now, we'll have bulletproof children with superhuman strength. Yes, you've bought us some time, but in what way is that not as bad as it sounds?)"

"(Well... Okay, it's pretty bad,)" I admitted, not wanting to mention the Law just yet. "(But it will be years before it'll have any serious effect, and I theorise that the lack of mana will mean any truly magical abilities are off limits. You shouldn't have to worry about people developing invisibility and teleportation a couple of decades from now.)"

"(You theorise?)"

"(You're the ones who ripped a hole into our universe. Don't take it out on me!)"

Were the System's portals pumping out mana along with their pathogens? I didn't notice any mana in the System's chamber being drained, so hopefully not.

... Now that would have ended badly for this world. If the System had all its mana ripped out, there's no way it would continue to function.

"(Can't you just break in?)"

"(No.)"

"(Because you can't, or because you don't want to?)"

"(Can't. It is the thing that grants us our powers, remember, and it would hardly let us use its own gifts against it.)"

I actually had no idea if that was true, beyond knowing the place was sealed from mana and I couldn't teleport in, but I also had no intention of finding out. Besides, not-Blobby had failed to batter down the door, and she still had me beat in strength. Maybe Krana could burn his way in, but I couldn't.

The more vocal of the pair of guards opened his mouth, looking very much like he wanted to say something else, but shut it again. Perhaps he'd been about to suggest using Earth weaponry to break in, or berate me for failing. None of them knew where the System was, and besides, I'd bet my new tail that it could defend itself. It had already survived an actual apocalypse, after all.

The unhappy guards and nervous researchers piled onto the dragons, along with me and Cluma. The last to board the Krana express was Doctor Withermark, glancing over at Serlv as he did so. Trying to pick the dragon least likely to make him barf again?

... No, he wasn't looking at Serlv. He was looking at one of the researchers. She hadn't said anything so far, and was looking rather shell-shocked.

Cluma joined one guard and a pair of researchers on Serlv, having a sufficiently high level in [Language: English] to communicate with them, leaving one guard and researcher with me and Darren on Krana.

"(Okay, what's really going on?)" I asked the moment we were in the air.

The unintroduced female researcher sharing our dragon suddenly found Krana's back very interesting indeed, refusing to meet my gaze, but Doctor Withermark just sighed.

"(Will it be enough to say that the members of our last diplomatic party were very glad you sent us back to the BSI and not our new island encampment?)"

"(An attack on the Earth side of the portal?)"

"(Exactly. It was shortly after we left. I don't know when you were last on Earth, but unless you've had an age reduction along with your body-mods, you can't be more than sixteen or seventeen, so it doesn't really matter. Nothing has changed since you were born. It's still a bunch of countries at each others' throats. Leaders backstabbing each other for personal power. All that changes is who's giving lip service to who. Well, when we put our 'international' team together, it stood to reason that not everyone would get an invite. One of those who felt unfairly left out decided to express their displeasure with missiles. About half the people stationed on the isolated island we'd used to host the portal were killed, and then a couple of those who were invited decided to take advantage of the chaos to kidnap some of my staff, or steal research data, hoping to build wormholes of their own.)"

Yup, it was the correct decision to find a way to block them as swiftly as possible. And it also explained why this new visit took so long.

"(Any of them succeed?)"

"(They didn't get any of my people. Or at least, not for long,)" he replied, glancing at Serlv flying alongside us. "(Other staff, though? There are still technicians and guards unaccounted for, and we know for a fact that several hard drives' worth of encrypted data were copied.)"

Great. I could easily imagine it. Earth's superpowers, each with enough weaponry to scour Earth's surface clean several times over, would be forced to work together, because the others would never let one monopolise what this world had to offer. Smaller countries wouldn't have the clout to force their way in and wouldn't pose an existential threat to anyone, but launching a surprise attack on an isolated island? They could still do that. And then the 'cooperative' nations, in the emergency situation, would each act in their own interests, as far as they believed they could get away with.

Maybe letting Erryn's Law infect Earth wouldn't be such a bad thing?