Chapter 34: Interlude 3: Wish

Erryn's POV, three years earlier

Erryn watched the mother carry the sleeping child back towards their village and considered how best to access his mind. The same method would also permit her to fulfil his wish, if that was truly his desire. The System had successfully adapted to his foreign soul, even if it had taken half a year before his birth to do so, so it was obviously possible. But the System was a collaborative effort between some of the best minds of four different races at the height of their power. Loath as Erryn was to admit it, although she could control it to a significant extent, recreating it from scratch would be far beyond her abilities. How exactly it had adapted to the alien nature of his soul, she could not tell.

Although Erryn had managed to subvert some of his memories before his birth, it wasn't a feat she could repeat now that he had been born. Even if she could, without more understanding it would be too risky now that he had memories of this world; any collateral damage she may have caused manipulating memories of his old world would likely go unnoticed, but damaging memories of this one would cause problems. And even then, Erryn wanted to read his mind first, not alter it; she wanted to find out the reasons for his actions, exactly what he thought of this world, and how it compared to his old one. She absolutely had to have a conversation of some sort with him prior to fulfilling his request. It wouldn't do to base any permanent actions on a single spoken sentence, especially given the state he had been in at the time.

Perhaps she should just ask. Despite the block on her usual telepathy, it wouldn't be difficult to scratch words into the ground in front of him, or dispatch a monster with a functional tongue and vocal cords. But this child wouldn't even trust his own parents with the most basic details of his reincarnation. He was extremely unlikely to be open with Erryn, and without her telepathy she wouldn't even be able to tell if he was lying or omitting information. No, she wanted to be able to read him properly, not converse in the slow and imprecise manner of language.

Probing his soul would be easier were he in a dungeon, bathed in the denser mana and in close proximity to one of Erryn's cores. The best would obviously be her primary core in the depths of what the world's races now called the great dungeon, but the density of mana there would melt the flesh from his bones in seconds. She would have to start smaller. Fortunately Dawnhold contained a suitably low levelled dungeon, at a mere ten floors. But that still wouldn't be enough on its own, or else she could just teleport him there right now.

Since the System had adapted, even though Erryn was unable to understand exactly how, perhaps it would still be possible to piggyback off its efforts. To probe his soul using the System as an intermediary. Every skill the system granted, every title it bestowed, every level and stat point: Each one was an alteration of the recipient, in both body and soul. The child did not seem inclined to act outside of the System, nor did he show any concern about how the System was changing him, so Erryn could take advantage of that. With every level he gained, it would hook deeper into his soul, and it would only take a small tweak to ensure that each of those changes brought his soul closer to that of a native. With time and enough levels it would completely erode his alien nature, causing him to become vulnerable to Erryn's telepathy and Law alike.

The next day the child finally admitted his reincarnation to his parents, but still refrained from giving any details that Erryn wanted to hear, and asked them to not spread the knowledge or question further. He explained away his fear of the local ruler by describing how one would have reacted in his old world. It must have truly been a terrible place if even parents or people in power couldn't be trusted. Oddly, despite finally noticing Erryn's tampering with his memory, he made no attempt to break it. Didn't he wish to remember? He was old enough now, settled enough into his new family, that it wouldn't have done him harm.

Following that, he seemed to settle back into his regular life. That was fine; he was still developing his magic, and Erryn accepted that the process of the System changing him little by little would take time. He even introduced a couple of board games from his old world. Maybe Erryn should pass them on to... Was it still Mirodar The World Eater? Erryn had been paying too much attention to the child recently and hadn't been keeping track of that particular eccentric slime. She'd probably changed her name half a dozen more times by now. But then the child blind-sided her by saying that he wanted to meet Erryn.

If that was the case, it surely wouldn't hurt to... encourage the process.

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