Chapter 9: Interlude 1: Glitch

Erryn's POV, one year earlier

There was a glitch in the System. It wasn't the first time, but it was the first time in the past couple of hundred years. Erryn had thought she'd ironed out all the bugs by now. She stirred her attention from her sixth floor, where the floor boss was arguing with a ranger about the way an arrow couldn't possibly hit anything that was running away. The logic went that by the time the arrow reached the point the runner started at they would have run a little further, requiring the arrow to fly more, by which time they would have run further again, thus the two would never meet. Erryn wasn't entirely certain if the slime believed what she was saying or if she was just messing with the poor ranger. She had recently taken to calling herself 'Mirodar The World Eater' because she thought it sounded cool. With a personality like that, Erryn didn't feel safe making any assumptions.

Erryn focused on the glitch. It was something new. The System had generated a unique trait for someone, but it was causing a conflict of some sort. That shouldn't happen; the System wasn't allowed to create a new effect that conflicted with any existing rules... It should be easy enough to fix in any case, Erryn just needed to find the recipient, remove the trait, then find the hole that allowed the conflict to happen and patch it.

The source was to the far east, almost as far as the ocean. A tiny village built on the edge of a forest. A tiny shack in the tiny village, home to a pair of young humans. The source of the glitch was the woman, which was odd. Young as they might be, they were far past the age of generating traits, and a quick inspection of the woman confirmed she had nothing out of the ordinary. Ah, it wasn't from the woman, but from inside the woman. She was visibly pregnant. But why was the System generating traits for a baby that had yet to be born?

Erryn read the trait details and baulked. The System hadn't generated the trait or its effect; it had simply wrapped words around something that was already there. This wasn't a bug in the System, it was a bug in reality. There was a soul that shouldn't be there. A soul so alien that no existing soul magic would touch it. A soul immune to Erryn's Law. She should kill the child before it threatened everything she had built. She should kill it, but... she watched the parents lovingly embrace, the mother caressing her belly. If she was guardian to these people, could she really take that happiness away from them? If only she had spotted the soul earlier, before it had implanted. She would keep watch, but she couldn't bring herself to kill the unborn child.

Besides, perhaps this child could offer something else that Erryn so desired. Validation.

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