Chapter 90: Interlude 8: Cracks

In the days of Erryn's youth, back when she was still bound by the System, she had earned the [Merciful] title. She was outside the System now, and titles held no meaning, but it wasn't the title that granted her attitude; it was her intentions that granted the title. Yet since creating the races of the world, she had acted like any other dungeon, each labyrinth she created a death trap for those who entered. When had her attitudes changed?

Her memories were unclear, and there wasn't a single point in time to point at. Had she just drifted back to her original state over time? She hadn't noticed before, but now that Peter had pointed it out, it was obvious that there were compulsions placed on her own behaviour. They weren't rigid, like the Law, but they were there, and if she didn't make a conscious effort to ignore them, she'd end up behaving in a 'correct' manner.

The irony was palpable, even to Erryn.

That explained the unnecessary core access, the aggressive monsters and the rigid dungeon layouts, but there was still something else that bothered her. She turned her attention to the memorial deep within the great dungeon. Here lie a people that I never knew, yet I weep for their loss. When Peter had first set foot in a core room, he had reminded her of its existence, but how long had it been since she last thought of it? If it had been in her mind, she would have made a conscious effort to make less dangerous dungeons.

That memorial was, to Erryn, kind of her second birth. If she had to point at a moment in time when Erryn the dungeon became Erryn the earth mother, that would have been it. How the hell did she forget? Such a defining moment was too important to have been pushed out of her mind. Was that part of the compulsion too?

Maybe she was just getting old. These cores couldn't have infinite storage capacity, after all. With a sigh, she turned to the System, applying her new understanding to extract details of the dungeon creation subroutines that she had long since disabled, but which were still present. She found the layers of compulsion, giving her the information needed to strip them from herself. A new look at each of her dungeons would be required, now that her intentions were no longer being subverted.

It turned out that when she'd changed the rules that bound dungeons, it had made no difference whatsoever to her. It would have affected new dungeons, but she had made sure there would never be any. The effects she'd seen were simply placebo, 'knowing' that she'd changed the rules allowing her to ignore them more easily, as long as she thought about it. When she didn't, she had unthinkingly been slipping back onto her prescribed rails.

That left her spotty memory. That was not part of the dungeon creation subroutine, and Erryn realised with concern that it wasn't a capacity issue either. Was her main core starting to degrade from age? It shouldn't do; the self repair schematics here suggested she should be able to outlast the planet, should she desire to do so.

With a rising sense of horror and dread, another alternative occurred to Erryn. Soul magic had a cost. The records from the ark told a story of their own apocalypse being caused by a single soul mage, driven utterly mad by the use of their power. The world Erryn had been born into had been destroyed by soul magic that outright consumed the caster, body and soul alike. She'd taken precautions; the mana to maintain the Law was shaped by the System, not directly by Erryn, which was the same trick the official [Soul Mage] class used to keep their sanity. Likewise, she used subsidiary dungeon cores for her own casting. Nevertheless, Erryn was still involved; it was her will that powered the magic. Magic that pervaded the entire world, and had been active for centuries. Even the smallest bleed-through would have built up over that much time. Was she slowly corrupting herself, her precautions only slowing the side effects instead of preventing them?

Erryn withdrew her consciousness back into the great dungeon. She needed to test this theory immediately; given her immense power, if her sanity degraded, her children would not survive, and that must never be permitted.

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