An Unbound Soul

Harry swore.

"Language!" I exclaimed, still grinning. I wasn't quite sure why. I was feeling somewhat manic.

"How long have you been there?" he asked, shoulders slumping.

"Why would I want to answer that?" I pointed out, not wanting to give the overly insightful devil-wannabe any more information than absolutely required. "Long enough to know who my enemies are, at least."

"Enemies? We would never have harmed Cluma, and you know it."

"No, I don't know it; she'd hardly have made a good hostage if I did. Besides, you also wanted to Lawify me, so there's that, too."

"Just like you want to brainwash us."

"Want to, perhaps, but luckily for you, I don't believe in capital punishment. I still intend to follow through on my part of our deal. Which, of course, leaves you. You're a threat to this world, and openly admit you aren't going to stop trying to 'save' this population, so I can't let you roam free here. I can't toss you back to Earth without risking a devastating epidemic there. I really can't think of anything to do with you other than leave you imprisoned. Cara and Calvin can leave. The rest of you can stay right where you are."

I'd decided by a simple process of elimination. I couldn't kill them or take their minds. I couldn't involve the innocents of Earth. I didn't want to imprison them forever, but it was the only option I could think up that didn't cross a hard line.

I wouldn't be able to hide them from Erryn, should she ever recover, but that was decades away.

"They can leave?" laughed Harry. "Voting against something counts that strongly, even if they accepted being outvoted, and watched on silently as we fed Cluma a bunch of lies? Heck, I believe Calvin even nodded in confirmation at one point, when Cluma was looking doubtful. They could easily have stopped it, and chose not to."

And there was always the possibility that even if they weren't going to try to 'save' this world, they'd try to rescue their colleagues, given an opportunity. But...

"I'm not trying to punish anyone," I shrugged. "Not even you. I don't like the idea of keeping you locked up for the rest of your lives; I'm just doing what's needed to protect this planet. I'm not going to risk you going after my family again to get to me. Since those two don't seem inclined to do so, I don't need to keep them locked up."

"You're not protecting a planet. You're protecting a zoo!" shouted Harry, losing his cool for the first time since my return to the ark. "Why can't you see that?! It's not just us you're robbing of freedom, but the entire population of this world!"

"And that's where your opinion differs from mine. The people of this world are just as alive—and worthy of keeping that life—as you are."

The case of Serlv and Krana had shown that removing the Law wasn't necessarily personality death, but doing it on a wide scale would definitely be problematic.

"Hah. And I suppose you'll say that if I agree to subject myself to the Law, you'll let me out?"

"Well, I wasn't going to say that out loud, because it would be blatant coercion, but yes. If I'm keeping you locked up because you're a threat, then if you ceased to be a threat, then logically I'd no longer have a reason to keep you locked up."

"Fine. Keep lying to yourself that you're 'protecting' anyone or being 'moral'. All you're being is lazy. All you're doing is making excuses for why you should leave everything exactly as it is, when you could be..."

He didn't stop his sermon, but I was distracted from it by [Danger Sense] triggering and pulling my attention towards my [Mana Sight]. Dominic had shuffled into the corner of the room, out of my line of sight from where I still stood in the doorway, and he had drawn his gun again.

I spun around as he fired, my reactions too slow to dodge. Instead, I let my delver instincts kick in, applying my wisdom stat to calculate the trajectory and activating [Dislocation] in its path.

There was a second of silence as everyone in the room processed the fact that Dominic had just shot me.

ding
Skill [Danger Sense] advanced to level 18
Skill [Weapon Style: Relentless Erraticism] advanced to level 7

"You just tried to kill me!" I exclaimed stupidly. I wasn't saying anything that everyone in the room didn't already know, but I still hadn't finished processing it myself.

He didn't respond, his gun slipping from his outstretched hand and his eyes glassy.

"What did you expect? That we would happily agree to be locked up for the rest of our lives?" snapped Harry.

"Hey, Dom!" exclaimed Russel, running towards him as he collapsed.

Alas, the muscle memory implanted by my weapon style skill, combined with the instincts from all my time in dungeons, was pretty clear that reacting to a surprise attack should always be done with lethal force. Without thinking about it, I'd redirected the bullet not into the ground, but back the way it had come. Unlike the movies, someone struck by a bullet didn't get blasted backwards, and it had been too fast for anyone to see. My [Dislocation] would have been visible, with me making a maximum sized portal to compensate for not knowing the exact path of the bullet, but it would have looked like I'd shielded myself, rather than reflecting it.

No-one had noticed that he now had a hole through his heart. Not me, at first. Not even Dominic himself, whose face displayed nothing but confusion as he hit the floor, with no idea what had just happened to him.

"Here, healing potion. Get it down his throat, now," I said, pulling one out of [Inventory] and tossing it at Russel. He didn't react, and it just bounced off his back. That was another mark for them coming in metal vials with watertight lids, and not fragile glass bottles. "You might want to hurry; that bullet hit his heart."

Not that I'd aimed there specifically. I'd just reflected it in approximately the same direction it came. The rest was pure bad luck.

Harry swore, jumping into action and grabbing the rolling potion. I stayed where I was, blocking the door. Moving risked one or more of them fleeing, which would force me to detonate the flame grenades, causing more death.

Russel quickly got over his shock, acting professionally and locating Dominic's bullet wound. He raised his head, took the potion from Harry and poured it down Dominic's throat.

It had no effect. [Eye of Judgement] showed that he was already dead, his health sitting at zero.

That seemed... unfair. Yes, it was a fatal injury, but it would be minutes before he suffered complete brain death from the lack of blood supply. Why shouldn't a potion heal him at that point? Would he have survived had his endurance been at the normal level for someone of his age? I attempted a cast of [Endurance] but hit the same problem; the System considered him dead.

"Why isn't it working?" shouted Russel.

"His health hit zero already. He's dead," I answered, trying to keep my voice steady.

I'd killed tens of thousands with my decay bomb, but I hadn't watched any of them die. Now I'd killed one, in self defence, but it was happening right here in front of me. It made it so much more real.

I spun around, facing back out into the corridor, managing not to get any of my vomit in their prison cell. Russel took the opportunity to draw his own gun, aiming it at my back.

"Don't!" shouted Harry, of all people.

Russel did, but this time I wasn't operating on pure instinct and redirected the bullet harmlessly out down the corridor.

"It wasn't a simple reflection..." accurately observed Harry as Russel fired five more times before his ammo ran out. Then he reached for Dominic's gun, but I grabbed it with [Far Reach], storing it safely in my [Inventory], never to see the light of day again.

ding
Skill [Dislocation] advanced to level 18

"No, it isn't," I confirmed. "If I have time to think, I can redirect projectiles anywhere. It's unfortunate that Dominic didn't give me that time."

Harry glanced at the pool of vomit, then stared me straight in the face.

"Then why was your default reaction to kill him?"

"Why are you so calm?! He just murdered Dom!" yelled Russel.

"I work as a delver when I'm not babysitting aliens," I muttered, not having the presence of mind to consider whether giving him more information was a good idea. He probably knew I was a delver already, though? It wasn't a secret. "Spending my days fighting monsters has given me ingrained reactions for situations like [Danger Sense] firing."

... But I hadn't told him about [Danger Sense] before. Oops. Although he had very likely had conversations with others at the institute about skills and the System, and it wasn't exactly rare. He'd have known of its existence already.

Russel swore, throwing his own empty weapon at me as hard as he could manage. I simply caught it, the weight of a pistol no trouble for my superhuman strength and dexterity, and sent it straight to my [Inventory] alongside Dominic's. I'd melt them down later; Erryn's world had no need of guns.

"Fine," said Harry, backing away from the door with his hands in the air. "Everyone, back away. He obviously doesn't want to move away from the door, but we don't want to share a room with a corpse. Let him do his vanishing act on it."

"You traitor!" yelled Russel, turning on Harry. He was obviously closest to Dominic, but even so, Harry being so logical and cold was disconcerting.

"Calm down; you're supposed to be a professional soldier. He saw an opportunity, took it, but failed to account for Peter having the [Danger Sense] skill and paid for it. It's a risk of your occupation."

I packed away the corpse while they were arguing, but had no idea what to do about the pool of blood. I couldn't magic that away; it needed cleaning. Or a decay grenade, but that would leave a hole in the floor.

Or would it? From the way the structure of the ark blocked mana, there was a good chance it was just as immune to the decay effect as dungeon stone. I gave one a go, prepared to use my limited supply to conduct an interesting experiment, particularly since it would help distract me from the fact that I'd just killed someone, and sure enough, the grenade erased the blood without damaging the room.

Maximilian's death didn't faze me in the slightest. The knowledge of the people I'd killed on Earth did, but only in an abstract sort of way that by no means kept me up at night. Someone on Earth had been trying to commit genocide, I stopped them, and that was that. I could already tell this was going to be different.

As I watched the last of the blood lift from the floor and crumble away to nothing, erasing the last evidence of my actions, the bile rose once more in my throat.

Yes, he'd tried to kill me, but it wasn't unprovoked. I'd just told him I was going to keep him locked up here forever. His escape attempt had involved trying to kill me, but would I have done anything different if the situation was reversed? What other options had he had?

"Sorry," I mumbled, stepping back out of the door. "Umm... Cara and Calvin? Are you coming?"

The pair looked at each other, then stepped past me out of the door. I pulled it closed behind them, Russel still fuming, Harry staring at me coldly, and Abigail silent, looking away from me, but [Mana Sight] still showing me the tears streaking her face.

"That didn't go well," I muttered, detonating another ice grenade and repositioning my ice crystals to freeze the door shut. I'd need to do something more secure quickly, given Harry's intention to escape, but it would hold for a while. Losing half his manpower would hinder him, too.

"And the sky is blue," snapped Calvin. "So, now what? You're going to leave those three locked up forever, and what of us? We don't exactly have anywhere to go ourselves."

And yet they'd abandoned their friends for the sake of their freedom.

"First, you can follow me to a graveyard. Dominic at least deserves a decent burial."

He remained silent at that, so I used [Inventory] to teleport the pair of them to a room outside the most impactful graveyard I knew, the crystal of judgement still hovering in the air before Erryn's pedestal, now occupied only by a mindless mechanised core.