An Unbound Soul

"Where did you get that last part from?" I asked.

The illusion of me shifted and warped, becoming an image of Dominic. I gave a sharp intake of breath and took a step backward away from it. "That was self defence," I claimed.

"His death was not required for your defence," said the image, now using a warped, monotonous version of Dominic's voice. It was true, too. But how did it know about it? Had it not just pulled out my answer, but all of my memories and actions up until now? Was it reacting based not on what I'd deliberately answered, but my prior actions instead?

"It was... instinct. An unfortunate accident," I answered.

The image shifted again, becoming Maximilian.

"I didn't kill him! That was Krana!" I shouted.

"Yet you felt it deserved," came Maximilian's voice, this time more smoothly. "You never felt that his death was wrong."

Well, yes. Containment wasn't an option in his case; he could attack me invisibly, with no obvious movements. He thought nothing of killing hundreds for his experiments. An attempt at locking him away somewhere would be dangerous in the extreme. Not to mention his extended lifespan; I was confident I could outlive Harry and his cohort, but the same wasn't true of Maximilian.

"Justification acknowledged," said the image of Maximilian, before shifting and expanding.

Was it still inside my head? I hadn't said anything out loud! It wasn't visibly targeting me with soul affinity, but that was equally true of Erryn's telepathy. It may require an amount small enough to be imperceptible to my [Mana Sight].

It was doing something, though; the image had collapsed, and the cloud of affinity had ballooned outward, surrounding me and covering the entire room.

Suddenly I was elsewhere. The dungeon stone had gone, replaced by asphalt. A black sky was above me, roiling with clouds so thick that I couldn't tell if it was day or night. The street was lined with brick houses and lampposts. My breath caught in my throat as I realised I was on Earth.

But I wasn't, was I? The dense mana of the great dungeon was still all around me. I could see the clouds clearly, despite the lack of any source of light. There were people on the street, but they weren't moving correctly. They didn't have faces. They were little more than shadows, giving a hint of realness but unable to stand up to any real scrutiny.

I spun around, looking down the street for what I knew was coming. After all, this was my nightmare. I'd had it enough times to recognise it. The damn thing had ripped this from my head, too.

Sure enough, the wall of lava came, glowing an unrealistic red. Yes, lava did look like that, but it didn't come in a high-speed tidal wave towering over two-story houses. Pyroclastic flows would have hit this street long before any lava did. But since when did dreams need to be realistic?

The lava washed over the street, not making the slightest sound of its own, but the faceless victims screaming as it consumed them.

"I didn't know!" I shouted over the noise. "It was an accident!" I lied.

An accident... Telling myself that was how I slept at night, nightmares notwithstanding, and it was certainly true that I hadn't intended to create a new volcano in the middle of a populated area. Nevertheless, the fact was that I'd attacked the facility with a bomb that I knew would erase everything within a massive radius. Expecting to get away with that without anyone not involved in deploying the plague getting caught up in it was stupid. At the end of the day, I'd knowingly put lives at risk to protect this world.

I'd believed that I needed to take that risk to save this planet, and that even if a few innocents died, their lives were worth it.

The illusion vanished. Mostly. There was still someone stood in front of the crystal, too blurry to make out through my damp eyes. I rubbed my face and looked up again, to find myself confronted by Owen. My heart pounded in my chest as my memories of fear flooded my mind.

"You never thought of him," spoke the illusion in Owen's voice. "You have never lain eyes on Daniel, nor did you want to. He was taken by the Law against his will, and you were happy that it was so. Never did you believe that action to be wrong. You were glad of it, for it gave you the excuse to put him out of your mind forever."

Were these illusions growing more eloquent, or was it my imagination? Either way, I had to admit they were making valid points. And that hurt.

Owen was responsible for my death, and then he'd reincarnated as Daniel, but Erryn had mind-wiped him for trying to kill his new brother. And yes, I was glad of it. I hadn't done it. I hadn't even known it had been done until after Erryn's death. I was in no way to blame for it, so why should I feel bad about it? Apart from the fact that, yes, I was happy someone 'died'. And it wasn't just Lawification; Erryn wiped his mind clean. If that wasn't personality death, what was?

"Fine! I admit it!" I screamed. "I'm a giant hypocrite! So will you please stop now?"

Why was I here subjecting myself to this when I could just teleport away? Because I knew the illusions were right? Or because claiming I had the right to judge Erryn without being judged in turn was just another layer of hypocrisy?

Owen morphed into Harry.

"Oh, come on. He's still very much alive!" I complained, checking with [Mana Sight] that was still the case.

"You believe a confinement of the mind to be akin to murder, yet you do not believe the same of the confinement of the body. What do you believe to be the difference?"

I had thought about that before, but now I'd made it real. I'd told Harry his confinement wasn't punishment, but to protect the world from him. But how much better would his quality of life be if I protected the world from him via the Law, rather than locking him in a small room for the rest of his life? Locking them up forever benefited no-one.

I couldn't argue that the difference was choice; Harry didn't consent to the Law, but he sure as hell didn't consent to being locked up, either. The only difference was that he knew he was locked up, but why did I consider that a mark against the Law? Why shouldn't it be a positive?

"I... don't know..."

The illusion morphed again, this time back to me. For some reason, it was wearing my maid cosplay, but no way was I going to question why, in case it answered.

"What you wish you believe differs from what you truly believe," said my image.

"Then tell me, since you seem to know all!" I snapped. "What do I actually believe?"

The illusion of me cocked his head, ears twitching in a far more realistic manner than on the first attempt, and the tail raised realistically behind it.

"That it's complicated. That there are no hard rules. That all things should be decided on a case by case basis on their own merits. That the answers are ambiguous, and even given plentiful evidence and time to think, it is possible to be incorrect. That looking over past decisions and wondering if they were wrong is painful. That putting decisions in the hands of others avoids that pain, and so you would prefer to follow than to lead. That the true reason you refuse to bestow the Law on Harry is because his fear of it mirrors your own, and you see yourself in him."

I would prefer to follow? I... guess? I'd often lamented Erryn's death, not so much because I missed her or any of the usual reasons for mourning a death, but because I'd had to do a part of her work. That I'd been left to make decisions, when all I wanted was to be a background character of some sort. And yet I still didn't want my mind messed with. If I was content to take orders and not think for myself, why was I so scared of the Law? Just another little contradiction on top of all my other contradictions, and I certainly wasn't about to embrace the Law just because an illusion pointed out my cognitive dissonance.

"Okay, that's... reasonable," I hesitatingly admitted, feeling a bit like I was in a session with a really bad therapist.

In an ideal world, then yes, I could say 'thou shalt not kill' with a straight face. Earth was not an ideal world. Nor was Erryn's, despite her best efforts. There were... wrinkles.

"But I promised I would protect Harry and his group from the Law, and that takes precedence over any discussion about what is best for them. If they want it, and I agreed, I'm going to stick to it."

The illusion shifted from me to Cluma. The false catgirl stared at me silently.

"Yes, they kinda broke their side of the deal," I admitted. "That doesn't mean I want to break mine."

Cluma shifted to not-Blobby, continuing to stare at me in silence.

"I'm... not sure where you're going with this one?" I tried.

"She is violent. Impulsive. A danger that has almost killed you on three occasions. You have promised her nothing. She is, in your mind, more of a person than a monster. Should she face punishment or restrictions for her crimes? Should she face the Law? Should she face me?"

The illusion, which had been using the perfectly emulated voice of not-Blobby, broke and shimmered on that final word, the voice momentarily echoing in a way that suggested a million speakers in perfect unison. What the heck was I talking to here? The Law itself? And it was learning? I took another step back for reasons other than wanting to get away from the memories it was stirring up.

Were those thin slivers of soul I could see, mixed among the affinity mana?

But it had asked another question I'd never even considered. It was true, too. She'd accidentally served me poison, made a deliberate attempt at killing me, and then fractured my ribs for the crime of trying to help her.

This was too hard!

No, I wasn't going to give up here. I'd poked the hornets' nest, and I had no idea what the result would be if I left now. I had to get through this. The slime was... a nice girl, mostly. Maybe there was a touch of insanity from the fact she had a 'brain' that was supposed to drive a dungeon rather than a slime, but what she really needed was anger management classes rather than something as heavy-handed as the Law. Maybe. At least the Law was guaranteed to work, and wouldn't result in not-Blobby attacking her teacher.

Urk, no, I was right the first time. Me giving permission to Lawify someone just felt icky. It wasn't something I wanted to do ever. Probably not even to Owen slash Daniel. Even though I felt nothing at the fact Erryn had done it, and that the weird crystal illusion therapist was right in saying that locking someone up forever was worse. I simply didn't want to be responsible for making that decision.

The illusion ballooned outwards again, but this time didn't encompass the room. Instead, it wrapped itself around the pedestal, shimmering white, forming into the image of Serlvrenalliacta.

"Then shall she make it?" she asked.

Heck no. She wanted to be Lawified. She'd definitely vote that everyone be subjected to it!

But what was the point in saying that I didn't want to make decisions if I then complained that the one making decisions instead was making the wrong decisions? Or... perhaps thinking she was wrong was another thing I wished I believed, and underneath that, I was simply being selfish. I feared her making decisions because she had openly stated her opinion that I should be brought under the Law. It wasn't as if she'd demanded the Lawification of Earth.

The illusion shrunk once more, turning back into a perfect image of me, this time in my delver gear.

"Judgement accepted," it declared, and then burst with spatial affinity.

"Wait, what? What did you accept?" I yelled, but no answer came. Rather, the whiff of soul affinity that surrounded the crystal decayed, dissolving into the dense background, and the crystal itself cracked and shattered into dust, the powder vanishing to nothing before it reached the floor. The thin wisps of soul—which had seemed to grow progressively more real throughout the conversation—wrapped themselves around the dungeon core.

"What did you accept?!" I repeated, growing more concerned. The crystal had broken and taken the illusion with it. If I'd been talking to the Law itself—which was ridiculous, because how could the Law be intelligent—did it just break? Why had things that looked like fragments of soul crystallised out of the mana?!

The only answer was more spatial affinity, swirling around the room and depositing the five surviving Earthlings around the core. Thankfully, all five were still chained; the Law wasn't broken.

Wait... I'd just been thankful they were still chained. Wasn't my purpose here to remove those chains? Yes, it confirmed the Law hadn't just broken, but... Argg.

"Huh? Why are we back here?" asked Calvin, being the first to get his bearings.

"Now what!" snapped Harry. "Found somewhere more secure for us?"

"No, I..." I started, before the room blazed with soul affinity. Not just a small amount, either, but the full floor one hundred density, exploding from the core in a flood.

As the core chamber lit up in soul affinity, a million voices on the cusp of my hearing whispered, "I will decide for myself."

Harry stared up in alarm. "What the hell are you doing?" he snapped. Even without a mana sensing ability, his [Soul Sense] was sufficient to pick up that something was going on. The other four didn't even have that much, apparently not noticing anything out of the ordinary beyond their sudden teleportation, the ridiculously dense mana having no effect on them at all.

"Nothing... I swear, this isn't me! "

And... it wasn't. As the mana looped itself between the Earthlings and the dungeon core, I could see it warping their souls. Angular patterns lost their edges, looking more rounded. Looking more native.

Proximity to a dungeon core. Erryn had mentioned, once, that it was easier to interact with foreign souls within a dungeon, and easier again within a core room. And where was a stronger core or denser mana than here, at the bottom of the great dungeon? It was adapting them to the Law proactively instead of via passive System shard growth.

And Harry knew it. He looked at me in terror, even as I watched his chains hook ever more deeply into the depths of his soul.

"This isn't me..." I repeated, more quietly, and it was true. I'd kept my promise. I'd tried to protect them. And this was the 'judgement' that had been taken from me. That I felt this world would be safer if Harry's group was Lawified, and not only that I felt they deserved it, but that I felt it would be best for them. But I refused to do it myself because of my own self-imposed chains.

So the decision was taken out of my hands. They'd be chained, and it wasn't my fault.

Not my fault... Not my fault... That was the mantra I repeated to myself as the terror in Harry's eyes faded, replaced with nothing more than a blank stare, and as I tried my best not to think about how fragile a dungeon core must be, and how easily I could smash the core that was warping them. And how many people up above in Synklisi would lose their livelihoods or maybe even food supply if I did?

Harry was fond of bringing up the trolley problem, and this time he was firmly on the losing side.

The backlash from soul affinity had always seemed strange to me. Why soul, specifically, and not any of the others? Even death affinity could be used without danger to the wielder. But standing there, I could sort of see it. How could anything with a soul do this to them and remain unchanged?

"Stop! This wasn't what I wanted!" I lied.

"Stop what?" asked Harry, looking at me with a mix of concern and confusion.

And there it was. The final threat to this world, the self-proclaimed whispering serpent, was gone. The planet was safe once more. No extra-dimensional invaders. No plagues. No internal threats. No soul-magic-ravaged almost-goddesses. Even the strange fragments of soul ceased their movement, falling inert in the centre of the core. Everything was over, and I'd won. And I didn't even need to feel guilty about it, because I'd done my best to stop it.

The only question that remained was whether I should laugh or cry.

Well, that and the question of what my 'judgement' had done to Earth.

cathfach I feel I should write something here, but I have no idea what. Peter continued to be the most passive protagonist I've ever written, and yet he just stumbled into an ending he's happy with. He's saved the world, got the girl, and is rich and famous... I'm not sure he deserves any of it.

Half the readers won't be at all happy with the Law 'winning' of course. But then, it wouldn't be a Lonely Dungeon/Unbound Soul volume ending if it wasn't contentious. Oh well. Epilogue coming up next. Then catgirl sex, because let's be honest, did anything else even have a chance? :p

I'll post the afterword after that, in which I can finally join in the moral conversation without colouring who I consider the 'good' and 'bad' guys of the story. And then we're done.

Ish. I still have a long list of side stories and what-ifs I want to write. Most will probably be patreon-only, but maybe I'll bring the occassional one over here. I also still want to swap out the first couple of volumes here with the better-edited e-book versions, but still have no idea how to do it and keep chapter numbering straight. Maybe I'll just put the first two e-books up for free somewhere.