"Sorry sweetie, but Daddy needs to visit Synklisi today," I told Catherine, trying to detach the [Clingy] catkin toddler. She'd inherited her own take on her mother's hugging tendencies, and the damn trait boosted her arm strength. I could still overpower her easily enough, but with her low endurance, I was worried I'd break something.
"No! Want to play!"
"You can play with me instead," came Cluma's voice from nowhere in particular, before she stepped out into existence behind me.
I wasn't sure if it was a good or bad thing that neither me nor Catherine flinched. Our kids were all pretty bomb-proof when it came to jump-scares. They had to be, with Cluma as a mum. Ever since classing up to [Invisible Death] and becoming completely invisible to my [Soul Perception], she'd taken a sadistic glee in terrifying me at every opportunity. Well, as sadistic as anyone could be, with the Law holding her back; she'd stop if I ever asked her to.
I hadn't, of course, because I enjoyed her behaviour so much. She still needled me about the time it turned out that despite [Expert Delver] giving a twenty level reduction, it didn't actually let us take rank two classes for free. A minimum of one level was always required for a class change, forcing me to go frilly headpiece in hand to Lord Reid and beg him to hire me until I could earn a level and switch back away from [Maid].
Perhaps [Soul Sight] would pick her up, and we could take our game of hide and seek another step higher, but I still wasn't sure how safe soul skills were, even if only used for perception.
Maybe today was the day I'd find out.
"Mmmk," said Catherine, detaching from me and reattaching to her mother.
"This is going to be one of your more interesting delves," said Cluma.
"Interesting, yes, but it's not really delving. Not when I can teleport straight to the core room."
It was a simple plan. Krana and Serlv would enter the bottom floor the official way, signal me once they'd cleared the boss, then I'd teleport Erryn down and follow myself. I could teleport straight to the core chamber, since I still had my beacon there, but I couldn't transport the dragons, and they insisted on being present in person. Despite how my mana pool had grown over the years, they were still too much for me.
"If you aren't delving, why are you wearing your delver gear?" called up Charles from the bottom of the stairs. He was the eldest of our children and a seriously annoying [Pedant].
"Because it looks cool," I answered, simply grateful for the fact we had children, however annoying they could be. Three of them, the middle one a girl called Chloe, who was out the back tinkering with her jet racer. It had taken a lot of time and effort, but the hint we'd needed had come from Maximilian of all people. Shortly before his untimely but well-deserved demise, he'd suggested that beastkin were artificial, and that something served to stabilise their DNA. With the help of Jason and the institute, we'd isolated the virus that served as that something, and applied it to me.
That had thrown the System through a loop. It took a full three days of 'working' messages before it simply gave up. My status still called me human. Alas, [Test Subject] had only fired once, and, even worse, rather than evolve [Xenophilia], I'd lost it. I supposed it made sense; I only had eyes for Cluma, and given what I'd done to myself, she no longer counted as exotic. In any case, it made no difference what a couple of words on my status said, only that we'd been blessed with three healthy cat-sìth children.
All of whom had names beginning with C. Apparently it wasn't so much a tribe or extended family thing as something Camus's parents had started, and then Clana simply found it amusing how similar her name was and so named Cluma to match. I should have guessed, given Clana's sense of humour. We'd joined in a little, but Chloe was the only one who completely followed the rules.
On their side, they'd named Cluma's little sister Carla. She was Cluma's opposite; quiet, sedate, and a bit of an introvert. That hadn't stopped her taking up my mantle of inventive cooking, though. My attempts at mana-filled meals had been innovative, albeit only edible to Cluma and our kids, but Carla had been working enchantments and affinities into things. Durability enchanted jelly that bounced back, ice affinity ice-cream that didn't melt even in direct sunlight, death and fire affinity hot sauces for... extreme masochists? Presumably there was a healthy market for hot sauces that were made of literal fire and pain, else she wouldn't make so many, but damned if I knew who they were.
"Armour is supposed to be protective, not look cool," Charles complained, which brought up amusing memories of Adele calling me cute, and the similar complaint I'd made in response.
"No reason it can't do both," I answered. It did, too; the bodysuit of interlinked dragon scales was better than the leather of any monster, and it had been expertly crafted to not hamper my mobility in any way. Throw in a sprinkling of adamantite and hihi'irokane, with Grover's rank five enchanting skills on top, and I had a winner.
It was also well over two decades old. Time during which I'd soloed the Obsidian Spires and reached as far as floor eighty of the great dungeon. If that wasn't a resounding endorsement of its durability, I didn't know what was.
"Be safe," said Cluma, giving me a quick hug goodbye.
"Mummy! You're squishing me!" complained Catherine, who was sandwiched between us. It was her own fault, though; she could have let go at any point.
"I'll do my best. Bye-bye," I replied, turning around and walking into my bedroom.
For most people, that sort of conversation would take place by the front door. I'd never been most people. Besides, walking out the front door just to teleport would be silly.
Precisely zero seconds later, I was in the Synklisi teleport room, courtesy of [Fabric Shift]. The pair of dragons were waiting by the dungeon wall, clearly visible to [Mana Perspicacity] despite the background glare of the dungeon. And with them, a lady of the inconvenient age that would consider 'middle-aged' to be a terrible insult while clearly being too old to be considered a 'young woman'.
The fact that I was older than her and still considered myself young was neither here nor there, of course.
There was only one human in the group, though; there was no sign of Cara, the [Itinerant Scholar], who had taken to wandering the world together with Erryn. Despite the change of circumstance since I'd made the suggestion—with the three released from their imprisonment and hence five of the six back together, each chained by the Law—she'd taken up my suggestion of becoming a travelling teacher.
Russell took up delving, ending up with a rather concerning [Gunner] class, especially since his new guns were fuelled by mana instead of gunpowder. He'd given Grover a description of how Earth weapons worked—despite never quite being able to articulate what they were used for since Earth had no dungeons—and the next minute, Grover had built half a dozen of the things and was test-firing them out in their fields.
The other three kept up with their research, directing their attention to mana instead of power sources. They still had no idea how darkness crystals worked, but were building increasingly complex bits of machinery in an attempt to find out. Even Harry was still chipping in out of interest, despite his advanced age.
As I stepped into the city, I pondered how much it had changed since I'd first visited. The glass windows had been first, the bicycles on the streets later on. The casual use of enchanted mythril. A couple of blimps in the sky. The secondary portal network, built for personal travel now that we'd learnt to stabilise the things so that they never needed recharging.
That had, ironically, happened the year after the blimp transportation network had been set up. Not the best timing ever, but fortunately a year hadn't been long enough to expand the blimp network too far, and people still kept around the blimps that had already been built for the spectacular views. They'd been converted from a transportation network to this world's equivalent of a cruise industry.
The dungeon was still the same, though. No interesting changes had happened to dungeons in a long time. Although that may be something else that changed today; once I got closer, I was pleased to confirm with [Soul Perception] that Erryn was, as far as I could tell, still completely healthy. And also completely human.
"You are late," complained Serlv.
"Sorry. It took a while to detach Catherine."
Krana looked at me dubiously. "Your excuse for tardiness is a child not yet of age?"
"You should have brought her," said Erryn. "It's been a while since I've seen your little ones."
"Not so little anymore; Chloe is entering that big race next week. Hasn't stopped tweaking her racer all season. Didn't even say goodbye to me today."
I gave a faux sniff, wiping away a non-existent tear.
Serlv blew out a cloud of ice in a sort of draconic snort. "Come. You can wax poetic about your family later. For now, let us complete this task."
She turned and plodded off, Krana on her tail. The guard at the gate let them through without even commenting on their lack of armour or equipment, which I felt was speciesist. He'd never let me in naked.
"You sure you want to do this?" I asked Erryn, the moment they'd teleported away.
"Again? You must have asked that a million times by now."
"Four. I counted."
"Still three too many," sighed Erryn. "Yes, I am sure."
"It's just that you're so... human."
"So were you, once," she chided.
"I still am! The System says it, so it must be true."
"Serlvrenalliacta said that the pace of events doubled again last week. You say my soul has healed. This world needs its earth mother."
"The pace of events doesn't matter if the System collapses their portals before they even form. The last time we asked it, it told us it could cope with a thousand times the rate before it would need an alternate strategy."
"Then it's best we find that alternate strategy before we need it."
I'd always voted against telling Erryn of her origins, but in our de facto ruling triumvirate, Krana and Serlv tended to vote together, and in this case they'd been against me. She'd always known something was up, given her ridiculous trait and affinities, and when we'd finally told her the truth on her twentieth birthday, she'd barely seemed shocked at all. It was more like we were telling her something she'd always known, but had put out of mind momentarily.
Jason, on the other hand, had needed to go and have a lie down. The knowledge that he'd spent sixteen years raising the earth mother easily broke through the anti-reverential effect she'd built into the Law.
And now, another decade later, she was taking up her mantle once more. Once again, I'd been outvoted, and this time Erryn herself had joined in my opposition. But if she was willing... I had to admit, the continued portal attempts were concerning. I'd never known for certain what my judgement had done to Earth, with even the System being unable to provide an answer. I'd come to terms with my own mind since, though, and I could say with little doubt that whatever the Law had pulled from my head that day, it wouldn't have spread itself to Earth. The new portal attempts weren't really evidence in either direction. We weren't even sure they were from Earth; a worse case would be if Maximilian had reincarnated somewhere else and was now doing his best to invade.
And so, a week ago, we'd taken Erryn to the ark and granted her [Unbound Soul]. She'd been rather thoughtful ever since, but not angry or depressed. That was promising, but today she'd be regaining her memory. Who knew what might happen?
We stood around in a nervous silence until Serlv signalled me. Or at least, I was nervous. Erryn seemed fine, a fact of which I was a little jealous.
"Time to go," I said, so she dumped her mana pool to allow me to teleport her. A few seconds later, I joined them in the boss chamber, needing to use [Redistribute] since [Fabric Shift] couldn't penetrate a dungeon.
I was just in time to see Erryn staggering, Serlv catching her before she fell.
"Hard... to... breathe..." she gasped.
"Take a moment to get used to the density of mana here," said Krana.
She wasn't lower in level than the first time I'd visited this floor, but her mana pool was smaller. She may have inherited her universal affinity attunement from her time as a dungeon core, but her pool was completely human, and she hadn't been taking skills to expand it.
"I... I'm okay... It's just a bit... much..."
"You're not okay!" I snapped back, scanning her with [Mana Perspicacity]. Her mana veins were already in a state that reminded me of Cluma the first time I'd tried [Item Box] on her, but, unlike Cluma, it wasn't a one-off hit. The mana wasn't getting less dense, and she continued to burn. "You're burning up. We need to get you out of here!"
"Peter, your control over mana is sufficient to reduce the density around her to safe levels. Do so," ordered Serlv.
Right. That was an option, too. I activated [Mana Authority] and built a bubble of reduced density around Erryn. I couldn't completely hold back the crushing density, but I could reduce it enough that her breathing eased. She healed herself and stood up straight.
"Sorry," she said.
"You have nothing to apologise for," pointed out Krana. "Peter, if you would?"
"Would what?"
"Open the door to the core room, as you did last time."
"Huh? I didn't do anything special, just said why we were here," I pointed out, before addressing the wall where I remembered the door being. "We are here to return Erryn's memory."
Nothing happened.
"Oh, joy. This is going to be the ark all over again, isn't it?" I muttered. Was it my imagination, or did the wall look a little smug?
"Open," said Erryn confidently, walking towards the exact position of the door despite it barely being visible to my [Mana Perspicacity].
It opened.
"Okay, that was cool," I said, looking over at Erryn.
And seeing her eyes.
"Erryn?" I asked, but she ignored me. Or, more likely, didn't hear me. Her face was as blank as someone in the middle of a Law-powered memory wipe, and she was walking forward like a zombie.
"Is this supposed to happen?" I asked the dragons, moving my bubble of reduced mana to keep her in the middle.
The only answer I got was a pair of draconic shrugs, so we followed Erryn, walking silently through the graveyard, but instead of walking around the central monument, she stopped in front of it.
"That was the second time..." she muttered under her breath. "I can only pray there will not be a third..."
She turned towards Serlv. "My memories," she asked, hand outstretched.
"We have not yet reached the core room," she pointed out.
Erryn shook her head, a tear running down one cheek. "No, but we have reached my heart. I remember... enough."
Serlv handed the core over without additional complaint, and Erryn turned and rammed it into the monument, right above the text.
Things happened.
[Mana Perspicacity] was good, but it wasn't that good. I hadn't even maxed out its level, with the final three proving annoyingly stubborn. Had I had it at rank five, along with an equivalent soul perception skill, I might have been able at least to see what it was that I didn't understand. As it was, 'things happened' was the best I could do.
And then Erryn turned back to us, eyes red and with a tear still on her cheek, but smiling. Her outfit had changed—the practical trousers and shirt replaced by decorated robes, bright green and hemmed with brown—but her face was identical. [Eye of Judgement] showed a class change to [Earth Mother], her previous rank three class of [Itinerant Healer] relegated to her list of completed classes. Aside from that, it showed little difference.
"You are... still human?" I asked carefully.
"What did you expect?" she asked in turn, almost playfully. She glanced over at an orichalcum plaque—left behind by me long ago but never consumed by the dungeon—then back. "And when this body ages and dies, I shall be beastkin, harpy, centaur, mer, fairy, demon, dwarf, elf, then dragon. And even then, I would not dare claim to have learnt enough to fulfil the role I chose to burden myself with."
She turned away from us, walking towards the core room.
"You thought me almost a goddess," she continued as she walked. "You thought that with me here, everything would be fine. The world protected. My children safe. Even I believed it, for a time. We were mistaken. I had the advantage that my perception spanned the world. I had the weight of age behind me, and the ability of a dungeon to create or to kill. I had power, but the person beyond that power? I was just a lonely, naïve little girl."
"Hah. Better than me," I snorted, somewhat amused by the idea of a lonely dungeon. "At least you had conviction. I could barely do anything, for fear of making the wrong choice."
"The choice to do nothing is still a choice," she pointed out.
"Do not belittle yourself," chimed in Serlv. "You are not a goddess; you are our mother. You offered us nurturing and protection, as a mother should. You offered us love, and that is the very definition of a good mother."
"Should a mother wrap her children in chains?" she asked.
Ah. That question again. Serlv and Krana had been all for it, back when I'd first released them, and I'd never been able to draw them on the subject since. How had the decades altered their perceptions?
"It's not important," said Krana, and I tripped over my feet and face-planted into very solid dungeon rock.
"Not important?!" I complained, once [Rapid Regeneration] had fixed up my face and I once again owned a full set of teeth. How dare he call something that I had agonised over for so long unimportant?
Erryn apparently saw the funny side, because she just laughed.
"I fail to see why my response surprises you both," grumbled Krana.
"Because Peter spent many of his early years agonising over the questions posed by those chains," answered Erryn from in front of the dungeon core, which was an interesting trick, because she was also still giggling to herself a few steps in front of me.
"What?" asked Serlv, staring at the second Erryn, who was wrapped in robes of identical style, except coloured in sky-blue, hemmed with white.
... The second Erryn didn't respond to [Eye of Judgement], and [Mana Perspicacity] displayed a sight I hadn't seen in a long time, the mix of soul and light affinities forming the illusion being unique to only one thing I'd seen in the past.
"You are the Law?" I asked it, not quite as afraid as I had been the last time. This time, I had backup with me.
The illusionary Erryn shook her head, and gave a small, sad smile. "I am the price that was paid. I am that which was lost in sacrifice. I am the verdict at the end of the judgement."
I stared, wondering how the hell to respond to that. Or, more importantly, what that even meant.
"Too complex for you?" asked the illusionary Erryn, the small smile growing into the sort of grin Clana would wear when about to make an obscene joke. "In that case, it would not be completely wrong to call myself the daughter of you and Erryn."
"Oh my. Cluma will be so disappointed at your infidelity," giggled the real Erryn, while my mouth hung open.
... Except, they were both real, weren't they? The price that was paid? Those soul slivers, awoken once more and dancing around the core... So that was how soul magic could be used safely. Not to mention why Erryn—upon regaining her memory—felt able to keep her human body.
Talk about chance and happenstance. So much for needing an alternate strategy; we'd had one all along. I'd pity any Earthling that tried to invade us on her watch.
Now it was my turn to laugh. To laugh and laugh and laugh.
Surprisingly, the poll results here and on royal road are almost identical. Mating season won on both, with Earth's Regret running up on royal road here and Goddess in third place, while here Goddess took second place by a single vote and Earth's Regret was relegated to third.
As I said above the poll, I'm going to keep royal road clean, so on Friday scribblehub will get mating season days 1 and 2, while royal road will get Earth's Regret.
Perhaps, following the previous chapter and this epilogue, people wish they voted Goddess. Well, good news! That one has already been made publically available! Just... not in a sensible place. You can grab it, along with the edited volume 1 e-book, from the bookshop on God Street in Ankh Morpork of the Diskworld MUD. (Bottom right of cell H6.) It's also available for borrowing from the assassins' guild library.
Yes, that's not a normal publishing platform. (It has better formatting options than patreon, though: it can do colour!) But I figured it was a good opportunity to shout out a criminally underrated free game. Just because it comes from a time before graphics were a thing, modern gamers tend to turn their noses up at it. Perhaps users of a site dedicated to reading will be more tolerant of a game requiring people to read. (But if not, the discworld books are awesome too. Go read them instead.)
The only plot hole I still wonder about is the bond with not-blobby...
I was going to make a big comment about the Laws being bad, but it got long enough and broad enough to be more of a review than a comment. So that's what it will be instead now.
EDIT1: on review of the review guidelines, it might be better to keep this as a comment. It is spoilery, and its pervasive negativity could be construed as an outright attack against the author or story itself. Putting it back now, though the formatting seems to have been broken. I like to use bolding, italicizing, and underlining for flavor and emphasis.
I'm glad I remembered that there's a scribblehub version, my aversion to making a royal road account continues unabated. I preface this comment with that because this webnovel, and lonely dungeon by extension, almost drove me to make an account just to make this comment. And I don't mean that in a good way.Let me just say this right out the gate: Erin's Laws are a curse and it is the wrong decision to let them continue. They have been semi-regularly shown to have been ill-conceived and having detrimental blind spots. They are a palliative and do nothing to address some of the deeper issues causing what it seeks to address, moreover its implementation causes literal harm to those it binds. They effectively lobotomize an entire civilization in order to suppress the icky bits of free will, however prevent the civilization from addressing it naturally meaning that should the Laws vanish one day everything they suppressed would come back in full force. The Laws can even be briefly overpowered through sufficient will which could allow for occasional breaches of the code of conduct, albeit with a risk to shatter said person's soul.
And that brings be to my next bit, what the laws actually are. A curse manifesting as thick black chains entwining and piercing a person's soul. That alone would've caused me to be vehemently against the Laws, hell it even got me to be (more) uncomfy about the System since it's growing inside each soul and reshaping it like a parasite. But I digress. The Laws are inherently harmful, and have been shown to be misery inducing. The people bound by the law do did not consent to it, and for each person we've seen that has lived with the Law long-term we have been shown that they wouldn't've consented to it had the choice been given.
I could go on and on about this, making an entire essay out of everything wrong with the laws, but that never really mattered did it? The world of Unbound Soul was a thought exercise about a utopia brought about & maintained through invasive & damaging means, and the narrative of Unbound Soul wasn't actually a story. It was a series of events excusing the harm and building up ammo for anyone refuting the continuation of the Laws, wether it be the readers or the characters. I had fun reading this until that ending, and some of your replies on royal road gave me the needed context for my conclusions here. You yourself would be an advocate for these Laws, and that was the point of Unbound Soul. It doesn't matter how awful and unwanted that the Laws are shown to be in-universe, you yourself agree with their existence and so they remain. Peter's narrative purpose of being an outside perspective given the task of passing judgement on the Laws were fairly irrelevant in the end. The Laws were given sapience and judged him instead, rebuking his outside perspective entirely and proceeding to violate the consent of people that didn't want to be lobotomized. The epilogue serves to justify this cruelty because look how happy everyone is! It's all happily ever after and everyone clapped! Hogwash. The institutions of slavery still exist and there are people out there that would be readily xenophobic if given the chance to do so.
Moreover, the Laws as first stated before their apotheosis were not actually enforcing a defined set of morality, but were reinforcing the averaged common definition of morality and civility. This specific wording is something I've already encountered and found an exploit in from the Genshin Impact TOS agreement, that of "commonly held / majority morals". Should the majority change their mind about morals, what gets enforced subsequently and automatically changes along with it. What if the majority of people decide to ascribe to xenophobia? Sure it would be suppressed until it reached a threshold, but past that it suddenly flips and the floodgates are opened. Suddenly the Laws are increasing people's xenophobia, and allowing them to express it. This wouldn't happen anymore now that there's a conscious mind behind the Laws, but that's another thing. A conscious mind is susceptible to degradation and corruption from performing soul magic, as far as I'm aware. Not simply having a soul or being a construct made from soul-matter. That's bad enough considering what the Laws are, but the System also might be subject to backlash too now.
Honestly I hope I'm wrong about my overly negative conclusion about both Unbound Soul and you yourself, cathfach. But I honestly don't see that being the case after all is said and done. The way the story went and ultimately ended doesn't make full sense as anything but a hypothetical scenario justifying Erin's Laws to both the audience and potentially yourself. You'd be fine with the concept of Erin's Laws coming into existence, but there's some part of you that recognizes that its implementation couldn't be anything but harmful and misguided. That dissonance comes out as the negative aspects of the Laws I've highlighted here. The term railroading more applies to things like DND, but I think it works here.
Also the lengths the story went to in order to both force and justify having an adult copulate with someone they perceived as a minor was weird as f*ck and pretty uncomfy when placed alongside the equally forced justification of the Laws and system at large. I know that reincarnative isekai stories feel kinda sus when romance is involved, but added scrutiny and justifications make it MORE sus, not less. It's like that episode of Always Sunny In Philadelphia where Frank is holding a child beauty pageant and tripping over himself to remind everyone that he isn't a child diddler. People wouldn't be actively suspicious of him if he didn't make such a deal of it. So anyway yeah what was up with the Cluma s*x stuff? Anything you'd like to mention?
I won't address the bulk of that, because it's a perfectly valid opinion to hold. If the thought of everyone in Erryn's world, Peter included, plodding along happily and ignoring the fact that the entire world had their souls violated invokes a visceral reaction in you, then I consider the story a success. It's not supposed to be a fairytale happy ending.
Things I will address:
You yourself would be an advocate for these Laws
Heck no. Please don't misinterperate the afterword. I didn't say I liked them; I said I liked Earth less. We live in a society where selfishness is a winning personality trait, and such people float to the top of society like scum, where they f*ck the 'good' people over. I do not believe there's any good solution for solving the problem that is humanity. (If you've read my comments on royalroad, you'll have noticed that the usual 'solution' I mention is a direct meteor strike...) The Law is a non-good solution, and one that's impossible to implement in practice, but nevertheless, as I said in the afterword, if Erryn's world was a reality, (and Goddess-Erryn doesn't get soul magic backlash, and can protect the world from outside invaders,) then I would happily move there because I'd prefer it to living in this hellhole. What I _wouldn't_ do is force the entirety of Earth to move along with me. It's my personal choice, but not one I'd be prepared to force on others.
Also the lengths the story went to in order to both force and justify having an adult copulate with someone they perceived as a minor was weird as f*ck and pretty uncomfy when placed alongside the equally forced justification of the Laws and system at large.
Firstly, again, that was _supposed_ to be uncomfortable. The intent for many of the elements in this story is to read a paragraph and have the reaction 'that's cute' and then, if you spend a few seconds to think about it, the reaction changes to 'wait, that's messed up'.
Secondly, he didn't. When the discussion of a relationship first came up, she was already an adult in the eyes of society, and in those same eyes, Peter was doing a bad thing by stringing her along. Either saying 'no, not ever', or 'yes, right now', would have been better to the locals than 'maybe, in the future, when I feel less uncomfortable about it'. But he strung her along anyway, because as you say, he viewed her as a minor even if society didn't, and he's pathologically indecisive so didn't want to turn her down but also didn't want to accept her. Then, thanks to stringing her along, he was forced to make the decision 'do I badly hurt her or do something I personally find uncomfortable', and made the decision not to hurt her, but despite that decision, he was given a cop-out and nothing actually happened. That was actually only due to a planning mixup on my part; I got a couple of timeskips wrong, and so the characters at that point were younger than I intended. Cluma was still over my local age of consent even at that point—16, in earth years, which works out ~14.3 years on Erryn's world, where years are longer—but it was only barely, (she was ~14.5) and if you need to do accurate maths to work out if something is paedophilia, you really shouldn't be doing it... Not to mention that people kept forgetting about the extra days in a year, which made it look even worse than it was.
By the time s*x actually happened, she was well over the age of consent by not only my local laws but also the bulk of the world, and Peter no longer viewed her as a minor. (The extra time dungeon delving with her as more-or-less equals helped with that.)
@cathfach I tend to overthink things, which has been exacerbated due to my heavy preference for binge consumption of media my brain has adapted to what I call filter-feeding, with ingested data being treated in three ways. Priority data such as (possible) foreshadowing, general plot stuff, and other things that catch my attention are properly picked out for memorization. General story stuff and whatnot are essentially blurred into a low file size package, essentially leaving an imprint of the plot which the aforementioned priority data can be used as focal points for to de-compress the data. The rest is discarded, no two ways to say that. As such my brain at this point in the game automatically overanalyzes even small tidbits and scraps to weave them together to the other scraps overlaying the plot imprint, and for somewhat unrelated reasons my brain tends to generate negative, harsh, or just Edgy conclusions. I think I developed these habits reading heavier stories…
So! I would like to thank you for giving me more civility than many others would, and perhaps more than I should’ve received. With that in mind I will try and reword some of what I said for clarity. I was unaware that the laws were actually condemned to any valid extent because of the epilogue. You say that it’s not a fairytale happy ending, but what we see from the epilogue is that fairy tale happy ending, or at least just a happy ending / happily ever after sans fairytale aspects. There’s matters of tone and presentation when it comes to how something is depicted, forgive me for being crass but if it weren’t for your comment here my takeaway from this novel would be that the overall message is "f*ck off with your earth perspective, the Laws are working perfectly fine and everyone is happy because of it." Hell, I still think that this is what the novel’s overall statement is, at least to an extent. Because there is a fundamental difference in views between you and me in regards to the Laws.
Let me preface this by saying that there’s a difference between being an advocate and an evangelist, though it can be semantics depending on who is listening I guess. You are an advocate by my definition, but you are not an evangelist. You are fine with the existence of the laws (at least in an idealized form), but don’t want to force other people of earth into it. Do the people of Eryn’s world get a choice? I know that they didn’t to begin with, but with the judgement system going on now it’s possible that SOME people might not live in chains. Crime and punishment is worded as such because crime must happen before punishment, not after. Innocent until proven guilty.
Do you truly believe that humanity is a problem that needs to be solved? That humans are inherently vile and need to be corrected, and failing that eradicated? Did you not realize that even joking about a meteoric mass extinction event "curing the human plague" or whatever is you making jokes in favor of genocide? I won’t lie, there are people out there that are downright disgusting, and human civilization has done many f*cked up things, but humans as a species are not evil. Imposing a planetary scale behavioral geas with built in memory adjustment is. That’s where we differ, I don’t think it’s acceptable for in your own words as written (and mine as implied) "the entire world [has] their souls violated" (bracketed part of quote is to make it align with the sentence’s grammar). You actually want to live in a world like that? A world with people’s minds and souls enslaved by something that causes harm to them? A world where consent means nothing to the ones on top? Sure it seemed nice enough in the story, but it was just that: a story. Any piece of fiction is dictated by it’s author(s) and therefore cannot be seen as being fully representative of how it would exist if it were real, and even the idyllic version you’ve presented here is morbidly f*cked up and would likely kill me should I wind up there. Wether that be through ego death (which is a valid concern) or my soul literally breaking into pieces fighting against the literal chains burrowing into my soul. There is no trust. That is a world that fully believes that there is no inherent goodness (or potentially even worth) in it’s populace. Look me in the eyes and tell me why the people that are stated to not have their behaviors corrected by the Laws (as in they are legitimately good people) are still bound by them. Unless that is no longer the case? Because if they were freed, maybe say so. Death would be less cruel than having your mind and soul violated. Cruel and unusual punishment.
I don’t fully get it. You’ve crafted a world that is held together by something cruel and inhumane that disembowls everyone’s autonomy and violates them on the deepest and most fundamental levels, and you’ve presented it as idyllic. You claim that people are meant to be put off by it and that it’s a success if this injustice evokes a visceral outrage in readers, but you want to live there. It’s incongruent. It’s dissonant. It’s insane. I just don’t get it. I don’t think I want to 'get it' if it would cause me to be alright with slavery, mass punishment, routine violation of consent, nepotism (aristocracy), a lack of transparency in regards to physically invasive "institutions/medical practices" (the curse/Laws), a fundamental mistrust in people, and so on and so forth. Back on that mass punishment thing, it’s a system that will enslave infinite innocents to restrain even just a single person from doing wrong. Do we not deserve free will in your eyes? Punish the masses for the crimes of just a few? But let them keep their institutions of power for some reason? Are there no more chances to prove that people can do good without being lobotomized? To be allowed to keep their memories, to know the truth of their world? Are we not allowed to be people?
@Tonykins2000
that the overall message is "f*ck off with your earth perspective, the Laws are working perfectly fine and everyone is happy because of it."
The story does indeed end with the Law working fine and everyone happy because of it. That's the surface level happy ending. And then you can stop to think about it, applying your earth perspective, and you know that they're happy because they're forced to be, because they have no freedom to be unhappy, and then the 'happy' ending suddenly gets complicated. (Or not complicated, in your case, but that's fine too.)
Do you truly believe that humanity is a problem that needs to be solved? That humans are inherently vile and need to be corrected, and failing that eradicated?
Just to clarify, if I had a magical kill-all-humans button, I obviously wouldn't push it. I do believe humans are inherently sinful, and I give great kudos to those humans capable of looking past their own selfish desires. I would quite like for humanity to be 'solved', but I don't believe there exists (or can exist, outside of divine intervention) a 'solution' that's better than the status quo, and some generalised hope that maybe things will improve in the future.
I'd like to think I'm doing my part for the future. Donating to charity. Being helpful to friends and family. Simply being polite to strangers. But considering it honestly, how much of my time do I actually invest? How much of my money? Do I give enough that I have to think about if I'm going to cause hardship to myself? Do I feel guilty each time I turn on my heating, because I'm consuming Earth's limited resources? Of course not... Because I'm human, and my own needs come first.
I tend to think of humanity as a single giant prisoners' dilemma. And the bulk of 'humanity' will sell out every time, despite the benefit to the species as a whole if they did not, leaving the few who don't to get royally screwed over.
You claim that people are meant to be put off by it and that it's a success if this injustice evokes a visceral outrage in readers, but you want to live there. It's incongruent.
I said it was valid to have that reaction, and that I understand it. That doesn't mean it's the _only_ valid reaction, or that it's the reaction I have. If you've been following the comments, you'll see plenty of people with the same opinion as you. You'll also see just as many people arguing that Erryn's world is fine as it is, and trying to impose Earth morality on it is the evil act. There are even some arguing that the Law should be applied to Earth. My goal isn't to invoke a specific reaction; it's to invoke a strong reaction of any sort. If you read it and think 'that's pure evil', then it's a success. If you read it and think 'I must invent some mind control technology at once so I can do this to Earth', then that's a success too. If you read it and think 'that's interesting' and spend hours trying to decide if you should be appalled or jealous, that's the _best_ kind of success. If you read it, think 'meh', and then move onto the next book without giving a second's thought to the implications, then and only then is it a failure.
You care enough to have written such a wall of text about it, so it's obviously playing on your mind. Therefore, success. :)
I'll add that in this hypothetical scenario of me moving there, all I'm doing is moving somewhere that already exists. I'm not the one creating the place. My own opinion is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum; I'll go along with it if it already exists, but I wouldn't seek either to bring it into existance or to destroy it if it did exist.
Ok, between this novel and Unwilling Monster, I still have a giant question... How did Maxipad (no, that wasn't a typo ) get exposed to the reincarnation whatever energy?
Peter's family got it from being in the experiment chamber, and Unwilling explained how Erryn's monsters got to Lily's world, but Max shouldn't have been born yet when the dimensional break occurred. If mere exposure to the corpses was enough there would have been a bunch of reincarnated sociopaths... The only conclusion I can come to is that his self-experimenting (maybe what messed his arm up) was responsible. I was really hoping that Unwilling would explain but his appearance was rather underwhelming lol.
I'm kinda curious if the effect is permanent... Have we seen the last of Maximus Atrocious or did he keep his memories? Will Peter and family keep their memories after death? Have you not decided?
It's ironic that Peter is chained by his own version of exactly what the Law's Chains apply, an aversion to harming others and breaking the golden rule. He just gets to remember the consequences. I can't quite decide if it is better or worse to not be aware of the Law, like to still be bound by the restrictions on actions but able to remember that they are blocked and why.
Ah hah! I spotted this @cathfach comment on RR, so that's one less question
Reincarnating required direct exposure to an unstable portal. Owen ran into the portal chamber, pursued by parents, during an early iteration where it wasnt properly shielded and was spitting out radiation everywhere. Maximillian did more or less the same thing; back on his home world, he was a biologist, but there were physicists trying to understand where the monsters had come from too, and mad as he was, he took a front-row seat to watch one of their experiments. Most sensible people wouldn't deliberately expose themselves to unknown radiation...
And honestly, Earth's Regret has discouraged any lingering sympathy for that Earth, prepping to bomb Erryn's world that fast even knowing the potential damage, all because their repeated acts of aggression had just dug them a deeper hole. I'm half-sorry they didn't try to shove the bigger bomb through the wormhole and have it blow up in their faces with a dungeon core mana boost. Maybe they can open a portal just long enough to send a message saying "stop or we'll send something you won't enjoy"
thank you for this story
Sushi potato, the last