"Curiosity killed the cat, and the human was so saddened by this that they created a safety net so that no other cats would meet the same end," a female voice echoes inside my mind.

Then a female hand grabs mine and pulls me forward, reminding me that I'm still alive and that I have a fight to finish.

 

I groan in pain and try to open my eyes, but my body refuses to move, so I try to wrestle back control, but I just feel the pain get worse the harder I try.

There's still something inside me, something "foreign," and I know of only one thing that could even have a chance of dealing with that.

I can't control my physical body, but I can still access my spells since they reside within my soul, so I summon ten light-Ciels around my collapsed form and [Equip] Patrono, then I activate its brilliance.

I scream in pain, but now I can actually hear myself and feel my muscles tensing up as I'm cleansed of whatever was inside me, then the pain starts to ease, and I manage to open my eyes.

I discover that everyone has collapsed around me, some of them writhing in pain, trying to crawl away from the divine light, while a few of our Lordsguard and the golems try to make them drink HP potions, and a dozen of our mages chant [Light Magic] spells.

"Elementals, [Heal] them!" I shout and pour all of my mana into Patrono, making it shine so brightly that everyone goes blind from it and my skin even starts to burn because of the heat.

I check on the girls through [Bind] and discover that they're all having nightmares, but the light and the elementals immediately start having an effect on them, and they quickly calm down, so I turn down Patrono's shine.

Hana is the first to wake up, and the moment she opens her eyes, she pounces on me as her skin becomes covered in emerald scales.

"WOLFY!" She roars and pushes me down with one hand, but then she realizes that Patrono isn't in her other hand anymore and stares at it, dumbfounded.

"I'm okay!" I shout back and grab her shoulder, making her turn her head back to face me. I still feel like shit, but at least I'm back to normal, I think.

The room is suddenly filled with groans as everyone starts to wake up from their nightmares, then Hana quickly gets off of me so that she can check on the others. My muscles feel as weak as toothpicks right now, so I stay on the floor until Alissa rushes to my side and pulls me towards her chest as she hugs me tight.

"I'm fine, I think," I try to appease her. Even though she's quiet right now, she's still feeling pretty shaken up about what just happened.

Then Poosh rushes into the room looking quite distraught, and I wave at her with a pained smile so that she knows that the worst has passed.

"Your Highness, what happened?!" She exclaims as she kneels before me and starts inspecting my body.

"An accident during an experiment, but things are fine, now," I explain with a hoarse voice. I decide to cast [Regeneration] on myself since my HP is at-…

What the fuck?!

 

 

 

"Soul Corruption."

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. I don't like the sound of that shit. Not one bit, nope.

Alissa stares at me wide-eyed, her breath speeding up almost to the point of hyperventilating.

"Find me the best Chimera Alteration mages that we have in town, now!" I exclaim as a hint of terror starts to seep into my tone, then Poosh nods soberly and hurries out of the room.

Once the Officers are back on their feet, I tell the Lordsguard and the court mages to leave the room, then Alissa helps me sit down on a chair.

"What happened?" Sandoro immediately asks as they all sit on their own chairs, forming a circle.

"Something tried to come through the spell. It also either made me lose control of my body or tried to take control over it," I grimly explain.

"Check your 'Stats' and skills, is there anything different?" Ciel asks and they all do so then shake their heads.

"Everything's fine, but I assume someone isn't," Sandoro replies, and everyone stares at me.

I nod and sigh. "Yes, I'm not. Has anyone ever heard of a 'Status Effect' called 'Soul Corruption'? It even has a question mark in its name, as if the system isn't sure what it is."

"The question mark is a sign that you don't know what it is," Ciel clarifies, and I nod in understanding, then our eyes fall on Sai, our expert Spirit mage.

But the halfling woman frowns worriedly and answers, "Soul Surgeries are a bit beyond my skill level, but I've never heard of 'Soul Corruption,' though the temporary damage spells like [Soul Blade] do all fall under 'Soul Damage,' which is easily healed through [Spirit Touch] or just with time."

"Right," Yunia mumbles, then casts [Spirit Touch] and uses it on me. I immediately start to feel better, so we'll just have to wait and see if this spell can fix everything.

"I also have lowered skill levels and 'Stats,'" I continue.

"A lot of spells can lower 'Stats' temporarily, but only [Dark Magic]'s [Atrophic Blade] can lower skill levels, and it's also temporary," Ciel explains again.

"Perhaps your soul was 'jumbled,'" Almaria somberly points out, and we all fall silent as we nod in agreement, then I give Alissa [Sense Soul] and have her scan my soul in search of anything weird.

"That thing that came through…" Silvano hesitantly continues.

"It smelled like the undead," Alissa finishes his thought.

"So the undead are alien invaders?" I immediately question, my curiosity temporarily overcoming my dread and tiredness.

"'Alien'?" Almaria asks back with a raised eyebrow.

"Something that came from another Realm or Cycle."

"I don't think so," Lina rejects my idea, then she spends a few seconds recalling everything she has read about the undead. "Every source I've read mentions that the undead are an offshoot of heretic mages trying to recreate the immortality of Ender, The Hand and Child of the God of Destruction.

"Ender's death marked the end of the Age of Oppression and the beginning of the Age of Glory, and during that time, some mages started to research the few remains that Ender left behind and the location where he was slain, but the temple outlawed any research on immortality, so those heretic mages hid in the shadows until the Heresy of the Tower of Decay that created the Deadlands. It was then that the word 'undead' was first used in writings to describe the mages who could regenerate completely from near absolute annihilation of their bodies and absorb any sort of energy to fuel their power."

Then an idea comes to me. "Aren't the undead said to be outside the 'cycle of mana'? Perhaps the smell of undeath is simply the natural result of matter from our Realm interacting with alien matter, which may also cause this 'corruption' that the undead are famous for."

"The mist that thing released made us all fall unconscious, which is something I've never heard of coming from an undead," Ciel points out.

"That thing wasn't undead, it was just incompatible with our Realm," Yunia follows up.

I nod and agree, "It came from a different Cycle, after all."

"It's fortunate that it was vulnerable to [Light Magic]," Almaria quietly remarks.

"I don't believe in coincidences," I state firmly, and everyone goes silent again as they realize the implication.

Also, I bet that the weird dream I had was actually the Goddess of Knowledge giving me a bit of a push.

My body stops hurting, so I look at my "Stats" again and notice that my "Strength" and "Endurance" are back to normal, so either [Regeneration] or [Spirit Touch], or both together, are doing something to fix me up.

"I can't remember what that 'alien' looked like," Alcander shares and frowns as he holds his head in pain. "My head hurts just from thinking about it."

"It came from another Realm, so our eyes and minds aren't prepared to understand what it was," Yunia explains for me since I'm busy guiding Alissa's inspection.

"Are you going to continue experimenting with this spell?" Mimi suddenly speaks out, sounding a bit frightened.

"We have to, Mimi," Hana softly replies with pleading eyes.

And Ciel joins in to help her understand, "This spell most likely killed the person who created the [Summoning Magic] school, so we'll have to replace it with something safer."

Mimi nods meekly and looks down, a bit disheartened. Both she and Hana are strong, determined women, but seeing their loved ones in danger pulls on their heartstrings like nothing else can.

Then Almaria concernedly points out, "But will you be able to cast it again, safely? Doesn't it resume from where you left off, as in, close to that invasive Cycle?"

"That's… true…" I admit and feel my heart sink.

"You just have to alter the spell before you cast it so that you can choose your starting 'position,'" Alcander calmly suggests.

"I'm kind of bad with altering spells," I awkwardly confess.

"Can't someone teach you how, then?" Sandoro asks, and his eyes scan over the High Mages.

"As a system mage, I won't be a good teacher for learning how to alter spells," Alcander immediately states.

"I'm just a bad teacher in general," Roxanne admits with a shrug.

"I might be the same," Sai confesses a bit embarrassedly.

"I'm just a duelist," Silvane points out.

"I might be able to, but I know nothing about [Summoning Magic], and [Weaverism] isn't exactly a model magic school to teach someone about spell alterations," Almaria hesitantly explains.

Silvano turns to Sandoro and bluntly asks, "What about the new guy?"

Sandoro frowns. "Aisco? I don't think he'd be a good teacher," he rejects.

"Same," I agree with him.

"We'll just have to hire someone, then," Yunia states dismissively.

"Or Lord Wolf could learn magical theory at a proper school," Almaria retorts.

"Like that Kabara school we got invited to!" Alissa suddenly exclaims and immediately returns to scanning my soul.

Roxanne heartily agrees, "Their [Jaleowzeh Magic] seems to rely heavily on theory and spell alterations to work properly."

And Alcander reluctantly sides with her, "I admit that imperial magic schools probably don't have as much depth of knowledge regarding such a topic as an Estekabar school would due to our focus on system magic."

"We should take a look into that once we're back from the Capital," Yunia affirms, and we end this topic.

While we wait for the Chimera Alteration mages, I try to add and remove skill points from the skills affected by the "??" effect, and messing with them seems to fix the affected skill with no visible loss of skill points. It's as if the variables that held them were just altered to invalid values, so the fix was just to set them to something that's, well, valid.

So, I now only need to fix my [Sword Use], which lost two of the levels I had trained in it, that [???] skill with an "??" level, and my lowered "Willpower" and "Sanity." My Gift doesn't let me change the [???] skill, as if it's one of the "innate" skills, so we might have to resort to the temple and their skill removal service for that one.

Alissa's inspection of my soul reveals something that looks like "cracks." The core of my soul, the location that represents my body, has a few "structures" with the characteristic "spiderweb" crack patterns of laminated safety glass, and my old, incomplete soul map created with [Sense Soul] tells us that the two affected areas are related to my brain.

They don't seem to be healing, even with both [Regeneration] and [Soul Touch], so there must be something else that we can do to fix them.

Then Alissa searches the outer layers of my soul, where my skills are supposedly stored, and finds two "tears" that look like rifts into a black void. They don't seem to be healing either, though at least they aren't widening or leaking something.

I have a small itch that tells me to try to access my [Sword Use] skill and see if there's something different about it, but I fear that using that part of my soul would widen the tear or have unforeseen side effects, so I keep my thoughts very far from triggering that skill.

"Let me see if I can reach your brain with [Soul Touch]," Yunia proposes, and I hesitantly allow her to try it.

Alissa watches the "cracks" intensely and notices that one of them begins to heal, and soon, my "Sanity" is back to normal, but the other crack remains, unchanging, no matter what she does.

It seems that [Spirit Touch] can't reach wherever it is that my "Willpower" is "stored."

We arrange for someone to repair the emellanat cage, then we move to another room with a bed for me to lay down. I'm not hurting anymore, but I'm still feeling rather exhausted.

 

We hear hurried footsteps, then Poosh quickly comes into the room.

"I've brought the Chimera Alteration mages as you asked," she reports with a bow.

I begrudgingly part with Alissa's lap and sit up to make myself presentable, then I wave them in.

Three very nervous Chimeras wearing only their personal towels come in. Two of them are women, and they're fairly attractive, making for quite a sight for sore eyes, and I'm feeling very sore right now.

"Your Highness," the three of them greet and bow stiffly, then I nod back and motion to the seats.

"I assume our High Chamberlain hasn't fully explained things yet, so let's start with that…" Alissa begins the explanation.

 

"I don't believe we can fix those 'cracks' since we can't see inside the soul like you can," the deer-headed woman explains concernedly.

"I've also never heard of a Soul Surgery that caused a change in the 'Willpower' 'Stat,'" the marmot-headed man adds.

Ah… fuck.

An idea suddenly occurs to me, and we all give Roxanne a look as she stiffens with a sudden bout of dread.

"I believe in you, Roxanne," I affirm through [Bind] as I gaze at my pale, gorgeous wife.

"Wouldn't be that different from the hundreds of times he's left his life in our hands, and vice-versa," Alissa wryly remarks.

Roxanne's eyes scan the other wives, and they all transmit their feelings of trust, but it's Lina's and Aoi's that have the strongest effect on her. The former is always cautious, and the latter always very forthcoming, which gives it a special meaning to have them both agree on something so fervently, making Roxanne feel a bit funny.

She steadies her heart with a deep breath, then nods energetically and adjusts her glasses as she accepts her role in our plan, "Alright, let's do this."

I turn to the Alteration mages and sternly ask, "Can you explain to my wife how you use [Alteration Magic] to change someone's soul?" Then their eyes widen as they immediately understand what I intend for us to attempt.

"This is… extremely dangerous," the deer woman warns us with a grave tone.

Much less so when I can give Roxanne fifty-two points in [Alteration Magic] and six in [Sense Soul].

"I think it's worth the risk, but I'd like to increase our chances by preparing the perfect environment to help her focus," I calmly retort.

 

Intermission - Ciel

 

This Soul Surgery is going to be many times more complex and difficult than what Sai did for Dokkanchee, so everyone puts in the effort to make sure that nothing can go wrong.

We move into one of the meeting rooms since they have a soundproofing enchantment that can block all outside sounds from coming in, then we close all the windows and curtains to make the room completely dark, remove all of the aromatic plants, and activate an anti-scent magic tool. Now, there's nothing that could disturb Roxanne's concentration aside from us using [Bind].

Wolfy lays down on the bed, and Alissa begins casting [Sleep] on him. It takes her a few tries thanks to him being quite resistant to the spell, but he eventually falls into a deep sleep, and our watch over him begins.

Meditation, mantra, visualization, and motivation, these are the four pillars of [Alteration Magic]. It seems that Wolfy briefly studied them back when we first came to Goloria, but now, it's different since we don't just have excerpts from a book but are actually getting in-person guidance from experts.

"It's hard to concentrate. I think Wolfy gave me too many points in [Alteration Magic]," Roxanne complains through [Bind].

Alissa and I share a frown.

I guess we have to wake him up, but how will we explain it to the mages?

"Hang on, let me try something," Alissa declares and starts focusing on her connection with him.

It's honestly a bit scary how easily she can use [Bind]. At most, I get annoyed when Wolfy's stray thoughts start to seep through our connection, but Alissa revels in the noise. It's almost like half her mind belongs to Wolfy with how eagerly she hears his every thought, but what's even more frightening is the fact that she's also always listening to us. It's because of her that it's so hard to hide anything from him.

I sense her trying to suppress her pride when my mind involuntarily likens her to a prison warden, and I'm just glad that Wolfy isn't a tyrant because Alissa would be the perfect right hand to keep us all in line.

She somehow manages to open his "Companions" tab and moves his hand to press on the "adjustment icon" that reduces Roxanne's points in [Alteration Magic]. The fact that she's able to do such a thing is a bit discomforting, but then again, Wolfy does have absolute control over us, so I guess it's fair that Alissa can also control him just the same.

When Roxanne's points reach thirty, she reports that she's fine now, so we move on to the first step of [Alteration Magic], meditation. Since we need to do this very same practice to perform our mana circulation training, she achieves clarity of mind in just a minute.

Then she starts reciting the mantra, "I am the stillness, I am the void, I am the silence. I am without a mind, except for one will."

Her solemn voice echoes through the darkness again, again, and again, the constant repetition almost entrancing us since it's the only sound we can hear for several long minutes. We even have to keep our breaths slow and quiet because the noise could potentially distract her.

The problem with an untrained mage using [Alteration Magic] is that they won't know when they have achieved true clarity until they see the results of their alteration and realize that it didn't come out the way they wanted it to, but with [Bind], we can all watch Roxanne's mind like Hollys and closely observe it as the stray, convoluted thoughts of her internal monologue settle down one by one and join the chorus of her mantra.

Finally, when all we can hear coming from her [Bind] is just the perfectly synchronized chant, we nudge her to move on to the next step.

Now things have to be done quickly before her state of true clarity is disrupted, so she activates [Sense Soul] and immediately locates the "crack," then she pours all of her "Willpower" into the sincere wish to heal Wolfy's soul as she activates [Alteration Magic] and allows the skill do the rest.

Alissa senses Roxanne's "presence" push out of her physical body and spread out as it covers Wolfy's form entirely, then Wolfy's "presence" starts to shift, transitioning into what seems to be a "merging" of his and Roxanne's.

It's just as fascinating as it is frightening. What if Roxanne and Wolfy became fused together forever? That'd be a nightmare scenario if their teasing natures added to each other's, or if their issues of the mind deepened.

But we're all closely watching over both of them, and we sense nothing wrong with what's happening. Or rather, things are going exactly how the Alteration mages said they'd go.

Then an immense amount of Roxanne's mana floods out of her body and fully covers Wolfy's, making us hold our breaths as he glows with magic.

In the blink of an eye, the "cracks" in his soul are gone, and the mana covering him disperses.

I use [Redirect Mana] to clear the room of the spent mana, allowing Roxanne to immediately train her focus on the two "tears" in his soul. The Alteration mages seem to become confused, unaware of the reason for why the air suddenly cleared, but they remain quiet, so we can just explain things to them later, if they even ask.

Roxanne repeats the alteration two more times, and the two tears in his soul disappear without any observable side-effects.

Once it's all done, we let out a collective sigh of relief, then we turn the lights back on, and I cast [Purify Body] on Wolfy until he wakes up.

He immediately sits up and turns his lifeless, cloudy eyes towards us.

"Who are you…?" He asks flatly, and my heart skips a beat, then I probe his mind through our connection and sense him hiding his mirth right beneath the surface of his deception.

"You…!" I grumble as a wave of anger flares up and takes hold, and I slap his shoulder repeatedly while he breaks into a fit of loud, joyful laughter.

 

Intermission end.