My biggest concern was Cluma or Krana walking into a room containing something they weren't allowed to see and getting stuck. Would I have to blinker them to get them out?

Cluma immediately relieved me of part of that concern by declining to search by herself, sticking with me instead. Given that she had no idea where we were or what we were looking for, that seemed like a perfectly sensible decision to me.

Of course, what I was looking for wasn't the same as Lily and Krana. They were on some sort of mission to uncover a parting gift from Erryn, whereas I had a pair of harpies to save.

I read the booklet myself, and located an area labelled the control room, positioned directly above the chamber that housed the System. That seemed like a promising place to start, so I made my way there, down the sterile, featureless corridors towards it.

When I read 'control room', I'd pictured some sort of place packed full of monitors and keyboards, with lots of important looking switches hidden under perspex covers, and maybe a big red button labelled 'do not press'. Instead, all I found was a small, undecorated chamber with plain metallic walls no different from any other room, with a big black crystal floating in the centre, looking remarkably similar to the ones used in the great dungeon.

Following the precedence of the great dungeon, I held my hand against it.

I was instantly assaulted by a headache. It felt like the process of skills downloading knowledge into my brain, but worse. It wasn't quite on the level of the time I'd bought all the skills, but it was close. The crystal was presenting me with an interface, but it was telepathic, not textual, and it was dense. So much information... The only reason I wasn't sick was because Krana had already very thoroughly emptied my stomach.

There were lists. Skills, classes, traits, titles, races. People. Did it function based on intent like the library, and other crystals of this sort? I focused on the list of people, wishing for data on myself and being presented with an incomprehensible deluge of data about System shard #1978846 in response. I looked up Cluma and got a similar if slightly smaller dump. I looked up the twins and got back something small enough that my brain actually had a chance of processing it. I could see their traits, both the real ones that appeared on their status, and the extra ones that did not. Such as [Soul Adaptation in Progress].

Could I remove traits? I wished for it, but it didn't work. The System gave me feedback, but even that was difficult to parse. Forbidden? Access denied? Insufficient rights? Something like that, and it made me suspect that what I wanted was possible, but I lacked the required System permissions to do it. Then I needed to find an administrator? Who would that be? Lily? Krana? The Serlvrena-something who Erryn had asked to guard the core? Were there any at all?

Once I put my intent behind it, a list of administrators did indeed pop out. It had exactly one name on it; Erryn. Alas, she was in no position to help.

More searching found a list of privileged users. That had a few names on, including me and Krana, although oddly not Lily. Or Blobby, as it would be listed here. No-one had more permissions than me though, so they would be no help either. What permissions did I have?

As best as I could tell, the main purpose of the privileged user list was for us to be able to receive administrative messages, such as the notification I'd had when the twins were born. Presumably Krana and the others would be notified of other points of interest. Things that would require their intervention. But that wasn't the only thing I could do. I couldn't modify anyone by adding or removing skills, titles or traits, but I did have the ability to disable a System shard completely. I could cut anyone I liked away from the System.

Putting that aside, I continued my search, but I could find nothing at all to do with the Law. I knew it wasn't originally a part of the System, and Erryn had bolted it on later somehow, but wherever that was controlled, it wasn't from here. It likely didn't have any sort of humanoid accessible control mechanism to start with, given that Erryn was about as far from humanoid as someone could get.

So, this control point did actually give me an option. It wasn't a great option, but I was reasonably sure it would work. I could cut the twins off from the System, and hence permanently prevent their soul erosion from progressing. It would also cut them off from skills and stats, leaving them completely normal in a world of superpowers. That wasn't something I was going to do here and now. In fact, it wasn't something I could do at all without asking them first, given the life-changing effects of being cut off from the System, but it was nice to know there was an option if all else failed.

Putting my mission aside for a moment, I browsed the other information available to me. I'd need to spend a lot of time here to sort through it all, but it would be worth it. Unlike the library, this place didn't require me to already know something existed in order to find it. I could list all skills, and filter by rank, type, or anything else I could imagine, as long as I could picture it in a way that was sufficiently clear to whatever interface I was connected to.

A couple of minutes was enough to discover that lots of things simply didn't exist. Looking up complex affinities I could form with my own attuned affinities revealed nothing except [Eldritch Mage]. There was no [Eldritch High Mage] either. Were the classes formed on demand, only when needed? Who did the designing? Just how intelligent was the System?

I could partially see it below me through [Mana Sight], the interior walls not being completely opaque like the exterior. It was an immense construction. Doubly so, since the spatial affinity I was picking up implied both that it was far bigger than the chamber it resided in, and also that it enjoyed the benefits of some decidedly non-Euclidean wiring. There was time affinity in there as well, and I imagined that a spot of time dilation could do wondrous things for a computer's processing power. And, of course, it had the advantage that mana seemed to completely disregard conservation of energy, so powering the thing was no problem.

With a sigh, I removed my hand from the crystal. I needed to get back to my search, and couldn't afford to waste all day browsing information, however interesting it was. I detached a lump of toe with the intention of returning some other time, and pulled the map back out to look for other likely locations.

ding

For your efforts to uncover the secrets of the world, [Researcher] awards 2 soul points.

"Done already?" asked Cluma, which was strange. I tended to lose track of time when dealing with the library, and this had been similar, but my best guess was that I'd spent half an hour accessing the control crystal. Did it put me under time dilation too?

Then I saw Cluma touch the crystal herself, the look of curiosity on her face being instantly replaced by a blank gaze as her hand dropped away.

"Done already?" she asked, looking around at me.

"Yes," I answered quickly, before she had a chance to touch it again. "Let's get going."

"What did it do? Can I try touching it?"

"No, it's not safe for you to touch," I answered, trying to discourage her before we got caught in a loop.

"Oh."

There weren't really any other likely looking locations marked on the map, so I returned to where Lily had found Erryn on our first trip. The map showed other rooms joined to that one, and given that Erryn had obviously been using the area, they might contain items of interest.

The room was mostly as we'd left it. The massively dense mana had dissipated, but the pedestal was still there. Now that I was in a better position to search, I could pick up some form of constructs embedded into the floor, reminding me of the rune-less enchanting used on the room in which Erryn had stashed the dwarfs. They weren't active, and I didn't know what they were supposed to do, but the floor obviously wasn't plain metal.

What I couldn't find were any doors that corresponded to one particular room on the map.

Doing a loop around the surrounding area failed to reveal any alternate entrances, but it otherwise matched the map exactly. We were missing a room, then. That certainly counted as an item of interest. How could I get access?

Returning to Erryn's room, to where the door should be, neither my skills nor Cluma's picked up anything. I walked from one side of the room to the other, holding my hand against the wall, in the hopes that if there was a perception filter in place I'd at least be able to pick up the anomaly, but came up empty.

If it was a perception filter, even Lily wouldn't be guaranteed to see through it; since Erryn could talk to her telepathically, she obviously didn't have soul magic immunity despite her non-humanoid soul. Our only option would be the twins.

If it wasn't a perception filter, and Erryn had walled up the door, we had a dragon available. He may not want to risk fire, given the danger of accidentally melting the core he was here to retrieve, but he could probably do something to move the wall out of the way.

"Lily?" I tried to call telepathically.

"Yes? Did you find something?" she replied.

"Maybe. There's a room on the map that's been blocked off. It should open onto the room you found Erryn in."

I felt a brief burst of raw emotion over the telepathic link before it shut back off. Lily wasn't too happy about being reminded of that day.

Krana was harder to call. He wasn't in range of my [Mana Sight], with the interior walls slashing down my range. I should have left some random body-part with him so that I could teleport. We could either wander randomly, or wait for the hour to expire and meet him back at the entrance.

Lily turned up a few minutes later and saw no sign of a door. Nor did she uncover anything by spreading herself in a thin film across the wall, or by attacking it. Me and Cluma searched the room for messages or hidden mechanisms, but likewise found nothing. At least there was nothing in the room that was robbing Cluma of her memories.

As the hour ticked down, I was finally struck by a thought that I should have tried earlier. "I have come for the subsidiary dungeon core," I said aloud, mirroring Krana. Perhaps the letter had mentioned the phrase explicitly as a password.

There was a click, and the outline of a door appeared in the wall, swinging open moments later. I hadn't actually expected that to work.

"Dammit, why didn't you do that to start with?" complained Lily.

"Why didn't you?" I countered. "I only just thought of it."

The room was dark and cold, with no light except the small amount spilling through the narrow doorway. I risked a quick scan with [Soul Perception], but picked up nothing except Lily, Cluma and myself. [Mana Sight] showed no activity, and even with an active scan, only picked up a single feature within the room. An orb, resting on the floor in one corner, lightless and without mana.

I stepped in to grab it, and after double checking that the room was indeed void of all else, I quickly left before the door decided to lock itself again, before firing [Analysis] at my prize.

Inactive Subsidiary Dungeon Core (Rank 4)