After a quick explanation to Serlv that body-parts added in that way couldn't be consciously controlled, and hence wings wouldn't be useful, we found ourselves once more in front of the door to the ark.

"Wow. What is this made from?" asked Kari. "It completely blocks my [Mana Sight], but it doesn't look like adamantite, and [Analysis] doesn't work."

"I have no idea. It's definitely enchanted in some way, so maybe the mana blocking is part of the enchantment?"

I'd first seen the door prior to the successful manufacture of adamantite, and hadn't yet seen anything like the mana-blocking effect. Besides, I'd had more important things to worry about at the time, and hadn't put much thought into what this place was made of.

"Our null-mana rooms don't block [Mana Sight], though. I suppose it could be a higher rank enchantment..."

"Or not a System-based enchantment at all," I pointed out.

Kari blinked as she considered the alien thought of an enchantment made without System assistance. "Wow, we aren't even inside yet, and this place is already interesting."

"And we may never reach the inside," commented Serlv. "We have an emergency situation, and require access," she declared to the door. It responded in the same way as every other door I'd seen in the world, which is to say, not at all.

"Another world has made contact with this one, and the System is having adverse effects. We require access to cut them off," she added, once more to zero effect.

"Are you... talking to the door?" asked Kari carefully.

"Yes, but in our defence, last time it listened," I pointed out, before treating the uncooperative door to a glare, hoping it had cameras somewhere.

"It will not believe there is an emergency simply because I say so," sighed Serlv. "It is likely that it does not view the current situation as a problem."

"Oh, come on," I complained, to no-one in particular. "How is this not an emergency?"

"Will someone please tell me who you're talking to? Why are they not capable of talking back?"

Maybe they were, and chose not to. And who were we talking to? The System itself, or was there some other artificial intelligence running the ark? I hadn't seen any sign of one. If there was one, how intelligent was it? I'd been thinking of the place as a dumb computer, but what if it wasn't? Perhaps I should try to explain?

"The primary purpose of the System is to form a defence against civilization-destroying events," I said to the door, doing my best to ignore the look Kari was giving me. "I'm sure you're an intelligent... whatever you are. Heck, if you're the System, you can read memories. Mine included. Extrapolate the likely effects on the civilisations of Earth if the System is introduced in an uncontrolled manner."

Nothing happened. I waited a minute. Nothing continued to happen.

"The System is supposed to stymie scientific advancement," I continued, ignoring the surprised outburst from Kari. "Earth has already advanced beyond the point the System can curtail. They may not have mana, but they have nukes. They have contagious biological weapons. The introduction of the System to Earth could easily result in a war on a scale sufficient to purge all life from the planet."

The response continued to be underwhelming.

"Or I suppose, as an alternative, the System could dispose of all advanced weaponry on Earth." That would certainly be interesting. I'd bet things would still get messed up over there, but at least they'd have a higher chance of survival.

The door remained resolutely closed.

"I feel you must accept this errand has failed," said Serlv.

"... Fine," I agreed unwillingly.

The door clicked and swung ponderously open.

"Seriously?!" I complained, wishing the door had a neck to throttle, and rushing in before whatever was listening changed its mind.

Why had it waited for me to give up? Surely giving up was a sign it wasn't an emergency. Or had it just taken that long to process my explanation?

"What an interesting place," said Kari, looking around with interest as she sauntered in at a far slower pace. Even Serlv was staring. I suppose it was her first time here, too.

"Don't bother," I said, as Kari made her way towards the informational booklet. "You can't read it."

"Huh? How do you know? Why not?"

... And already I wished Serlv hadn't brought her. Then again, after her brief outburst of surprise, she hadn't commented on my claim that the System was supposed to stymie progress. That must count as banned knowledge.

"We have been invited in. Let us perform the task we are here for, and not push our luck," said Serlv, neatly attracting Kari's attention and saving me from needing to come up with a believable excuse.

A pouting Kari trailed behind us as I led us from memory to the System control room, but I hadn't even entered it before noticing something was wrong.

Maybe not wrong. Perhaps different would be more apt.

There had been spatial affinity mana wrapped around the System before, and I'd assumed it was cheating with interconnects. But whereas that had involved neatly controlled structures, now there was chaos, and there was so much more. Several dense clumps of spatial affinity mana were embedded in the heart of the System.

I could believe it was trying to make portals. Poorly.

Kari had stopped walking, presumably having [Mana Sight] active herself.

"What the hell is that?!" she exclaimed.

"The System," I answered, but she wasn't really listening, too focused on it to even hear me. Or to notice the trickle of drool she was leaking.

It was impressive enough to me, but to someone who actually understood some of the construction, it must have been unbelievable. I didn't even know how my lightning glove worked, beyond knowing there was more to it than simple enchantments, and having heard Grover and Vargalas talk about mana channels and things. How much of it she'd actually be permitted to remember was anyone's guess, though.

Ignoring her, I made my way to the control crystal and placed my hand against it, the flood of information assaulting my mind an instant later. Thankfully, this time I knew what I was after, so I filtered by species, listing off all individuals of the new human subspecies. As expected, it spat out a list of over eighty thousand individuals. Most of them had names, so they'd obviously found a reliable way around that problem, somehow.

What I couldn't do was detach them.

I couldn't even view their information. Trying just gave me some sort of error feedback that was difficult to interpret. A communications failure? The portals below, if that's what they were supposed to be, were hopelessly messy. Perhaps it had a good enough link to Earth to know they were there, but not to properly function? But the two people from the delegation who'd been exposed last time had gained levels.

I filtered the group by location, picking out everyone close to the coordinate origin, but got back far more than thirty. Thankfully, I could filter on anything, so I could tag them by eye and hair colour, and other distinguishing features. That gave me the thirty I was looking for, Gregory and Harry among them. Just like everyone else, I couldn't bring up their information. I couldn't even see their levels.

Actually, that was... impressive. I'd never really considered it before, never having tried something like this, but I could remember their descriptions. All thirty of them. And, now that I stopped to think, all of my acquaintances. Was that normal? I felt like there was no way I could have done that on Earth. I'd heard a lot about System-boosted intelligence, but concrete examples weren't commonplace.

Wait... How could I search by eye colour, when I couldn't view their eye colour? I filtered my selection by level, requesting back everyone of level three. Harry showed up on his own. I switched it to greater than one. Gregory joined him. So it knew, but wasn't letting me see? Or detach them? Why the inconsistency? A side effect from it's half-finished adaptation?

I should have come here before we sent the delegation home. Not only would that have let me confirm the world-hopping had something to do with it, but if so, it would have been the perfect excuse to only detach a small group to check for ill effects before doing everyone. A quick check showed I could view my own incomprehensibly dense information just fine, as well as that of Cluma, Kari or Serlv, so there was something going on beyond my access being revoked.

So, now what? I could make another attempt while Darren held a portal open. The only problem would be trying to get back in after leaving. Was it worth sending Serlv out to fetch him? We'd need to coordinate somehow. I could lend Serlv a finger for her to send a signal with...

I reset the filters and brought up the list of people back on Earth once more, idly scrolling among the list of names as I pondered.

And then I spotted the incongruity.

I'd have to admit to my maths not being perfect, whatever the System may or may not have done to my brain, but I knew the first list of everyone on Earth had eighty-thousand-four-hundred-and-seventy-nine entries. Now there were eighty-thousand-four-hundred-and-eighty. It had gained one. Was it still spreading? But I hadn't had any foreign soul notifications. A new baby?

Or... Last time I'd filtered by Earth human. This time I'd filtered by being on Earth. I searched for Earth humans, and the number dropped by one.

What the heck? There was someone on Earth that wasn't an Earth human?

I reversed the filter, listing everything from Earth that wasn't an Earth-subspecies human. As expected, a single entity remained. I wasn't sure what I expected that one entity to be, but what I saw wasn't it.

Unnamed dungeon core

Why the hell was there a dungeon core on Earth?! That had certainly not been part of the trade goods we'd given them. Didn't Erryn make all the dungeons?

Okay, so the Emerald Caverns dungeon had rebuilt itself after Erryn was gone, but that was rebuilding one that had been destroyed, not creating a new one.

And yet Xander's party had been wiped out in an unexplored dungeon. One with a really nasty trap. If it had been there since before Erryn's death, how hadn't it been discovered, and why hadn't she done something about the trap when she was on her mission to make things fairer?

"Hey, Serlv," I called, letting go of the control crystal. "Have any new dungeons been created since Erryn... became human?"

In keeping with the other dragons, Serlv muttered something about rude nicknames under her breath before responding. "One in Bluestone Peak was discovered a few years ago, but I know not when it was created."

Not very helpful, then.

"Why do you ask?" she continued.

"Because, according to the System, there's now a dungeon on Earth."

"That is not possible. Dungeons require mana, not only to feed their monsters, but to exist at all."

"I can assure you..." I started, putting my hand back on the crystal, only to find there now were no dungeons on Earth.

Okay, so... I can remember the facial features of thirty people without even trying, but I mucked up the filtering on this interface? Really?

The mental feed hiccuped, and one line appeared in my previously empty search results.

Unnamed dungeon core

What the heck?

"You appear confused," observed Serlv.

"It can't seem to decide if there's a dungeon on Earth or not. It vanished, then reappeared."

Another symptom of the poor link? Or, if they require mana, something keeps trying to spawn a dungeon core, which then quickly starves? Keeping my hand on the crystal, the process repeated with a regular cadence. A dungeon core would show up, remain for half a minute, then vanish again, only to be replaced another minute later.

It didn't seem to match anything the mana was doing below, so a dungeon core spawning in a place unsuited for it was my best guess. Either way, it was increasingly obvious that the System was still struggling to integrate Earth, despite the lack of connection lost messages, and the new addition to coordinates. How intelligent was it? It had its hooks in Darren and Dr Withermark, both of whom had the knowledge required to open portals, and hadn't used that knowledge. Yet it could build new classes on demand, with varied complex skills? It seemed strangely inconsistent.

"Just what are you trying to do, and why?" I muttered to the crystal.

"Huh? Now what's it doing?" asked Kari, who was still staring in awe at the System's construction with her esoteric senses.

I had to admit to not having any more idea than she did. A surge of mana was flowing through the System, but there was no indication of what it was for.

"I think it would be advisable for Bruleg to take a look at all this," I commented, Serlv not having shown any signs of having a mana sensory skill better than my own. Perhaps Bruleg could disrupt the pseudo-portals I could see, too, and sever the link to Earth that way. "Without understanding what we're doing, it's too dangerous to try anything else."

"Very well. Then let us return to the others," said Serlv.

Alas, that was made impossible by the way my hand wouldn't pull away from the crystal.

"Umm... I seem to be stuck..." I commented, just as the build-up of mana below us ceased.

And, with a flash, was forged into soul affinity, which flowed upwards, towards the crystal. Towards me.

The next second happened in slow motion as I activated stage one of [Detach], splitting my wrist and leaping backward from the crystal as the mana poured into its base. I activated the second stage as the mana rushed towards my hand, still glued in place, then the third, severing my hand from me completely, body and soul, as the terrifying mana brushed against my fingers.

The fright was enough that the pain or bleeding from my stump didn't even register.

"Did the System just attack you?" exclaimed Kari.