P-System Log

Here we go. Into the belly of the beast, except the beast isn't actually that bad? I swear I saw a James Cameron movie that featured, like, a single scene about this.

Oh, for fuck's sake, that's not the important part. Aster's just used yet another one of her fancy [Perfect]ed skills, and now we're elsewhere. I gotta say, teleportation just doesn't hit the same as a System. Well, I never experienced it as a human, but the act of literally instantaneously traveling something like three hundred miles--I'm not sure on that number, my senses don't go anywhere near that far--just felt like nothing. One moment our surroundings were the dungeon in which we'd spent the last couple of ours and the next we made it here.

"Here" is apparently a field in bumfuck nowhere, completely flat and empty. There's not even sand here, so I'm not confident in calling it a desert, though with the R System present, I doubt there's much rain.

You came again rather quickly. P-Party Chat

[Aster K'lon]: It's the R System.

[Arcs S'tar]: Fuck! I knew this was a bad idea! Kill it!

[P-System]: Chill. I'm negotiating with this thing.

[Arcs S'tar]: kill kill kill kill kill kill kill

[Thron of the Fallen Stars]: enemy must be eliminated

...one moment, please. Do me a favor and don't kill anyone? Heh. Done. P-System Log

Alright. I am so glad I have this enhanced perception shit going because I can already see them acting. I'm surprised that they can actually see the R System--Eternal King, whatever--messaging. Then again, we are in the heart of its territory, so I guess it makes sense.

Anyway! The important part is that they are now getting murderously aggressive towards it! It's something that I recognize pretty well, given that I used to fall into that state quite a bit. It's really scary to look at from the outside in, too. Is this what rabies is like?

Should I take away their System access? They're diving towards the well, which I assume contains some kind of power source central to the R System--what exactly, I'm not sure, but I can detect a massive amount of W Inertia from that general direction.

Okay, taking away System access is probably a no, actually. They won't do much damage if I take away their shiny abilities, but they'll probably get themselves killed. The brainwashing will remain whether or not they have magic, and though the Eternal King is way friendlier to me than the Origin System would have me believe, I doubt it'd just let two direct attackers survive. A new System having a 50% fatality rate would probably be a bad way to start my new life off.

That means I gotta figure something else out. Number one on my list is redaction.

Look, maybe mind-wiping my new subjects--er, System users--isn't the first thing most people would jump to. Hell, it's not the first thing I jumped to. I was thinking for a brief second that I could just maybe try and get them to ascend like me, but, well, they're not Systems, are they? I don't think I can force enough W Inertia into them to alter their fundamental brain chemistry.

Instead, what I can do is reach back into their minds. I confirmed in my definitely-humane experiments earlier that redacting any memory is wayyyy easier than trying to restore them, and theoretically, all I need to do is look for the part in their brains where the Origin was like "hey, you! Kill every R Beast on sight!"

Mmm... yep, there it is... and there... and there, and there, and there, and--

Okay. You get the point. Ol' Origin's apparently a huge fan of fucking with people's heads.

Huh. This feels... almost too easy? Like, yeah, there's a ton of it to remove, but all I need to do is restrict their access to it via a small helping of W Inertia (which, by the way, I apparently still have an absolutely massive supply of) and bam! It's gone.

Welp. No time to check my work like the present.

P-Party Chat

[Aster K'lon]: Arcs! Thron! Control yourselves!

[Thron of the Falling Stars]: kill kill kill kill it kill it burn it burn

[Arcs S'tar]: Ugh. What the fuck?

P-System Log

Whoops, missed a spot.

There we go. That should be it.

Mmmm... lemme just redact the last ten seconds or so. That should be fine.

You are learning. That's good to see. I see you brought the green one with you. Yeah. Why can't it hear you, by the way? It can't hear you either, at least not when you're talking like this. I've got some precautions of my own, which I hope you would expect. The normies here can probably hear me, but I made sure to exclude the green one from this method of conversation. Is there something wrong with it? Something tells me you've already figured out that there is. Is everything quite alright? Everyone appears to be rather silent, which is a touch concerning when in hostile territory. P-System Broadcast Yeah, we're fine. Just hold on while we discuss our next steps. We're doing it privately. I'm pretty sure that thing is going to try to kill me and eat my component parts at the first possible opportunity, but then again I'm pretty sure you will too. Impressively candid. Honestly, there's nothing I can say that will convince you, but I'll waste some time anyway and tell you that no, in fact, I don't actually want to kill promising young talent. The green one, on the other hand... Isn't it just hungry? It's been living in a cave for a long time, apparently. Feeding it a Dungeon Core got it going. Ah, so that's where it hid. Deep in B territory, I assume?

B? Oh, right, B. Yeah, it was in a dungeon a while away from the border cities.

Also, going back a bit, promising young talent? Shouldn't you kill that? I thought you were going for world dominance or something.

If you're not going to try to kill me, I won't try to kill you. I mean, works for me. Why? You're absolutely correct that I want to obliterate the B System. I'd like to kill the green one, too, since every last iteration of it has done the same damn thing that the B one does. Which is? Perpetuate. Drag new people in from other worlds. Fight until their last breath, then take that last breath and squeeze it for everything it's got. I did notice that, yes. You claim that your people aren't reincarnators? None of them are otherworlders. I can bring some for you to check, if you'd like, but I don't know if you actually know how it works. Well, I'm totally on board to fight the B System, but I feel like I'm missing a lot of information. P-System Log

If that isn't the understatement of the century, I don't know what is. I've learned so much about the way of the world now, spurred on by the necessity of breaking free, but I'm still stuck on so many things. The fuck is W Inertia? What is its relation with mana? Why is all of this even happening?

Also, I am once again so thankful for sped up perception. Barely a second has passed by for the adventurers, which is very good since I'm sure that they're going to start panicking any moment. Even if I've removed some of the brainwashing, they've been raised to believe that the R System is something that will literally poison them to death by existing, which, from the stuff it's outputting right now, appears to simply be untrue.

Here is an important question that may help you: what do you think W Inertia is? Oh, we're starting out big, huh? I figured the W stood for something important, but I never stopped to figure out what. World, maybe? Weight? White? Wicked? I don't know, I don't have a dictionary. It stands for World, yes, but do you know what that means? I haven't the slightest fucking clue.

World Inertia is a term that describes how far one's soul is displaced from the core of this world. Souls from other worlds will always have higher W Inertia, but there is significant variance there based on character, alterations to timelines, and numerous other factors.

The main issue with W Inertia is that it converts the soul, preventing it from going back into the natural cycle. See, normally, the energy from a recently-deceased soul will pass onto another world, but W Inertia traps souls, feeding the Systems that run the place. It's not an issue for the natives, because their bodies were designed to work with this world, absorbed for their W Inertia before the soul energy itself changes, but otherworlders aren't. Their souls--life force, id whatever you want to call it--are different from the natives' in slightly different ways, enough for them to count as W Inertia rather than soul energy. When you have an influx of otherworlders--all of them captured by the Systems--that look like big juicy batteries...

Oh no.

The Systems consume the excess, because why wouldn't they?

The B System is eating otherworlders' souls.