Lurona city [southern shores of Fuminao Legacy Kingdom], local time [1794.01.16]

“The offer is…”

The tiny emanation spread her hands. Two orbs manifested just above them.

“A blue pill or the red pill?” she asked jokingly.

He rolled his imaginary eyes. “They are both white! Did you read all of my memories? You are using an awful amount of Earth’s references for an alien being,” he asked instead.

Giggling, she threw the orbs up with a lazy movement of her arms. After stopping, they hanged motionlessly in place. “Not all. But I was overseeing the process of the construction of your extended body. I was serious, by the way.” She put her arms behind her back, floating about in the space with excitement. “You are either to remember and conspire with me, or you are to forget and live your life as you always did.”

He smirked. “You say it like you can erase my Soul memories without damaging it or leaving a trace.”

She shrugged. “What is happening right now is already encrypted – we are in a space that’s unfamiliar to all, the System Onji included. The trace left in your Soul would seem erratic at best, and plainly random at worst. And I can purge parts of your memories, too. The cluster containing the processing unit covers quite a lot of the newly-forming memories – a thing I can easily scramble. Only your Will may preserve some scattered fragments of what had happened, but you know in what state it is in right now. Although, if the processing unit stays with you…”

He frowned. “That doesn’t make much sense. The Soul is recording everything, does it not? Every experience. And those can be read as life-like experiences later on. You would have to damage my Soul to counteract that.”

She nodded. “That’s true, but you are missing the reason standing behind that phenomenon. You don’t have access to all memories from your past lives, are you?” she asked rhetorically. “That’s because you cannot read the information without a proper context. It’s similar to seeking a data set without reference in the Soulscape. You need to start actively using that part of your Soul before reading from it. The natural process of regaining memories from the past life involves getting accustomed to your Soul and the possible image of the reality in which your past self had lived. Among other, more drastic changes. What is happening right now is similar. You would need to gain context before deciphering those memories. Something you won’t be able to achieve without the processing unit I have implanted temporarily,” she clarified with certainty in her voice.

Zeph couldn’t even argue. She was giving him new information – something he would have to check in the future. For now, though, he had to assume it was all true.

Again, he also somehow knew she wasn’t lying. This time, he noticed that subtle effect consciously. Having a great idea, he opened his mouth to test a theory blooming in his mind...

Only to be slapped away by the irritated Faerie.

“Don’t even try that here, you moron! You knew well what influence on the Soul a lie can have on Corora. You are now all Soul, idiot!”

“It’s a simulation… how could I know?” he mumbled to himself while massaging an immaterial bump on his spherical body.

“Hmph! I can hear you, dumbass! Use lo—Ahem, logic…” she stammered and her voice lost the sharp tone. The projection of her body moved back as she remembered an important fact. “Um… okay, my not-so-intelligent compatriot…” she tried to start anew. “Don’t lie here, okay? Not without taking a corresponding action at the same time, okay? We are quite immaterial here, yes?” She patiently explained while making gentle, flowing gestures with her hands.

He sighed in irritation. “Stop with that pretentious tone. I am not a baby. But if there is a ban placed on an action, you should have mentioned it earlier! I was experimenting a whole lot before, you know?!”

She waved her hand. “No, no. Trying to do things with your body, the energy, or other things surrounding you is all good. Just…” She scratched her head. “Please, stop trying to form a separate ego, ok? Like I said, you aren’t really yourself right now already. I don’t want you to drift away altogether.”

He glanced at her, unimpressed. It sounded awfully like a simulated unit—him, in this case—desynchronizing with the original, forming their own individuality. Something she previously indirectly denied as a possibility. It seemed there was more hidden between her words. Omission technically wasn’t a lie.

Yet, here he stood – naked and somewhat functional. She evidently knew what she was doing.

He sighed again. “You should have put the rules in place, nonetheless. You want me – what would happen if I broke myself here?”

She plopped down on an invisible cushion. “Well, breaking shouldn’t happen in any circumstances – forceful reset would happen at the worst. But I know what you mean… We may have been a bit too focused on the discretion,” she admitted with a slight bitterness in her voice. “It’s not like we were disregarding your safety, but… my original has decades yet to find a solution to save herself. In the worst case, she will try contacting the System, no matter how risky that is. You aren’t the only option and it’s hard to harm oneself in this space, so she didn’t leave me with much compassion or predetermined worry towards the continuity of your being…”

He smirked. “Interesting choice of words. What will happen to you after I leave then?”

The white emanation sagged down. “What do you think?” she asked mechanically. “I am a construct. A construct with a clear goal to achieve. I will cease to exist the moment I finish my job.”

Yeah, that’s not going to happen. “If we are to work together, I will need the person I made a deal with to be alive. And I have a feeling another one would take your place to mediate in the future, assuming I agree.”

He had no illusions – she was a projection. A construct. She named herself as such. Still, he would rather work with what he knew. Especially because she seemed to possess her own Will.

That small detail didn’t escape his notice. The Will he was producing was partially unattuned to his space. Those ‘filaments’ of his Will joined the war effort going outside. But… his unattuned Will wouldn’t simply leave without being guided. It would fight against the fake reality, if he so wished. After coming to that conclusion, it became much easier to feel out its Nether-attuned counterpart. Because no matter how small of an amount, it was constantly interacting with hers.

Knowing what to look for, he almost immediately secluded and recognized the semi-familiar feeling of pushing against the Will of another being.

Maybe she thought she was stealthy, maybe she wasn’t even aware of the fact, or maybe she set up an elaborate trap by giving him just the right information – to test his ability, or to see what he would do if he knew… But none of that mattered. She was a living and sapient organism from his point of view. Even if she was trying to hide it. Even if she was engineered as a one-time instance of a greater being.

What he said made her pause.

In thoughtful silence, she floated down. Her fingers were playing involuntarily with her ‘dress’ as she descended.

“I… appreciate your sentiment. But I don’t think it’s possible…” she quietly said.

“Don’t be so sure. What are you, physically speaking?” he asked with great confidence – something that would be impossible for him normally. She explained things in enough detail, though. If he was going to lie, even only to himself, he was going to bolster his confidence first. He was always lacking in that department. Objectively speaking, a healthy dose of self-assurance would have miraculous effects on his long-forgotten career on the Earth, as well as his life quality there.

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It was a topic he was analyzing time and time again—as any supposed introvert would—so he knew what the perfect execution of self-imposed change of that kind should look like. He had plans ready for implementing self-development in the most direct way possible.

He still cringed at the words coming out of his mouth, though. Acting was one thing, believing it was another.

“What… Well… a good question, I suppose?” she said, tilting her head. Her tone dropped suddenly. “If you can preserve me… I will make it worthwhile for you.”

Her serious voice didn’t match her prior behavior at all. Her façade cracked for a moment, presenting him with a living mind that was pressed between a rock and a hard place.

She was terrified, and he could feel that in the very space around them. The possibility of non-existence would do that to any sentient being. She wanted to live.

“I am… no,” she shook her tiny head. “Disregard my body. It’s not important. My awareness is what matters.”

She took a deeper breath, centering herself.

“I won’t raise my expectations. I know already that preserving me should be impossible without my original’s interference. As so, don’t expect anything more from me until you manage to keep me around,” she started, glaring into his ethereal eyes.

“I am an information construct formed from the… matter of the Soulscape,” she said with disgust. “Of course, there is no matter here. Even suggesting that is revolting. Even though I can’t explain that any better for you.”

He nodded in understanding. Her form flickered for a split second as she was speaking – either a side effect of lying or going out of the script.

“Are you a part of the Soul construct embedded in my Soul?”

She sighed. “Yes. My… being? No, my processing unit, would be more correct – is limiting the Nether-bound Soul fragment by physically encompassing it. I form the surface, the border. The insides are… partly me, but not truly. Most of it is this simulation, along with some additional information – like that on the Terrien. Of course, we are talking Soulscape.” She shrugged. “It’s all a metaphor. There is no 3D space to encompass.”

Zeph nodded and focused on the white static that was starting to intensify with time. If that was the visual effect of his attuned Will…

He dropped all pretenses and focused on the now.

There was no better time than the present to use up his Will.

Firstly, he made sure that what he was perceiving was what he thought it was. Condensing the static into a ‘sphere’ gave him mixed results, though.

Firstly, it wasn’t as responsive as it should be. It wasn’t fully ‘his’, which should be obvious from the start – he was in a non-physical space with strange rules. The space was controlled by the fragment of the Faerie. Or rather, she was the environment in which his Will existed. That dampened his Will accessibility drastically because she was alive – in some weird way.

Living meant change. It was a process. And Will dabbed in influencing just that. But the environment wasn’t his nor was it neutral.

Secondly, he couldn’t feel the ‘sphere’. The static in his vision concentrated around one point, for sure, but the experience was absolutely alien to him. As if he was trying to control pixels in a game, instead of something intricately intervolved with his very being, all he could perceive was distant and ‘quantized’ units that were forming shapes they were not made to form. Trapped between this fake world, Faerie’s influence, and his control.

Be that as it was, he managed to do one thing he wanted. He sent the ‘attuned’ Will to the borders of this simulated ‘space’.

He spent almost everything on his first try.

The vertigo that followed wasn’t fun at all. Yet, the information he received was barely meaningful.

“You alright?” The Faerie’s projection asked. He could now see how meaningless her form was. It was merely a shaped speck representing something greater, but the manifestation was taking place in her world. That complicated things. Even with Will, he couldn’t understand what he just detected.

“How much time do we have, again?” he asked after stabilizing his mental structure.

Yes, he would never again call this construct a body. It was immaterial in a way he never knew was possible. For a moment there, he felt more like a numerical program floating in an emulator set on a virtual machine calculated in the cloud than anything with actual physicality to itself.

So, from now on, he was a mental structure and nothing more.

It was a sobering thought.

“Around a week. You lost a few days, but I can downclock the simulation to replenish energy to prolong the duration.”

“Any arguments against becoming Gru’s snack?”

Her face crumpled. Hard.

“Are you going to try what I think you are going to?”

“Yes,” he smiled viciously. “But first, I need to map this place. It will take some time. So?”

The floating white Faerie seemed shocked for a moment. She knew well what he meant by ‘mapping’, but he shouldn’t be able to do that. It was becoming easier to read her when she was losing control over her emotions.

After a moment, though, she gave up on asking him any questions and simply nodded. “The idea isn’t the worst, although the accuracy of such… surgery…”

He shrugged. “Gru already did a Soul transplantation on us. Twice. And he wasn’t even sentient at the time. I wouldn’t worry much about that, but you would have to help me contact him.”

“Okay, I agree… Going back to the deal, though.” She swiftly changed the topic. It wasn’t yet clear if they would be cooperating in the first place.

“Yes?”

“My original wants to fill the crack in your core Soul with her own. It should be similar to what happened when you decreased your Soul fragmentation – when the System implanted certain Soul contaminations. Of course, it will be different.”

“She will give me a fragment of her Soul containing a processing unit to stay alive. And a ‘subdued’… no, the Nether-shifted parts of her Soul that are under her control,” He guessed blindly.

“Not so much,” the little emanation shook her head. “She is already shredded when it comes to memories. A processing unit prolonging her suffering is unnecessary,” she said with much remorse. “Putting her overwhelming emotions on your shoulders wouldn’t be right. No. She wants to merge with you.”

That’s something new. “Merge?”

“Became a part of your core Soul without a Will of its own, accessible in its entirety for you… You can think of it like an implanted contamination, but based on a living being, and impossible to deteriorate. What she wants is a peaceful death with the hope of preserving her knowledge, experiences, and the right to reincarnate instead of giving up to the Nether. In a sense, she will be planting a seed from which her child could have been born. Faen don’t reproduce like a normal, physical species do. The newborns are as much a prolonging of their being as a new life. What differs is the Will, of course. The new personality for an old entity…”

Zeph was shocked as he started to understand what she was talking about. “She wants me to become her child?” he asked incuriously.

Mavis waved her hands, indicating that he wasn’t exactly right. “It’s… similar, but wrong. You are of a different race, for starters. Do you expect to suddenly change into a Faerie? Or be overwritten? Hmmm…” She poked her cheek with her finger. “That would be kind of fun, actually…”

He exhaled mentally with relief. He definitely wasn’t ready for an abrupt change of his race. “Not funny. But what do you mean?”

She took a teacher’s pose again. “As you live on, you will become more accustomed to her Soul fragment and slowly merge with it fully, but the process is very different from the normal ‘conception’. You will have to reach her Soul’s density before that happens, though, accepting or discarding certain Traits along the way. Any changes will take time nonetheless. If you die prematurely, her fragment will have a chance to become her true child. If it manages to attain Terrien’s Will, all the better. Before you ask”—she lifted her hand to stop him from asking more questions—“it’s impossible for her to fully separate from the Nether part at this point. Her child won’t be any different. Without a proper germination period to grow and build up the Nether-controlling structures, it will shift to their side almost immediately. She can’t make it pure anymore. If you can keep it safe for enough time, though, there is a chance the spread of the infection will be stopped entirely in case you die and her child surfaces. Then, it would have to be proven to other Onjis that not only the newborn isn’t a Nether treat but also a useful ally. That’s why she is looking for someone who can not only withstand the Nether but also use it creatively.”

Zeph finished for her, realization dawning on him. “So, either the child learns a thing or two from me while I am protecting it, or I convince the powers to be before she is even born. Because I will have the same exact problem as she would, just much earlier, won’t I? The acceptance.”

“Yep!” the Faerie confirmed joyfully. “Whatever you do, it will be remembered. That’s how the merging process works if one side is much stronger than the other. Soulwise. And if you manage to preserve me, it’s where I can help,” she straightened up proudly. “I can grant you partial access to the seed’s deeper memories. Normally, you would have to progress with the merging to get that information, but I can cheat a little in that regard. Of course, a huge part pertaining to what we have talked about will become accessible for you from the beginning, even without my interference. But—”

“Stop with the self-promotion. I already decided to help you if I can agree to this,” he interjected. “But why would I want to go that risky way? If I understand it correctly, the Soul fragment of her will be mostly dormant – especially the Nether part of it. If that means it will be as hidden as a Netherling, or even better, why would I want to do anything to prove myself to the Onjis?” He crossed his imaginary arms.

“Because of the Deep Memory Scan the System Onji will ask of you at some point. And because of your threshold metamorphosis,” she answered smartly.

“The first one is obsolete, though?” he said with a smirk before she could elaborate. “No memory scans for me. I and the System have a deal.” And good thing I have made it! It seems I am not that much out of shape when it comes to the negotiations!