“Why?” I asked Snow, the sudden and surprisingly intense mental query, almost a shout, shocked me. I hadn't intended to ask any such thing of the powerful beast, but for some reason, I had to know.

Snow's lips parted, revealing his shining white teeth. It could have been mistaken for a grin if it wasn't for the vision of Snow's true form with his lips pulled back in a snarl that appeared in the back of my mind. For a moment I felt as though a giant paw was pressing me down to the ground.

“Why would I train you? I already said I think of you as family. Is that not explanation enough?” Snow's deep voice sounded friendly and curious, there was no hint of the displeasure in his tone. The phantom paw pushed harder on my mind.

Honest flared, it almost seemed like the Concept was indignant at the fact that I was being lied to. Information flooded my head as Snow's pressure, and a pulse from Survivor, forced me to lower my head, my eyes squeezed shut.

After everything I'd just been through my mind spun, unable to take the assault from so many fronts I fell unconscious.

The embrace of the warmth from the sun shining brightly overhead was the perfect counterpart to the soothing cool of the soft grass underneath me. A sweet smelling breeze flowed around me, softly ruffling my fur. The soft sound water flowing nearby seemed to carry away the stress I had been feeling on its current.

I let out a sigh, grabbing hold of the sense of peace that pervaded the space I was in with both paws. I instantly knew where I was, and my memory of manners from my first life insisted that it was incredibly rude of me not to acknowledge the man who I could barely detect sitting not far away from me.

I didn't say a word, I didn't even open my eyes. The entity I was sharing this space with did not require any sort of speech. He knew what I was thinking, and he knew I needed some time to sort through the information honest and curious had teamed up to dump in my head.

Snow hadn't been lying about intending to teach me, but the reason he gave was a total lie. When he said that he considered me family, it had felt strange, it wasn't a lie, not really, but it carried the intent to deceive. I chewed on that for a while, trying to understand what it could mean. I was drawing a blank until Randy spoke up.

“I'm surprised that you're stuck on that, given your history. I think it's a good thing that you didn't let your bad experience ruin your personal concept of what family should mean. You have to remember, however, that your definition is a very human one. Different species, particularly asocial ones, don't have the same values.”

What he said made sense. Snow wasn't human, he was a beast, he didn't stop being a beast just because he was old and intelligent. From my few conversations with the old cat I didn’t get the impression that he thought very highly of humans, so what reason would he have to act like one?

I didn't know a lot about snow leopards, but I was fairly sure they were solitary animals. From what I remembered most male big cats were fairly hands off with their families. At best, they would allow them to share their territory until they reached adulthood.

Still, Snow wasn't just a beast, he'd been sapient for centuries. What familial bonds meant to him was likely his own decision. From the feeling I got when he spoke, they weren't entirely meaningless, but…

“A creature like him probably has more than one reason for any action they take. It's good to be aware of, though I don't think he means to hurt or hinder you in any way. First generation beings are generally quite dedicated to their creators. You should have an idea of how that is, considering your experience with Thorn.”

I cringed, I still felt more than a little conflicted about the way Thorn treated me. I felt responsible for him in a way that shook my very soul. I wanted him to be happy and healthy. I wanted him to have the opportunity to choose and grow, and find his own path. Yet the path he seemed determined to choose was serving me. Thinking about it made my head ache, because somewhere along the line, choice had become enshrined in my soul as something that I would never, could never take away from someone else.

“Oh, a tenet, already. Are you trying to set a record for fastest ascension?”

Randy's words knocked the thoughts out of my head. A what now? I looked at him curiously.

“You understand Concepts. They are how the beliefs of the masses can change and empower reality itself. Tenets are similar, but they come from inside. They are ideas that have reached such a level of importance that you have subconsciously engraved them on your very soul. For a deity, tenets are Rules that can only be broken if reality itself steps in.

I was pretty far from being a deity, I knew that quite well. I wondered what that meant, and grimaced when I considered that I had one more thing I had to worry about influencing my actions.

Randy laughed.

“I very much doubt that you'll come across a scenario when you want to violate your own Tenet any time soon. Freedom of choice seems like it will make things much more difficult for you after you ascend, but while you're alive? Ha! Hash and I will have to scrap our plan to fix your System conflicts.”

The grin on Randy's face grew by leaps and bounds.

“It’ll be a lot of work! But he'll do it! If only for the chance to study how the heck you managed to utilize so much conceptual power with a soul so weak. It's definitely a species trait, something to do with the way you can break down existing Concepts for parts. But! And this is very important to that lazy bastard. We can't figure out the mechanism that reality instilled in that body. He'll definitely want to keep studying you, and if you reject the System… he can't.”

Wait, reject the System? I can do that?

“You are doing that. Right now. That's what I drew you here to tell you about. The moment you managed to convert Holy to mean inviolable, the System began to encounter a cascade of conflicts with the Concept. It could no longer act without causing damage to your soul. That's why we shut it down.”

I blinked, and Randy's face took on a gravely serious look.

“I was ordered to contact my true self so we could perform another soul surgery on you to remove the Concept. It would have been terribly dangerous for you. The odds that your soul shard would unravel were far too high in my opinion.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

The fragment's eyes narrowed, and I saw his muscles tighten with barely suppressed rage.

“They said that the alternative was beyond the capacity of a soul your level to control, and it would take too much effort to create the tools to do so for a mere shard of a split soul.”

The man shook his head, and let out a breath filled with frustration.

“No one on the call was split, and I was the only soul surgeon. They only barely understand how split souls work, and their understanding is flawed. They didn't really care when I said that each shard was its own person. My opinion on the matter was considered compromised, because my tenets and authorities make me “weak”. As if compassion for others was a fault.”

Randy shook his head.

“I can't tell them the secret of the Concept. They quite literally wouldn't hear me, but you can, since you have it. Kind can cost you, sometimes dearly. But I have never seen it fail to pay me back eventually, it's part of the magic of the Concept. It ties into the larger Aspect of ……” He continued to speak, and I heard him, but the meaning of the words left my mind instantly. I focused hard, trying to follow them, but language itself began to lose coherence in my mind. Randy went quiet.

It was hard to think deeply without words to give my thoughts definition. Left for a few moments with only emotion to guide me, I felt frustration. The frustration turned to an aching fear as I recognized something had gone terribly wrong.

Then the man was petting my head, soft noises that I didn't understand came out of his mouth. His touch was soothing, Kind, I felt the Concept emanating from him. I didn't have the word to define the Concept, but I recognized it, and the warmth of it calmed me. I closed my eyes, and let myself relax.

It didn't take long for his words to begin to make sense again, for language to return to me, perhaps a minute or two. He was telling me how sorry he was, how he had forgotten how young I was. He told me that I should never, ever try to fight it when I couldn't hear something like that.

“You probably know of the set of ideas I mentioned, but I should never have said it the way that I did. It may be connected to a Concept that you hold dear, but that's not enough to let you hear it in all its glory.”

I tried to think of what he might have meant, but my mind shied away from trying to touch it. I understood without being told, that it was something I could try to unravel, but later, and with caution. For now I was just happy to be able to think normally again.

Randy coughed, then spoke again, his previous excitement returned.

“Anyway! Now that you've gone and developed the tenet that you did, removing Holy would not fix the problem. Choice! How wonderful. Most souls are too indoctrinated into how the System generally works to integrate that into their soul by the time they have the power to do so. I certainly wouldn't have been able to do so. It will make your life so much harder!”

The excited god leaned down to hug me, and whispered in my ear.

“You'll make a fantastic god when the time comes, don't let anyone tell you differently. I'm sure your people will grow stronger than most after they survive the terrible choices they are bound to make.”

I rolled my eyes at that. I was proof that the System didn't stop people from making bad choices. I thought about how much pain the System had caused with the choices it made for the Brightwood adventurers. If they had the choice, I don't think a single one would have chosen the class they had. If my “tenet” meant I could avoid forcing that on anyone? That sounded so good it made me want to weep tears of joy.

Randy backed up, and looked me in the eyes.

“Those mistakes are rare, but I understand how you feel. And I understand how your life so far pushed that value deep into your soul. I'll have to call for another meeting. We'll sort something out for you. I can bet that it won't be easy, whatever we come up with. For now, rest, learn what you can from the cat. The System will remain offline, it will make you vulnerable, but you can use the time to learn to do things the old way.”

I tilted my head to the side, hoping that Randy would elaborate on that, but he laughed.

“How old do you think I am? The System was somewhat new and unfinished when I took my first contract, but it was already around.”

He hummed a little, it seemed like he was thinking hard.

“I heard some things of course, and I know some tricks. The older contractors did talk.”

He told me what he knew about how things used to work. It seemed that the mana hadn't been nearly as thick in the air back then, even a tier one area would have been considered special.

Most normal people would avoid mana zones, there was a real danger of “becoming poisoned” by them, and going mad, in other words, turning into monsters. Some people had the ability to process the mana safely and make cores like spirit beasts. These people grew powerful, and dealt with the monsters that frequently came out of mana dense areas.

He said that they had many techniques they used to manage their mana, but apparently much of it was superstitious nonsense that only helped because they developed Concepts while they were seen using them.

Strange ways of breathing while they circulated mana through their body were very popular. Bathing in herbs and sometimes even poisons was another method.

I recognized the descriptions. It was a thought I'd had long ago when Dux taught me to circulate mana. They sounded like cultivators. Dux had shot me down when I raised the idea.

Randy laughed.

“That is what they were called. I'm not surprised that the System didn't want you to know that though.”

The god shrugged and got back to telling me the important parts. Mana circulation was key, and what Dux had taught me was supposed to be a good maintenance technique. To make gains though, I would have to take purposeful control of the mana. He said that the exercise would help empower my Concepts, and teach me what I needed to know to better control mana outside my body.

I wasn't sure I loved the idea of empowering my Concepts more, particularly while I still had hungry, but I nodded along. It seemed that Dux had really been trying to help me when he told me to keep circulating mana. It was a shame that I hadn't taken his advice more to heart.

“Ah, well, the System might have gotten in the way. It's meant to warn most people against using the techniques at all. Cores are considered dangerous. Do you know what happens when one ruptures? I think the founders were of the mind that any core growth should be System assisted, for safety reasons.”

I gulped, remembering the times that my cores had come close to cracking. I knew some of what could happen, a rupture that caused the mana inside to spill out into my body being the most mild danger. Hash had told me once that they could explode in a way that would result in my death. I knew that such an explosion would be a disaster, it was probably why Callum, the Brightwood guard captain, had been wary of me.

Spirit Beasts were one incredibly bad day from turning into the most dangerous of weapons.

Randy nodded solemnly.

“It's a big part of why they are seldom welcome in civilized lands. It can happen, and when pressed, the System will do nothing to prevent it.”

I narrowed my eyes. Sometimes the way the System worked seemed to be full of contradictions.

Randy shrugged with a sad look in his eyes.

“It's one of the things we have to allow. Like war, and criminal behavior. Maintaining true peace isn't an option in our worlds. Conflict breeds Concepts, and Concepts are necessary in a way that I can't fully explain to you right now.”

I watched as the man flinched, I saw his jaw clench for a moment before he sighed ruggedly.

“What is it about you that makes me push the boundaries? Is it the part of my original self in you? I think we'd best be done here. Rest, practice. I'll contact you later.”

With that, I slipped into a dreamless sleep.

When I woke, I had little time to think about anything that had been revealed to me in my sleep.