Chapter 53

The Choice

"I want to split." My former self stated decisively, not taking even a second to think about the consequences.

"Shouldn't we at least think about it first? It will change us for the rest of our existence, and just passively watching lives get lived for hundreds of years sounds like torture." I really didn't like the idea of being powerless to do more than watch, and maybe chime in every once in a while for such a long time.

"The man said you could still live more lives if you want to try, I mean how common is soul damage anyway? If Randy here is to be believed, our situation is pretty uncommon." My other self looked smug, as she crossed her arms.

The god on the TV frowned slightly. "I regret to inform you that small amounts of damage are actually more common than you would think. Unmanaged stress, fear, frequent exposure to pain when you are not mentally prepared to tolerate it, and mental manipulations all cause minor fraying of the soul."

Randy raised a hand as both of us started to speak, and continued.

"Generally it is considered beneficial to endure those times, as it causes the soul to grow stronger when it is given time to recover. I am not one to agree with that method, myself, and rest assured what Belua has exposed you to in such a short time merits a rather severe talking to."

Angela looked like she was about to explode, "A talking to!? How much of what we've been exposed to is her doing?" I could tell that she barely held herself back from screaming.

"That's a difficult question to answer. First, I should say that nothing she did was, by itself, enough to cause your current state. If you hadn't endured that fellow's very interesting innate ability, you would have likely never been put in this position."

The man on the TV sighed, and rubbed his face. "That said, she had to ignore several System warnings about possible risks to use what she did on you. She has very little excuse for her behavior. Unfortunately, a talking to is the likely best I can offer in terms of punishment. Fortunately, I know all about the Authority that drives her, and I can almost guarantee a reaction from it with just words."

"Authority?" I asked.

"You touch Aspects of the Authority of elemental mana when you use your abilities. Authorities are a collection of Concepts formed with a central theme. Developing one is seen as an almost necessary step to ascending to godhood."

"Wait, won't splitting cause us to have a hard time developing one of those? If I was to play it safe and split again for future lives, I mean." I scratched my mane, Ascending seemed like it was a ticket to freedom, I didn't think my other half would be okay with missing out on that.

"That is where the 'almost' comes in when I say almost necessary. Every time you split off a small portion of yourself, and it lives a life, you will collectively grow stronger. Gestalt entities tend to ascend after roughly one hundred new selves have been created. Depending on how long their lives are. It's actually slightly faster than what you can accomplish normally. Though you will slow it down substantially if parts of you live repeatedly."

I groaned, just thinking about having to quietly observe so many lives sounded horrible.

"Oh come on, the man said we would mostly be asleep, and the end result is an eternity being your own person. Why the hell do you even need to think about it? I mean think about how these contracts work. What if in one life we end up having to do something a lot of people think is terrible to do what the contract requires? Then we'd end up with some evil Concept, and we would be stuck with THAT for eternity. I don't want to deal with that, your life is already probably going to end us up with something shitty like Bestial."

Randy choked a little, and spoke up. "That exact nascent Concept is forming, so you're not wrong. Whether it's 'shitty' or not is up for debate."

I snorted "You can tell what's developing? I didn't think I'd left an impression on enough people yet."

The man on the screen spread his hands, while shrugging. "Bestial has not actually formed yet, and I'm assuming it's started because the guards talked about you. No amount of orders from above can keep a lid on that juicy gossip, though they specifically wouldn't be able to say you were Spirit Beast. There's also a tiny spark of Honest, and a little bit of Holy, but they're very very weak. It's actually quite amazing that they are starting to form at all in such a short time."

"I said it before, and I'm even more sure now, I want to split, put me to sleep until we ascend if you can." My old self declared grumpily.

I grinned a little, thinking of something that we daydreamed about since we were a child. "You'll miss out on being able to eventually live as a dragon!"

"If we ever get that offer, you mean, Marilyn was pretty clear that it isn't a life offered very often. Besides, if I can mostly sleep my way till we become a godly power, I can just choose to live as a mortal dragon on our world!" My old self looked a little smug again, and still dead set on splitting.

As much as the idea scared me, I had a hard time coming up with an argument against it. I didn't hate who I was becoming in my new life anymore. I found the idea of staying the person I was, without worrying about picking up some 'evil Concept' in another life, to be very tempting. But I did worry that losing my human half would change me anyway. That said, I didn't think she'd come around, so the split would likely just be put off if we didn't do it now.

I tried one last thing. "If we split, what does she take with her? What do I take from her? Won't we already lose ourselves?"

"How do you feel right now? You are currently under the effect of what could be called a simulated split. She is the parts of your old life that you have had to put aside. You are the parts of her that can cope with change, and make the best of bad situations. She is the parts of you that cannot tolerate not being in complete control."

"Wait, does that mean that I'll lose my will to fight being controlled? I'm not sure I care for that idea." I scratched my neck again, in what I recognized as a self soothing gesture.

Randy looked thoughtful for a moment. "I'd say that if that idea bothers you right now, you should be fine. There's a difference between a need to be in complete control, and having the strength of character to not be walked all over. Besides, the instincts you were given are definitely attached to your part of the soul. Thankfully we don't have to worry about giving either side of you a new personal core Concept. Both halves have managed to retain Survivor somehow."

"I'm fine like this, once we ascend I won't have to worry about being put in situations I have to adapt to anyway, right? I'll just leave the god stuff to everyone else."

Randy nodded at my other self. "That is definitely an option."

I looked at the man on the television, I realized that given the nature of what Randy had described of her half of the soul, she was not going to change her mind. "Can you think of any reason why we shouldn't split?"

The man frowned, and looked like he was thinking for a moment. "I've already told you everything I know about Gestalt deities. If the downsides I already mentioned don't bother you, then no."

"Come on, just agree, I'm ready to sleep till all this Contractor business is done." She looked at the TV. "Can you help me do that?"

Randy scratched his chin, and seemed to be deep in thought. "That kind of soul magic is quite possible for me. But I have an offer for you that you just may like better. I will have to discuss it with you after the split, if both of you agree.

"I'll hear your offer as long as I don't have to be around for the other lives. I don't care for the way the System alters people with their classes and other things. I don't want to have to watch it happen over and over again."

The handsome man on the TV rubbed his forehead. "You know the Aspects that the System puts together for classes aren't usually that severe, right? Angel is a really exceptional case of meddling with all the extra things that were added on."

Angela raised her hand and held up four fingers. "Pierce, whose class makes him so prone to anger his partner has to constantly help him mitigate it. Krassis is someone I really don't know much about, but being a Berzerker seems to hurt him so much I've never seen him sober. Torill, who I guess is a fellow contractor, has to give up parts of herself to use her powers, even if it's temporary, that's pretty messed up. And Alexander who seems so afraid of whatever class he's been saddled with he jumps at his own shadow. Would you like to tell me again how they aren't usually so severe?" My other self spoke each word like an accusation.

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The man on the screen looked a bit surprised and concerned by the descriptions. I wondered if he didn't know that kind of thing was happening. "Those are definitely all outliers, I'll look into their cases when we're done here to see if there's anything I can do to help them. The System should never give you a class that doesn't fit who you are. Unless you specifically agree to it with a contract."

"What the hell? How can this surprise you? You are a damn System Administrator. From everything we've heard, Brightwood is a small town in the middle of nowhere, and those are just the cases I personally know about. I can't imagine it's too rare." Angela crossed her arms, looking like she had judged Randy as a complete incompetent.

The admin held out his hands placatingly. "Brightwood is not small, it's rather large for a border town. A lot of young, low level people used to spend a few years there earning their early levels so they could spend more time between levels learning to actually use their gains. It's commonly known that you receive a much more appropriate first class evolution if it takes you a bit longer to get there. Parents also often bring their young children to places like Brightwood because the threats from monsters are relatively low because it's a low tier mana zone. But I take your point, I do not often interact much with individuals. It's hard to do, you know, their entire lives go by in the time it takes me to blink sometimes. Time gets a little funny when you Ascend, you have to really focus or you find yourself losing centuries."

"Like that's an excuse? You. Are. An. Admin. It's your fucking job to know these things are happening." My former self looked like she was ready to breathe fire, no draconic life needed.

The man on the TV scowled, he placed both hands on the desk in front of him, and leaned forward. "Look, I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of exactly who you're talking to. As far as the pecking order of System admins go, to use an example you understand, I am glorified tech support. I didn't make the System, I'm not old or powerful enough to change anything about how it works. An ancient god who is my superior in every way imaginable, and the one who brought me in to help you, helped create the thing, Not. Me. My job is to help when things go wrong, and he calls me, that's it."

"Oh." I could see the wind leave her sails. "Sorry, but you should still be aware that these things are happening. I doubt the Brightwood Adventurers Guild is a special case. Though, I guess they do stand out more since there are so few people left." Angela took a deep breath, and closed her eyes, looking pained, before speaking again. "I still don't want to take the chance of watching it happen to other versions of myself. Please don't make me watch, and maybe see if you can bring the problem up to people who could do something?"

The scowl dropped from the man's face, he looked at my other self solemnly with sympathy in his eyes. "I will help you, and I will do what I can to bring what you've pointed out up to the higher powers. I'll have to find more than a few cases, and document how their classes have negatively impacted them, and the people around them. It will take a lot of time, likely several lifetimes to get the data they would want. But I will make it a personal mission. In the short term I will see what I can do for the people who you mentioned. I can't change how the System works, but I can tweak things."

"Thank you, I'm sorry I was so rude." Other me looked satisfied.

"Now, Angel," Randy looked at me. "I want to be clear, I will not do anything without your consent. For the best results, you will need to actively aid me as I work with your soul. Do you want this?"

"Yes." I said, simply, any fear of what this potentially meant for the future was overridden by my other half's strong feelings. From everything that the admin had said, with my old self's attitude the split would just happen without his help anyway if I didn't agree.

"Okay then, before we get started I want to let you know that I will have to spend some time with your bonded companion. I expect that the repairs to, or severing of the soul bond between you will lengthen the duration of their sleep. Since their class is still being applied I won't be able to pull them out of the timestream." He looked at the two of me. It seemed like he was thinking of saying something, but decided against it.

"I will start the process in just a moment. It will not be pleasant, but I want you to make sure you concentrate on allowing me to do what I'm doing anyway. It will feel like I'm hurting you on the deepest level you can imagine. Because I will be doing just that. I'm warning you now that I will do my very best to dull the memory of this event, but I will not block it. Souls never forget, and trying to make them do so is a foolish venture. Please try to relax."

I took a deep breath, and as I was exhaling, the room around me disappeared.

I saw nothing but black. I felt a gentle, but overwhelming power engulf me.

I felt the power questing around my being, touching every part of my soul. I thought that my earlier experience having the catalog attached to my soul would give me some idea of what was coming, and it did but this was an entirely different experience.

"First, let's take care of that nasty little piece of garbage the System welded onto you. I always hate to see these things, there's a much better way to make sure you have access to your soul's memories."

The energy sank into the lump on my soul that housed my magic catalog. After a few moments the places where it had bonded to me melted to nothing, and it fell away, leaving an open wound in my soul's outer shield that the energy quickly covered. I was still aware of the energy contained in the addition that the System had given me, and I felt it disperse. It seemed like it was gone, but I could still feel its contents. The removal actually felt good, like a weight was taken off of me.

"There we go, I took the liberty of setting up your knowledge bank. It would have formed naturally eventually, but now you're set up so you won't lose your accumulated knowledge in your new lives. Now for the actual separation, this part is going to be uncomfortable."

I began to feel myself being slowly, steadily pulled apart. I felt the most awful sense of loss, it felt like I was losing touch with something incredibly important to me. I wanted to claw it back, fight to hold onto what I was losing. But I knew I had to allow it to happen.

I wanted to cry, and wail, the loss was so intense. When the separation was complete I felt broken, and incomplete, I was built on what was gone, and without it I didn't even know what I was.

"Your part of the soul was smaller than I thought, I will have to give you some of myself. I'm afraid that some Concept contamination is inevitable. Choose from Kind, Honest, Heroic, or Empathic they are the ones I have an oversupply of."

I felt like I didn't have much time to consider what was happening. They said a lot about the guy who was helping me. I picked the one I thought it would be nice to have, I always tried my best to be that kind of person anyway.

"Kind."

"Very well, I have much kindness to spare. I'm sorry that this has to happen, I'm going to give you parts of one of my better lives, you shouldn't remember any of it exactly, but you may have some strange dreams. Though you spend your nights in Belua's realm instead of sleeping normally these days, so I don't suppose it will come up."

I felt the energy holding me, entering through my torn edges. I felt power flow into me, enough that I was more than I had been before the loss. The new power felt foreign at first, but it settled in, and seemed to become something close to the lost part of myself. I could sense that a connection had formed with the entity surrounding me.

"It is done, I was able to mostly prevent you from gaining any of my soul memories, but I'm afraid you are now a Kind, Honest, Survivor. I should have known that empowering that one was inevitable. I'm very sorry. I'll have to owe you a favor. I'll come up with a nice Contract for you sometime. Now, it's time to wake up."

My eyes opened. I was lying on the sandy ground in my demihuman form, I felt disoriented. My head hurt so bad it made me feel like my brain was about to break out of my skull, and my mind was a muddled mess. I was momentarily unsure who or where I was.

"You okay there buddy?" I heard a man call out.

It took a second, but I remembered what I had been doing, and what happened.

I groaned. "What does your lighting do to magic, I just want to know exactly how dumb I was." The words slurred together, I tasted copper.

"Uh well it is supposed to turn magical attacks into more lightning to restore my charge, but it seems to just destroy them instead." Martin walked up to me as he spoke. "Are you going to be okay? You've got a nosebleed."

"I think so, but I had… some trouble." I wasn't sure how much of what happened I could discuss.

"You can tell them you had a System admin intervention, it's okay. You can say it hurt your soul, that's also not a problem. I think you'll be fine now, but you may want to shift to your true form soon. I want you to gather the guildmates with problems, and tell them to be ready to have their classes altered. Because of Belua's plan for you, I will be hitting Pierce's class tonight, the others will have to wait a few days."

While Randy was speaking to me, Martin held out his hand. I took it, and he helped me to my feet. I almost fell down again.

"Thanks but, uh, well. I had a System admin intervention, and the admin who helped me just told me I need to shift to my true form." I didn't mean to say the last bit, I was just going to say I needed to shift, and leave it at that. I blinked a little bit, it had to be Honest . That might bite me in the rear pretty quick.

"Your… true form?" Martin looked at me like he was wondering if I'd lost it.

I nodded. "Yup, I'm a Spirit Beast, and apparently I can't lie right now, that's pretty disturbing, I like being truthful but there are some things I don't want to share. Oh man, I'm going to shift now because I can't stop." I shifted quickly, changing to my true form felt so damn good. I heaved a sigh of relief, my head no longer hurt.

"Holy shit, that's what you really are? You're giant, why were you using that other cat?" Martin looked at my form without a hint of fear.

I blinked at him. That wasn't quite the response I expected.

"I'll tell you later if you want, mind speech is hard, I'm not good at using it."

I was stunned. That was easier than it had ever been before. My words transmitted to Martin without even the slightest hint of effort. I had to wonder if my human half had somehow been the reason for my troubles in that department.

"It was the soul damage, it was causing interference in more than one area. I was able to mend you, and have given you protection from further harm that should last for several lives."

I blinked. That was very kind of Randy, but that made sense considering the Concepts he listed off as ones he had an abundance of.

"Oh, maybe it's easier now, I'll still tell you later."

I sat down and did my best to groom the blood from my nosebleed off my fur.

My tail swept back and forth, it felt good to be in my natural form in front of everyone. It felt good not to hide what I was.

Torill came running into the arena. "Angel honey, can you come with me please? I think we need to talk."

I trotted up to her, and butted my head against her in greeting, careful not to hit her with my horns.

"Ahh okay, that's nice, come on then." She scratched me on my neck before starting to walk away. I followed her like a giant puppy.

She led me to the apartments. "My room or yours?"