Willams had no idea where to begin, He didn't even know what was wrong, He knew something was wrong, but not what exactly. He started inspecting the nearby lumps in greater detail but soon realized that all of them were exactly the same, down to the t, not a single one differed from the other in any way. Willams peered deeper, looking for something, anything that was different, out of place, He didn't know why he felt that should be different, just that they should.

He found nothing at the top so he started looking at the base of each lump, they were all lined up in straight rows of ten so he picked a row and started searching for differences, not far into his investigation the spirit noticed an unnatural shadow obscuring the base of a lump of metal at the end of the row, it came alive as soon as he noticed it and lashed out at him, sending a shadowy whip straight at him forcing him to quickly will his perception back to avoid the attack.

'What the hell?' Peering closer he felt a strange sensation pass over him, similar to the system but not quite, it felt slightly different but was clearly from the system.

{AUTOMATED SOUL DEFENCE AND REPAIR UNIT [KVQ20]}

{STATUS: GUARDING SOUL NODE [KV457818###OK]

{INTRUDER DETECTED....CONNECTING TO THE MAIN SYSTEM FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS...ERROR[!] CONNECTION TO MAIN SYSTEM TERMINATED}

The spirit found this oddity interesting, it could be the key to fixing his damaged core, it could be the key to all his problems, he just had to tweak it in his favor. This could be the reason why his skills were working the way they were, and why that was the only part of his system that was working because if this thing were to be believed, some part of the system mechanics were inside him, inside his soul core to be specific.

The fact that he could see that notification gave him hope, maybe he could permanently prevent it from connecting to the main system while still retaining the ability to gain skills and use them.

That would be a massive boon, assuming the sadistic God couldn't just snap it out of him as soon as it found out, maybe it could and it was just toying with him even now, the prospect put him on edge, but on the bright side it could also help him repair his soul, he needed to find more of these things though, the fact that it had such a long name suggested that there may be many others like it out there.

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Willams marked this specific spot to come back to later, he needed more evidence to confirm his theory, and he had a lot of things to test out before trying anything that could potentially kill him for real this time. With that settled he moved over to another row and willed himself to be as close as possible to a random lump in that specific row and what he expected happened, at first.

They radiated the same amount of heat and spewed out the same amount of motes when he wasn't near them, he noticed that they only changed that cycle when he was nearby.

Willams noticed that when he was extremely close to one of the metal lumps, they activated overdrive mode, spewing out new motes that teemed with life and energy, permanently, even after he moved away.

But, even then, the new motes that came out just stayed there, Willams took the time to observe them more and noticed that new motes were a lot more than they seemed to be at first glance, they seemed to be dancing, dancing to a firey tune and crackled and popped angrily, they swayed to an invisible wind, winding over each other in an attempt to rise higher.

Willams observed them for quite a while, mesmerized by the sight, he tried to take in as many details as his senses would allow him, the motes continued to pour out with increasing speed and fever the longer he observed, first, they formed a bubble, but soon they began to elongate and stretch upwards as if reaching for something, looking up he saw what could only be described as a glitch in reality, something that felt wrong to him, on a fundamental level.

Space distorted around these glitches, bending and twisting before collapsing on itself in a neverending cycle of destruction, fractal-like shapes dominated the center of the glitches, they spun themselves out of reality itself before growing so large they implode, releasing sparks of white matter that made Willam's head hurt if he looked too long.

Willams realized that these "glitches" lined up perfectly with the cracks on the surface of his core, looking back at his initial landing spot, he noticed that one was above it too, but it was by far the largest one of them all, it looked like a huge jagged scar that stretched on to the end of his perception.

The spirit realized that these were the things responsible for the cracks he saw above, He realized that each and every lump He came across had a glitch right above them, some so small he nearly missed them.

Only after going through row after row of lumps did he figure out how to spot the strange distortions in the fabric of reality.

The only exception to this was the lump with the defense unit at its base, which only further proved that they were the key, he just at to figure out how to use the said key to open the doors of freedom.

He still hadn't found another defense unit yet but he knew they were out there he just had to keep looking, eyeing the rising infernal pillar he took off in the opposite direction, he didn't venture far before he came across a row of metal lumps that all had a shadowy base, but these ones were different, they were stretching and reaching out to metal lumps that didn't have a shadow at the base of them.

They were multiplying, fast too.

{REPAIR SQUAD[KVAKIEL16]

{STATUS: RESTORING MAIN CONNECTION NODE}

Willams didn't like that, he didn't like that at all.