"That's hard to believe, but it explains a lot," she sighs, "I thought you were fucking with me when you were asking very simple questions that should be common knowledge, but turns out you're just an interdimensional tourist."

"I can't really be a tourist if I can't even take souvenirs back with me," I look at my big frog plushie. "Will you take care of it when I leave?" I push the frog towards her.

"The fact you're more worried about this thing than me says a lot about you, honestly," she shoves the frog away.

"The fact I am willing to entrust this precious being to you means I deeply trust you, it's an honor if anything."

It took me a while to adapt to her sudden personality change, but I eventually got used to it. Friendly banter is a lot easier when I don't have to be hyperfocused on her soul all the time and overthink whatever emotion I read from it. Well, this could also all be an act, but being paranoid will lead me nowhere, I'll trust her and assume she trusts me. What's the worst that could happen? If she tries to absorb my entire soul, she'll just choke on it and implode or something. It would destroy my physical body in the process, but most of my actual soul would be fine. Case in point, I don't have much to lose from trusting her.

Not a lot is happening on the road, so I have plenty of extra time to check the menu of this world, what is "Alignment" for?

ALIGNMENT

Trin

Party member System

Observer

Why is it called alignment if it's basically just a faction menu? It's probably my translator skill that messed up.

"Hey, Trin? Is it normal to have the system in your alignment window?"

"What the fuck does that even mean? The system isn't a person or something, it can't be aligned with anything," she looks at me suspiciously before continuing, "There WAS this incident with some cultists I can't remember the name of, it was...fuck, what was it? 200 years ago? That's ancient history by human standard, I'm pretty sure. They worshiped the system or something, and apparently they had it in their alignment menu. I'm pretty sure it was just a rumor, though."

"And how did they worship it?"

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"Fuck if I know. They were cultists, and that's all anyone needed to know before they got stabbed for easy experience. I'm going to assume you don't have the fucking system in your alignment window, or else the looming shadow is the least of our problem."

"And if I do have it?"

"If you do have it, then I hope it's not angry with you." she sighs.

"It says it's an observer."

"That means it's interested in you but not enough to directly interact with you, for now anyway. I really shouldn't have to say this, but please don't piss off the system?"

I simply give her a thumbs up, and she rolls her eyes. There are a lot of reasons as to why the system might be watching me. Although I doubt it's the system itself, more than likely it's the universe that is watching me.

Fun fact, universes are actually just massive souls, and everything physical inside it is also part of its soul, this is what I call a "true god". This is also why soul surgery as a skill can work on basically anything, because technically everything is a soul. Unfortunately, a true god's soul is so insanely diluted it makes it a lot harder to mess with, which is why you're better off interacting with the universe in a normal fashion by using stuff like technology, systems or magic.

Really, I'd argue soul surgery is a pretty impractical skill despite the theoretically infinite possibilities it offers. Even though there are things only soul surgery can do, they are very situational. Thankfully, I am in that very situational position where I can both train my soul surgery as much as I want AND have it be useful.

To come back as to why the universe is watching me, I think it's a mix of me diving into its database, not belonging here and my soul being an affront against both the natural and unnatural order. But as long as I don't do anything drastic, I'm sure it's going to leave me alone.

It takes some time, but we finally end up seeing a small village on the horizon. The most striking part is not the village itself, it's the massive black mountain behind it. It's hard to describe, it looks like a triangle shaped black hole, but it has the general outline of a mountain, except that outline changes if you look too hard at it.

"How did I not notice the mountain before? It's massive," I ask.

"That's normal, this mountain is only visible once you get super close to it. It's also in multiple places at once, but everyone climbs the same mountain. I have no idea what actually climbing it is like though," she explains nonchalantly, as if this was the most normal thing in the world.

As we approaches the village, a young lady in a highly sophisticated dress waves at us. She looks like some kind of noblewoman that would be better suited in some royal castle, and as the woman approach, I can see Trin freeze up as if she's hoping the lady's sight is based on movement.

"Hi!" the woman says while offering her hand, "Trin! It's been a while, what are you doing here?"

"Listra, how wonderful to see you here," Trin answers, leaving the woman's hand unshaked, "I see you are...enjoying your newfound wealth."

"Of course! My husband is such a dear, I don't know how I'd live without him," her eyes quickly meet mine before going back to Trin, "I assume your last business endeavor didn't go quite well? Too much competition, perhaps?"

"Listra, if you say one more word-"

"But don't take it to heart, I'm sure your customer did consider you, maybe you were just incompatible."

"Incompatible? Unlike you, I actually-"

"Actually care about the client's wishes, yes, yes. But tell me, did this work philosophy not bring misery to both you and your customers? For example, that fellow Edri-"

"Leave."

I chime in, "Yeah?"

"No, I meant 'leave' as in 'Listra, get the fuck out'," Trin grabs her by the collar, "Yeah, the fucker picked someone else, and you know what? Good for him, good for me. I hope you choke on your expensive wine, I hope it was fucking worth it."

There is a heavy silence before Trin finally lets go of her collar.

"To each their own," Listra smirks.

"To each their own," Trin hisses.

Listra then dusts herself off and simply walks away from that whole exchange without any more words.

Trin puts her hand on my shoulder without facing me. She stays like that for a minute before she speaks up.

"If you're wondering how I managed to tolerate you this entire time, that's because no matter how hard you try, you'll never top this bitch."