Reincarnated as an Energy with a System

Chapter 2013: A Plan for a System

Ning frowned. "Couldn’t you update the Heavenly Records to work for them? It could’ve been done easily."

"I could have," Crownus answered. "But I have no reason to. I am not a guardian of this world. I am this world. And whatever direction it takes, I follow."

Ning frowned slightly, understanding that this was how a Will would act in the first place. They had no reason to be benevolent. In fact, the war had likely given him more thoughts and thus more power now. Ning could only imagine how much stronger he had become.

"I will say," Crownus continued, "even if I could have helped in any way, I did not have the opportunity to. I was busy right here, after all."

Ning nodded slowly.

"So, what happened next? How did the war unfold to become this... big?"

Crownus continued his explanation.

At first, the lack of recognition hadn’t been as big a deal with the general public. Though Mekharans could not receive the Callings of Avelis, people generally understood that it was likely due to the differences in their physiology.

The humans generally knew that the Mekharans were intelligent.

The problem was that their civilization had spent tens of thousands of years living beneath a System, which had created groups that were much less considerate of that fact.

"A religion formed around it," Ning guessed.

Crownus explained that certain groups began treating the Heavenly Records as an absolute authority rather than a System someone had created. To them, the fact that the Records did not recognize Mekharans was not a technical limitation.

It was a judgment.

If the Heavenly Records did not acknowledge them as people, then perhaps they were not people at all.

Ning rubbed his forehead.

For Crownus, the Heavenly Records had been an experiment designed to test how a System could interact with living beings. For the people of Avelis, it had existed since before recorded history and had guided countless generations.

Of course some of them had started treating it as divine.

The situation still might have remained manageable if nothing had pushed those beliefs further.

Something had.

A high-ranking Mekharan priestess named Serai-Venn was sent to Avelis as part of an official envoy.

Ning paused when Crownus called her a priestess.

"The machines have priests?"

"They developed religions as well."

"Right. Why wouldn’t they?"

Serai-Venn belonged to one of the oldest spiritual traditions on Mekharis. Her role in the delegation had been symbolic as much as political, intended to demonstrate that the two civilizations could understand one another despite how different they appeared.

For several weeks, the visit went well.

Then a group of religious fanatics attacked the delegation.

"They believed the Heavenly Records had already revealed the truth about the Mekharans," Crownus said. "They considered recognizing them as people to be opposition to divine law."

Ning’s face hardened. "Let me guess. They killed the priestess."

"Yes."

Not only Serai-Venn.

Several other members of the envoy died with her.

The attackers were eventually captured, but by then, the damage had already spread far beyond Avelis. Images of the dead Mekharan delegation reached their home systems before the human governments could control the situation.

Mekharis demanded answers, and though Avelis gave them, they weren’t satisfied.

"The attackers were executed," Crownus said. "Human governments formally condemned the ideology behind the attack and offered compensation. But the machines didn’t think that was enough."

"It’s life. Tit for tat isn’t always enough," Ning said with a sigh.

"Yes, but this was more than that. The Mekharans did not just want punishment for the murderers, but a condemnation of the System through which the murderers were born," Crownus said.

Ning’s eyes widened in surprise. "They wanted the humans to condemn the Heavenly Records?"

Crownus nodded.

From their perspective, the problem had not been a few murderers.

The murders had been justified using the Heavenly Records, a System woven into the foundation of human civilization. As long as that System continued refusing to acknowledge Mekharans, the belief that they were lesser beings would always have something to point toward.

If the humans didn’t condemn the Heavenly Records, then the Mekharans would never be able to feel assured that they would not be betrayed at a later date for the same reason again.

Ning closed his eyes for a moment.

He was beginning to understand why Crownus had said the war was accidentally his fault.

As the creator of the Heavenly Records, he hadn’t thought far enough ahead to see how this might cause an issue in the future. Though it made sense that he could not be faulted for this lack of foresight, he still had some responsibility to bear.

The humans had tried to change the Heavenly Records themselves. Several scholars, scientists, priests, and anyone else who could do anything at all made attempts to include the Mekharans. However, without Crownus’s assistance, they all ended in failure.

As the years passed, political arguments became more extreme among the humans.

Mekharan leaders interpreted the lack of action as unwillingness. Human extremists used the continued failure as proof that the Heavenly Records itself rejected the machines. Every diplomatic incident made both sides trust each other less.

Eventually, fighting began around disputed colonies. Then military alliances formed, and from there, it spread.

"How long has the actual war been going?" Ning asked.

"Almost four thousand years."

Ning stared at Crownus in astonishment.

"Four thousand?" he asked. "I bet not even half of the people realize the reason for the war in the first place now."

"I wouldn’t doubt that," Crownus answered. "They have records, of course, but everyone involved in the war’s start has long since died."

Ning sighed.

"We’ve got to do something to stop it," Ning said.

"Should we?" Crownus asked, clearly not interested in it, but willing to listen.

"Yes!" Ning said before thinking for a moment. "Alright, I’ve decided. Whatever System we’re going to make, it’s going to have to be one that can help end the war."

Crownus nodded. "And how are we going to do that?" he asked.

"That’s what we’re going to have to think about now," Ning said, frowning slightly. "My suggestion is that we create a System that can bond with a Soul but also detach when the Soul is no longer in use. Meaning, when the person is dead."

Crownus turned toward him, the smoke forming his body shifting slowly beneath the floating goat’s head. "I could make something that bonds with a Soul, yes."

"Bonds?" Ning asked. "I’m assuming it’s similar to what I’m thinking about."

"I’m talking about binding an object to a Soul. Once the connection is properly formed, that object belongs to the person in a way that can’t easily be separated. Depending on how the bond is made, it can remain theirs for their entire life."

Ning nodded slowly. "That works."

Ning had made more artifacts than he could easily remember. Some had stored Energy, some had manipulated it, while others had performed very specific functions depending on what he needed at the time. Creating another physical artifact was not particularly difficult for him.

What made this different was the ownership.

"I’ve made plenty of artifacts before," Ning said. "What I haven’t done much of is making one that is supposed to work for only a single person and nobody else. At least, the bonds that may have formed were not of my doing, but rather the System and the world the artifacts were formed on. If we bond it directly to the user’s Soul, we can make the artifact recognize them without having to put the entire System inside the Soul."

Crownus remained quiet for a moment before asking, "Would the bond itself damage them?"

"Not if we do it properly. The Soul wouldn’t be used as fuel or altered into something else. It would only act as the thing identifying who the artifact belongs to."

That was an important distinction.

The artifact could sit outside the Soul while still being permanently linked to one person. Someone else could steal it, destroy it, or perhaps even study it, but they would not automatically become its user simply because they possessed it.

Crownus seemed to approve of the direction, though another problem quickly came to him.

"What about the Energy required for the System?"

Ning nodded.

That was the larger issue.

"A System can’t run for free. If the artifact is going to do anything significant, the Energy has to come from somewhere. Either someone keeps filling it whenever it runs low, or we make the System capable of obtaining the Energy it needs."

Crownus immediately focused on the second possibility. "Producing Energy would violate the rule."

"Only if it’s actually creating it. What if we utilize the Energy that’s already around somehow?"

Ning didn’t believe it would be easy to do, but he couldn’t immediately think of how.

For an artifact that might be carried anywhere, that became unreliable.

Crownus thought about the problem for some time.

The two of them remained surrounded by the barren landscape of the planet, with radiation still spreading freely across the surface while Crownus worked through possibilities. Ning did not interrupt him. After spending one hundred and thirty thousand years learning how Systems worked, Crownus could afford a few minutes to think about how he wanted to power one.

Eventually, Crownus said, "Any artifact we create would have no reliable way to obtain its own Energy."

Ning nodded. "That is the issue we’ve come upon, isn’t it?"

Crownus frowned for a long few seconds. At this point, he could afford to waste that much.