Beyond The System-Chapter 281: Terms of Control

“I don’t understand. You promised us that—”
The large man was cut off by Elric, a hand raised, expression flat. “I didn’t offer you anything with a guarantee. I only said we may teach some of you.”
Brun—the large man—stood, shoving his attendant aside with a rough sweep of his arm, his body a thick blend of fat and corded muscle. “I didn’t give you all the intel so you would give nothing back,” he growled.
I rolled my eyes, twirling the mayor’s orb between my fingers, letting it spin lazily over my knuckles. “Intel? That intel was hardly needed. To find the home, we could’ve just walked around on our own and found it.” Not like I couldn’t see the flow of energy myself. The rest of the slums were like a sea of darkness surrounding the glaring light of the manor.
“And we don’t like you,” Sia admitted simply, Thea nodding along with a look of open disgust on her face. “I’d have clawed your eyes out already if…” She trailed off, grumbling something under her breath about Elric stopping her from that particular deed.
Brun’s eyes narrowed, his face hardening with anger. “Then why would I let you utilize any of my resources?”
Elric began to laugh, low at first, then with genuine amusement. “Resources?” He gestured to the identity orb in my hand, then to the tablet on the table where we all sat. “We have all the resources we—no, actually
you
—need. Now we only need someone trustworthy to manage it.”
All our gazes shifted to his attendant, Trey. A young man, fed well enough not to be malnourished, yet not marked by the same overindulgent consumption as the lord of the underground standing before us. He stared back at us, blinking in surprise, clearly not understanding.
But he understood the underground organization just as well, but had also shown clear concern for others when we had arrived, offering our services.
“I AM—!”
“Enough,” I said, forcing my voice to cool as I released a gust of energy that wrapped around him, choking his words off in his throat. I stood and walked to his side, leaning in close until my shadow fell over his face, the anger in his eyes slowly warping into fear. “You have methods to help others, but you only ever help yourself. I don’t trust you, like you, or anything even near that.” I drew in a slow breath. “But… I struggle to eliminate people for nothing. Stand aside, and your life—along with others—will improve in quality. Substantially. If you don’t…”
I turned to Elric, letting him finish the thought, blade unraveling into more than a dozen hovering pieces. “I’ll have no hesitation.”
Brun squinted, trying to mask the fear that had been steadily creeping up before. Of course he could; he was a man who controlled an underground circuit that stretched into many border cities—places crammed with criminals or people simply unlucky in their placement, along with troops waiting on the front lines. “You will teach me? Even if I’m not in charge?”
I pursed my lips to the side. “I have no issue teaching anyone, so long as they help me.”
He chuckled darkly and sank back into his seat, his mood shifting with unnerving speed. “There isn’t much choice with the options provided. Obey, or death. I usually offer something similar. Points or death.” He seemed oddly satisfied, as if everything before had been little more than a staged performance, though maybe it was.
The words being spoken so blatantly still made me shiver with discomfort, but I nodded, not denying any of it. “Some of you, anyone familiar with building or farming may leave to my land, but all of you would be difficult.”
“I’ve no interest in that, decide yourselves. Instead… what will become of the governor?” he asked.
Elric answered for me. “He must be kept alive, under careful watch. So long as you have these two items”—he gestured to the orb and the tablet—“keep the tax payments consistent then the funds are yours to use… with caution. If the governor dies, this orb will be useless.”
He had explained to me earlier that the orbs of nobility, royalty, or other high-status individuals could be connected more directly to the system of a person. Information from Drake. That was the main reason we had to be careful not to eliminate this man.
With the matter mostly settled, I decided to leave the rest to them. I walked toward a door that opened into a narrow hallway. “I’m going to train,” I said, stepping into the dim passage lined with old, worn wood. I heard Thea following me out, the two of us heading silently toward another room.
When I opened it, the room was dim and still, but the noise filtering through the single warped window refused to let his mind rest.
Soft whispers of people selling powders in alley corners. A pair of gang members arguing over whether they should relocate to the next border town. Somewhere farther out, someone was shouting prices for stolen goods.
The whole district was a mess of desperation and corruption that wasn’t unlike the nobles they all likely detested.
Perspective. That’s what it came down to.
Peter tried to shut it out, lowering himself onto the creaking floorboards, placing one hand on Bristle’s warm side. The hound didn’t stir, only exhaling as his thick chest rose and fell in slow, steady heaves.
Thea slipped in quietly, closing the door carefully before sitting beside him. She leaned her shoulder against his. “You’re alright?” she asked softly.
He nodded, though not entirely convincingly. “We should be moving on soon, I think. Just… wondering if the next place will be like this one or the last.” Even with such little time, it felt like their goal wasn’t solid. Would they continue with small disruptions like this one? Large ones like the last? Or perhaps shifting again, focusing on trade or supply lines.
She didn’t answer right away. Instead, her gaze drifted to Bristle. “It’s funny,” she murmured, “how that little guy is the reason the rest of us are going to be able to progress.”
Peter leaned into her, fingers threading through the hound’s coarse fur. “Yeah… It still surprises me.”
One day he had focused on Bristle’s core—using his Beast Force to assume the consciousness of the dog—only to see it had changed again. The color had shifted again, following Peter’s path of another element. Now a green core lay in place of the former red one.
The group had theorized for a while. Griffith had suggested dissolution, wondering if it was simply instinct. Perhaps the beast—unable to hold multiple cores like me—chose to follow me in loyalty, dissolving the former as a built-in drive. But he didn’t seem convinced himself, wanting to examine the creature personally.
But Thea… Thea had simply closed her eyes and listened to the story. She stayed silent for several long minutes while the others discussed, only opening them once the pieces must’ve aligned in her mind, delighted.
“Layering,” she had said.
She hadn’t formed a second core like Peter, but she had directly experimented, manifesting a thick outer shell of Fire Force around her main core. And a while after that, after more experimenting, she theorized she wouldn’t be able to produce other elements passively the way Peter could. The Natural Force core beneath was sluggish, hardly able to produce even a tiny amount of Force.
Peter smiled faintly at the memory.
“How’s Luna?” Thea asked.
He looked at the silent rose curled around his wrist, smirking. “Probably still annoyed at her progress. But silent. Even after these last couple of weeks.”
Thea reached over and interlaced her fingers with his free hand, giving a wordless apology.
He shook his head. “It’s alright. I’m a little lonely,” he admitted quietly. “But I know she’s there. Working hard. And… I have you guys with me.”
She closed her eyes, smiling at the softness in his voice. “Have you been taking advice from Elric?”
Peter visibly shuddered. “No. I’m just this charming naturally.”
She snorted, laughing, which made Bristle groan drowsily before settling back into gentle snores. “Well, you are to me,” she said, kissing his cheek before leaning against him again. “I’ll train too.”
Peter exhaled, letting the warmth of the moment settle before he closed his eyes. His awareness sank inward. The world around him faded.
And then he stepped into his Inner World.
His avatar of energy had changed, now an amalgamation of glowing nodes: gold, red, and green, orbiting slowly beneath the translucent outline of his form. He walked toward his World Seed, now wrapped in a ring of radiant light.
But he didn’t reach out to it yet.
Instead, he called into the still, humming expanse.
“Drybel?”
Drybel responded, the tentacle wrapped around Peter’s world seed shifting slightly as if adjusting its grip before it spoke. “Is something wrong?”
Peter shook his head.
He couldn’t help recalling the moments directly after targeting Kris. Drybel had been disappointed, yes, but more at the situation than at Peter himself. A being that had lived so long hardly bothered to grow truly angry with him; instead, it lamented how unavoidable everything had been.
Even so, Peter had apologized. Not for attacking Kris, but for not being able to assist the man who had helped him so much up to that point.
“Were there any changes to the ring?” Peter asked.
He gestured toward the luminous band encircling the world seed, the ring that had formed the first time he had truly Extracted.
“It has become significantly lighter, at least to me,” Drybel replied.
A thin tendril stretched out and struck the ring, but passed straight through it as though it didn’t exist. “What you said about conversion seems to be correct. A passive effect, I imagine.”
Peter nodded, but the motion felt hollow. He still wasn’t satisfied.
With Mei’s words echoing from before, he knew he should be able to manually convert that power without much loss, but the method remained out of reach without clear explanation. He thought to grab at it before, but much like Drybel now, his figure had passed through.
“I’ll wait until Bristle has recovered fully,” he decided aloud. “Then I’ll go again.”
Originally, he had planned to bring the snake with him. But it had greater purpose in helping trigger sensitivity to Fire Force, and it would be a useful companion to the others. So in the end, he’d chosen to leave it behind so the others could still use it to stimulate their own training.
And beyond that, when he had first placed his hand down to begin Extracting, Bristle had kept catching it in his mouth, clamping down and gnawing on him until Peter was forced to stop.
Eventually, reluctantly, Peter had set his hand on Bristle instead—on his own personal beast, who did not have the same resistance it had just provided. This time the hound allowed him to take its energy.
“That energy too—your blood—it felt stronger,” Drybel added, voice low with curiosity. “More closely aligned to what I felt in Janus so long ago.”
The words only deepened the mystery surrounding Creation, adding another layer to questions Peter still hadn’t answered.
“I wonder how he is…” Peter murmured.
The thought of Janus lingered in the quiet Inner World, hanging there alongside the hum of the ring of light around the seed.