Even without the System notification, I could taste the moment I stepped over the boundary. It was something about the way my teeth started tingling and my tongue went numb.

  A quick bit of mental arithmetic calculated how much I could raise my Constitution and still be able to balance my Stats in time for the next growth marker.

  The guild's notes had claimed this dungeon could be conquered with a mere one hundred Constitution, but the notes had never claimed doing so would be pleasant. I was almost at one-fifty, and it still felt like I was choking.

  Worse, this wasn't poison in the air. It was disease. Diseases needed time to multiply. An incubation period during which the germ in question remained under the body's radar. To feel it in the air immediately was concerning. Just how much worse would it get as the infection spread?

  Then again, it might just be more dungeon bullshit, and it wouldn't get worse no matter how long I remained here.

  I ignored the unpleasant sensation as best as I was able, and headed down the cramped tunnel, needing to stoop to avoid bashing my head on the ceiling. As the name of the dungeon suggested, the place was modelled on an animal burrow, narrow tunnels crossing each other at arbitrary angles. An occasional dead tree root breached the ceiling, but none had made it far before succumbing, so none of the tunnels were blocked.

  And no, the fact that there were no trees on the surface did nothing to prevent the dungeon sprouting roots.

  A squeaking further along the tunnel indicated the presence of one of the dungeon's denizens, because diseased as it may be, there was no such thing as a dungeon without monsters. The creature rounded a corner, but didn't hesitate at the sight of me, presumably already aware of my existence despite [Expert Stealth]. The environment wasn't really conducive to being sneaky.

  Not that I needed to be.

  Even hunched over, it was easy enough to stab the rat. It didn't really have any weapons beyond its teeth, and trying to bite me just meant that its brain was within dagger reach. Even its claws were shaped more for digging than attacking, despite the fact that the dungeon was well mapped and no rats ever actually engaged in digging new tunnels.

  The bigger problem was that the tunnel was so tight that the corpse was effectively blocking it. If dungeons were going to go around ignoring basic physics and biology, why couldn't the corpses of dead monsters just fade away to nothing, leaving only the valuable bits, of which these rats had none? I ended up needing to partially dissect the dead rat just to get past it.

  Was rat flesh supposed to be those funky shades of green? I'd never opened up a real rat, but I was fairly sure that wasn't the correct colour for any sort of natural flesh. Nor was meat supposed to bubble...

  I didn't want to spend any longer in this place than absolutely required, so I headed toward the boss chamber by the most direct route, pausing only when more monsters blocked the cramped path. Thankfully, there weren't many of them around, which aided my sanity, even if it meant I couldn't gather enough experience for another level.

  Another fact for which I was grateful was that the boss chamber was far more spacious. I wouldn't go so far as to call it cavernous, but there was at least enough space for me to stand upright and spin in a circle with my arms out without hitting a wall.

  Not that I did. That would be silly. Especially when the dungeon's boss was staring at me.

  The boss was another rat, no bigger than the mobs, but looking more like a zombie than some of the actual zombies I'd stabbed. Most of its fur was missing, with only the odd scraggly patch remaining. One eye was milky and oozing something orange. Great purple boils blistered on its skin

  The thing glared at me with its one good eye and hissed. That activity apparently put too much strain on its body, because a tooth fell out.

  "I almost feel sorry for you..." I mumbled at it as it started running. "Stab!"

  Almost. And sheesh, was that monster even D-rank? If so, that was the lowest base experience I'd seen from a D-rank monster.

  There wasn't even a treasure chest.

  This dungeon royally sucked. No treasure, weak monsters that barely gave any experience and couldn't be killed in quantities to compensate, the damn disease in the air that spread a short distance from the dungeon and prevented any farming or raising of livestock in the area. What was it good for, other than a Mark?

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Feeling rather disappointed, I stepped into the teleporter the moment it had formed, and looked around for whoever I was supposed to meet. Alas, the area was deserted.

  "Guess I was too quick," I muttered as I looked for somewhere to sit and wait.

  "Oh, I wouldn't say that," whispered an ethereal voice, directly into my right ear.

  I reacted on impulse, drawing my daggers and spinning around, but there was no-one there. There was no-one anywhere. I even checked the sky and between my own legs.

  "Are you done?" asked the voice, managing to emote a significant amount of mirth despite the lack of accompanying face and the volume being kept to a whisper.

  "I guess so," I admitted. "I take it you're the king's agent I'm supposed to meet?"

  "Indeed. You may call me the Enshrouded, and I'll have to ask you to forgive my discourtesy."

  "What discourtesy?" I asked, as an invisible grip suddenly caught hold of me, lifting me into the air. "Eep!"

  "Your Stats are truly impressive for your age, but even so, you've not yet reached the point at which you can travel with the celerity we require," declared the whisper as the ground blurred beneath me.

  I had quite a good view of the ground, given the way I was facing it. From my positioning, I could only guess the mystery voice had thrown me over his shoulder. The position, rough ride, blurring landscape and tail end of the Black Burrow's plague combined together into a single, inevitable result, splattering the road with a splash of colour. My mystery carriage didn't even slow down.

  Thankfully, as we left the vicinity of the dungeon, the effects of the plague were wearing off quickly.

  "So... I was promised an explanation?" I hazarded, having to shout to make myself heard over the whistling wind. "I don't know what an Unbound is, nor what we're supposed to do in the dwarven ruins to defeat one."

  "What an Unbound actually is is a question that could occupy a city of scholars for a century," answered the formless whisper, perfectly audible despite the volume. "And yet I feel that the simple explanation of 'a type of extremely dangerous monster' will not satisfy you, so let me ask you a question in turn. Why does the System limit the number of stat points and skill points you receive?"

  I blinked, having never previously considered the question. That was just what the System was. It operated on fixed rules. You might as well ask why gravity wasn't stronger, or why fires weren't hotter. It was simply how the world worked.

  But again, I couldn't help but feel that there was a reason gravity pulled with the strength it did, or for the amount of heat generated by a fire. Something deeper than 'that is how the world is'. That, with sufficient knowledge, you could work out how hard gravity should pull.

  Did the same apply to the System? Could someone yet to unlock, who had never seen a Status, or ever spoken to someone else, work out from first principles how many stat points should be earned per level? It seemed... unlikely.

  Would the world be a better place if everyone had infinite skill points? Skill crystals would still be a bottleneck, but putting that aside, we'd never have trainee blacksmiths forging tools, or trainee farmers failing to extract the maximum produce from a field. Productivity would skyrocket. That would be a good thing, right?

  Despite my thoughts, there was only one answer I could give. "I have no idea."

  "Good. It would be a serious failing on the part of the organisation I lead if that information had leaked," chuckled the invisible agent.

  "Uh... So does that mean you aren't going to tell me? Then why bring it up, and what does it have to do with what happened to Count Harvent?"

  "Suffice it to say that what happened to Count Harvent is the reason the System restricts the gifts it bestows upon its users."

  "Then should I be worried?" I asked, suddenly nervous. Yes, I didn't have unlimited anything, but my growth rate was so much faster than anyone else's...

  "No, you should not. I admit, the thought had crossed my mind, too, but while the description of [Ancient Soul] doesn't directly reference your soul, it's still right there in the very name of the Mark."

  "My soul?" I asked. "What does that have to do with anything? And I thought this was some sort of state secret?"

  "I never said I wasn't going to tell you," chuckled the voice. "That was your assumption. Rather, I have high hopes of you joining my organisation. Your muscles don't expand when you increase your Strength, nor does your brain press against your skull when you boost your Reasoning. Rather, when the System grants you Stats or Skills, it is effectively enlarging your soul. Reforging it to be stronger. Splicing extra bits on. And yet your soul is what makes you 'you'. If you take a broom and replace the handle, and then some months later replace the brush, do you still have the same broom? Most people would agree that yes, you do. That somehow, the essence of broom had passed from old brush to new handle. But what if you were to replace the brush and the handle at the same time? Doubtless you experienced unlock euphoria when you first unlocked the System. Imagine how much worse it could have been had you unlocked with the Stats you have now. Could you have remained 'you'?"

  I took a few minutes to process that, during which time field after field was consumed by the voice's impressive speed. He was moving many times faster than I could sprint, and he was sustaining it.

  "So an Unbound is just someone driven insane by gaining too many Stats and Skills all at once? Then why does the name of [Ancient Soul] reassure you? Besides, Old Three-Eye mentioned some sort of flesh horror, and it wasn't until they heard that description that Sir Quix and the guild master suspected an Unbound."

  "In your case, the System isn't adding to your soul, so much as it's healing it. Your soul appears... lesser than it once was, and restoring what once was is a far simpler task than creation. You have much to regain, not only memories, but also power. And as for the appearance of an Unbound, we will not be approaching the former count closely enough to observe, but yes, Old Three-Eye's description was accurate. If you take your wooden broom, and replace the old wooden handle with one forged of enchanted mithril, and swap out the brush with an exquisite clump of unicorn hair, is the result even still a 'broom'? You recently lost your arm, and consumed an elixir to restore it, but how did that elixir know what an 'arm' is, or that you were missing one? That information is engraved upon your soul, and should that soul become warped, in conjunction with Constitution high enough to regenerate from any wound, what result can there be other than the creation of a horror of flesh?"

  That thought was enough to make me nauseous again, so I refrained from asking further questions for another few minutes. That was enough for the wall of the royal canton to come into view, its size making it obvious despite the distance and the fact I was viewing it upside-down.

  As it rapidly grew closer, another thing I spotted was the lack of any sort of gate.

  "Umm... Are you going to climb..." I started, pausing when my carrier's steady speed made it obvious that he wasn't. "Hey!" was the only exclamation I had time for as he ran straight into the wall.

  ... And, instead of colliding, as people tended to when running at a wall of solid stone two or three metres thick, he passed straight through. We passed straight through.

  "Oh..." was the only thing I could add as he veered south, heading toward the mithril mountains.

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