"I have a headache," I informed the unfamiliar ceiling hanging over my head. It didn't answer, but that was fine. Mostly, I was happy hearing the sound of my own voice.

  As I'd thought earlier, headaches were proof that I still had a head, but with the way I felt, the extra reassurance of my voice was nice to have, especially since I had no idea where I was, or how I'd got there. The last I remembered, I'd...

  In a panic, I whipped my arm out in front of my face, staring at my wrist. Yup, my hand was still there, which was odd, because I distinctly remembered losing it. I'd killed Sir Khris—although I had no idea how. I'd just... poked his mana a little, and he'd collapsed as if every tendon in his body had been snipped—and then... there had been nothing but a pool of blood where the Enshrouded had fallen, and my wrist was burning, and...

  Okay, so he'd chopped my hand off as the most expedient method for getting that ring off me.

  I had to begrudgingly admit that I couldn't fault him for it. My time between putting that ring on and waking up here was something of a haze, but I knew for certain I hadn't been behaving like myself. It was like I was drunk. Drunk on my own memories.

  Really? Full Stamina and Mana? I had no idea what the System was smoking, but I'd quite like some of it. I didn't feel full of anything, except perhaps pain.

  That was a ridiculous amount of experience, too. It seemed I needed to reevaluate my opinion of humans not being worth much. Apparently, they started low but inflated quickly.

  And there was a new Mark. The name was somewhat ominous, but I already had [Fragment of the Past], so what was one more? Hopefully, this one would be just as powerful.

  Yup, that boded about as well as the royal knight standing in the room's doorway, staring at me with his sword drawn.

  Yes, there was a royal knight—Sir Quix, if I correctly judged from the little I could see of his face, but I'd need to wait for him to speak to be certain—but right now I was only capable of dealing with one problem at a time, and he wasn't actively trying to stab me, and thus I was ignoring him.

  [Fragment of the Past] had given me a big boost to my defining Mark. [Echoes of the Past] gave me... something I wasn't permitted to see. In a way, that was even worse than [Outsider]. [Outsider] didn't show up on my Status at all, and thus might as well not even exist, but [Echoes of the Past] was clearly there, and had an 'effects' line. It was fairly conclusive that it did something.

  Who was permitted to see it? Did it require reaching a certain level? What other requirements could there be? And what sort of thing did it do that I wasn't allowed to know about? Were there entire new categories of System stuff, alongside Stats, Skills and Marks, and I just hadn't unlocked them yet? If so, why hadn't I ever heard of them? Perhaps Paths counted, but the singular Path I'd been offered didn't show up on my Status.

  Sir Quix coughed politely.

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  "Okay, let's shelve that for now and move onto the armed and armoured elephant in the room," I said out loud.

  "Shelve what?" asked Sir Quix, since my earlier musings hadn't been out loud.

  "I was just peering at my Status. It's as inexplicable as ever. I don't suppose whatever fancy appraisal Skill you people keep using on me can see the full description of [Echoes of the Past]?"

  "No, we can't," he admitted.

  That made it less likely it was level limited, then, given that whoever was appraising me was probably into the triple digits. It was still possible the Skill acted based on my level, or some artificial low level, rather than the level of the user. In any case, it was probably time I addressed the 'armed' part of 'armed and armoured'.

  "Then can I ask why you have your sword drawn?"

  The Enshrouded had chopped off my hand, but then, given Sir Quix's presence, had apparently brought me back safely to the royal canton, where my hand had been healed. And now Sir Quix was holding a rather lethal length of sharp, enchanted metal within decapitating range of me. I was getting kinda mixed signals, even if I could make a fairly confident guess as to why.

  "Does the name 'the Seeker' mean anything to you?" asked Sir Quix, in lieu of a real answer to my question.

  "Not another damn stupid nickname, like the Enshrouded or the Fatal Breeze," I sighed. "But no... I've never... uh..."

  I blinked a few times as I realised it did sound familiar.

  "I don't think I've ever heard it before," I finished with rather less confidence than I'd started. "Why?"

  "Because that's the name your Status reported at the point you killed Grysk Khris."

  "Oh, hell no. Please don't tell me past-me gave themself a stupid alias, too."

  Despite my flippant, albeit fully truthful, complaint, that comment was horrifically disturbing on a completely different level. My name had changed? I'd thought 'I' was 'me'. That there weren't two people in my head, only a singular 'me' with a bunch of extra memories. But how much of someone was intrinsic, and how much was the sum of their previous experiences? If my memories were wiped and replaced with those of someone else, would 'I' still be 'me'?

  For a brief period, the System had considered me closer to my past identity than to my current. 'Robin' had been replaced. 'I' had effectively died. That was... terrifying.

  Sir Quix stared for a few moments longer, then thankfully sheathed his sword, presumably happy that the person before him was 'Robin' and not 'the Seeker'.

  My name changing back in my Status was very likely the only reason the Enshrouded had brought me back alive.

  "How much do you remember of your encounter with Grysk Khris?" he asked. "Recount everything from the moment he performed [Black Arena]."

  "Uh... The Enshrouded gave me a ring that boosted all of my Stats by half, then attacked Sir Khris, presumably to distract him while I put the ring on."

  "Please don't prepend the 'sir'," corrected Sir Quix. "His rank, title and house's status have been stripped for his treason."

  "Fair. Then Grysk swatted away the Enshrouded like nothing, and I was terrified, but also angry, because he hadn't earned his power properly but had stolen it from... me? The logic didn't make much sense. Someone else had stolen something from past-me, and used it to build one of the machines in the dwarven ruins. He used that machine to boost his power, and I was really infuriated by it, so I... uh... stopped him? And then I wasn't terrified anymore, but I was still really angry, and then I killed him. Sorry, I really have no idea what I did, or how."

  "Would it surprise you to know that he was level two-hundred-and-fifty? So the fact that you simply 'stopped him' and 'killed him' is rather surprising."

  "Yes, that would surprise me. I don't know how human experience scales with level, but I'm pretty sure I should have got more if he was that high."

  "The Enshrouded reported that the kill notification displayed only one-hundred-and-twelve. Presumably his level before he boosted it."

  "That sounds plausible, but... I think that big gap is the only reason I could stop him. I remember... uh... disappointment. It was sad that someone so capable had deliberately crippled themselves. I don't remember the details, but I do remember that what I did to him only worked because he'd artificially boosted his level. It wouldn't have worked on anyone else."

  "And what you did to him required [Mana Manipulation]?"

  "Yes," I confirmed. If the Enshrouded had checked my name, there was a good chance he was the one with the insane appraisal Skill, and had seen me buying it.

  "Then would it work on anyone else were you to advance the Skill to the fifth stage, or evolve it into something stronger?"

  "I don't know," I admitted. That was yet another terrifying thought. If I could seal Skills or paralyse people—let alone outright kill them—using nothing more than [Mana Manipulation], I'd be an absolute nightmare to deal with. "I really don't remember what I did."

  It wasn't a surprise that Sir Quix had started this interaction with his sword drawn.

  "I think, for everyone's safety, including your own, that you might want to avoid raising your Memory further," said Sir Quix. "Unfortunately, that will require you to cease levelling."

  I fought down the obvious burst of anger. I didn't even need past-me getting pissed about stolen trinkets for that declaration to irritate me. Stop levelling? Throw away everything that I could be, just because they were afraid of who I might become?

  "I disagree," I said calmly, albeit stiffly.

  "Oh? Would you care to explain?"

  "It's the difference between you—who has presumably reached whatever level you are legitimately—and the former Count Harvent. I am me, and gaining one or two new memories won't change that. Gaining an entire lifetime's worth all at once will. I'm sixteen, and the bulk of my life has been spent in a small, poor village. Gaining memories of another life all at once would drown me. Gaining the same memories little by little, all while I'm forming new memories of my own, would not. I agree that I should probably refrain from spending any further free stat points on Memory, nor should I use enchantments, potions, Skills or whatever that artificially boost it, but as long as it's raised gradually, I'm not going to lose myself."

  "You sound pretty sure of yourself. Even if you're right, though, at the current speed you're levelling, don't you think there's a danger of overwhelming yourself?"

  "... But if I slow down, I'll never clear the Deep before the next dungeon break."

  "Thanks to your work dealing with the Unbound, combined with Grysk Khris switching sides, the next dungeon break is no longer the existential threat that it once was."

  "But it's still a problem," I pointed out. "I'd quite like to know the details at some point, but there's something else I'd like to know first."

  "Oh? And what would that be?"

  "What happened to Greyforge? The other villages of Harvent Canton? It's all Unbound this and Unbound that. People talk about dwarven ruins, armies and knights, but no-one seems interested in the damn people!"

  Sir Quix blinked, apparently taken aback by my outburst. Perhaps I'd got a little too worked up there...

  "On that topic, I have some very good news," whispered a voice from right behind me, causing me to jerk painfully and fall off my bed.

  The Enshrouded snickered unrepentantly.

  Because of course he was here. Sir Quix had never been the threat; he'd been the bait. If I'd reacted poorly to his sword, I'd have found a knife in my back without ever knowing how it got there.

  On the bright side, the fact that he was speaking up now presumably implied he didn't consider me a threat.

  "And what news would that be?" I asked as I picked myself up from the floor. Thankfully, the headache was fading fast.

  "It seems that your foresightful former liege made preparations to receive the entire population of Harvent Canton as refugees. Rather than moving the people to the food, the food was moved to the people, but his preparations still saved many lives. Of course, the crown will compensate Baron Cargellen for the materials and manpower expended."

  "Seriously?" I asked. "Why would he have done that? So everyone is safe?"

  "Everyone is a bit of a strong word," said Sir Quix. "There was some amount of rioting in Greyforge before relief arrived, started when desperate citizens started stealing and looting whatever food they could. Then there were a few self proclaimed 'heroes' who took it upon themselves to save the city by reducing the number of mouths that needed feeding. I don't believe there were any survivors in the town orphanage, which had already been decimated by the fallen count taking everyone from there who was old enough to understand instructions. But, in the end, over two-thirds of the town's population was saved. The outlying villages never faced outright starvation, but given what the count's men did to them both in taking their children and 'punishing traitors' at the end, I wouldn't say they got off lightly."

  Damn. It was easy to say 'if only I'd been quicker' or 'if only the people had worked together instead of turning on each other' or even 'if only Count Harvent hadn't been batshit insane'. Really, they were all nothing more than excuses. They would have prevented this situation, but it could just as easily happen somewhere else instead.

  As I'd told the gods, this world sucked. They'd told me to fix it myself. Kinda. I was fairly sure they meant humanity as a whole, rather than me personally, but I was still part of humanity, and so it was on me to do my part.

  I... was kinda getting the impression that past-me wasn't a pleasant person. That was fine. I wasn't him. I was me, and while I wasn't going to declare that there would be no more Harvent Cantons, I was going to declare that a world in which I stood would have less of them than a world in which I didn't.

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