[NR] Corruption Is Easy - Chapter 552 (Patreon)

Rosha, “Well, that’s horrifying and total nightmare fuel. Though you said magical mind control is mostly benign. That was clearly an example of it not being the case, but what are the other methods?”

Jason, “The other option besides magical methods is physical. Whether that means wearing your body like a skin suit or something replacing sections of your brain to control you.”

Courtney frowns, “That is certainly bad, but it also sounds like something healing magic could fix? Remove the foreign material and regenerate what is missing. What am I missing?”

Jason, “You can’t really be blamed for missing it, but the soul. It’s kind of strange. Sometimes the soul will hold on to a body even after their body decays and others it just gives up even as the body still lives. In cases like this, though, the accepted explanation is that this form of control is more fundamentally counter to a person’s soul. Though with NeoRealm and players specifically, the System likely just grabs our souls out right away and treats it as a normal death.”

Courtney, “But you don’t suspect either of those, do you? You mentioned the memetic idea right away. How would that work and why did you have us burn everything? Plus all that purification, though since I could feel the resistance I can’t say much about it.”

Jason shrugs, “Fire does a good job of purifying things. But yeah, I suspected something very insidious was going on there. If the Deep Wilds had a mind, I would be suspicious that it had used us to remove part of an infection.

“More specifically, while I said memetic, I would side more with corruption that happens to also be viable through thought forms. While similar vectors, those two are very different and thankfully, regular corruption is easier to clean up after. Memetic stuff can be passed to someone through guessing correctly about what happened. Once introduced, there is no true solution unless you can remove all instances of it from the universe. Even then, an outside source can reintroduce it.

“Now corruption? Comparatively easy. While knowledge of it does tend to corrupt people, that is not because the knowledge is inherently corrupting. A person with a strong will can know whatever they want about corruption, though such a thing is a trap. People really love to overestimate themselves and what they can take. So I figure since we burned the area and purified it, things should be fine. We'll just have to be careful and watch how the plants grow back in that area. Any signs of mutation or strangeness and we’re burning it to the ground again, purifying everything within ten paces, and I’ll work on digging down a couple meters to remove all the infected soil.”

Courtney raises an eyebrow, “That sounds a little extreme?”

Jason nods, “Yep, this is complete overkill. At most, the topsoil is a little messed up and purification should clear that problem.”

Courtney waits a moment, expecting him to continue. He doesn’t so she has to ask, “Then why go that far?”

Jason, “Because of that very belief. The fact that my mind is so willing to put what it can do in a neat little box. Even just the fact I’m willing to wait for signs of corruption to show up would be seen by some as a sign of weakness in my last life.

“Whatever sort of outer being; be it demons, devils, angels, archons, or those from that stalk the corners of dimensions? If they get in through a manner other than summoning, you can’t assume they’ll follow any assumptions. And so I’m not going to assume that the corruption was simply in the ashes.

“Besides, that area would make a wonderful pond if cared for correctly. In fact, maybe we should dig the area, anyway? Get it started now and there might be a chance of it growing with our territory.”

Rosha, “Where would we even put the dirt? We clearly don’t want it.”

Jason shrugs, “Dump it a distance away from the clearing and it will take care of itself. Well, the next terrain shift will.”

Rosha, “What if the Deep Wilds don’t want to move it away? Not as in having an opinion on it or anything, but more along the lines of it passively keeping corruption along the edge in an area about to be removed from the whole.”

Jason shrugs again, “Then we keep an eye on and purify as needed. At least when we dig it up, we have easier access to it all and we can directly purify it all. Though this all can wait till we complete the next couple days. The waves won’t pause for us to dig a hole.”

Rosha sighs, “I still don’t see why you both believe this all.”

Jason, “For me it is really more of a ‘feels’ based assumption. However, since we’ve already seen something else messed up, I figured this was a good point to go over what to do.”

Courtney, “And for me? While the idea of an actual memetic threat or dangerous knowledge isn’t really a thing irl. I am trained to recognize threats, even those that aren’t seen as likely if they are at all possible. This fits under that.”

Rosha squints, “So neither of you have an actual reason?”

Jason, “Well, on a more concrete level, they react wrong. It was like fighting a giant amoeba. The monsters didn’t even act like a swarm, but a single entity.”

Courtney nodded, “The family trained me to recognize the dynamics of a mob, herd, clan, swarm, and so on. While I might not have put it the same way as Jason, I agree with his basic analysis of the situation.”

Rosha, “I’m still not one hundred percent on this. However, assuming you both aren’t blowing smoke, what do we need to do?”

Jason shrugged, “If we get cagey about something, keep it on the down low. There isn’t a one size fits all cure for this and we shouldn’t need it after this. At least as long as we don’t go too far into the Deep Wilds. This stuff should have come from quite deep.”