Unbound Soul Side Story: Maximilian's Madness (Patreon)

A shadow's width away from Erryn, on a world where mana was so sparse that magic was unusable and even the least of monsters couldn't survive on the ambient supply, a madman stared in awe at the culmination of his work. The true owners of the world—for whom all of humanity existed only to pave the way—were reborn at last. A goddess, engineered to consume flesh and absorb the concentrated mana contained within. And, more importantly, an intact mind. Intelligent eyes bore into him, looking at him as nothing more than prey. A source of information. A guilty party to be punished. Maybe even mere food. It didn't matter. That was right and just. To the proud and beautiful Lily, he was nothing more than prey.

He turned everything over to her without a second thought, smiling in bliss as his own former bodyguards sliced him apart. He'd done his part. Now the rest was up to her, to take the world and do with it as she saw fit.

His mind remained wrapped in bliss as his body fell to pieces. He toppled, his sight blackened, and the background noise of his blood running through his veins ceased. All fell to silence. All was still.

And then there was light.

As insane as he was—his soul cracked from exposure to an impossibility; a creation forged from the merged bodies of a thousand monsters, infused with liquid mana that twisted time and space, body and soul alike—his mind was still logical. It was simply the ends to which he directed that logic, and the assumptions which formed its inputs, that had become corrupted.

He considered an afterlife, but discounted it. He had a body, but its mobility and senses were poor. He concluded his mind had been wrapped in the shell of a baby, which didn't sound like any afterlife he'd heard of. Then had Lily saved him? Preserved his brain in those last moments, and brought him back in a true body as thanks for his efforts?

More time ruled that out, too. He had parents, and they were human. He drank his mother's milk. There were no signs of the true ones. Only those who were to herald their arrival. Reincarnation? Perhaps, but it wasn't long before he noted the lack of things that should be present. His home contained no lighting. Food was cooked over a fire. The outdoor air smelt of manure instead of polluted fumes.

Reincarnated into the past? But he didn't recognise the local language, and it would take even more time to learn it.

Time that he didn't have. His intelligence and memories were intact, and his mother was unchained by Law. She reacted in what could be considered a normal way when confronted by a newborn who carefully listened to every word she said. Who learnt to recognise his name within minutes. Who stared at her with a hungry intelligence.

He was disposed of by his own fearful parents. Sent away to die. Luckily for him, they were too scared to do the deed themselves. They handed him off to a church, and the vicar, disbelieving of the mother's claims, handed him to an orphanage. A place of cruelty and exploitation, but that was to his further benefit; the lack of care meant that no-one beyond other kids noticed the crazed intelligence behind his eyes. Kids who had long since learned that speaking out only resulted in a beating, and so they held their tongues. The child, William Taylor, was left to grow.

And as he grew, he asked himself; "Why am I here?"

He watched malnourished orphans younger than ten working long days, coming back dirty, returning to their narrow bunks with lifeless eyes. He listened to hushed conversations. He learnt. And what he learnt was that this world was not his own. He was on Earth, not in the past, and thus was his purpose at last made clear.

"I brought the true ones to my world, and the gods were so pleased with my success that I have been sent to bring them to another."

A mad conclusion from a mad and broken man, who thought himself the herald of monsters without ever recognising the true monster within himself.

And so he set about his purpose. Being exploited for cheap labour would not aid his goal, and so his first step was to rise above his station. He had time; his slavers were oblivious to his existence, and until he grew old enough to use, he would be ignored. Uncared for, and hence unwatched, it was a simple matter to sneak outside at night. In the squalid town, finding what he needed was easy, and so his plot hatched. He secretly infected the wife of the chief slaver with a disease the primitive locals thought incurable, made some insane claims about being sent by God to save her, and then did so.

He did not remain ignored after that.

He soon had access to all the resources he needed, but, more importantly, he had access to a proper education, learning the world's history and geography. The world really was primitive, compared to his previous, but he could make do. The bigger issue was that the true ones had never touched this world.

Yes, they had stories about them. So many stories, and the locals feared them, but they weren't real. Everyone had heard of someone who had a friend whose sister had been eaten by an ogre, but the only ogres anyone had ever seen themselves were in their nightmares.

But stories had to come from somewhere. Perhaps there had been a grain of truth to them, long ago. Or perhaps not. How would he know? Unlike the first world, if they had come, it was when a technologically advanced civilization wasn't there to record the data. And without the corpses of the true ones to provide DNA, how was he supposed to bring them to this world as he had done his first?

He recalled some of the people he'd once worked alongside in the first world. They hadn't just had corpses, but even some of the readings of the original cracks had survived. There were those among the researchers who studied the remains from great collapse who believed the cracks could be pried back open. He'd watched them try, once, insisting on a front-row seat, his excitement palpable as the universe was torn apart in front of him. It hadn't worked. All he'd seen was blue light, before he was hit by a deafening roar that had shattered his eardrums.

Still, perhaps there was something to it. He couldn't remember the exact frequencies of the thing—his specialism was biology, not physics—but he remembered the general principles behind it. Not that anyone in this world could rebuild it, primitive as they were. But perhaps with time, they could be... guided.

After all, that was the purpose of humans. To pave the way for the true ones. To prepare the world for their arrival.

It would take time, but he was very good at biology. The treatments he'd used to treat the damage after he'd sacrificed his own flesh for his research in the first world would be useful for buying more time. And so he continued to live and learn for beyond the span of a normal life, discarding those who aided him once they had served their purpose, searching for signs of the true ones, or engaging in research that could help speed their arrival. He even discarded his name, preferring that of the first world; Maximilian. After all, he had the same mission in each.

Civilization progressed, and eventually they had what they needed to reopen the way to the true ones. Alas, it became clear that his half-remembered knowledge was insufficient. He could give people the idea, but without those readings of the original paths, years of trial and error would be required.

Years turned into decades, and as technology advanced, he could conduct more interesting research. Even without the payload, he could improve the carriers. Viruses were fascinating things. Too virulent, and they'd burn out their prey. Too benign, and they would never spread. Too stagnant, and their prey would out-evolve them. Too picky, and they would find no suitable prey to infect. A natural virus needed to act within such narrow confines if it were to survive.

An unnatural virus had no such restraints. Viruses that only infected a handful of cells in a target. Viruses that weren't contagious at all. Viruses that pumped out poisons as they replicated, killing their hosts in minutes and self-sabotaging their means of reproduction. By the time the team working on portals finally achieved success, he'd built up quite the little arsenal.

But then, when the team had finally achieved success, they threw it away.

The path he had waited so long for was guarded by the government, and the government squandered opportunity after opportunity. The diplomat on the other side offered them the corpses of the true ones, and they declined. They feared them. Leaving matters to them was hopeless. He decided to take action himself.

But he had considered the possibility of such interference and had made backup plans. A set of shadow equipment, built in secret using information he'd leaked himself. But despite the aid he'd given in building it, the builders demanded payment to let him use it. They wanted a plague, one that could wipe out all life on this third world, so they could take it for themselves.

Maximilian didn't give it to them. How could he? Since there were humans there, this third world was apparently not the home of the true ones after all, yet they had corpses. He needed to extract as much information from the place as possible, and killing them all would work against that. He needed to know where the corpses had come from, and how to get more. He gave them a contagion so virulent that it would burn itself out immediately, completely unable to spread beyond the initial group.

He even told them how virulent it was, and not one of them batted an eyelid. They didn't understand that meant it wouldn't work for their purposes. It was not his policy to be dishonest when a touch of truth combined with human stupidity worked just as well.

But what he found on the other side was horrifying. This third world was a world of chains. The true ones were prisoners, trapped in dungeons deep underground, without wills of their own. The surface races barely even consider them prey. They were mere resources, to be harvested as efficiently as possible.

It was unacceptable.

Had the first true ones, the cause of the great collapse, really come from this world? If there were three worlds, why not more? Had the surface races taking over this world been the cause of the great collapse, as the true ones fled to avoid their aggressors? But if that was the case, were the true ones really worthy? Were they really true?

For the first time since his soul was broken, his faith wavered. More information was needed. He could extract much from the surface races, lesser than even regular humans as they were. A world of half-people, like NPCs from one of those newfangled games that Earth had finally got around to inventing. They knew little, and had no hunger for greater knowledge, but he learnt of the earth mother and the great dungeon, and made his way there.

And there he met his first true one. He didn't count the basic monsters of the dungeon, dumb animals that they were, but the slime... She had all the power of Lily, and even her personality reminded him of her. But even so, it wasn't at the level of those who caused the great collapse.

Had he not died prior to Lily's evolution, perhaps he would not have rated the slime so highly, yet there was no point pondering what-ifs. Satisfied that this world could provide what he sought, he took the DNA he needed, that he had waited so long for, and prepared to experiment. The half-people of this world would surely offer themselves up to the noble cause. There would be no ethics committees to shut him down.

And it was while he was still in such a good mood that he encountered his first real stumbling block. He'd heard a lot about him from the slime; the one person in the world who was unchained. Who was capable of full comprehension of the true ones.

Maximilian assumed him an ally. After all, how could one meet the slime and not understand? But the child was incomprehensibly angry that a few of the half-people had died to his plague. The death toll was actually considerably less than Maximilian had been expecting, but even had it numbered in the thousands, why would anyone care about the psudeo-life of this world? Perhaps living among them for so long had blinded the child to the fakery, and had caused him to view them as real? A pity if so, but he just needed to wait for the boy to calm down.

He hadn't lost much. He hadn't brought heavy equipment into the dungeon to start with, and while he'd lost the samples he had gathered, there were other dungeons. Best to avoid the boy for now, and continue his work elsewhere.

Talking his way into the portal network, simply by explaining his truth that he had been given a divine task he must carry out, he made his way east, and enacted his plans.