Chapter 2002: A Single Restriction

There was only one requirement Ning had already decided on for the System he was going to make.

It could not attach itself to a Soul.

That single restriction eliminated most of the normal methods used to create Systems, but Ning had no intention of changing his mind about it.

Most Systems worked by attaching themselves to Souls while those Souls were on their way toward the Realm of Souls. At some point during that journey, the System would bind itself to the Soul and remain there until the Soul returned to a Realm of Matter.

It was also where several of their problems began.

One of the stranger side effects of binding Systems to a Soul during that process was that the cleansing of memories did not always happen properly. A Soul was normally supposed to lose the memories of its previous life before being reborn, but the presence of a System could interfere with that process.

The result was someone being born with memories they should not have possessed.

Ning had seen enough examples of that already.

People woke up in new bodies with memories of another world, another family, or another lifetime entirely. Sometimes those memories helped them. Sometimes they ruined them. Either way, it was not something Ning wanted his own System causing simply because it was convenient.

More importantly, there was a much larger problem with the entire method.

Energy.

Ning frowned slightly as he thought about it.

There were fundamental rules that everything using Energy was supposed to follow. One of the simplest among them was also one of the most important.

Energy could not be created from nothing.

It could change forms. It could move. It could be stored, consumed, released, transformed, or transferred from one thing to another, but it could not simply appear because someone wanted more of it.

Many Systems found ways around that restriction that worked entirely by violating the Soul.

They consumed Souls.

More specifically, they chewed away at broken or damaged parts of Souls and turned what they consumed into usable Energy. From the perspective of the System, it was simply taking something that already existed and converting it into something else.

Nothing had been created.

The problem was what happened to the Soul afterward.

If too much was consumed, the Soul could become too weak to properly continue into the afterlife.

Ning had never liked that part.

It was one thing for a System to use Energy from the environment or from resources willingly gathered by its host. It was another thing entirely to survive by consuming pieces of their Soul that were already damaged and vulnerable.

Especially when those Souls might never realize what was happening to them.

"No," Ning muttered.

That method was out.

He wasn’t going to make something that casually damaged Souls simply because it made designing the System easier.

Just removing that one feature already made whatever System he created far more ethically acceptable in his mind.

Of course, it also made the actual design significantly more annoying.

Ning leaned back and began going through possibilities.

A cultivation System was one of the obvious options, but it required an environment where cultivation was possible and useful. Depending on the world, that might make the entire thing worthless.

A magic System had similar problems.

A technological System might work somewhere sufficiently advanced, but on a primitive planet, it would either be useless or force Ning to include far too much information and infrastructure inside the System itself.

He considered several variations after that, changing what the System rewarded and what resources it could interact with.

None of them solved the central problem.

Without attaching to the Soul and without consuming Soul fragments for Energy, the System needed some external source of power and some reliable method of remaining connected to its user.

That immediately narrowed what it could do.

More importantly, many possible Systems became dependent on the world where they were used.

A System based around Mana required people who could interact with Mana.

A System based around spiritual energy required people capable of cultivation.

A System built to improve Awakened abilities would be nearly useless to someone without an Awakening.

Even something as simple as a combat-focused System would need to account for whatever form of power existed on that particular planet.

Ning clicked his tongue.

"That’s restrictive."

It wasn’t impossible.

Just restrictive.

He could still make something powerful. In fact, he could probably make something absurdly powerful if he wanted to spend enough resources on it. The problem was that if Crownus spent all his Energy on the System, there would be nothing left for him to use to expand his Inner Space.

Ning continued thinking through different designs, discarding most of them almost as quickly as they appeared.

Eventually, Ning stopped.

There wasn’t much point in deciding the exact function right now.

He was still traveling toward Crownus, and he knew very little about the planets there.

He did not know what types of people lived on them, what forms of Energy they used, what kinds of abilities were common, or what problems they faced.

Making a System before learning any of that would be like designing a tool without knowing what job it was supposed to perform.

He could do it.

It would simply be stupid.

"I’ll wait," Ning decided.

Once he reached Crownus and learned more about the worlds there, he could determine what kind of System would actually be useful.

The restriction on attaching to Souls would remain.

So would the restriction against consuming them.

Those two rules would limit his choices, but Ning was perfectly fine with that.

If limiting his options was the price of making something that did not casually interfere with a person’s reincarnation or weaken their Soul until it could no longer reach the afterlife, then that was hardly a difficult decision.

Besides, he had already figured out something more important.

He might not yet know what the System would do.

But he had a fairly good idea of how he wanted it to work.