The Guardian System: The strongest Summoner's quest to save his family-Chapter 391: A City Like a Corpse (8)

Reidar sat in the ruined building; the journal was in his hands. The Ignis writing had been dense, technical, and at times almost cryptic, but the translator did its job well enough that he understood everything that was being said.

He placed the journal back on the metal table. He stared at the grey cover for a moment. What he read was a lot to digest.

What the Ignis said was heavy. Two things made his stomach particularly tighten.

The first was about feralization.

The journal said it started around level 450 if the system wasn't there to regulate mana absorption. The author described it as a gradual process where higher-level beings began losing reason.

Their minds degraded as raw mana saturated their bodies faster than their neural structures could adapt. The system prevented this by acting as a filter, pacing the absorption of ambient mana to match biological tolerances.

It was a life-support machine.

But Reidar was already past that threshold.

He was level 480. He was thirty levels past the safety line.

<If the system gets taken away, what will happen to me?>

Reidar looked at his own hands. They were covered in the gloves of the Ignis Ember-Grips, equipment made from the very creatures the Ignis had become.

He flexed his fingers. Underneath the gloves, his skin was still human.

But for how long?

The thought wouldn't leave him alone. He had always believed the system was permanent—once Earth got it, it would stay forever. But the journal proved him wrong. The system could be removed, taken away as easily as it had been given.

And that decision rested with the Allied Worlds.

<If they decide humanity is too much trouble... if they decide we're like the Ignis... they'll shut it down.>

If that happened, Reidar wouldn't just lose his interface or his inventory. He would lose the filter, and so would everyone else.

They would all turn. They would become like the Ignis Reidar had fought just to reach this place: a creature of instinct and rage. Everyone was basically a walking time bomb, and the Allied Worlds held the detonator.

Reidar leaned back against the wall, staring at the ceiling. The structure above him was cracked, sections of it missing where debris had collapsed during whatever disaster destroyed this place. He could see the sky through the gaps. It was orange-red, the color of the planet's atmosphere filtering the distant sun.

The second thing that alarmed him was that the church had been right.

It was a bitter pill to swallow, honestly. It went against everything he had fought for, everything he had believed since the apocalypse started.

Silas, the zealots, and the madmen who sacrificed people to "ascend"—they were all monsters, and there was no doubt about it. Not because they turned, of course, but because of their actions.

They were mass murderers who believed the System was a cage designed to limit humanity's potential.

Reidar had killed them because they were dangerous. He had killed them because they were threatening the whole of humanity and using everyone as sacrificial tools. But they were nonetheless right.

The Allied Worlds weren't benevolent saviors coming to Earth out of charity or duty. They were coming to recruit soldiers.

<Or servants.>

And if the recruits were too wild, too strong, or too independent, the Allied Worlds would simply turn off the lights and lock the door.

That was the core of it. The "Tier vs. Controllability" graph Zhen-Gora had described.

The Ignis had high potential—they leveled fast, adapted quickly, and were smart—but their controllability was low.

They questioned what the allied worlds said, and the Allied Worlds pulled the plug. They shut down the Guardian System and left an entire species to rot in a mana-saturated hell.

Reidar began to pace the room. The ash on the floor crunched softly under his boots.

The church was not right about everything, though. They claimed that "Ascension" was the answer. They thought that by embracing mana and rejecting the System, they could become gods.

They were mistaken about the outcome. Ascension without regulation didn't make you a god; it made you a murderous machine. Besides, their ideology was still twisted, their methods barbaric.

<And yet, their suspicion about the Allied Worlds was accurate. How Ironic.>

Humans weren't controllable. Reidar… no… every human knew that.

Earth's survivors were chaotic, aggressive, and ambitious. They leveled fast, adapted quickly, and formed factions that fought each other as much as they fought the monsters.

The Allied Worlds had seen this before, and the races that became "too independent and dangerous" were abandoned. The system was pulled, and the civilization either found another solution or went extinct. Mostly the second thing happened.

Reidar sighed. Reliance on the System meant reliance on the Allied Worlds. It meant humanity's survival was conditional on their obedience.

<So, if humanity keeps being a problem, the Allied Worlds will just cut us loose. I can't accept that.>

That was the reality. Earth was on probation, whether or not the people realized it. The Allied Worlds were watching, evaluating, and deciding if humanity was worth the investment.

If they decided humans were more trouble than they were worth, they'd take off the Guardian System and let Earth collapse under its own weight.

<Ok…> Reidar paused to think. <The feralization process is tied to the absorption rate of ambient mana. The higher the density and quantity, the faster it saturates the body. The faster the saturation, the quicker cognitive degradation sets in. But if a magic circle could regulate mana density the way the system does, then it could act as a substitute. Not a perfect one, but enough to prevent the immediate collapse that would follow if the system gets removed. It would at least give us time.>

Reidar needed something more. He needed insurance.

<The journal mentioned a solution. Or at least, a theory. Vor'len and the others at the Northern Sanctum had been working on magic circles meant to create mana crystals. If they work—if I can replicate them and study them, if they can trap the ambient mana in crystals—they can lower the mana density in a specific area. There is a way to regulate mana without relying on the system.>