Abyssal Awakening - Chapter 875

Capítulo 875: Memory Manipulation

“Nightmare realm? What’s that?”

Hearing this, Alice felt her entire body freeze.

The new realm they were just talking about, a place of new laws and monsters.

And he just… forgot?

“Huh? You don’t remember? The Nightmare realm with the Embryos, guides, beasts, avoiding deaths?” Alice frowned but Elias seemed as clueless as ever.

She looked at Alyss who also seemed surprised by his reaction.

Then the two of them looked at Cayla.

[I’m just as clueless as he is. But I have made a bunch of notes that I don’t even remember making. If you didn’t mention it right now, I might’ve discarded them later.] Cayla held her hands up in surrender.

Alice massaged her eyes.

No wonder they didn’t write a report on it.

No one f*cking remembered going into the Nightmare realm.

Was it tied to deaths? Or was it because of their unique constitution?

Alice doubted the latter. Her best guess was that memory was tied to deaths.

Was the threshold three or more? Or was it four?

Would the memory loss get worse as you die?

How long before you become a drone like the others?

“Sh*t…” Alice cursed.

Pulling Elias away for now so that he didn’t block the entrance, Alice began to contemplate.

What could they do to retain memory if anything like that was to happen again?

It’s clear that she wasn’t immune to the effects considering she was dragged into the realm without resistance.

The rules that apply to them also apply to her, this was no longer a case where the Abyss showed her favouritism.

In the Nightmare realm, all was equal.

Including herself.

‘We need to make something in order to prepare for the wipe. Otherwise if we ever need a break from the realm, how are we supposed to consolidate ideas? I’ll be honest, with the way things are going, avoiding deaths till the threshold is going to be impossible.’ Alice suggested as Alyss agreed.

[What do you suggest?]

‘I thinking of making a memory capsule of sorts. We’ll duplicate a portion of our souls and overlay it with my Sixth Sigil. That way, when activating it, I essentially experience everything I learned inside the realm all over again.’

[That’s a lot to duplicate though. How will you even record what goes on? Or are you going to set it to a timer of sorts?]

Depending on how they approach this memory capsule, they might be able to modify it to be used with others.

[There’s also the issue of recording everything inside the Nightmare realm. There’s no telling if your Sigil will work or not.]

‘You also can’t forget about testing how the realm erases that memory to begin with. If we go back to the city, will we remember everything? If so, if you keep duplicating your memory like that, wouldn’t you start overloading your soul?’ Alyss spoke up.

The method of erasure was going to be important here.

Alice folded her arms with a sigh.

There were some… ideas but the moral implications were rather tough to swallow.

The first idea was to set reference points before and after entering the Nightmare.

And once the two reference points are linked up, what remains is the memory of her excursion into the realm.

Once that is done, the moment she leaves the city without her memories, this memory capsule will override and synchronise with her memories. If any overlap are detected, it will be shaved away.

But the issue with this is…

It’s hard to determine whether what’s being shaved away is a copy or the original. What if it’s tampered?

If she replaces her memory enough times with this method, is she still the same person? What if a fault occurs during the synchronisation and the only thing she remembers is the time inside the nightmare realm?

Would she forget everything that came before?

Too many risks were involved with this idea. Risks that Alice would rather not take.

The second…

“I guess it’s the second method after all.” Alice sighed.

“Elias, we’re going to be experimenting for a little bit before going back to the surface. I need to make a memory storage system for when we’re outside of the Nightmare realm.” She suggested as Elias furrowed his brows but nodded his head.

He could tell something was up but didn’t know what.

And with Alice being this serious, it must be something major.

[How do you plan on doing this storage system?]

‘Just a simple matter of storing knowledge into a capsule. It doesn’t replace anything but rather it opens up similar to the library that I saw when accessing the contracts. The main difficulty with this is the method of storing. I need to create a space to store all of the information I gain from the realm.

‘Either it updates automatically, or I have to do a manual synch every time we exit the realm.’ Alice scratched her hair.

She needed to store it in a physical object so that it wouldn’t be erased if her abilities are disabled.

And with the properties of her sixth Sigil, this physical object need to ‘store’ the history of her memories.

That way, it doesn’t need a constant supply of energy to remain.

The good thing with her sixth Sigil is that the knowledge is only temporary unless she went out of her way.

Like the time she copied Rosalyn’s movements and habits, the ‘memory’ faded away after a while since Alice didn’t go out of her way to master it.

It was simply available in the moment.

Of course, it would be different if she used the syncing method since it would just duplicate everything in her brain.

And thankfully, she wasn’t going down that route.

While Elias found a place to stay for now, Alice started to work on the first prototype.

Whatever she uses to store things can’t be created by her power. So metal sheets and so on as they’ll fade away after a while.

And the resource she could get her hands on all the time was naturally…

Making a cut on her finger, Alice extracted a single droplet of blood before snapping her finger.

The droplet was compressed into a single thin rectangular sheet.

Using her powers to solidify this wouldn’t work as it’ll run into the issue she mentioned before. Without her powers, holding its shape, it’ll disappear.

Thinking about it for a moment, Alice took out an old damaged outfit she had and cut out a stripe the same size as the sheet.

Creating a spark, Alice had the sheet dry up and harden.

“Now… How the hell do I even engrave information into this thing so my sixth can overlay it…” She mumbled.

Holding the sheet against the light, she began to humour a few ideas.

Creating a small tool for now, Alice started to carve away at the surface while talking about the discoveries they made in the Nightmare realm.

Once everything was carved and done, she held it against the light and smiled at the densely packed carvings across the surface.

Closing her eyes, she activated her Sixth and began to trace the ‘history’ of the sheet.

Yet… Her smile started to fade as she let out a sigh.

“Tsk, I guess that wouldn’t work.” Her idea was to talk about the information so that when she activated the overlap, she’ll be able to know what she was talking about.

Unfortunately, all she did was mimic the mouth movements but not the sounds. The mimicry wasn’t perfect either since certain words had the same mouth movement but different ways of speaking it.

Thus trying to decrypt the information using this method was too much of a gamble.

As for the second method…

‘Since it only records movement, why don’t you combine it with other Sigils?’ Alyss suggested.

‘True…’

Tapping her finger, Alice decided to test out her sixth Sigil + mirror jester.

The jester allows her to mimic a person along with their personality.

So what if she fabricates someone who’s only purpose is to decrypt a certain code?

Noting down some letters to replace with code, Alice activated the mirror jester and began to memorise everything.

But halfway through, she realised an issue.

Using the mirror jester still required her to remember what the parameters were. If more of her memory was to be wiped, how did she expect to access this information?

[Can’t you just use the vault? If you write down everything you learned then put it into the vault that Suyin gave you along with some notes, don’t you think she’ll help you retain the information?] Cayla asked curiously.

‘True… But writing everything down still requires me to remember everything I’ve been through. What if after a certain point, my memory is wiped the moment I exit the nightmare realm?’ Alice sighed in frustration.

While Alice was testing out new ideas, Elias returned after finding a place to stay.

She saw the dejected Alice sprawled across the table and ordered some mead.

“Thanks.” Alice sighed, drinking the mead to cheer herself up.

She had a few ideas but it was hard to replicate without the constant use of her powers.

Half way through the cup of mead, Alice decided to ask someone else.

On the topic of Suyin’s vault, Alice decided to seek her help.

She was someone who’s been rejected by the Abyss yet still managed to navigate this world.

Through machinery and Abyssal engineering, she was able to bridge the gap despite being a normal human.

Writing down her request and placing it into the vault, Alice waited for a response.

With nothing else to do but wait, Alice drank the night away while throwing a few ideas that might work.

The next morning, Suyin’s response arrived in the most unexpected form…