Chapter 148: The Forgetfulness Stone |
“Hmm... wait a moment.” Samuel suddenly thought of something.
“Hmm?” Wyke raised an eyebrow.
“You’re telling me, without even a bit of programming language, you built an Astral Computer?” Samuel stroked his chin.
“That’s right.”
“Pure mental calculation?”
“Pure mental calculation.”
“Calculated it the hard way!”
Samuel truly hadn’t expected to hear that answer.
He smacked his lips, finally understanding why Wyke had been so delighted just now.
“No way, am I just supposed to take that pain for nothing?” At this point, Evina, who had been silently watching, finally spoke up.
“I almost passed out from the agony.”
“Well, coming from a Siren... she does have a reason to be upset.” Wyke acknowledged that this was only natural.
“What’s wrong with Sirens? Did a Siren eat his family’s rice?”
“No, not that.”
“Then why...”
“Sirens did eat his parents.”
“Well... um... er... ah...” Evina rubbed her chin, then her mouth, scratched her face, and touched her fins. “Tsk, oh well, it’s not like I chose this...”
People always look busy when they’re embarrassed. Apparently, Sirens were no different.
“But you don’t need to worry too much,” Wyke said, stuffing his hands back into his pockets. “Even though he hates Sirens, he won’t target you specifically. After all, you have no connection to those Sirens from back then.”
“Relatively speaking,” he added nonchalantly. “Why do you think Mutants are so hard to find these days?”
“If it weren’t for the two Law Inscribers guarding your kingdom’s Fifth Prince, he would have been tortured and killed long ago.”
“Two?” Samuel asked, puzzled. “I thought the king of this country wasn’t the type to protect his children.”
“Oh, I know this one.” Celt explained. “He won’t let someone possessing the ‘Royal Blood’ Law Rhyme die.”
“Part of the reason,” Wyke shook his head slightly. “Regardless, that is still his son.”
“Who would’ve thought he’d actually be such a sentimental man.” Samuel sneered.
Wyke knew exactly what Samuel was mocking, so he didn’t comment.
Indeed, a king who turned his subjects’ lives into resurrection armor was hardly one to talk about sentiment.
He returned to Samuel’s earlier question.
“If you want to leave, just go that way.”
He pointed behind him.
Massive amounts of data converged, and a door materialized out of thin air.
“My proto-Divine Realm overlapped with his in this small area. Just use my exit.”
“Won’t your companion object?” Samuel raised an eyebrow.
“He never planned to target you from the start.” Wyke smiled. “From beginning to end, it was me who was after you.”
“But now I’ve gotten what I wanted, and...” he chuckled softly, “you helped me a great deal.”
“You just lack a bit of experience, but you’re not stupid. You would’ve figured it out eventually.” Samuel casually ran a hand through his hair and put on a top hat.
“Yeah, I don’t think I’m stupid either.” Wyke’s face was still smiling.
“Oh, right, this is for you.” He pulled his hand out of his pocket and held it out to Samuel.
It looked like a small remote control, palm-sized, with just a button in the center.
“What’s this?” Samuel took the remote. “We’re exchanging gifts now?”
“Wrath asked me to give it to you.” Wyke pointed upward with his finger. “But I did make it myself.”
Samuel pressed the button but felt nothing happen.
“It’s not working. Is it broken?”
“Don’t just press it randomly...” Wyke said, exasperated. “Why are you just like Pride? The first thing you do with any Extraordinary Item is test it out...”
“Isn’t that normal? You always test game items when you get them.” Samuel answered matter-of-factly.
“You’re not worried it’s a self-destruct button,” Wyke teased.
Then, he explained the effect of this Extraordinary Item.
“Take it to a place with a corpse. It lets you experience the sensations the deceased felt roughly half an hour before their death.”
“The effective range is about a kilometer in diameter.”
“What’s the point of this? I’m not a masochist.” Samuel fiddled with the button.
“His exact words were this,” Wyke relayed. “I don’t know why he likes Mutants, and I have no intention of correcting his views. But if he chose to act this way out of pure ignorance, then perhaps you could take that button to the ‘Xenik Mountains’.”
After a pause, Wyke added.
“When the Mutant Uprising ended, the bodies were all disposed of there.”
“Oh, I see. So he wants me to experience the suffering of those killed by Mutants.”
“Seems that way.”
“How strange.” Samuel tilted his head. “I don’t even know him. Why would he want me to see all that?”
“Does he do this for everyone?”
“No, only for you.” Wyke explained.
“Doesn’t that make it even stranger?” Samuel spread his hands.
“Probably hoping to prevent a Law Inscriber from protecting Mutants,” Wyke answered. “Especially one that’s a ‘Singularity of Absurdity’.”
“You’ve only been active for how long, and you already have two Mutants around you.”
“He’s genuinely worried you might side with the Mutants.”
“Is that so? Then he might be overthinking it.” Samuel said carelessly. “I don’t care about humans, and I don’t care about Mutants.”
“I only do what I want. To me, there’s no difference between Mutants, humans, or Subhumans.”
“If something makes me happy, I’ll do it. If it doesn’t, I won’t.”
“It’s that simple.”
Wyke nodded. “That’s good to hear.”
The data door behind him swung open automatically, revealing the underground basement outside.
It was the basement on the second underground floor of the Theater. Looking through the door, they could still see the Scholar tied to a chair.
Evina and Celt immediately stepped forward, heading toward the door.
“Looks like this is really over.” Samuel smiled.
“See you next time, then.” He waved.
“Good. See you next time.” Wyke nodded.
Celt and Evina had already gone out, and Samuel followed, just about to step through the door.
Suddenly, he heard Wyke’s voice, tinged with a hint of melancholy.
“I’m so curious...”
He turned back and saw Wyke looking up at the sky.
“What does the world look like, through the eyes of you ‘Singularities’?”
“Ha.”
Samuel let out a laugh.
“Then go play more of the games I gave you.”
With one step, he left this proto-Divine Realm.
The data door slowly closed behind him, vanishing into nothingness.
Samuel slowly turned back, staring at where the door had disappeared. He clicked his tongue.
“Looks like the Theater needs to come up with some defense measures.”
“Trying to defend against a Law Inscriber isn’t going to be easy.” Celt scooped up Sereia, who had been floating around restlessly.
Her sudden departure earlier had made her worried.
“At least I should have some kind of warning system.” Samuel shrugged. “He came and went, and I didn’t even know he’d been here.”
He could have covered the entire Theater with his spiritual perception, but maintaining that every day was just too tiring and troublesome.
Soon, he left the second underground floor and arrived at the ballroom on the first floor.
Music was playing from inside, which caught him off guard.
It was a “field of corpses” when he’d left.
Walking into the ballroom, he indeed saw those “playing dead” gentlemen and ladies back on their feet, continuing their previous dance.
His spirituality stirred; it seemed the interrupted extraordinary gathering had also resumed.
Samuel raised an eyebrow, weaving through the sparse crowd back to the private room, and stepped inside.
He saw Allenay had already left his painting and was sitting back on the sofa.
Wyatt was also lounging on another sofa, legs crossed, holding a wine glass.
“No panic at all?” Samuel walked over and sat down. “I thought they’d at least show a bit of fear.”
He wasn’t surprised they could stand again.
After all, when he had acted earlier, he had activated all their wounds.
Those activated wounds instinctively moved toward a “better” future.
Once Samuel left and the activation ended, the wounds had mostly healed.
Not even a scar remained.
But Samuel hadn’t touched their memories.
“Did you erase their memories?” Samuel asked.
“What kind of panic did you want to see?” Wyatt countered with a smile.
“At least not this.”
They were dancing and singing, showing no trace of the bloody scene from before.
Wyatt swirled his glass, leaning back.
“Things like this are actually quite common. Pretty much the same as what the Public Security Bureau does.”
The Public Security Bureau’s methods?
Samuel was even more curious.
“I really didn’t know about this.” He picked up a wine glass himself. “Do they just directly wipe memories?”
“Not quite,” Wyatt shook his head with a smile. “They just rationalize it.”
“You have the Ring of Fallacy too. You should understand more or less.”
“I see. Blur part of the memory, modify part of it, and rationalize the rest.” Samuel understood.
“The Public Security Bureau does this often?” Samuel felt like they might not have enough manpower.
He remembered Grill telling him before that the entire city of Reins had fewer than a hundred Security Officers, including support staff.
And in this city, extraordinary incidents happened every single day. The number of witnesses varied—sometimes in single digits, sometimes in the hundreds, and occasionally in the thousands.
If the capital was like this, other places were even worse.
It was everywhere, both in the open and in the shadows.
Samuel figured they must be overwhelmed.
If every extraordinary incident required mass memory modification, he thought the support staff would be worked to death.
“That’s when you prepare in advance.” Grill swirled the glass in his hand.
He took a stone out of his pocket.
Samuel looked at the stone and felt a slight blurring in his vision.
It was an unremarkable-looking stone, but on its front and back, a pattern was carved.
Samuel recognized that pattern. It was a Law Mark.
A vast amount of information was packed and compressed into that simple design. Just looking at it could overwhelm an ordinary person.
That feeling of blurriness was very faint for him—almost negligible—but for ordinary people, it was different.
“Look, this is called a Forgetfulness Stone.” Wyatt explained.
“It’s an Extraordinary Item with Law Marks inscribed on both its front and back: ‘Psychopath’ and ‘Con Artist’. The spiritual material itself comes from a small portion of an ‘Illiterate’s’ bone ash.”
“The crafting process is a bit complicated, but its repeatability is high, and the materials are easy to obtain, so it can be mass-produced.”
“By incorporating a little alchemy, you can create a shield that blocks certain things within a set range.”
He tossed the stone in his hand.
“When planning a city, you can have architects distribute these stones across every corner of the city.”
“Individually, each one affects ordinary people within a radius of five hundred meters. Combined with special alchemical formations, the effect can cover an entire city without needing more than five hundred stones.”
“To be thorough, you can make a thousand and spread them out a bit more densely across Reins, covering the entire city with no problem.”
Meaning ordinary people’s memories were being erased around the clock, nonstop?
“Living in a place like that every day, it’s a miracle your city’s ordinary folks haven’t all gone brain-dead.” Samuel mocked.
“That’s not how it works.” Wyatt smiled. “For mass production, each stone only contains a tiny amount of bone ash, so the effect is quite weak.”
“So most of the time, a Security Officer still has to make a special trip to clear the memories.”
“Otherwise, those vague memories linger in their minds.”
He pointed toward the dance floor. “Like in that situation just now, their memories would be very vivid. Just using the Forgetfulness Stone to blur them wouldn’t make them forget.”
Samuel understood. “So its target is only the kind of brief, distant glance—things that don’t leave a strong impression.”
Wyatt nodded. “Exactly.”