NOVPUBDaniel spread his right hand before his face, and the Enchanted Eye burrowed out through flesh and blood. 𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙥𝒖𝒃.𝙘𝙤𝒎
"I possess a river of memories!"
With a mere flicker of thought,
The Enchanted Eye shimmered vibrantly.
Emanating rays of red, akin to serpentine entities, they delved into his eyes.
In that instant,
Daniel felt as though his mind was being forcibly crammed with book after weighty book.
The influx was relentless, unceasing.
After what felt like an eternity, as though every book from the world, even the universe, had been jammed into his mind, leaving no space for even a single sheet of paper, it halted.
Agony!
Clasping his head with both hands, Daniel was wracked with unbearable pain.
Damn it!
This is the end!
Just as Daniel felt he could endure no more,
The void resonated with the sound of scissors.
Snip, snip!
A chilling touch descended upon his forehead.
Couldn’t resist anymore?
In the next heartbeat, before he could react, a young figure materialized before him.
The Memory-Altering Monster’s hands morphed once again into twin memory shears, effortlessly cleaving through Daniel’s skull.
Pain, once again, engulfed him.
His soul felt as if it was being violently yanked from his body.
Suspended in the void, he helplessly watched the Monster’s shears reach into his head.
A gentle touch, and his brain unfurled into a tangled mess of Memory Strands.
The gaze of the Memory-Altering Monster shifted subtly.
The memories within this man seemed... peculiar.
It had never encountered such dense memories, as though the recollections of every being in the world were crammed into this single mind.
How bizarre.
But it didn’t ponder long. With a snip of its shears, it began piecing the memories together, extracting a vast segment and embedding it within its own mind.
Once done, a face of deep satisfaction emerged.
Joey and the others looked on, aghast.
They hadn’t expected this abruptly appearing creature to be so nefarious. Even though they weren’t sure what exactly it had done to Daniel, it certainly wasn’t good.
Susanna sprang into action, "Release him!"
Then, she transformed into a blur, charging forward.
She didn’t want to die; thus, Daniel mustn’t either!
As Joey and Aesop readied themselves to assist, a sudden burst of memories exploded in their minds.
The next moment, their faces contorted.
Their features twisted, their visages spun rapidly, and their heads flipped upside down.
Their statures swelled grotesquely, making them appear monstrous.
In an instant, the two caught up to Susanna.
Their cleavers descended upon her, cleaving her in two.
But immediately after, the bisected form dissipated into a mirage, with Susanna’s silhouette reappearing to the side.
An afterimage!
Confronted with the threat of death, Susanna unleashed a speed unlike any she’d shown before.
Conversely, it was the reduced pace of Joey and Aesop, transformed into monsters, that prevented them from striking Susanna with precision.
Then, Susanna made an unexpected move.
She whirled around, charging directly at Joey.
The dagger in her hand thrust out with force.
However, she had underestimated the gulf between her and Joey.
The disparity between level 3 and level 2 was as vast as heaven and earth.
Her dagger managed to pierce Joey’s left shoulder, tearing the skin and letting blood flow.
But that was the extent of her success.
"Roar!!!"
The injured Joey was instantly enraged.
His cleaver swung horizontally towards Susanna’s waist.
Susanna wanted to evade, but with a sudden twist of horror on her face, she abandoned resistance.
From the void, Aesop’s massive fist hurtled towards her.
One from the front, the other from the back, they completely sealed her path of escape.
So, this is the end.
Susanna closed her eyes.
Whoosh!
Suddenly, she felt the whisper of a blade brush past her ear.
Then, a thud resonated, as if a heavy body had collapsed.
Opening her eyes, Susanna saw Joey motionless on the ground, utterly lifeless.
Behind her, Aesop was in the same state.
Both had their hearts pierced by a pristine white dagger.
Indeed, this lethal strike had been delivered by Daniel.
At the critical juncture, Daniel managed to regain control over his body, and with a reverse motion, formed a dagger with silk thread, and with all his might, flung it out.
Flawlessly taking down the two who had turned into monsters.
The Memory-Altering Monster found itself in agony, clutching its head and kneeling on the ground.
Much like Daniel had been moments before.
"No!"
"How can this be?"
"It’s just the memory of an insignificant being, how can I not bear it?"
In torment, it writhed, its hands morphing into scissors, attempting to extract the overwhelming memories from its mind.
Yet to its horror, it discovered that the memories had taken a terrifying twist, visibly expanding and magnifying at an alarming pace.
Daniel approached, his calm voice laced with a hint of mockery, "This is memory from across the universe. And you naively thought you could digest it? You’re going to burst, you fool."
The Memory-Altering Monster stared at Daniel in disbelief, "Impossible!" "You’re just an insignificant creature, how could you possess such vast memories?"
Daniel smirked coldly, "Those are fictitious memories I created by hypnotizing myself. I can conjure an endless stream of them. And you, in your misfortune, cut away the segment I hypnotized into being. It will keep growing, multiplying, expanding."
"For me, they’re mere illusions. But for you, they are an unbearable weight."
"You!" The Memory-Altering Monster was so furious its teeth chattered.
As agony coursed through its being, and the memories continued their rapid expansion, it felt its head was about to burst, with no way to make it stop.
Externally, its head had already swelled visibly. At this rate, its demise was inevitable.
All it could do was look to Daniel, pleading desperately, "Please, take them back."
"In exchange, I promise never to lay a hand on you again, ensuring your safe departure from here."
Daniel chuckled, "Isn’t there some misunderstanding between us?"
"What made you think I need to rely on your assurance to survive?"
Boom!
An intangible pressure surged within the Memory-Altering Monster’s mind, accelerating the expansion of that particular memory.
Driven by agonizing pain, the Memory-Altering Monster was utterly incapacitated, collapsing to the ground, quivering uncontrollably.
Seizing this golden opportunity, Daniel manifested a silk thread cleaver in his hand, slashing it decisively across the creature’s neck.
Thud!
The misshapen head rolled away. Strangely, from the neat wound, not a single drop of blood emerged.
Instead, countless Memory Strands wriggled out uncontrollably from the monster’s head.
In the blink of an eye, the space above was blanketed with a tangled mass of Memory Strands.
A myriad of memories flowed forth. Most of them were the memories of those whom the Memory-Altering Monster had slain, bearing little value.
Yet a scant few were from the Monster itself. Glancing over, Daniel discerned most were related to this pyramid, including the secrets it held within.
However, the sheer volume and complexity of these memories made them hard to assimilate in the moment.
After a cursory look, Daniel produced a golden safe, preserving them for a more thorough examination later.
Just then, a prompt materialized before Daniel’s eyes.
[Item]: Memory Strands
[Detail]: Precious memories containing vital clues. Can be extracted upon retrieval.
[Market Value]: 0
Daniel was taken aback. It was the first time the system had initiated a prompt on its own.
Considering he couldn’t decipher these memories and that most seemed to serve no immediate purpose, he thought it might be worth a shot.
With that thought, Daniel silently commanded in his mind: "Retrieve."
Almost instantly, everything shifted.
Daniel felt the world go dark, a wave of dizziness washing over him.
When he opened his eyes again, he found himself in an abyss of nothingness.
To his amazement, not far ahead, there hung a radiant blue orb.
Even though it was his first time seeing it this way, Daniel instantly recognized it — it was Earth, the world he called home!
Was he... in outer space?
Daniel was utterly dumbfounded.
He could scarcely believe that merely retrieving a memory could transport him into the vast expanse of space.
Was this some kind of trap?
Experiencing space for the first time, a pang of anxiety tugged at Daniel’s heart.
After what felt like an eternity, he made a startling realization.
He could still breathe normally, and his body felt no discomfort.
Could this just be a simulated version of outer space?
In the very next moment,
A bizarre luminescence suddenly streaked across the obsidian expanse of the universe.
Countless monstrous and horrifying creatures abruptly emerged before Daniel.
Stretching as far as the eye could see, they blanketed the cosmos, forming an overwhelming sea of monstrosities.
Suddenly, a realization dawned on Daniel. These creatures seemed eerily familiar.
Beasts brimming with tentacles, entities covered entirely in eyes, titanic giants whose heads touched the heavens and feet treaded on planets.
And that colossal, terrifying eyeball, as vast and luminous as a star itself.
Weren’t these the very monsters etched in the murals of the Trojan Pyramid?
Could they truly exist?!
A shiver ran down Daniel’s spine.
Though he had grown accustomed to the face of death, a deep-seated trepidation resurfaced within him — a dread of mortality.
Each of these creatures was immensely vast, akin to deities.
With just a mere breath, they could shatter stars, and with a single blink, extinguish the very essence of all living beings.
But most striking of all was that massive eye, veined with blood.
Its gaze exuded an indescribable indifference, as though everything in existence was utterly trivial to it.
