“... I just don’t understand…” I muttered, as I softly wept in a hidden corner of the mory Palace.
I was trying it out, having unlocked it during the Duelist Alliance opening when I got my sixtieth number. Even if that number was Number 58: Burner Visor.
The mory Palace can be used in two ways. One is just as a screen that will replay mories. But the second is what I was doing. I had entered the mory Palace, which was a small alternative realm within the Nuron Code. So basically like the Factory, except that the mory Palace also took my body, not just my soul, when I entered it.
And it was sothing. I expected it to be kind of useless, after all, Storage already records everything I see. But that is only what I see and hear.
The mory Palace records everything. What I see, hear, taste, sll and feel. And not just what I’m physically feeling, but also my emotions at the ti. With the mory Palace, I can re-live monts, feeling everything I did.
And there is one more thing it does better than Storage. Storage has only stored what I’ve seen since I obtained the skill. And no, it didn’t start from when I had Inventory, but only after it evolved into Storage.
But the mory Palace rembers all. Even things that happened before I unlocked it. Things before I had access to the Nuron Code. Things before I even had Pack Opener. Things from before I was ever in this world. ᴛʜɪs ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɪs ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ʙʏ NoveI-Fire.ɴet
And that leads to where I am now. Retreated into the deepest corners of my own mind to re-live so of my best mories from back on Earth. Which sadly brought up the pain from the ti.
Especially as I was living through my mories with Laura. I … I don’t really know what to think. If I was just watching, I probably wouldn’t think of much. I’d recall the good tis we had, but I’d understand that good tis must end, to be replaced by sothing new and even better.
But because the mory Palace went ahead and put all of my feelings from the ti into , it really reminded of just how much I loved her.
To the point where when I traded for more recent mories with Lua and Alice, they just … didn’t quite match. And that isn’t even ntioning the other four. I know I shouldn’t compare them, but I couldn’t help it.
So I wept alone in the depths of the mory Palace, going through all of my mories and trying to see where I went wrong. And sure Laura and I had our problems, but they were nothing I’d think she’d break up over. So despite everything, I couldn’t find that one piece. That one thing that would have broken us apart.
Eventually I reached that day. My final day on Earth. It was an experience.
Reading the letter Laura left , getting angry about it, only for my package to arrive and temporarily put out of my funk. I could never be angry while I was holding that Legend of Blue-Eyes box in my hands.
So in an attempt to push my feelings away, I cleaned my table, set out a clean cushioned pad I used while opening packs, and prepared to open the box. Only to realize I was completely out of sleeves.
So before I could get into the box, I had to walk to the nearby gaming store and buy myself so sleeves. And the frustration of not having what I needed combined with the pain I already felt, so I was tempted to rage as I put on my shoes and hoodie, prepared for my quick trip to the store.
Only to end up in this world.
Having all of that rage in felt awful, so I quickly ended the mory. But that completely crashed my emotions and I was left feeling empty. And that emptiness was filled again by sadness.
I moved myself from the mory Palace to the Factory, hoping that it could help , but I was still crying, so I didn’t want to face anyone. So I teleported to the hidden room Laura made for us. And I cried so more.
Weeping alone in my own personal realm, filled with the monsters that I adore. The cards that I hold dear. The cards that sohow led to the worst day of my life.
… pathetic, isn’t it? The worst day of my life was a stupid breakup. What a privileged life I lived for that to be ‘the worst’.
Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was for the best. But experiencing it again … I felt emotions I never want to feel again.
But rembering it does make happy as well. Happy about how it ended. Not that day, but how things got to where I am now, able to relive that day.
I feel like soone else in that situation may have raged against this random world they arrived in. But thank everything I didn’t. I really wouldn’t have wanted to beco an enemy of the world.
That made thankful for the people I t on those first days. Be it the Pri Rib team or the Watchman family. They really made sure I didn’t go crazy.
So I wiped away my tears and left the Factory. I shouldn’t be alone right now, but neither my monsters nor Laura can get out of this funk. There is one person I really want to hug. Maybe I’m interrupting her lesson, but I’m sure Lua will understand.
Lua didn’t care about my overly affectionate self and just kept teaching, even using as a test subject. Which led to her putting to sleep with Blood Magic, and that honestly was a great nap.
But after the lesson was over, she asked about it, so I took us to the mory Palace. And as I did, I learned sothing else it can do.
The mory Palace can not only show my mories, but it can also do it for anyone who enters. So as my mories took over half of the space, Lua’s took over the other half. And like with , Lua’s mories ranged all the way to her childhood. No future mories though, this place isn’t that powerful.
But now with Lua here, I showed her what really had broken. I replayed so of my mories with Laura, letting Lua feel my emotions at the ti.
It was a little overwhelming for her at first, since she was experiencing both my past emotions, as well as her current emotions. And sadly there was no emotion suppression in the mory Palace. I could turn them off completely, like I could with any other sense, but that doesn’t really serve a purpose. I needed Lua to feel what I felt to get the idea.
So when I traded from my mories of Laura over to my mories, and emotions, about Lua, she could feel the difference. And she did.
But not in the way I expected. Instead of being angry or disappointed or any number of different emotions, I could feel the love radiating off of her. I don’t know if it was because of the mory Palace, or if Lua figured out a way to do it, but at that mont, I didn’t care. I wanted to feel that love.
So when Lua said: “You are wrong. You didn’t count things correctly.” I listened.
She took over the controls and used the mory Palace to play her own mories. Her mories of the monts where she began loving . Starting from the day I offered to cure her curse, even if it failed that day.
Continuing to the very next day when I actually succeeded in it. And from there, it continued.
The love Lua showed when I almost died to Tye’s spirit tiger. The love Lua felt as we cured the town she grew up in. And the love she showed the day we got together.
“Do you feel where you went wrong?” Lua asked.
“... how? How can you … feel this much love?” I asked her.
During those mories, I was filled to the brim with love, to the point where it began overflowing from my … whatever holds my emotions. Lua love was so much more than what I ever felt. So much that it washed over anything I’ve ever felt, making my love seem aningless.
“Brian. Love isn’t a quantifiable emotion. You are trying to compare things wrong. You can never love like we do. You lived in a different world. You never considered the danger of dying the next day. We do. Every day we woke up happy to be alive for one more day. So we give every day our everything.” She explained. “You didn’t need to do that. So you save so of it. You save it for those special monts where you want to show your everything.”
“... I … alright. But … I just feel…”
“You don’t feel like you are enough.” Lua said. “You think your emotions don’t match up to mine.”
“... yes.”
“This isn’t a competition. Love isn’t a competition. You show as much love as you can, that is the truth. And while you haven’t been able to match the levels you had before, and maybe you never will, it doesn’t matter. Our love will still trump anything that ca before. Even if you can’t show as much of it, we will show you more than Laura ever could.” Lua said. “Because if she loved you like we do, she would have never let you go. Because we never will.”
We then invited the other five into the mory Palace, and we explored so of our mories. I had to turn the emotion replication off, as we began to be overwheld by everything.
But we went through the good tis, and so of the bad. And for a few mories I turned the emotions back on.
Experiencing things like Alice’s battle against the behemoth from a first-person view was quite sothing, as were things like Unika becoming one with Stella from Stella’s point of view.
We also ‘re-lived’ Wilma’s death at her workshop at her request. It wasn’t fun, but she wanted to.
Probably my favorite mory was with Cailie. The day we t in the Nixie clan’s Hallow Prison. I turned the emotion replicator on for that, and the amount of things she felt that day was so much. And the turmoil of her being terrified, suspicious, then hopeful, then happy, only for all of that happiness to turn into sadness as her sister’s rebanishnt happened. It was a rollercoaster.
Eventually we ended up heading into Janina’s mories. She had the most of any of us, naturally. And through her long, long life we saw as the world around her changed, while Janina stayed relatively the sa. Only slowly growing larger and stronger over ti.
And that showed us a few things. Like why Janina is the only surface dwelling serpentine dragon.
Serpentine dragons like here were decently common when she was born, being around a third of all dragons on this continent. But that body structure is weaker than the ‘western dragon’, so a lot of them would not grow old enough to even reach adulthood, nevermind reaching the point Janina did. So the dragons born with the eastern dragon style body began to force their evolutions to head towards that of the western dragons.
But it also showcased the problems with that body structure. It is more difficult to evolve and grow, thus causing those dragons to have a more limited lifespan. Eventually the energy required to evolve just becos too much for them. At least that was my theory.
On the other hand, Janina’s more streamline body is easier to grow, thus allowing her to evolve further and to beco the divine dragon she is today.
Eventually we reached Janina’s mories of the ti she faced the Hero’s party. This happened after they had already defeated the demon lord, so they were really powerful. Not that they were a match to Janina. But that does an that we didn’t learn the Hero’s na through this.
We watched her mory of their little playfight and I noticed sothing strange. A ripple in the air, almost like soone was hiding there with magic, watching over the Hero’s party. At least I think they were watching over the Hero’s party, as I’d never noticed a ripple like that in any of Janina’s other mories.
Sadly, as this was a mory, we couldn’t interact with it beyond watching it. We couldn’t scan it for souls or the type of magic, or maybe a skill, that was used for the hiding.
And at the end of the fight, as Janina ordered one of the adult dragons to fly the Hero’s party wherever they wanted to head next, we again saw the ripple in the air following after the party.
I asked Janina about it and she admitted that she forgot about it. She said that she noticed it during their ‘fight’, but she expected it to be a hidden mber of the party, soone who would attack her at so point. But since they never did, Janina just ignored it and let it be.
But it did get thinking. Who was following the Hero’s party? Could the succubus who gave him his sword be following him? And if she was, why? And why even after the demon king was defeated? And at this point, the Demon God should also have his device. So why the stalking?
Or is this soone else following them? And if it is, who? And again, why? I doubt they ever helped the Hero’s party, as I’ve not heard anything about anything like that from any of their System Supports. I’ll ask them just to make sure, but I feel like they won’t know.
During my ti thinking about those things, Janina’s mories had rolled forward, to a dream she had during her next sleep after her fight with the Hero. Before falling asleep she had considered if the Hero would ever grow strong enough to give her a child, and in her dreams, a dragon appeared.
It didn’t look like any dragon I knew, and no one else recognized it either. There seed to be so influence of my monsters in it though, as it had multiple ‘Konami orbs’ on its body.
You know what I’m talking about, right? The strange orbs Konami likes to add to their dragons, especially during the Arc-V era. And especially to the Odd-Eyes monsters.
Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon is a perfect example. It has Konami orbs all over its body. Sa with Revolution Dragon. And All-Eyes Phantom Dragon.
Spoiler
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Sure it is just a stylistic choice they made for the ‘Odd-Eyes’ dragons, but it is strange that this dragon in Janina’s dream has them.
The dragon told Janina to wait. Told her to live on, waiting for the one's arrival. She would know the day had co, when she would face down a dragon like her.
I asked Janina about this, and again she said she had mostly forgotten about the dream, believing it to have been a dream. But she then told us that the next ti she faced ‘a dragon like her’ was when we first t. When I summoned Uria, Lord of Searing Flas to face her.
Spoiler
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What sort of foreseeing dragon visited her dreams? I an, I don’t bla them for knowing, as Ti Magic could be used to foresee those things. So maybe another divine dragon from another continent sohow felt Janina’s loneliness and sent her that dream?
But why wouldn’t they co and have kids with Janina? Maybe they can’t? Maybe they had to give up their physical body to live ‘forever’ or sothing?
Could be. And maybe the Konami orbs sohow hold the dragon’s soul, thus are a part of its soul projection. Sadly I’ll probably never know unless I visit the past.
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