Endless Debt

Chapter 1268 - 79: Replica

The light spear fell, tendrils wildly danced, and the building collapsed section by section. Just as Bologue had nowhere to retreat, a safety door emerged from the broken wall. Amidst the striking green light, the safety passage opened for Bologue."I knew it!"

Bologue shouted excitedly.

Freya succeeded. She really uploaded herself into the Ruins District. However, something happened in the process, as the consciousness she uploaded wasn’t complete, leaving only the frail young version of Freya before him.

Thinking about Freya’s difficult survival in the Ruins District, along with the warning powers she spoke of.

That wasn’t secret energy at all; it was one of the controls over the Ruins District.

"Freya!" Bologue yelled out, "You must have encountered numerous dangers before, right? Is it that every time you’re at a dead end, a door like this opens!"

"Yes, yes," Freya fearfully closed her eyes, allowing the Deceitful Snake Scale Liquid to carry her back and forth, "Didn’t I tell you before? It’s like there’s some force helping me from the shadows."

Bologue dragged Freya, swiftly darting towards the safety door, his roaring voice echoing.

"The force helping you isn’t something ethereal, it’s yourself!"

The hazy light and security personnel could mobilize the power of the Ruins District, just like Freya. However, unlike they, Freya found it difficult to actively control this power, with it only passively activating in dire situations.

Bologue surmised that Freya’s consciousness was diluted by the immense Ruins District, similar to trying to manage an entire city or nation with one individual’s mind.

The computing power of Freya’s individual consciousness simply couldn’t support such a massive computational consumption. Even if she could control the Ruins District, the feedback from commands would be very delayed, and the practical effectiveness would be very weak. Hence, only when her personal safety was really at stake could her power barely manifest.

In contrast, the collective was far more efficient. When individual computational power wasn’t sufficient, others were brought in. Each person’s consciousness was subdivided differently, taking on different functions, becoming a cog or a gear in this dreadful machine.

Bologue suspected that if Mamo could really connect to the collective before brain death, his consciousness would likely be used for maintaining the Sublimation Furnace Core. With each person’s many years of prior experience, these consciousness bodies wouldn’t even need training to get started.

"What am I thinking!"

Bologue complained inwardly. In this extremely tense situation, he unconsciously made dark jokes in his mind and accused the Order Bureau of such fatal behaviors.

"Mamo! Mamo Pine, do you remember this name?" continued Bologue asking.

Freya shook her head blankly, she had no memory of that name.

"Loss incurred by consciousness upload?"

Bologue speculated. He thought to forget it; it’s not the time to trouble Freya now. Once they escape to the Void Lump area, there will be time to interrogate this coward.

Scorching air currents engulfed them, countless light spears aimed at Bologue, piercing and shattering the ground, closely following Bologue’s figure, leaving a trail of spearmen behind him. After a brief delay, the light spears exploded, and pure ether unleashed chaos, hitting Bologue’s body with debris.

Bologue felt a sharp pain in his chest, followed by a metallic taste in his throat. The agitated ether filled every corner, and any slight extension of Bologue’s ether beyond his body resulted in severe ether mutual exclusion.

In such crises, Bologue would typically release Protection·Soul Sucking and Essence Stealing, with these hostile ethers. In the face of protection, they were like a buffet, allowing Bologue to consume and utilize at will.

But after realizing the curse brought by protection, Bologue dared not activate it lightly. If he were to be controlled by obsessive envy, forcing himself to do something, it would be manageable if it were just thoughts of slaughter. However, if some other unintentional thoughts were forcibly executed...

For instance, the complaints he just had internally about Mamo, would his obsessive thoughts attempt to make him kill Mamo?

Envy, terrifying envy.

What one desires must be obtained, and what one wants to do must be done.

By any means necessary, regardless of the cost.

Bologue calmly analyzed the nature of the protection curse, "Irrational obsession arising from envy."

"Stay!"

The eerie light clusters resounded again with an aftershock, this time piercing directly through the heads of the security personnel. They were manipulated like puppets, with excessive ether accumulating inside, even blank faces emerged with features, overflowing with pure light from their eyes, mouths, and noses.

Bologue ignored the mutation behind him, diving headfirst into the safety door with Freya, thoughtfully shutting the door behind them.

The scorching temperature suddenly dropped, and the strange space entangled with stairs unfolded before his eyes. Accompanied by the heavy sound of the door closing behind him, Bologue dragged Furya along, slowly coming to a halt past the many stairs.

Sitting on the steps, Bologue panted heavily, pondering deeply while looking at Furya, who was seated on the steps opposite him, still entwined in Deceitful Snake Scale Liquid.

As time passed, the cracks on her body slowly healed, not completely shattering like a porcelain doll.

"I... I..."

Furya wanted to say something, but she truly seemed to know nothing, unable to utter a single word of defense. In her panic, she looked as though she was about to burst into tears.

Bologue felt a bit annoyed, having never encountered someone so prone to tears, but upon reflection, it seemed reasonable. A fragmented and bewildered consciousness, hiding in the fearsome Ruins District.

"Take a look at this."

Bologue tossed over a diary along with a badge he had taken from a corpse. These pieces of evidence proved that Furya was not an intern but a product of consciousness upload, Furya Bradley.

Furya sobbed softly, flipping through the diary, the fear within her magnifying... She recognized the handwriting in the diary—it was hers.

Bologue could sense the fear emanating from Furya. He understood her feelings at the moment, akin to someone suddenly telling him that he was not a real living being, but merely a virtual character in a story.

In such situations, it was inevitable for one to question their own existence.

Not daring to recklessly use Protection to recover Ether, Bologue could only resort to the most primitive way of absorbing Ether independently to restore his own Ethereal Amount. As for the potion containing Mang Silver Soul, he had found quite a few in Furya’s storage room, but they were all destroyed in the recent confrontation.

After briefly reading, Furya put down the diary, her eyes still filled with disbelief.

"How could this be?"

Furya tried to refute the facts, attempting to recall her childhood, but no matter how she retraced her memories, she couldn’t surpass a certain point.

The point when she awoke amidst chaos after the Vibration of Xilin’s invasion. At this point, her recollections came to a halt, as if there was nothing beyond.

"Nothing is impossible; there are many deadly things in this world."

Bologue coldly commented. He had to make Furya accept reality quickly so he could proceed with the next step.

"You are Freya Bradley. After being trapped in the Ruins District, you chose to upload your consciousness to the Ruins District to prolong your life. But during the upload process, the consciousness was inevitably worn down. Not to mention, your individual consciousness couldn’t possibly control such a vast Ruins District, so you ended up in this state."

Midway through, Bologue couldn’t help but speculate about the Hazy Light. It seemed that compared to Furya, the Hazy Light was truly the sovereign of the Ruins District.

Freya shook her head, "No... Freya is already dead."

"What are you talking about?" Bologue retorted, "Aren’t you Freya?"

"If what the diary says is true, if she truly succeeded, I am her... but also not her."

Freya opened the diary, showing Bologue the last page, where crooked handwriting was scrawled, as if written with the last ounce of strength by someone on their deathbed.

"Consciousness can only be copied, not uploaded."

Bologue was stunned, only now realizing, albeit belatedly, that he was accustomed to interpreting everything through the concept of consciousness upload. But in reality, there was no such thing as consciousness upload.

Dead is dead.

Even the numerous consciousness entities within the group merely represented copies of living consciousnesses before brain death.

The real Freya had long since died, perished within the spire, yet she continued in another form, presented before Bologue.

Bologue suddenly stood up as a screech of metal friction echoed. Glancing towards the direction of the sound, he saw the safety door they had come through being slowly pushed open.

Freya had mentioned that the Void Lump area was not entirely safe and still under the gaze of the Hazy Light.

Pure, radiant tendrils stretched out from beyond the crack of the door.