[BONUS] FORGETFUL
[Bonus chapter courtesy of Mr. Ham <3 3/6]
Leonel would be lying if he said that he wasn't surprised by this. Rather than killing the creature, this man used his Ethereal Glabella to somehow trap it, and it was a shortcut of sorts to solidifying the connection with his real body.
'It should be related to those runes. That's definitely not a natural ability, or my studies would have stumbled upon it. In that case, it's definitely a treasure they used some special means to bring in.'
But Leonel could also tell that this treasure had its limitations.
That White Stone Elephant should be a Tier Five threat, and that was around the same threat level the man was exuding as well. As for the man's original threat level, it should have been Tier Four.
This was to say that this man only had to capture one beast to immediately shoot up that level. Even for Leonel, if he had to calculate how many Tier Five beasts it would take him to go from Tier Four to Tier Five, it would probably be at least a dozen.
Unfortunately, the cost for each Tier was just heavier. It would have taken him longer to reach Tier Four if not for the fact his Dream Force had improved.
But with those benefits came clear drawbacks.
This man could obviously only capture one creature at a time, and he was probably trying to defeat this Tier Six so that he could swap it out and replace his Tier Five one. If he did so, he would be even more dangerous.
'He should have something to rely on if he came here so boldly,' Leonel thought. Then his gaze changed perspective and landed on what he really wanted.
At the peak of the mountain, there was an altar. On the top of that altar was an orb.
According to what he knew, these orbs were the greatest treasures of this world, with the best of them being on the highest mountain peak.
It was said that passing on your comprehension to someone else was impossible, but these orbs had condensed kernels of truth that could open one up to different avenues of thought.
They were known as the Forgetful Orbs.
This sounded like an odd name for a supposedly useful treasure, but its effects were magical.
It did exactly as it said, erasing your memories. But what was special was which memories it erased. It wasn't core memories, but rather the context of the memories. For example, it wouldn't take away a memory of you sliding into bed to sleep, but it would take away how you had gotten there. It wouldn't erase the memory of you walking up the stairs, but the fact you walked up the stairs in the first place to go to your bed to sleep.
What was the purpose of this?
It was quite simple. Comprehension was never about that you knew something, but how you came to know something.
Take Leonel's Scarlet Star Force. Why had it entered the Life State? He had known that it was tied to Destruction ever since he awakened it at 18 years old. Why did it take him till he was slowly nearing his thirties for it to finally click?
It was because he knew it was related to Destruction, but he didn't know what that meant, where the Destruction found its roots, or most accurately... That it was the benevolence of Creation itself that gave way to the path of Destruction.
The context was what was important... no, it was practically everything.
The Forgetful Orbs was a masterful piece of engineering, and an application of Dream Force so far beyond Leonel that even though he felt like his Ability Index should be able to replicate it, he had no idea how... at least not without at least experiencing it for himself first.
By stripping him of the context of his Comprehension, he would enter a state of limbo of sorts. However, because his Force Manipulation would remain intact, he would be able to easily reform the connections.
These connections, though, would be unlikely to be perfect.
It was almost like writing an essay you already had once before. The ideas were already fresh in your mind, and you already somewhat knew how you had structured them the first time, and now you could rewrite it faster and likely even better than the first time.
If you went through this process enough times, your comprehension would inevitably deepen.
There was no better way to check if you had a good grasp on a subject than having to explain it to someone else. And in this context, it would be like you were explaining it to yourself once again.
According to the Life Tablet, this application of Dream Force was so high level that it had never been replicated before. It was probably one of the reasons the God Races insisted on having at least one Pavilion to themselves. If not for how expensive it was to enter True Dream Planes that had Forgetful Orbs that could work on their true powerhouses, they would have probably tried to monopolize them all.
Since they were the de facto leaders of the Dream Pavilions now, they couldn't just use Contribution Points to blind themselves. Obviously, the Contribution Points had to represent something, and they were the ones shelling out the funds. © content.
Leonel shot forward, swimming low through the clouds of Dream Force. He didn't even look toward the battle anymore, quickly closing in on his target.
His control over his own Dream Force was perfect. He was completely undetectable unless one of the two laid their real eyes on him, and which one would be looking at a random point on the ground in the middle of such a heated battle?
He appeared before the orb and no longer bothered to hide himself, mostly because he couldn't. A random point in the ground was one thing, the treasure everyone was after was a completely different one.
He plucked it off the altar before their gazes.