Visdre took out his phone and set up an alarm with an interval of 10 minutes. He then skipped sleep for a night and went to bed the next day.
At first... he did experience the gap of consciousness that one experiences in sleep. Right as he was about to fall into dreams. He would shut down ECHO. Upon waking up from the alarm. He would turn it on.
After 72 recursions of this. He noticed that as soon as he closed his eyes. He would immediately enter the white room.
He was dreaming in almost an instant.
Now he needed to construct a 'key'. This was the password to enter his 'source castle'. But he hadn't yet created either the key or the castle.
The step told him to make a 'declaration' that he would find materials in his sleep to build these. So he did as he was told.
"I will find materials!"
He then went to sleep.
He was supposed to spend his time 'mining' for resources within his dreams. But he ran into a problem instantly.
He was still trapped in the white room by himself.
"It said to clear your sea of consciousness..."
He sat down on the floor and meditated.
The chess board vanished.
It was empty.
He decided to do something different from the book. He turned on ECHO while dreaming...
[ECHO]: Initializing...
He didn't notice anything abnormal. He woke up and continued with his life. But the next time he slept...
He experienced something different from the white room! This was a different space. It wasn't his dream at all.
He knew this precisely because he always had the same dream.
He was in a weird state. He couldn't really think...
But he 'felt' it.
He felt ECHO still running.
"The technique works!"
This thought woke him up instantly.
"My consciousness... it is becoming eternal."
"But I haven't built a 'source castle' or 'key'..."
Visdre didn't really know what to visualize here. But the fact that he was 'aware' of the nothingness in sleep made him believe in this technique.
He moved on to the next chapter.
"It isn't a step?"
The next chapter was just:
KEY
It was quite short. But Visdre was deeply surprised.
"60,000 hours!?"
"That's... ridiculous..."
"But..."
Visdre remembered the feeling he got in the nothingness. This technique...
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"Alright! I'll rotate it for 60,000 hours! But what exactly am I rotating?"
Visdre knew that he was supposed to rotate a 'key'.
"I see..."
He opened up his command prompt and entered a line from the chapter to see what would happen.
ECHO.programs.key.rotate();
He was blinded by white light. It was an incomprehensible image.
"So beautiful..."
What he saw was five fragments. They were rotating like gears in clockwork. The rotation took a single millisecond.
Right after it was completed.
He accidentally imitated the technique and rotated it himself.
He found himself in the white room!
"Impossible!? Wasn't I just awake?"
"Don't tell me... I already have a source castle?"
"It is this space?"
"It said I would be constructing a place with rules that benefit me massively... a place where I am supposed to be god. But I don't control anything in this room."
Visdre casually walked to the podium in the center of the room. As he reached for the book, it started to flip open automatically.
"That's new..."
[ECHO]: Connection established with legacy
[ECHO]: "Path of Somnus"
[ECHO]: Reviving...
"Eurgh..."
Visdre had never harmed himself in his dream before. He had never felt this much pain while dreaming. He had a splitting headache.
[ECHO]: Error... deviation from technique.
[ECHO]: Transforming...
[ECHO]: Create loop? Y/N
"Loop?"
[ECHO]: SetInterval(function(){
ECHO.programs.key.rotate();
}, 2500);
[ECHO]: Loop successful!
Visdre felt something in his sea of consciousness 'beating' like a heart. He had never really messed with his perception of reality. But now it was as if he had another eye.
Another 'thread'.
[ECHO]: Eternal thread constructed...
Visdre felt something automatically growing in his sea of consciousness.
[ECHO]: Creating 'key'
[ECHO]; Stage 1 - 100%
Visdre saw what he had seen when he typed the rotate function in his command prompt.
[ECHO]: Stage 2 - 0%
Visdre could see ECHO over his vision. But he could also hear it. As well as 'feel' it.
[ECHO]: Stage 2 - 1%
"What is a stage? What is happening?"
Visdre sat down in the white room and meditated for 24 hours
[ECHO]: Stage 2 - 100%
"How do I leave?"
He was used to waking up. This was the longest he had ever stayed within this white room.
"Maybe if I manually rotate the key?"
He focused on the visualization technique.
It stopped rotating and growing.
[ECHO]: Manual Mode!
[ECHO]: Technique has collapsed!
[ECHO]: Restarting...
He saw the fragments of the technique drift off beyond him like a planet losing its orbit.
But in the next moment... he was awake!
He checked the time.
"I was asleep for 24 hours!? What the hell..."
Visdre went to the bathroom and freshened up a little bit.
Visdre still remembered what rotating the key looked like before it collapsed. So he manually rotated it and within a millisecond. He was back in the white room.
He rotated it again and woke up.
"It said manual mode..."
"ECHO! Automatic mode!"
[ECHO]: Automatic Mode...
[ECHO]: Loop successful!
[ECHO]: Restarting visualization technique!
[ECHO]: Stage 1 - 70%
Visdre saw his imitation of the technique in his sea of consciousness rotating.
[ECHO]: Stage 2 - 1%
Upon completing stage 1. It started stage 2.
"The technique automatically grows?"
Visdre saw stage 1 grow. But it was unfathomable, it was as if it was growing in a direction that didn't exist. As if there was a higher dimension that couldn't be visualized.
He tried focusing on the weird fractal and found himself sucked in.
It was like a new layer had been added to his sea of consciousness. A special 'switch'.
"What happens if I allow it to keep growing?"
Visdre let it run for a week. He no longer messed with the technique or rotated it himself. He let it run in the background of his mind as he did other things. He continued to work and live life.
He avoided using the technique at all manually as his body would lose consciousness in an instant and he would collapse to the ground. He would instead find himself in the white room until he rotated the key manually again.
A week later.
[ECHO]: Stage 7 - 86%
"It seems every 24 hours... it moves up a stage."
"Wait... the 60,000 hours! Does this count?"
A month later...
[ECHO]: Stage 37 - 97%
"It seems to be quite consistent..."