"Distort is by far my most powerful ability. But I feel as if I am losing myself from using it. The path forward has been warped. I don't even remember the technique that allowed me to get this far."

Atesh thought about this issue.

"There has to be some logic behind what memories I lose... right?"

Atesh closed his eyes and focused on his sea of consciousness. There he saw two gateways.

Water dimension

Fire dimension

He recalled his memories and looked for a useless memory to test.

"My first death. When the warehouse caught on fire and I tried to save the person under the rubble."

[ECHO] Dream Force: 0%

"Well... that didn't work." Atesh tried to 'sacrifice' that memory to restore his dream force. But not only did he not lose that memory. His dream force didn't even fluctuate.

"What is the principal behind this force?"

Sovereign Soul

Somnus started to directly inspect his soul. He saw within it his connection to two dimensions. But he saw no traces of distort on his soul.

He felt he could directly manipulate the energy from the water, and fire dimension.

"So elusive..."

"There are no traces of it at all."

Atesh was surprised.

"Something deeper then soul..."

Distort

Atesh held out his hands manifesting that the scroll of his timeline. It started to manifest and time seemed to freeze. But the next second, time seemed to resume.

The timeline shattered!

"I can't use distort without dream force?"

Atesh decided that he needed to figure out how this ability worked.

Atesh's sea of consciousness had fully integrated with the water and fire seeds. While they were no longer a part of him. It had changed his foundation.

His path of a wizard was cut off. He couldn't manipulate his sea of consciousness in the way a wizard could. He would need to become a monarch.

For a decade...

He sat alone in the wizard tower.

This decade wasn't without benefits

[ECHO]: Calculating based on vitality...

[ECHO]: 3339 years old!

"It has been about a decade since I've started this project."

What project had he been working on? Atesh had remembered a technique. This wasn't some supernatural technique or anything. It was an ordinary memory technique from universe F555.

This decade he had constructed a memory palace. This had nothing to do with his powers or hidden existence. It was constructed in such a way that all his memories were stored as items, objects, and parts of it.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

That wasn't all however. He had designed the blueprint for his spiritual body.

Somnus essentially created a mega-structure that held his memories and personality.

Atesh's storage ring had been destroyed when he was consumed by Agar's devour. But this tower was like an academy. All sorts of resources were found in it.

Atesh directly copied his mental palace into a knowledge orb.

He had created an internal information network.

"Let the test begin!" Atesh was a little nervous. He planned on destroying the mental palace he had spent a decade constructing. It had all his memories within.

But it wasn't all he could recall.

He had memories of the time he constructed this palace. It was like a loop of information. So he didn't plan on losing anymore core memories. Instead he would focus on losing the memories of him meditating everyday searching his memories and creating that mega mental structure.

Soon, he lost all memories related to this structure. The palace itself vanished from his mind. He had no memories related to it at all.

"Another part of me lost..."

Somnus wished the network of this wizard tower was still intact. Perhaps he could've used that instead of a knowledge orb.

[ECHO]: Dream Force: 1%

Somnus had found a loophole. It just took a lot of effort to abuse. He couldn't remember his plan to cheat the memory stealing mechanism of Distort.

But he found that there was a knowledge orb in his hand.

"What was this for again?"

He probed it with his soul and a flood of information entered his mind. There was some information entropy.

[ECHO]: Decrypting Packet: 97% stability

That's right. Somnus had created a packet of information and stored it in a knowledge orb. So while he would forget about this method to gain dream force. His mental palace would be restored from the knowledge orb after he had destroyed the memories.

But the transfer of information to a knowledge orb and back into his mind wasn't perfect. It was like lining up a group of people and telling them a sentence.

You then had them form a circle and tell the person to their side the sentence in a whisper so that only they heard it.

By the time you completed a full loop. The sentence would have become unrecognizable.

Somnus started with 100% of the information when he inputted it into the orb. But he then lost all memories related to this. But the instructions for his plan was also a part of the knowledge orb.

But after just one attempt. It had dropped by 3% in stability. This meant 3% of the memories were lost. This was of course just the structure and memories of him building the structure. While he also lost all his memories. It was only related to this method.

Even though he had forgotten the steps to this method. He was reminded through the knowledge orb.

"A shame I didn't store my inheritance in a knowledge orb before developing the distort skill..."

Somnus first stored the structure and instructions in the orb again.

"Wait... If I had higher quality orbs and the information wasn't cleared after transfer. Couldn't I maintain 100% information stability?"

Unfortunately. This tower, while developed by a rank 4 magus. It only had materials suitable for an official one and acolytes. The orbs were consumables in order for their knowledge to not be spread freely.

After storing the information in the orb. Somnus tried to sacrifice his knowledge again.

[ECHO]: Dream Force: 1%

"It didn't work..."

"I see. I need the information to ferment in my mind."

Somnus attempted to farm dream force everyday for another decade.

It wasn't until he was 3,349. That he felt all knowledge of this method vanish from his mind.

[ECHO]: Dream Force: 2%

[ECHO]: Decrypting Packet: 92% stability

"What was I doing?"

He noticed he was holding a orb. He probed it and absorbed the information.

The structure in his mind was twisted slightly. Some of the memories stored were unrecognizable.

"This method requires letting the information integrate with my existence for a decade."

10 years later...

[ECHO]: Dream Force: 3%

[ECHO]: Decrypting Packet: 85% stability

10 years later...

[ECHO]: Dream Force: 4%

[ECHO]: Decrypting Packet: 80% stability

"The stability seems to have some variance in terms of loss."

10 years later...

[ECHO]: Dream Force: 5%

[ECHO]: Decrypting Packet: 74% stability

"How old am I?"

[ECHO]: Calculating based on vitality...

[ECHO]: 3379 years old!

The orb turned to powder as he absorbed the mental palace and the farming method for dream force.

"Well... I suppose it wasn't meant to handle such a large amount of information so many times."

"Perhaps it is almost time to fly down to the world again."

"If this continues... I'll have exhausted my structure before reaching full capacity of dream force."

"I need an orb that isn't simply copy and paste. But a permanent information library."