Chapter 183 - Rewards And Conspiracies
The moment he engaged his thought space, he noticed an abnormality.
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Were my insights always this small?
He shook his head. There was no way he misremembered the proportions of his own thought space. To get to the bottom of this, he launched a full analysis inside himself.
He first focused on the upper-north-western octant. The islands that very recently realigned and spanned the whole of this octant had grown smaller.
No, that's not it. He still had the same breadth of knowledge of structures that he did before engaging with the glyphs. If they contained the same amount of insights, how could they have grown smaller?
Then, that meant its inverse had to be true—that the octant itself was the one that expanded, not his insights, which changed.
No…no. Not just the octant, he facepalmed for missing the obvious until now.
My whole thought space expanded!?
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After perusing through the rest of the octants and coming to the same conclusion, he sat there in silence, his mouth agape.
He blinked numbly as more questions than answers assaulted his mind. Just what the fuck happened? What exactly was that entity he observed there? And why did observing it expand his thought space?
Yet, before all that, he had an even more pressing question. Does this change when I can shade my perception? Because it would suck if he had to saturate the octant with new structural insights once again before he could attempt to shade his perception.
So, he closed his eyes and explored his thought space, getting in tune with his inner self.
In a while, he had an answer.
No…?
Heck, he realized he was closer than ever to being able to legitimately shade his perception with a vision of a different fundamental.
Yesterday's fights had improved his insights on the structure by leaps and bounds, filling a big chunk of the small gaps in his structural understanding.
Not completely, but he was very close to reaching the threshold.
However, when he spent some time thinking it through, he nodded to himself. It makes sense. The alignment of my personal insights toward my shaded vision has nothing to do with the maximum capacity of my head.
Essentially, observing that…thing, that objective entity had expanded the maximum capacity of his thought space by a significant margin.
However, he soon narrowed his eyes as he thought of an even more fundamental answer to what had transpired.
My shackles of subjectivity have unraveled further. That's what observing objectivity did to him last time.
He used to think that he'd loosened them to the very limit, but he was clearly wrong. And now that he thought about it, it also made sense.
During his enlightenment, a single glance at that entity had shattered his very mind, whereas this time, he'd managed half an instant more than that.
So, until he could stare at such beings indefinitely, had he really broken the shackles of subjectivity?
On the other hand, it was interesting that the unraveling of these shackles resulted in the expansion of his thought space. In simpler words, his very brain had grown—now able to understand and comprehend higher concepts.
In a while, he shook his head as an excited gleam crossed his mind. So, observing objectivity can be greatly beneficial to me. Can I do it again?
However, he'd only grabbed the pen when he noticed a problem. There weren't enough of those glowing glyphs left in the air. He looked around himself and couldn't find more than a dozen or so of them.
This…
Well, that sucked. Does that mean that the echoes aren't permanent?
He tapped the pen on the notepad repeatedly and concluded that might very well be the case. From his understanding, the echoes were essentially the events that Lady Sylphina's weft observed.
By collapsing these echoes against his own viewpoint, he made the representation of these echoes incompatible with the weft, which then fizzled away and returned to Everflux once he stopped observing them.
But then why was I able to land on some echoes again and again when I was experimenting in the Nexus?
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After another few minutes of random conjectures and baseless assumptions, he had an idea.
Hmm, could it be because I wasn't able to fully observe those echoes? Everything he tested in Nexus was limited to a few words of conversation or texts that could have been paragraphs long in truth. But he'd only managed to parse a mere few words from them.
That's to say, if I fully observed them, I wouldn't be able to land on them another time.
That was good to know. He couldn't confirm it just yet, but he was quite confident in this theory. Such was the strength of a fundamentalist who understood the theory of foundational concepts.
He could extrapolate a lot based on his existing knowledge and even estimate just how likely it was to be true. Unless he was missing some ground-shattering key insight, he believed this had to be the case.
Well, no matter, he shrugged. He'd already gotten more than enough out of this whole ordeal, and while he was willing to go through that process again for the sake of benefits, the after-effects that came with it weren't appealing.
He'd now learned that losing one's sense of self as an observer was far more terrifying than if he was just a normal human. It was like his whole consciousness was in flux—always changing and unstable. Was this how Lady Sylphina felt when she wasn't being observed by anyone?
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"…"
On second thought, I'd like some time before I would want to try that again.
After a while, he shook his head as a smile played on his lips. He got up and began pacing around the room, analyzing the whole process from start to finish, dissecting just how he'd managed this unexpected windfall.
After all, he knew this was no easy feat. Back in the Nexus, he'd concluded that half the observers there had found their own lucky encounters that allowed them similar experiences, which loosened the shackles of their subjectivity.
He quickly realized how this was essentially a tonne of coincidences working in his favor.
The key point was the cage's resonance with the convergence note, which was only possible because this Archivist had explored wherever Midra's cage was located in reality.
Not just that, this Archivist went so far as to incorporate what they observed there onto the note while also adding some history as a bonus.
Just who is this Archivist?
First, he walked over to his notepad and wrote down the latest insights from memory. Once done, he put them side by side next to the previous set and compared them.
As he examined the involvement of this Archivist and the way they operated, he noticed a few patterns.
This person used 'dear readers' multiple times in these insights. That suggested the archivist knew someone would be reading this.
For a second, he almost wondered if this Archivist somehow predicted that readers could spy on these notes as echoes, but he soon found a better explanation.
It's possible the Archivist had a dedicated set of readers to whom he introduced all these topics and places? And were the publicly available insights the ones that managed to trickle out of that group?
Before long, a crazy narrative formed in his mind.
What if this person was actually an entertainer who went to myriads of dangerous places that his readers demanded of him?
Something like a newspaper but only for observers that could handle a scenery like the one from before without losing control.
Vern's facial muscles twitched as he took this absurd theory and ran with it. Did they do it for money like some bounty hunter? Or maybe they are an altruist leader of some organization and wanted to skill up their juniors?
"Hah," he couldn't help but chuckle as his imagination filled the gaps with ridiculous ideas.
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Anyways…in all seriousness, it could very well be related to their viewpoint. What if this was the method they used to advance on their path? By archiving the wonders of this universe, they could very well be becoming more and more powerful.
To immense disappointment, he realized that the last possibility made the most sense.
In a bit, he got up and shrugged. It doesn't matter why they do it, and I can't really be sure without additional information. He could maybe ask Irene to see if there was some pattern in the appearance of these insights.
Because if there was…Hehe, I can benefit a lot!
It wasn't just about the chance to further unravel his shackles of subjectivity. He cared just as much, if not more, about learning this world's history. After all, knowledge really was power. The world ran on insights, and the more he knew, the farther and deeper he could see than others.
Tucking the pen in the binding, he flipped the notepad close. He had to finish another task before he could go and play adult for the day. He couldn't just sit here and spend all day geeking over these mysteries.
The most important task at hand was imprinting Instability Inducement in his perception. While he could use it to advance to the second shade, he had no plans of going down that path. He wasn't an 'Entropy Manipulator'—as the Shepherd Captain had dubbed it, and had no plans of sticking to this sequence all the way.
He just wanted to have full control over this vision. Currently, he destabilized targets using the help of the Third Rune. While it probably wouldn't grow in power or anything after it was migrated to his own thought space, he would at least have peace of mind.
Until now, he'd been delaying this for one reason or the other, but he was out of excuses now.
This thought gave him a pause, and he grew perplexed. Actually, why did I wait until now to do this?
He had the first-hand experience of using this Vision by a proxy. There literally was no safer vision for him to imprint in his perception than this one.
Then, why?
Was it the lack of time?
He pondered seriously and found it to be untrue. That can't be right. I had so many free nights since I shaded my perception in the Steamscript relay station.
Then, did I just procrastinate?
That was even harder to believe. While he was indeed lazy at times, he wasn't one to intentionally delay matters of import.
He rested his head in his hand and stressed his memories.
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Seconds turned into minutes, but he didn't come up with an answer.
His expression grew heavy, and he opened his notepad once again, going through the notes of each day meticulously.
He found no particular reason for this delay.
Just…why?
He could discount himself for not trying it before he met Irene, as she was the one who explained the basics of Observation to him, but since then, he had quite a lot of chances to do so. Especially when it wasn't even a time-consuming task.
Not when he was already so proficient in using that vision.
Then why? Why did I never actually go through with it?
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The silence began to eat at him, and it felt like shadows in the room were inching towards him.
He tried to find a fundamental reasoning behind it, but there was nothing there. He was always adamant about not relying on Third Rune unless necessary because why would an Elden One with a nigh-infinite look at him as anything but an annoying ant?
He didn't want to become an ant that was crushed because it overreached. Then why did he not take such a simple step to solve a major dependency on an Elden One's rune until now?
He just couldn't reconcile such a behavior with his usual self.
This is wrong.
Something is wrong.
Was it Hensen? Did he do something to me beyond time to ensure I didn't actively discard the rune?
Maybe it was some kind of mental suggestion?
That was a plausible theory, except for one problem. Hensen's visions and viewpoint had nothing to do with cognition fundamental. He was most probably an Observer specializing in structure just like himself.
However, he soon found more holes in his own argument. He still managed to plant a memory in my mind that I haven't managed to decode until now. If he could do that, who was to say he couldn't have incepted a mental suggestion?
"…"
There were so many possibilities that it was hard to be sure. He wondered if it was possible to divine this but soon rejected the notion due to lack of any concrete details. On top of that, he wasn't sure if divining something of this nature could be risky, unlike the echoes.
Well, if not Hensen, he only saw one other possibility.
The Third Rune itself. Maybe it had an effect that made the user want to rely on it so it could become deeply embedded into their singularity? Who knew if that was a trap in the long term?
Either way, it was terrifying that something so subtle had been influencing his decisions all this while.
He wiped the cold sweat pooling on his forehead and muttered, "I need to look for ways to get this rune out of my head."
Yes, it could be a great tool of experimentation if wielded properly, but it would be in his best interest to prepare a backup solution that would allow him to chuck the thing away if it really turned out to be as insidious as he imagined.
He knew it wasn't something he could figure out on a whim. So, to ensure he didn't 'procrastinate' in looking for ways to rid himself of it, he jotted down the whole event, his conjectures, and ideas on what to do in the notepad on many dates.
Once done, he closed it for good and rested his palm on the cage. There was nothing else to do. Reacting to it with extreme paranoia or carelessness wasn't healthy. So, he chose to opt for a balance.
Let's get this over with before I find myself distracted by something else once again. Or I would conveniently forget to imprint the vision another time.