GRMFBS CH196

The power of the Candle Dragon worked well. He didn’t wake up, instead slowly sliding sideways under the pull of gravity until he was lying on the bed.

The dreamscape was like a starry sky, slowly rotating under the Information Master’s fragmented divine power, locating the place he sought. Thin dust shrouded the stars of the past. The wheel of time slowly turned, passing through the fine, ethereal dust of time, flowing out with the silent past.

The dream captured the first piece of information:

“Madness.”

Going mad is a process.

The world could be rebooted, time could be reset, yet things that had happened were not erased.

Time leaves behind dust; the soul is the best inscriber.

Like Elder Luan, who would dream of the Candle Dragon, traces of the old days would always surface at certain moments.

“Material time can be reset, but the soul cannot. Memories will be overwritten, but the soul possesses the traces of time.”

“So, if even the soul is shattered…”

Zhan Yan heard a soft sigh.

It was an ethereal female voice, seeming to come from the distant past, passing through the fine, shimmering accumulated dust. The voice of old days echoed in the present.

Zhan Yan couldn’t help but want to follow this voice to search. He felt as if he had left something behind in the past.

But this wasn’t the destination of his dream today.

The starry sky suddenly pulled closer, and he was placed in a familiar location—the apocalyptic world he had dreamed of several times before.

But this time he gained a higher perspective. It was more like a “perception”; no need to look, no need to listen, no need to organize external information—it already flowed into his heart.

Mental power is an appendage of the soul. Some mental power is worn away during honing, while some becomes increasingly tough.

The apocalypse is a small world constantly being rebooted. It is cut into a fragment, needing no past, having no future. It only retains the time period required for the instance, tied into a constantly looping knot, welcoming players who come and go.

The dust of looping time accumulates in the soul. The pain of every death leaves a mark.

Layer upon layer of wounds accumulate into a thick callus. Until the cycle begins again, and the power of Infinity can no longer penetrate the thick callus to overwrite the memories of the old days.

Rong Sui began to have headaches, began to dream.

“I dreamed again.” Zhan Yan saw himself standing on a high tower, looking calmly outside.

The base was operating, people flowing back and forth, distant yet full of vitality.

Rong Sui didn’t turn back, but she knew Yang Ran had walked up behind her.

“I dreamed that I died. After you left with the survivors, you returned to the base alone. You found my remains in the ruins.”

Rong Sui’s voice was calm.

Yang Ran almost trembled at what she described. He seemed to have already seen that scene, as if he could feel himself kneeling in the ruins, holding her body that would never respond again.

He seemed to hear his own desperate, painful whimpers, as if he had already experienced that scene countless times.

“Don’t do that,” Rong Sui said. Her voice remained calm, only a hidden trace of hoarseness revealing the exhaustion of being tormented by nightmares.

“If I die, you must take them and leave, establish a new base.” She lowered her head to look out the window.

A strength-type ability user who had just finished his shift carried food back home. His child cheered and ran towards him, picked up by him with one hand. They affectionately pressed their foreheads together.

Their plant-type ability user carried a basket of vegetables on his back, hurriedly boarding the vehicle heading to the research lab.

“You must live, take those who are still alive with you.”

“Sister Sui Sui!” A weak whimper squeezed out of Yang Ran’s throat, interrupting her almost unbearably. “Sister Sui Sui…”

He forced his voice to sound somewhat normal: “Didn’t you also talk about dreams where I died before? You would go find the Black Nest alone in those dreams, you…”

Yang Ran’s mouth abruptly shut tight. He wanted to act as relaxed as possible, as if these dreams were illusory and laughable, not worth caring about. But he found he couldn’t easily speak of Rong Sui’s ending in those dreams.

Rong Sui turned to look at him, her pitch-black eyes calm and serious. “That’s different. If you die, I won’t be able to hold on for too long by myself. Sooner or later, I’ll be dragged down by the continuous consumption of guarding the new base. By then, everyone will die.”

“So I should go solve those two Black Nests when I’m in my best condition. As long as they’re gone and the monsters are no longer endless, it’s possible for people to clear out all the monsters one day in the future. This is the best choice.”

“Dreams are just dreams.” Yang Ran trembled under her serious gaze. He didn’t want to hear her discuss these dreams so seriously, as if they would actually happen.

Zhan Yan listened to all this from Rong Sui’s perspective.

However, in those endings where the craftsmen died, after Rong Sui tore open the first Black Nest, her ability core would be on the verge of shattering. She was still alive, but she would always drag her scarred body towards the second Black Nest.

She knew clearly that in this state, she couldn’t possibly kill the second Black Nest.

“Go.” Rong Sui’s mental power fluctuated unstably.

She turned away, no longer looking at Yang Ran.

“From today on, I won’t leave here again.”

Continuous headaches and nightmares tormented her. At first, she thought it was because she worried too much about the future, but later she began to discover the unusual nature of these dreams.

The soul struggled in unseen places, enduring the friction of wounds, refusing to be overwritten.

Her mental power began to become unstable, now even uncontrollably generating mental storms around her. No one could withstand her mental storm. She would kill them.

Others in the base tried to help her. They thought it was because the pressure on her ability from guarding the entire base was too great. Until her unstable emotions caused a furious mental storm during a meeting.

People began to realize that the Lord of Hope Base, their greatest protector, was going mad.

Rong Sui knew it wasn’t a matter of pressure.

The stronger her mental power, the more intense the pain and nightmares.

Going mad is a process.

A process no one can understand.

The high tower is good; it has the best mental power filtering and blocking systems. Even if a mental storm occurs, it won’t transmit outside.

Yang Ran watched helplessly as the door closed in front of him. He began to shake, his hands gripping each other tightly, nails digging into flesh, arms tense to the point of pain.

This place was the weapon he built for Rong Sui. He had once proudly taken her on a tour, showing it off to her. Now, it had become her prison.

Yang Ran began researching mental-type items day and night. As long as he could create a protection that could replace Sister Sui Sui’s mental barrier, he could free her from the pressure! She wouldn’t have to endure headaches and nightmares anymore, and she could walk out of the high tower!

One cycle, two cycles, three cycles… Ever since the cycle where Rong Sui locked herself in the high tower began, Yang Ran failed to research mental-type items in every cycle.

Was it because he didn’t do enough? Was it because his ability wasn’t strong enough? He needed to make more things, more and more, until his ability upgraded, until he could create it…

In a certain cycle, when others dragged him out of his workshop, Yang Ran listened to others’ persuasion for the first time. He stopped.

The dust of time accumulated in his soul; the scars of reincarnation stacked up into marks of change.

He was haggard, clothes disheveled, a pair of bloodshot eyes calm to a frightening degree.

He talked with Xi Man, the strongest mental-type ability user in the base besides Rong Sui.

“You can’t create mental-type items,” Xi Man tried hard to persuade him. “Crafting is a material ability, completely different from the mental. Everyone is working hard to train; it won’t be long before we can take over Rong Sui’s responsibilities. She can rest, everything will get better. If you drag yourself down, what if she gets better and you collapse?”

Material, and mental. Pollution affects both material and mental simultaneously.

Yang Ran was a purely material-type ability user. He could create props to resist material pollution, but he had absolutely no way to deal with the mental.

“I understand,” Yang Ran said.

He began to understand. What tormented Rong Sui wasn’t pressure, wasn’t the pressure of her using her mental ability, but her mental ability itself.

Rong Sui’s mental storm symptoms became increasingly severe, even starting to break through outside the high tower.

The high tower blocked the mental storm, but it could no longer block her mental pressure.

Roaring mental power was like a tsunami, dragging anyone who dared approach into the violent wind and waves.

Yang Ran woke up with a start late one night. After he hurriedly ran out of his residence with clothes draped over him, he saw mental pressure rolling up like a substance outside the high tower.

Snow-white mental power was like foam on the sea, roaring and slapping at anyone who dared approach.

People originally within a hundred meters of the high tower were forcibly pushed out by the powerful mental force. Immediately after, a mental storm began to erupt within that hundred-meter range.

Xi Man hurried over, wanting to force his way in to check the situation.

Yang Ran grabbed him: “Take me in. I built the high tower.”

Xi Man opened a mental barrier and took Yang Ran to ten meters outside the high tower, unable to advance another step.

Beads of sweat poured down his forehead: “How can this be? Her mental power is stronger than before; why is a mental storm still happening?”

Normally, the stronger the mind, the more stable it is. Yet Rong Sui’s mental power was undergoing the longest and most severe mental storm.

“Can we go any further?” Yang Ran asked.

“No, any further and we’ll both be torn apart by her mental storm.”

“What happens if her mental storm continues?”

Xi Man didn’t speak, his eyes flowing with the sorrow of impending loss of a companion.

Yang Ran pressed behind his own ear. A mechanical structure extended from behind his ear, placing a mental power blocker on his forehead. He charged towards the high tower.

Xi Man didn’t catch him: “Are you crazy? You’re not a mental type at all; leaving my mental barrier means death!”

Yang Ran rushed to the front of the high tower. Xi Man gritted his teeth and opened the way for him for the last stretch.

His hand touched the tower wall. The high tower opened the nearest passage for him, concentrating the mental power filtering system that could still be mobilized around him as much as possible.

Violent mental power poured down like an avalanche. But Yang Ran knew the mental storm was trying its best to make way for him.

The mental power blocker protected his will from being washed away by the mental storm, but it couldn’t protect against the damage of materialized mental power. Bloody gashes bloomed on his body as he stumbled and crashed his way to the room on the highest floor.

The room looked like it had been baptized by a storm. The mental blocker he left inside the tower was reduced to fragments. Rong Sui was curled up on the ground, seemingly having lost consciousness.

Yang Ran rushed over and picked her up: “Sister Sui Sui!”

Rong Sui opened her eyes; both eyes were a silvery white.

She grabbed Yang Ran’s arm, her voice hoarse: “There is no ending.”

“Our world is a game. There is no ending.”

She couldn’t shed tears; bright red blood overflowed from her silvery-white eyes.

Blizzard-like mental power howled inside the room. The soft armor on Yang Ran’s body was cut open. Rong Sui lay on his lap, blood flowing from her facial features, merging with the bleeding cuts on Yang Ran’s hands.

“Sister Sui Sui.” Yang Ran’s tears fell drop by drop onto her face. He took the blocker off his own head and put it on Rong Sui’s head. “Give up your ability, okay?”

The mental power storm slowly converged and subsided. Rong Sui closed her eyes wearily and slowly shook her head.

The reboot was still continuing; she was in a hell with only herself.

…

Ability users die if they lose their ability core.

Ability core equals ability. But this equation was broken one day.

A fire-type ability user began to leak ability power due to excessive outburst during a patrol mission. Her teammates brought her back. They thought she wouldn’t survive because her ability had already dissipated in the outburst. But they didn’t want to leave her in a pile of monsters.

They wept and said goodbye to their critically injured teammate. Then, an hour passed, two hours passed… an afternoon passed.

The fire-type ability user’s ability had completely dissipated. She tremblingly raised her hand: “I think I can still be saved.”

She didn’t die. Her ability was gone, but her ability core was still there, covered in cracks but not shattered. Although she lost her ability, she could live.

Yang Ran found her, studied her condition, and began to focus on finding similar cases.

Abilities and ability cores can be separated. As long as the ability core is still there, even if shattered, the ability user can survive.

Yang Ran had a crazy plan.

Sister Sui Sui wasn’t willing to give up her ability. She could use his ability.

But the ability core is a mixture of material and mental. He couldn’t extract the ability from the core unless assisted by a power that mixed both.

He used an item of Infinity obtained from players.

The curse of Infinity followed his ability core and entangled his soul.

This was the confidence Infinity had to seek a deal with Rong Sui.

By the coast, “Tequila” looked up at the gray-blue halo in the sky. That was the projection of another world.

He turned his head and smiled at Zhan Suiru: “Half a dead world in exchange for a living person. Very fair, right?”

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