GRMFBS CH196

The Candle Dragon’s power worked wonders; he didn’t awaken, sliding along with gravity to rest sideways onto the bed.

The dreamscape, like a starlit expanse, rotated slowly under the shattered divine authority of the Lord of Information, locking onto the coordinates he pursued. A wispy shroud of dust veiled the stars’ yesterdays; the wheel of time turned languidly, traversing the ephemeral, floating temporal dust to let the silent past flow forth.

The dream captured its first piece of information:

“Madness.”

Going mad is a process.

A world can be rebooted, time can be reset, yet what has transpired will never truly be smoothed away.

Time leaves behind dust, and the soul is the ultimate engraver.

Much like Elder Luan who would dream of the Candle Dragon, imprints of bygone days inevitably surface at certain junctures.

“The time of matter can be reset, but not that of the soul. Memories can be overwritten, yet the soul bears the scars of time.”

“So, if even the soul is shattered…”

Zhan Yan heard a gentle sigh.

It was an ethereal female voice, seeming to hail from the distant past, piercing through the glinting, scattered accumulation of dust. Echoes of yesterday resonated in the present day.

Zhan Yan felt an involuntary urge to trace this voice; he felt as though he had left something behind in the past.

Yet this was not the anchor of his dream tonight.

The starry sky abruptly pulled close, depositing him into a familiar location—the apocalyptic world he had dreamed of several times before.

This time, however, he gained a higher vantage point. It was more akin to an innate “awareness”—no need to look, no need to listen, no need to collate external information; it already flowed naturally within his heart.

Mental power is an appendage of the soul. Some mental powers are ground down to dust through attrition, while others grow increasingly resilient through tempering.

The apocalypse was a minor world subjected to continuous reboots. Clipped into a standalone fragment, it required no past and held no future. Preserving only the timeframe needed for the dungeon, it was tied into an endless looping knot, welcoming waves of coming and going players.

The looping temporal dust accumulated within the soul; the agony of every demise left an indelible mark.

Wound stacked upon wound, eventually forming a thick, calloused cocoon. Until the cycle restarted once more, Infinite’s power could no longer pierce through the dense cocoon to overwrite the memories of old.

Rong Sui began experiencing migraines; she began to dream.

“I had a dream again.” Zhan Yan saw himself standing atop the high tower, gazing outward with an impassive expression.

The base hummed with activity, crowds coming and going, distant yet bursting with vitality.

Rong Sui did not turn around, but she knew Yang Ran had stepped up behind her.

“I dreamed I died. After leading the survivors away, you returned to the base all alone. You found my remains in the rubble.”

Rong Sui’s voice was placid.

Yang Ran nearly shuddered at what she described. It was as if he could already see the scene, as if he could feel himself kneeling in the ruins, cradling her unresponsive body in his arms.

He could almost hear his own despairing, agonized weeping—as though he had already lived through that scene, countless times.

“Don’t do that,” Rong Sui said. Her tone remained calm; only a faint trace of raspiness betrayed the exhaustion wrought by her recurring nightmares.

“If I die, you must lead them away and establish a new base.” She cast her gaze down outside the window.

A strength-type ability user who had just finished his shift returned home carrying rations; his child cheered and ran toward him, scooped up in a single arm as they affectionately pressed their foreheads together.

Their plant-type ability user carried a basket of vegetables, hurriedly boarding a vehicle bound for the research laboratory.

“You must survive, and take the living with you.”

“Sister Sui Sui!” Yang Ran squeezed a feeble cry from his throat, interrupting her almost beyond endurance, “Sister Sui Sui…”

He forced his voice to sound somewhat normal: “Didn’t you tell me about dreams where I died before, too? In those dreams, you’d go seek out the Black Nests all by yourself, you…”

Yang Ran snapped his mouth shut abruptly. He wanted to appear as nonchalant as possible, as if these dreams were illusory and laughable, unworthy of concern. But he found himself incapable of uttering Rong Sui’s eventual fate in those nightmares with any ease.

Rong Sui turned to look at him, her obsidian eyes calm and earnest: “That is different. If you die, I won’t last long on my own; sooner or later, I will be worn down by the continuous attrition of guarding the new base. When that time comes, everyone will die.”

“Therefore, I should eliminate those two Black Nests while I am still in peak condition. As long as they are gone, monsters will cease to be infinite, and humanity might one day clear them all out in the future. That is the best choice.”

“Dreams are just dreams.” Yang Ran trembled beneath her solemn gaze. He didn’t want to hear her discuss these dreams so seriously, as if they were bound to happen in reality.

From Rong Sui’s perspective, Zhan Yan listened to it all.

Yet, in the endings where the Artisan perished, after Rong Sui tore open the first Black Nest, her supernatural power core would teeter on the verge of shattering. Still clinging to life, she would always drag her battered, blood-drenched body toward the second Black Nest.

She knew full well that in that state, she stood no chance of destroying the second Black Nest.

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

She turned away, looking at Yang Ran no longer.

“From this day forth, I will not step foot outside this place again.”

Persistent headaches and nightmares tormented her. Initially, she thought it stemmed from sheer anxiety over the future, but she gradually began to notice how unnatural these dreams were.

Her soul struggled in unseen depths, enduring the friction of raw wounds, refusing to be overwritten.

Her mental power grew erratic; now, she couldn’t even stop psychic storms from involuntarily erupting around her. No one could endure her mental power storms. She would end up killing them.

Others in the base tried to help her, assuming the psychic strain of protecting the entire base had overtaxed her supernatural ability. That was until her unstable emotions triggered a furious psychic tempest during a meeting.

People began to realize that the Lord of Hope Base, their greatest protector, was losing her mind.

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

The stronger her mental power grew, the more excruciating the agony and nightmares became.

Going mad is a process.

A process no one could comprehend.

The high tower was ideal; it possessed the finest psychic filtration and isolation systems. Even if a mental storm occurred, it would not leak outside.

Yang Ran watched helplessly as the door shut in front of him. He began to tremble, his fists clenched so tightly his nails dug into his flesh, his arms taut to the point of pain.

This place was a weapon he had forged for Rong Sui, something he had once proudly shown off to her on a tour. Now, it had become her prison.

Yang Ran began researching psychic-attribute items day and night. As long as he could craft a defense capable of substituting for Sister Sui Sui’s mental barrier, he could relieve her of the burden. She wouldn’t have to endure migraines and nightmares anymore, and she could walk out of the tower!

One cycle, two cycles, three cycles… Ever since that cycle where Rong Sui locked herself inside the tower, Yang Ran failed to produce a psychic-attribute item in every single loop.

Was it because he hadn’t made enough? Was it because his supernatural ability wasn’t strong enough? He needed to craft more things, far, far more, until his ability upgraded, until he could create it…

In a certain cycle, when the others dragged him out of the workshop, Yang Ran listened to outside counsel for the first time; he stopped.

The dust of time gathered within his soul; the scars of reincarnation layered together to form an imprint of change.

Haggard and disheveled, the calm in his bloodshot eyes was terrifying.

He spoke with the strongest psychic-type ability user in the base besides Rong Sui.

“It’s impossible for you to manufacture psychic items,” Xi Man urged bitterly. “Manufacturing is a physical, material ability; it is completely different from the psychic domain. Everyone is training hard, and before long we can take over Rong Sui’s responsibilities. She can rest, and everything will get better. If you drag yourself to ruin, what happens if she recovers only for you to collapse?”

The material, and the psychic. Pollution acted upon both matter and spirit simultaneously.

Yang Ran was a purely material-type ability user. He could craft items to resist material corruption, yet he was completely powerless against the psychic realm.

“I understand,” Yang Ran said.

He began to realize: what tormented Rong Sui was not stress, nor the exertion of wielding her psychic ability, but her psychic ability itself.

Rong Sui’s psychic storms grew increasingly severe, eventually breaching the tower’s perimeter.

The high tower could contain the psychic storms, but it could no longer suppress her psychic pressure.

Her roaring mental power resembled a tsunami, sweeping anyone who dared approach into a tempest of raging waves.

Yang Ran jolted awake in the dead of night. Pulling his clothes around him as he rushed out of his quarters, he was met with the sight of near-corporeal psychic pressure swirling around the high tower.

Snow-white mental power churned like foam upon an ocean, crashing violently toward anyone who dared draw near.

Those within a hundred-meter radius of the tower were forcibly repelled by the immense mental power; immediately after, a psychic storm detonated within that hundred-meter zone.

Xi Man rushed over, attempting to force his way in to assess the situation.

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

Erecting a mental barrier, Xi Man led Yang Ran to within ten meters of the high tower, unable to take another step forward.

Sweat cascaded down his brow like a waterfall: “How can this be? Her mental power is stronger than ever; why would a psychic storm still break out?”

Under normal circumstances, stronger mental power equated to greater stability. Yet Rong Sui’s mental power was undergoing its longest, most catastrophic psychic storm.

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

“No. Any further and we’ll both be torn to shreds by her psychic storm.”

“What happens if her psychic storm keeps going?”

Xi Man said nothing; sorrow over the impending loss of a comrade welled in his eyes.

Pressing behind his ear, mechanical components expanded outward, fitting a psychic dampener over his forehead. He charged toward the tower.

Xi Man failed to catch him: “Are you insane?! You aren’t a psychic-type; leaving my barrier will kill you!”

Yang Ran bolted to the base of the tower; Xi Man gritted his teeth, paving the final stretch of the path for him.

His hand made contact with the outer wall. The high tower opened the nearest passageway for him, concentrating whatever operational psychic filtration systems remained around him as much as possible.

Raging mental power cascaded like an avalanche. Yet Yang Ran knew the psychic storm was trying its utmost to make way for him.

The psychic dampener shielded his willpower from being crushed by the storm, but it could not ward off the physical damage of materialized mental power. Bloodied lacerations tore open across his body as he stumbled all the way into the chamber on the top floor.

The room looked ravaged by a tempest; the psychic dampeners he had left inside were reduced to shards. Rong Sui was curled up on the floor, seemingly having lost consciousness.

Yang Ran dashed forward to cradle her: “Sister Sui Sui!”

Rong Sui opened her eyes, her gaze entirely silver-white.

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

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

She could shed no tears; bright red blood seeped from her silver-white eyes.

Blizzard-like mental power howled within the chamber, ripping through the soft armor on Yang Ran’s body. Rong Sui lay across his lap, blood trickling from her features, blending with the bleeding gashes across Yang Ran’s hands.

“Sister Sui Sui.” Yang Ran’s tears fell drop by drop onto her face. Removing the dampener from his own head, he placed it over Rong Sui’s, “Give up your ability, alright?”

The psychic storm gradually subsided. Rong Sui closed her eyes in exhaustion, shaking her head slowly.

The reboot continued; she remained trapped in a personal hell where she alone stood witness.

…

An ability user dies upon losing their supernatural power core.

Supernatural power core equals supernatural ability. Yet this equation was shattered one day.

A fire-type ability user suffered an energy dissipation due to an excessive supernatural power overload during a patrol mission. Her teammates brought her back. They assumed she wouldn’t survive, as her ability had already dispersed during the burst. But they refused to leave her amidst a swarm of monsters.

Weeping before their critically wounded teammate, they bid her farewell. Then, an hour passed, two hours passed… an entire afternoon passed.

The fire-type ability user’s supernatural power had completely drained away. Trembling, she raised a hand: “I think… I might still be saved.”

She hadn’t died. Her ability was gone, but her supernatural power core remained—riddled with fractures, yet unbroken. Though she had lost her ability, she could still live on.

Yang Ran sought her out, studied her condition, and began dedicating himself to finding similar cases.

An ability and its supernatural power core could indeed be separated; as long as the core remained—even if battered and fractured—the ability user could survive.

Yang Ran devised a mad scheme.

Sister Sui Sui was unwilling to give up her ability. But she could take his.

Yet a supernatural power core was an amalgam of matter and spirit. He could not extract the ability from the core unless assisted by a power combining both elements.

He made use of an Infinite item obtained from players.

The curse of Infinite wound along his supernatural power core, latching onto his soul.

This was the very confidence Infinite held when seeking out Rong Sui for a transaction.

By the coastline, “Tequila” looked up at the grayish-blue halo in the sky—a projection of another world.

Turning around, he smiled toward Zhan Suiru: “Half a dead world in exchange for a living person. A very fair trade, wouldn’t you say?”