Chapter 343 - 252: The Church Is in for Big Trouble

Chapter 343: Chapter 252: The Church Is in for Big Trouble

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Zog didn’t know what state the Priest’s physical body was in, but he was sure it wasn’t good.

Gone was the arrogant, self-important air he had while preaching his doctrine. Now he was just lying on the ground, drooling and babbling.

It looked like he’d be drooling even if he were cured.

The entire Consciousness Space began to collapse. The sky shattered into countless fragments, revealing the true nature of the space behind it.

There was nothing.

It was a consistently strange feeling.

Zog couldn’t think of how to describe it.

It wasn’t simply an endless black.

If he had to describe it, it was somewhat similar to the feeling of "seeing" with your eyes closed.

Just nothingness. Pure void.

The creations on the ground could no longer maintain their stability, flickering erratically like a game with a texture bug.

Although Zog’s business now relied heavily on his pixel-perfect memory, this ability more often than not caused him trouble.

He could forget neither good memories nor painful ones, and there was a sea of useless information. The internet was full of useless information, and he remembered every bit of it, even things he just scrolled past while browsing.

Clearly, this volume of content was beyond what a normal person could handle.

While Zog’s memories were destroying the Priest’s mind, many of the Priest’s memories also entered Zog’s.

The volume of content was minuscule to him.

However, it was hard to say whether the Priest was already mad or if Zog had influenced him. These memory fragments were filled with many twisted, insane snippets.

And it seemed the Priest had done his fair share of consciousness-capturing. In the memory fragments, his self-perception jumped between being a Priest, a nasty bully of a child, a middle-aged woman, and a dog.

’He really plays for high stakes.’

Zog sifted through this stuff, trying to find something useful.

He discovered that the ultimate goal of the Soul Ascenders was not just to build a super-consciousness collective.

It was for all intelligent life to leave their physical bodies and live in the omnipotent Consciousness Space, returning to the collective after death.

Their physical bodies, meanwhile, would be cared for by various machines controlled by the collective consciousness that had become a "god."

From then on, no intelligent being would ever have to return to reality, instead spending their entire lives in a beautiful, fabricated space.

’I know this one,’ Zog thought. ’It’s The Matrix.’

In the end, he didn’t find anything else useful before the space completely disintegrated.

When he opened his eyes again, he was met with the sight of the Magical Device containing the Tiefling.

His consciousness had returned.

He was surrounded by a large number of Magic Runes emitting powerful Magic Power, likely set up by Furin.

"Furin?" Zog called out, adding a joke. "These Runes won’t blow me to smithereens if I move, will they?"

"Are you okay?"

Furin rushed to Zog’s side, her eyes filled with concern as she looked him up and down.

"You’re really okay?"

"See? I told you he was fine," Doudou said from the side.

"Shut up, you little brat!"

"Who are you calling a little brat?!"

Furin retracted all the Runes, then moved to destroy the Magical Device that had caused the incident. She hadn’t acted sooner because she was afraid that rashly destroying it might affect Zog.

"Don’t. It’s still useful, we should keep it," Zog stopped her immediately.

"How long was I unconscious?"

"How long? Probably less than ten minutes."

"That short?" Zog was a little surprised. In the Consciousness Space, he felt like forty minutes to an hour had passed.

So the perception of time’s flow was different between the two.

From another perspective, this meant the time it took for that unlucky Priest to be overwhelmed by the massive amount of information was even shorter.

"I was just invaded by a Soul Ascender, a member of the Mammon Sect."

"Soul Ascenders?" Furin had heard the name before. "That small-time Cult from ages ago?"

"Yes, but they don’t seem so ’small-time’ anymore. They were able to trap me, after all. Luckily, this Dragon is a cut above."

"So this wasn’t an accident. That Magical Device was a trap set for you by the Soul Ascenders."

"You could say that," Zog shrugged. "But now the trap has become a gift. The person who set it, while not dead, is as good as. We’re taking this machine with us. There’s still a lot I want to know about the Soul Ascenders."

’Like trying to connect to it myself.’

"Fine," Furin reluctantly agreed with Zog’s decision.

"Alright, time to send a little gift to the Church," Zog said, stretching his neck. "We’re proceeding as planned. Clean up the scene, alter the memories of these Mammon Sect members, and Doudou and I will head back first to deal with the Magic Vision Station."

Despite the minor hiccup, the original objective of the operation remained unchanged.

They would profit from both the Church and the sect.

Furin took out something that looked like a pen. She clicked a button, a red light extended, and she aimed it at the three cultists on the first floor as the light flashed.

It was a little invention from Saint El, a Casting tool based on Elven memory-alteration Magic.

It was very popular among the Elves, allowing even those who couldn’t learn the Magic to make minor adjustments to their own memories.

That’s right, you could even use this thing on yourself.

However, the model Furin was using had a custom-designed appearance, specially requested by Zog.

The design was actually part of a set, which originally included a pair of sunglasses, but Furin refused to wear them.

The device was easy to activate, but fine-tuning memories wasn’t as simple as just speaking—it still required some finesse. So, Furin stayed behind to fabricate a story according to the script, while Zog and Doudou left first.

Back at the engineering department of the Twin Tower City Magic Vision Headquarters.

"What now? Isn’t the operation over?" Doudou flopped onto the sofa.

He complained discontentedly, "Even with overtime pay, we can’t just keep working without a break."

"There’s one last step. We need to transfer the Mammon Sect’s hijacking Magic to the active Magic Vision feed so the Church can discover it."

Doudou scrambled back up. "I’ll get it done right away."

"Not right away. Wait until we get confirmation that Furin has finished and evacuated," Zog stopped him.

"Then why were you in such a hurry to come back?" Doudou asked, confused.

"We have to sell the whole act."

Zog replied.

"Don’t we have an emergency kill switch system to cut the Magic Vision Device signal?"

"Yeah, but we don’t need it now."

That kill switch system was a temporary measure set up before the plan was finalized, to prevent the Mammon Sect from causing more trouble through the Magic Vision Devices.

If another image that triggered the Illusion Technique appeared, they could just shut down the Magic Vision Device signal directly.

"No, no, we need it now. If the Church finds out the signal was hijacked and we did nothing, they’ll definitely think something’s fishy. So, we’re going to activate the kill switch system. But to make sure the film finishes playing, the kill switch has to malfunction. Then, we need to put on a show of ’emergency repairs’ for the Church to see."

Zog laid out the next part of the plan.

After hearing it, Doudou gave a devious smile.

"You’re a real piece of work, you know that?"

"And listen, it has to be a real malfunction. The Church will very likely interrogate our Engineers later, and they won’t be able to pass a Truth-Telling Technique evaluation. So, in the Engineers’ minds, the kill switch system must have genuinely failed."

Doudou froze upon hearing this. "You mean, you need me to break a perfectly good system I designed?"

"Yes."

"That doesn’t sound good. I designed the whole system. If it malfunctions, it’ll make me look bad."

Doudou was reluctant.

Leading a team of Engineers had given him an unprecedented sense of accomplishment.

They all respected him, and he had won them over with his outstanding technical skills.

Causing a low-level failure now would be completely out of character with his brilliant image—a major stain on his career.

"Is that the point right now? A little malfunction is perfectly normal. Haven’t you ever had problems before?"

Doudou shook his head.

Zog was speechless.

After a few seconds of silence.

"Okay, fine. Here’s the new script: Zog, the unscrupulous, technically illiterate boss, insisted on testing the kill switch system himself. During the test, he gave forceful commands and offered his amateur opinions. The brilliant system engineer, Mr. Doudou, was unable to stop him, which ultimately led to the entire incident. How’s that?"