Chapter 340: Overmemory

The window finishes forming.

[What would you like to Consume?]

I wait.

Nothing appears below it.

I tilt my head and touch the edge of the interface, looking for some hidden tab. The window responds to the contact but stays empty. I try to expand it, go through the Overmemory information again, and even open my profile to check for some new section tied to Memories.

Nothing.

"Very helpful."

I go back to the question.

[What would you like to Consume?]

The system wants an answer without telling me which answers it accepts.

That starts to worry me.

Until now, I imagined Overmemory would open some kind of inventory. I’d choose a Memory, confirm the price, and find out what Drifter Mode does. It would still be a dangerous skill, but at least there’d be some level of control.

Here, I don’t even know how to tell Ocean’s Law what I want to consume.

I lean my back against the wall beside the bed and keep looking at the interface while I think about tomorrow’s dungeon.

Rhayne will be with me.

Zhang Xi has probably finished evaluating her, and if everything’s fine we leave in the morning. I still need to decide what to bring, talk to Duvilin about the region, and figure out whether Overmemory could work as an emergency resource if something goes wrong.

The thought of Rhayne pulls another one.

The conversation we had.

The truth.

I remember her looking at me while I handed over the secret I’d carried alone since my return. I remember the weight of every sentence and the strange feeling afterward, when I realized there was no way to take it back. Until then, only I knew the real extent of what had happened to me.

After that conversation, we were two... and only after a while came Freya...

The interface flashes red.

[Memory detected.]

[Would you like to Consume this Memory?]

My stomach lurches with the shock.

"No!"

I hit [NO] fast enough to almost push my finger through the window.

The prompt disappears.

I stare at the empty space in front of me for a few seconds, breathing slowly as I understand what just happened.

I don’t have to choose from a list.

I have to remember.

"Ah..."

I look at Overmemory again.

Then I snap my fingers.

"Got it!"

A smile appears.

The answer had been with me from the start.

I just needed to stop thinking about my own memories.

[Rescue].

The skill never gives me cold information about someone. I absorb pieces of a life. Experiences, feelings, habits, small things a person would never have a reason to tell. For a while, the line between what belongs to me and what belongs to that Memory can get uncomfortably thin.

It’s one of the effects of Rescue that bothers me most.

I can remember places I’ve never been.

I miss people I’ve never met.

In bad moments, I have to consciously separate Dryden Sands from someone who lived an entire life before ending up inside my Class.

If Overmemory consumes a Memory, maybe it was created for exactly this.

The problem is finding out the price.

Rescue already toys with identity. Overmemory looks willing to do something even worse to it.

I close my eyes and search through the things Rescue left inside me.

It doesn’t take long for a memory to surface. First comes a small house, dark wooden walls, a low window beside the table, and an old stove filling the back. I know one of the boards near the entrance creaks when someone steps on it, and I remember exactly where the plates are kept, even though I, Dryden Sands, have never set foot in that place.

A woman stands with her back to me, hair pinned up carelessly, sleeves folded to the elbows. She stirs something in a pot while complaining that her son came into the house with dirty boots again.

The emotion comes with the memory and catches me off guard.

I miss her.

The woman turns her face partway and says something Rescue didn’t preserve whole, but that hardly matters.

I know what’s in that moment.

She’s telling the boy to sit down, will complain for a few more minutes, and then ask if he got hurt while he was out.

Other memories follow that one: her hands fixing the boy’s hair, an argument over money, a cold morning when she put wrapped food into his hands, and a goodbye so ordinary no one in that house would have any reason to keep it as something special.

My throat tightens before I notice.

A tear runs down my cheek.

I drag my thumb across it and stare at the wetness on the tip of my finger, trying to understand why that hit me the way it did.

I don’t know that woman.

She isn’t Ingrid. She never raised me, never touched my face, and probably spent her whole life without hearing my name. That mother belongs to one of the cadets Rescue put inside my head, but knowing it doesn’t lessen the loss I feel.

For a few moments, part of me wants to go back to that kitchen and hear that voice complain about dirty boots one more time.

That’s the problem with Rescue.

I don’t just receive information about a person. I receive enough pieces of them that certain emotions keep existing even after I know they aren’t mine.

The interface flashes red.

[Memory detected.]

[Would you like to Consume this Memory?]

I stare at the confirmation.

The memory wasn’t born with me. That makes the choice less frightening than sacrificing something from my own life, but there’s still a problem I can’t ignore.

Rescue already carries a heavy side effect when it lets emotions and identities blur inside my head. Sometimes I have to consciously remember where another person ends and where Dryden Sands begins.

Overmemory looks about to do something even more aggressive to that border.

Even so, I press [YES].

My body doesn’t react.

For a few seconds, I stay seated on the bed with normal breathing and my feet on the floor. There’s no pain, no heat, no physical sensation to help me understand the process. What starts to happen is entirely inside my head, and that’s exactly why it’s so much worse.

The memory begins to disappear while I can still feel how important it is.

I try to hold on to it by instinct, but every second it gets harder to understand what I’m trying to preserve. I know there’s someone there. I know there’s a house, a feeling of tenderness, and something that makes my chest tighten, but the details start losing shape before I can reach them.

The face goes first.

Then the voice.

The house disappears along with everything that made the place feel familiar.

My body stays perfectly functional while my mind tries to keep up with a loss it can no longer name. The feeling spreads until it leaves a void that’s hard to bear, a heavy sadness with no clear source, as if someone important had just died and I’d forgotten who they were before I could even grieve.

I run my hands over my face and stay bent over my knees.

Tomorrow’s dungeon, the factory, Rhayne, Garen, Kaelen, and everything that filled my head during the day feels distant in that moment.

I know something is missing and I feel its absence hard, but any attempt to find out what was taken ends in the same empty space.

It’s like having senile dementia without actually having it.

The interface appears in front of me.

[Memory Consumed.]

[OVERMEMORY — DRIFTER MODE ACTIVATED.]

I look at the words until I can organize my thoughts again.

So this void is because I consumed a memory, and even that I forgot.

I know it because the system just confirmed it, and because I remember choosing something acquired through Rescue.

The content, though, has vanished completely. There’s no face left, no place, not even the certainty of which cadet originally carried that memory. All that remains is that objectless longing, an emotional hole my brain keeps trying to fill without holding the piece it needs anymore.

That’s when I think of the first memory the system detected.

Rhayne.

The discomfort spikes immediately.

If I’d pressed [YES] on that first confirmation, maybe I’d still know I’d told my secret to someone, because other parts of my life could point to it. But the conversation itself could have disappeared. Her face in that moment, the words I used, the decision to trust her, and even the reason that led me to do it could have become exactly the same void that now fills my head.

Overmemory doesn’t block a memory or store it somewhere else.

Consuming is literal.

A blue light passes across my fingers.

I lift my hand and watch spectral filaments rise under the skin, running along the wrist before spreading up the arm. The glow gains strength little by little, forming a translucent blue aura around my shoulders and small particles that hang in the air for a few instants before vanishing.

I get up from the bed and move to the window.

My reflection is still the same, but something seems layered over my presence. The aura alters the outline of my body, and when I move, my shadow takes a fraction of a second to catch up, as if another form were trying to occupy the same space.

I check the HUD.

[OXI: 4,820 / 5,000]

A few seconds later, the value changes.

[OXI: 4,770 / 5,000]

I wait.

[OXI: 4,720 / 5,000]

Another interval and fifty more go.

[OXI: 4,670 / 5,000]

Overmemory is burning OXI fast. The cost makes it clear Drifter Mode wasn’t built to stay active for long, but the system still doesn’t say what I get in return for a lost memory and a drain that size.

I move my hand, test my perception, and look for any new change in the profile. My strength doesn’t seem different and no additional skill has appeared. I’m still trying to understand what exactly changed when a familiar voice rises behind me.

"Master looks much better with this appearance."

I turn.

Duvilin stands near the wall, watching the aura around my body with a satisfied smile.

For a few seconds, I just look at him. I didn’t use any command, didn’t call his summoning name, and no notification appeared in the system.

And the memory I just consumed had no connection to him either.

Even so, Duvilin is here.

"I didn’t summon you."

His smile widens.

"I know. And that’s the best part, master."