Chapter 488 - 476: Consciousness Time Difference

Chapter 488: Chapter 476: Consciousness Time Difference

The real world. Day ten.

The once-bustling streets of Golden Stone City were now deserted.

The curtains of every household were drawn tight, as if to shut out all information from the outside world.

But the overwhelming cries of anguish on the Spirit Communication Network seeped into every home like an inescapable poison gas.

"It’s been ten days! My son is only sixteen!"

"The Wizards must give us an explanation! This is murder! Cold-blooded murder!"

Panic was fermenting, and anger was building.

Public sentiment, which had started with trust in Allen Wesren, was gradually sliding into an abyss of doubt and resentment. The entire kingdom’s order was on the brink of collapse.

In the palace corridors, no one had dared to speak loudly for three days. His Majesty the King paced his room like a caged beast, and the shattered teacups had been replaced several times over.

"Lord Allen!"

For the sixth time, William connected to the Spirit Communication Terminal. His beard was a mess and his face unshaven, stripped of any royal dignity.

"Families from all over the country are submitting petitions to the palace every day; the stacks are higher than my desk. Three nobles from the East District have jointly impeached me for incompetence, and Duke Zieg of the Northern Territory is already mustering his private army."

"I’m begging you, think of something else. Five million, one hundred and seventy thousand... That’s five million, one hundred and seventy thousand lives! They are my subjects, the people of Aiselan!"

William’s voice was hoarse. "I need to give the people an answer, Lord Allen. Even a little bit of progress."

On the light screen, Allen’s posture was still erect. The background, however, had changed to a brightly lit laboratory, suggesting he too had been working through the night.

"William, I understand how you feel. But my Cybertron also suffered heavy losses in this disaster. Repairing the physical hardware takes time."

"Time? We’re out of time!"

William shot to his feet, his tone almost pleading. "The limit is thirty days! We only have twenty left! Tell me, can you rescue them in twenty days?"

Allen fell silent for a moment, seeming to choose his words carefully.

"I am doing everything in my power. But theoretically, the hibernation pods’ life support systems will indeed fail when their energy is depleted."

That answer completely shattered King William’s nerves.

He collapsed back onto his throne, his eyes vacant, repeatedly muttering, "It’s over... It’s all over..."

"However," Allen’s tone shifted, "I am not without progress."

William’s pupils contracted sharply. Like a drowning man grasping a piece of driftwood, he stared intently at the light screen.

"Just now, I found a temporary data channel that bypasses the main server’s firewall. The bandwidth is minuscule and the connection is intermittent, so it can’t support a large-scale logout, but... we can attempt a ’point-to-point’ precision rescue."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I can pull some people out, but only players who have recently died in a boss battle."

"The first batch consists of two hundred and seventeen people."

"Two hundred and seventeen..." William repeated the number, his eyes suddenly turning red.

To the five million people still trapped in the game, this number wasn’t even a rounding error.

But for a king who had been trapped in despair for ten days, it was a shot of adrenaline.

"What’s their condition now?"

"Their consciousness has returned to their physical bodies via the hibernation pods," Allen said. "Theoretically, they should wake up naturally within six to twelve hours."

William let out a long breath and leaned back against his throne, as if a mountain had been lifted from his shoulders.

"Good... That’s wonderful," he murmured. "I can finally announce that someone has returned."

The Spirit Communication Terminal disconnected.

"Jarvis."

[Here, Commander.]

"Initiate the ’Consciousness Download’ protocol. Designate the 217 subjects as the first batch. Re-inject their soul data into the bodies within the hibernation pods."

[Command confirmed. Establishing data downlink channel...]

In Allen’s eyes, countless streams of data cascaded like waterfalls.

He hadn’t found any "temporary channel" at all.

From the very beginning, he had possessed the authority to "upload" or "download" any soul.

The consciousnesses of the players who had "permanently vanished" in boss battles had been stored, perfectly intact, in Cybertron’s deep database all along.

This so-called rescue was nothing more than a scheduled test for his "Consciousness Upload" project.

He needed to verify, step by step, whether a soul that had been digitized and had lived in a world with a threefold time acceleration could safely return to its original carbon-based vessel.

...

「Six hours later.」

The first batch of awakened individuals had already been sent to a nearby hospital.

One by one, they opened their eyes to the calls of their families.

"He’s awake!"

"Thank you, Lord Wesley! Thank you, Your Majesty!"

The hospital rooms and corridors were filled with an intermingling of tears and laughter.

A team of court Physicians sent by the royal family stood ready to conduct comprehensive medical examinations at a moment’s notice.

However, the joy did not last long.

The first anomaly appeared in bed number thirty-seven.

The patient was a young player with the Knight class. After waking, he remained silent for a long time, his gaze unfocused, unresponsive to his wife’s calls.

Until he tried to lift his right hand.

His fingers twitched once, then again, like a fish out of water.

"I can’t move it..." he stared at his hand, his pupils dilating. "Why can’t I move it?"

His wife held his hand, comforting him through her tears. "Don’t panic, you’ve been lying down for ten days. You probably have some muscle atrophy..."

"It’s not that!"

He stared at his own body with a look of absolute terror.

"This isn’t my hand."

"This isn’t my body."

He began to struggle violently, like a soul stuffed into the wrong vessel.

In the next room, a female player fell from her bed. She crawled on the floor, her limbs moving in an uncoordinated fashion, letting out a muffled scream, "What’s happening? I can’t control my body!"

A middle-aged man sat quietly on the edge of his bed, expressionless, repeatedly measuring the length of his own forearm with his fingers.

After measuring his left arm, he measured his right. After his right arm, his left leg.

"It’s wrong," he said calmly. "The dimensions are wrong. It should be three centimeters longer. The thigh circumference is wrong too. This is my data."

The "data" he spoke of were the parameters of his body in the game.

His mind had come to recognize the virtual, data-based body as his "self."

According to later reports, of the two hundred and seventeen awakened individuals, over thirty percent exhibited varying degrees of cognitive dissonance—the milder cases involved an inability to coordinate their limbs, while the severe cases involved a complete denial of their own physical bodies.

Less than four hours later, William’s Spirit Communication Terminal lit up again.

"Lord Allen!" The King’s voice trembled. "The people who were rescued... some of them have gone mad! They’re saying it’s not their body! The public is already spreading rumors—that the hibernation pods are man-eating coffins!"

"I’ve already identified the problem." Allen’s voice was, as always, unhurried.

"It’s a side effect of deep consciousness linking."

"Their souls remained in the virtual world for too long, causing a ’self-identity migration’ to their digital bodies. After returning to their physical forms, they need a period of readjustment."

"Then... then how long will it take for them to recover?"

"I’m researching it. Until then, prohibit all outside visitors. The only public announcement should be that they ’have been successfully rescued and are under observation while they recover’."

William was silent for a moment before giving a strained nod.

"I trust you, Lord Allen."

The Spirit Communication Terminal disconnected again.

Before Allen floated a comparative analysis of two hundred and seventeen sets of soul waveforms.

The original soul waveform from before the upload and the real-time waveform after the download should have been completely identical.

But the actual result was that the post-download waveforms showed a systemic frequency shift.

"Jarvis, analyze the cause."

[Average frequency shift: 6.7%. The direction of the shift is a perfect match for the brainwave acceleration ratio corresponding to the threefold time-flow in the game.]

Allen’s fingers froze in mid-air.

He understood.

The soul had operated in the virtual world at three times the normal speed for nearly ninety in-game days, which was equivalent to the brain processing ninety days’ worth of information at triple speed.

When this "accelerated" consciousness returned to a physical body that had only experienced ten days in reality, the "clock" of the soul and the "clock" of the body fell out of sync.

It was like someone living abroad for three months and needing to adjust to the time difference upon returning home.

Except this time, it wasn’t a sleep cycle that needed adjusting, but the entire operational frequency of one’s consciousness.

’Another problem.’

’This isn’t a failure; on the contrary, it’s a good thing. Only by encountering every possible bug can I ensure the system is foolproof when I use it on myself.’

’It seems I’ll need to design a "buffer protocol."’

’Before the soul is downloaded, I’ll first need to gradually decrease the consciousness’s operational frequency back to the rhythm of reality, allowing the soul and body to recalibrate their clocks before completing the unification.’

’As for the test subjects, they should be fine after a few days of rest.’

"Jarvis, create a model based on the current data. Calculate the minimum buffer time required for the soul’s frequency to return to the standard value."

[Modeling... Preliminary estimate: The minimum buffer period is 72 to 96 hours of real time. The subject will need to complete three to four full sleep-wake cycles in a frequency-dampening environment.]

Allen turned his gaze back to the game, which still held a massive number of living souls.

He still had twenty days.

It was enough.

’I will send them all back.’

’Of course, only after I’ve collected all the data I need.’