Nexus Awakened (An Isekai LitRPG Gender Bender Story)

718. Salivating Memories

“The Librarians have the Capital under their control.”

Anpu, the Lunar Haruspex of the present Tear Retrievers in the Capital contacted Frost. Subtle drips of blood punctuated between his words. The sound of scrapping, gurgling and heavy footsteps echoed within a desolate sanctum of red.

“The streets are teeming with Impuritas presence. Amalgam – Do you remember the same eggs that used to parade the City of Diamonds? Our surveillance tells us that there are 500 near the castle alone. Gerina’s men claim that we are only seeing a small percentage of their presence. I’m afraid the forecast within Frontier is worse than we thought.”

“Be careful around those eggs. They can steal a page from your life and regurgitate thousands of twisted versions of yourself. The Librarians can’t do it en mass on their own. They need the Crimson Hunger Hearts to churn them out. Any news on them lurking around the Capital?”

“Not nearly as much in the next tower over from what Abadona has seen. If I may add? The loyalist faction of the Empire has made it trivial to gather information on the populace. They’re burrowed deep with traitors of their own Empire like moles. We have information you will want to hear.”

“I’m listening.”

Frost climbed a long set of stairs, the walls adorned by crimson flags dripping with freshly bleeding sinew. She hauled a lump of meat up the stairs, chunks tearing from the seams as Frost set her sights to the exit of the underground fortress.

“There are oddities among the White Midnight personnel from what we have seen, and testimonies from Gerina’s soldiers. If you can believe this – it is possible that a majority of their personnel are Librarians. They do not bleed, and I’ve spotted injured personnel interacting with the eggs. They can heal their wounds with its paper cloth.”

The seas of its harbor were dyed red as the survivors aboard their ship took refuge in the recently cleansed fortress. Grandeur archways and battlements that were meant to survive relentless bombardments of cannonballs glowed orange, for they had melted under the immense heat of Frost’s magic.

Their chatter could be heard through the floors above. She had just finished cleaning up the Complex Heart buried within the basement of this place. Dragged behind her in a hand was another spoil of war to keep the Ankou still latched by her hip company.

It was a Memory Bistro.

“Is that true? Are the Librarians copying people now?” She asked the unrecognizable sack of meat.

It had no discernible humanoid features and carried a list of memories regarding how to deal with her. It mattered little when it was already caught. As a matter of fact, it was the Memory Bistro who had removed its eyes, mouth and ears for the sake of preserving its mind.

The mouthless entity groaned with unknown organs. She paused momentarily and threw it into a crevice in the wall, lit by a small torch above. With a finger, she carved a mouth for it to speak, but it still could not hear her.

She quickly found that the Crimson Hunger were highly tolerant of pain, as their existence centered around the exposure of flesh and nerves. Even the soul-rending pain of her flames and fingers could not hurt what had the smallest speck of a soul to call its own.

That explains why their RESIST stat is so high. At least regarding pain and conditions. Their hunger is so compulsive that they can’t think of anything else. But that doesn’t mean anything. I have more than one way of getting them to talk.

In her spare hand was the pallid-blue lantern containing Terrent’s tortured soul, and it was enough to drive the Memory Bistro mad as tiny nubs formed on its sides. It desperately tried to grow arms, so that it could finish off what Frost had spared it from.

Unlike the Fractured Nilhim who could communicate telepathically, the Crimson Hunger could not impart their memories unless it was deposited into a Heart, like how macrophages needed to capture and present a foreign body to helper T-cells.

That way, they could mount a coordinated response against the attacker. Afterwards, memory cells specifically built to fight that foreign body would appear for the next instance. The Memory Bistros represented these memory cells. But unfortunately for them, they functioned far too similarly to the human immune system.

Those cells were only useful if they could be used at all, and most importantly, if the threat was identical to the one they memorized.

Frost had changed a lot since she last openly interacted with the Impuritas.

Furthermore, she only needed to walk into a Complex Heart with Silence of the Stars, and it was already over. None could resist the light, aside from the Memory Bistros whose RESIST was still defined as NIL.

She scrapped it against the wall, spreading its flesh like mural as the Hired Arm guarded the staircase in case someone accidentally witnessed the Lantern. Frost attached it by her hip with steel string on the opposite side of the Ankou.

The cold, pale diaphragm of Die Agnosis was placed against the Memory Bistro’s minced flesh, and she spoke to it in a more direct manner.

“Tell me, why are the Librarians copying people in the Capital?”

Her voice reached an inner sanctum never meant to see the light of day; her voice like a ray of sunshine reaching into the bowels of an abyss.

Its thoughts scattered, but it did not yet speak to Frost. Die Agnosis was useless on an Impuritas as well, since she could not meaningfully interact with their State of Mind, perhaps due to their lack of Light.

“There is nothing for you to know. All memories are archived individually, so that our secrets can never be revealed.” It responded, however, Ankou spoke on its behalf.

“Amalgam, they have baseline memories, and memories that they are imparted with before they are separated from their collective.”

“Insolent –!?”

“To clarify…” Terrent’s voice seemed to register in the mind of the Memory Bistro. “And to begin with, they are terrified, Master.”

This was because Terrent, despite his physical state, still inherited some of his Impuritas abilities. Telepathy was one of them, although this could only be used on those with significant Trepidation Stacks, regardless of one’s RESIST.

Terrent then continued.

“Memory Bistros store and take memories out from their collective. You may call them Hearts of the City. They are given only what they need, never what they want. But we have conducted experiments of our own on their kind, long before we became… accomplices. CogitO and the Subderma were quite fond of how they could store memories. Unsurprisingly, the first successful instances of a Collection used the Crimson Hunger as a basis.”

“The point being?”

“You will be on your way to the north. I am no advisor, but I can show you how to interact with the Crimson Hunger to the best of my ability. Hearts of the City, as a collective, retain countless memories. But those memories are divided amongst each other. The triplets were fond of flowers, so I shall use it as an example. A flower grows in its own soil. A Heart of City will know much of its surroundings, as would what you call a Complex Heart.”

Terrent then added how he knew of a method to extract memories from the Crimson Hunger. Part of his experiments prior to becoming an Impuritas was through using the Crimson Hunger to store memories and experiences.

With the Memory Bistro, it was possible to use it as a method to extract information from a Heart of the City.

At least from the Crimson Hunger.

“Amalgam. Fear, to us, is not merely of the mind.” Terrent began as he directed Frost’s hands. “It is an instinct tied to those we believed are unprepared to face the future Nilhim envisions. A force of weakness, but it is a force that can be exploited. Scrape its flesh and smother me in it. Expose every nerve to my light. The Crimson Hunger fear only one thing – starvation. They are slaves to instinct.”

She did as he said, scooping the Memory Bistro’s flesh from the wall, and patting it around the Lantern until the light was smothered. This way, she could keep it alive until they reached the Crimson Hunger’s Heart of the City.

“Surely, if there’s one thing that’s going to know something, then it’ll be that. We lack so much information about them that hearing ‘I don’t know’ is driving me crazy. You’d think an Ankou would know something as well, but in the end, you’re all just pieces on a board, huh. Goes to show how valuable you are in their eyes.”

The Ankou didn’t speak a word, and the Lantern regretfully shuddered in agreement.

“It’s annoying that I can’t dig deeper into your mind like how I did with that Red Giant and the Blood Moons, but neither can Elysia. I could’ve turned it into a Confessor, but I can also confirm what you’re saying. I see a list of memories it carries. Terrent. Extract what you can from it. The ‘Imprints of the Capital’ sounds important.”

“As you wish, Master.”