Redy continued without pause, her tone unchanged. "Although to make this, I had to experience this exact mont many more tis than that. Enough to stabilize it. Enough to preserve it." She glanced ahead, toward the path she had ntioned earlier.
"It will be worth it in the end."
Adam studied her for a mont, then exhaled slowly, piecing things together. The battlefield. The preserved mory. The way everything had been set up. His thoughts aligned quickly, forming a conclusion he didn’t particularly like.
"So this was planned?" he asked.
His voice was steady, but there was a clear edge beneath it.
Adam already knew how inconsistent her mories between regressions could be. She didn’t always carry everything forward. That made it difficult to tell what was intentional and what wasn’t. But this... this didn’t feel random.
Not anymore.
His mind flicked back to recent events. The way Judgnt had been pushed past its limits. The timing. The risks she had taken without hesitation. Standing here now, in a preserved mory of their final stand, it all started to connect.
This wasn’t a coincidence.
It was starting to look like design.
****
Redy didn’t answer imdiately. Her gaze stayed forward, fixed on the path ahead, as if weighing how much to reveal. "I only rembered when I saw Ivy supercharge Judgnt," she said at last. "If not for that... this mory wouldn’t have returned."
Adam turned fully toward her, studying her expression carefully. There was no hesitation in her tone, no sign of doubt. That alone told him she had already accepted this outco long before he even realized what was happening.
"But if you had rembered earlier," Adam asked, his voice quieter now, more controlled, "would you have told ?"
Redy went silent.
It wasn’t a long pause, but it was enough. Enough for Adam to understand that this wasn’t a question she needed ti to think about. It was one she had already answered for herself countless tis before.
"No," she said finally. "If I had told you, the outco might have changed and you wouldn’t have gained as much."
Adam held her gaze for a second, then let out a slow breath, the tension easing just slightly. "Figures," he muttered, shaking his head once. "I just had to fall for a regressor."
Redy didn’t respond to that.
Adam didn’t press further either. Instead, his eyes shifted back to the fallen version of her lying on the ground and activated Analyze.
A panel ford instantly in front of his vision, clean and precise, hovering over the corpse.
╭───────────╮
〖Na: Redy〗
〖Rank: ....〗
〖Cultivation Talent: SSS〗
〖Special Talent: Tell Ti〗
╰───────────╯
Adam’s eyes narrowed slightly as he read through it, the pieces locking into place faster than before.
This explained it.
Why Redy said the benefits would have been less. Why even small changes mattered. If they had deviated too early, even slightly, they might never have reached this place at all.
The core.
Where talents weren’t just gained.
They were engraved.
****
Adam kept his eyes on the panel, but his thoughts were already moving ahead, connecting everything he had just learned. Redy was the only person he knew who could do sothing like this. A core mory shouldn’t exist. It wasn’t supposed to.
And yet, she had created one.
That alone broke the rules. But what ca after mattered even more. Because of how her talent worked, this wasn’t just a preserved mont. It was sothing usable. Sothing he could take from without destroying the source itself.
Her power wasn’t ford in a normal way.
It was accumulated.
That difference changed everything. It ant her abilities weren’t fixed in a single state. They could be divided, shared, copied in parts without collapsing entirely. Adam didn’t need to take everything. A fragnt would still carry the full effect.
That was what made this possible.
His gaze flicked back to the panel again, noticing what wasn’t there as much as what was. No bloodline. No affinity. It made sense. This was a soul mory, not a physical body. Those traits were tied to genetics, not essence.
Adam exhaled slowly, the decision already made. This was exactly what he needed. The bottleneck that had been holding him back for so long, it finally had a clear solution in front of him.
He wasn’t going to hesitate.
Stepping forward, he lowered himself beside the corpse, his movents steady and controlled. For a brief mont, he looked at her face again, committing it to mory, then placed his hand firmly against her body.
"Connect."
The response was imdiate.
"Equip."
A new panel flashed into existence, sharp and undeniable.
[Do you want to equip Cultivation Talent: SSS?]
Adam didn’t even pause.
"Unequip Cultivation Talent: D."
The mont the command went through, the change hit instantly. His control over essence dropped, slipping out of alignnt, while the strength of his profound spirit weakened slightly. The loss was imdiate and obvious.
But he didn’t stop.
"Accept."
The mont he confird it, a surge ran through his body, sharp and overwhelming. It wasn’t painful, but it wasn’t comfortable either. Sothing deeper was shifting, rewriting itself from the inside out.
The surge didn’t hit his real body, it spread through his current form inside the mory, flooding every part of him at once. The sensation was familiar, but amplified far beyond anything he had experienced before.
This wasn’t a simple upgrade.
It was a complete rewrite.
At first, it started in his chest, a steady heat forming at his core like every previous talent shift he had undergone. But this ti, it didn’t stay contained. It spread outward, deeper, anchoring him in place as if the world itself had locked onto him.
Adam didn’t move.
He let it happen.
Then his control over essence began to return.
It climbed back to where it had been before he unequipped his previous talent, stabilizing quickly. But it didn’t stop there. It pushed past that point without resistance, rising into sothing smoother, more refined.
More natural.
The difference was imdiate.
Control no longer felt like control.
It felt like submission.
The essence around him didn’t need commands anymore. It responded before he could even think, aligning itself with his intent automatically. His will didn’t guide it, it beca its direction.
That alone changed everything.
****
A/N: I forgot to add this while writing but [Once upon a ti] wasn’t there because whenever Rem died the talent would go back in ti with her leaving the current corpse without the awakened special talent.
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