Chapter 8: [Erudition] Rekka: I'm Just a Weak Academic, I Don't Have That Much Power.
The past twelve system hours had easily been the most abstract, surreal stretch of time Rekka had ever endured. But as the station's clock struck midnight, the chaotic biological urges of the Swarm faded. Right on schedule, his Path shifted.
[Erudition].
The frantic buzzing in his mind vanished, replaced by an icy, crystalline clarity. Rekka stood up, brushing off his clothes with slow, deliberate movements. He opened his eyes, meeting the intense, scrutinizing gazes of the two Geniuses standing before him.
"Oh?" The Herta puppet tilted her head, her synthetic joints whirring softly. "You really turned back into a human. And you are even walking on the Path of Erudition now. Interesting."
"I was killed yesterday morning," Rekka replied, his voice flat and perfectly composed. "Otherwise, what you saw yesterday wouldn't have been me devolving into a Swarm King larva."
The moment the mantle of Erudition settled over his consciousness, a floodgate opened. He inadvertently recalled fragments of forbidden knowledge from beyond the boundary of normal comprehension.
Herta's eyes gleamed with mechanical precision. "Memory retention?"
"Complete retention," Rekka confirmed, tapping his temple.
"Let us start with the conclusion, then." Herta crossed her arms. "You were killed by Genius Society Member Number Four, the Lord of Silence, Polka Kakamu. Quite an achievement for a Mr. Genius Trailblazer who has yet to even receive a passing glance from Nous."
The puppet leaned in closer, a genuine surge of academic interest animating her porcelain features.
"What exactly were you researching to draw her attention?"
"I forced myself to forget that specific knowledge and the research topic right before I died," Rekka said, offering a casual shrug. "But unfortunately, Polka Kakamu killed me anyway. She is very thorough."
Herta got straight to the point, ignoring his flippant attitude. "You are quite the optimist. So, I want to know—what did it feel like right before you died?"
"Before I died?" Rekka paused, letting his hyper-active mind sift through the pristine archives of his memory.
"Before I died, I realized Polka was attacking me. The calculations were there, but I simply did not have the physical strength to react. I only had enough time to manually wipe my own research from my active consciousness before the blow landed." He held up his hands, looking at his perfectly normal, uncalloused palms. "In my Erudition state, I possess a brilliant mind, but absolutely zero matching physical fitness. Right now, I am just a slightly smarter-than-average ordinary human. Any random space station security guard in standard protective gear could pin me to the ground if they got within three paces."
"You should be aware that 'forgetting' is merely a psychological suggestion," Herta pointed out, her tone dripping with condescension. "Once you know something, you know it. The data remains in your neural pathways. If you remember it again, Polka will simply hunt you down a second time."
"I don't care," Rekka replied smoothly. "As long as she doesn't go after innocent people, she can try."
Ruan Mei, who had been quietly observing the exchange from the periphery, finally spoke up. Her voice was soft, measured, and endlessly analytical. "Your Path switching is instantaneous, yet your memory remains entirely continuous. That is very interesting."
Rekka turned his gaze to the elegant scholar. "What is so interesting about it?"
"Generally speaking, different Paths dictate entirely different cognitive frameworks and fundamental ways of thinking." Ruan Mei slowly approached, her eyes tracing the subtle micro-expressions on his face. "If memories are fully retained across these shifts, the conflicting cognitive patterns of the different Paths should tear your psyche apart. But you seem to have adapted perfectly. Even though you were a creature of Propagation yesterday and a scholar of Erudition today, you can still converse with us fluently. This implies that your concept of 'self' is somehow more fundamental than the Paths themselves."
"It took me a full week to adapt after I first acquired this ability," Rekka admitted, a dry smile touching his lips. "At first, there was indeed a massive amount of cognitive confusion. I rapidly switched between the Knights of Beauty, the Scions of Permanence, a Fictional Historian, the Self-Annihilators, the Architects, and the Denizens of Abundance." He ticked them off on his fingers. "Then, on the seventh day, I stepped onto the Path of Erudition and finally managed to roughly calculate my own Path-switching mechanism."
"Oh?" Ruan Mei's eyes widened a fraction. "And how exactly did you figure it out?"
"I died seven times by jumping into a pool of magma."
Herta stared at him. "You jumped into boiling lava just to test your Path mechanism?"
"To be precise, I willingly jumped into the lava the first six times," Rekka corrected, his tone completely deadpan. "The seventh time, I was just walking too close to the edge and slipped."
"You are quite interesting, kid." Herta's gaze now held a genuine hint of appreciation, a rare commodity from the genius.
"You flatter me. I am just a very dedicated person," Rekka said. "During the sixth test, I hypothesized that if every death randomly switched me to a new Path, then theoretically, if I died fast enough, I could traverse all existing Paths in a very short amount of time. Unfortunately, I discovered there is a mandatory cooldown interval between resurrections."
"And then?" Ruan Mei prompted gently.
"Then it was Trailblaze's turn. I saw the Astral Express parked nearby, felt the urge to explore, and rushed over to join them."
Herta let out a soft snort. Figures.
"Well, hot-blooded fools like that are actually quite popular with the Trailblaze," the Herta puppet remarked, raising a delicate, painted eyebrow.
Ruan Mei remained noncommittal. She kept her silence, her gaze piercing through his skin, focusing entirely on the unseen internal changes shifting within Rekka's biological structure.
"Though the motive sounds primitive, it confirms my hypothesis. The active Path serves as the underlying driver of your behavioral patterns." Ruan Mei smoothly tucked her data terminal away, her voice returning to its flat, analytical baseline. "When you walk on the Trailblaze, you instinctively yearn for unknown journeys and bond with the Astral Express. When you walk on Propagation, you instinctively desire to expand, consume, and replicate. And now..."
She stepped closer, fixing her intense, dark gaze directly on Rekka's face.
"Now that you are walking on the Path of Erudition, what are your immediate thoughts?"
"I want to get some sugar," Rekka replied without missing a beat. "I am incredibly weak right now. Just a frail academic. I don't have world-shattering strength like you two. You are proper Emanators, and I am certainly not. Right now, I would probably get out of breath just by jogging across this room."
It was the absolute truth. Under the influence of Erudition, his mind was terrifyingly clear, but his physical senses were exceptionally, almost painfully sensitive. The casual conversation with the two Geniuses seemed relaxed on the surface, but in reality, his brain was running in overdrive. He was constantly forced to divert a massive portion of his mental energy just to process the relentless flood of environmental data entering his mind: the exact chemical components of the plum blossom scent clinging to Ruan Mei's clothes, the micro-hertz flickering frequency of the starlight outside the space station window, the structural stress points and synthetic material data of the Herta puppet standing before him...
Herta broke the silence. "How about we make a deal?"
"A deal?" Rekka asked. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a high-calorie nutrition bar, and tore the wrapper open with his teeth. He took a bite, chewing thoughtfully. "My current value shouldn't be very high right now, should it? Except for this hyper-active brain that could attract a lethal assassination attempt from the Lord of Silence at any given moment."
"On the contrary." Herta wagged a jointed finger at him. "Your current value is absolutely immeasurable. You are the only living specimen in the known universe who can experience a direct assassination by the Lord of Silence from a Genius's perspective, and still resurrect with your memories perfectly intact."
"Let me correct you on one minor point," Rekka mumbled around a mouthful of compressed oats and sugar. "I am not a genius. I am just an ordinary person with a slightly overactive mind—at most, a Masked Fool in training. Everything in scientific exploration is merely a 'discovery,'never a true'invention.' The more knowledge I cram into this skull, the more I acutely understand the sheer scale of my own ignorance."
He swallowed, pointing the half-eaten bar at her. "The more knowledge there is, the less knowledge there actually is. Every single time I solve one problem, ten more problems instantly arise to take its place."
Ruan Mei tilted her head, her expression softening into something resembling approval. "So, what is your fundamental attitude toward the unknown? Do you feel fear? Longing? Or simply indifference?"
Rekka stopped chewing. He looked out the reinforced glass window, staring into the endless, starry void of the cosmos. He thought for a long moment, letting the cold logic of Erudition sift through his chaotic human emotions.
"...Curiosity," he finally answered, his voice quiet but incredibly firm. "Curiosity is the only true driving force that keeps me."
"Fine. I can respect your thoughts, smart kid," Herta said, letting out a rare, genuine chuckle.
Rekka stuffed the last chunk of the nutrition bar into his mouth, chewed quickly, and brushed the stray crumbs off his hands. He clapped them together, returning his focus to the puppet. "So, what are the actual terms of this deal?"
"It is quite simple." The Herta puppet crossed her arms, her tone shifting back to strict business. "I need you to assist me in researching a few highly specialized topics while you are locked into the Path of Erudition. In exchange for your unique processing power, I will provide you with a significant level of resource support and physical protection."
"Protection?" Rekka raised an eyebrow, highly skeptical. "Can you actually stop Polka Kakamu if she comes for my head again?"
"No," Herta replied, utterly blunt and devoid of shame. "Because I cannot be one hundred percent certain that I can stop her, therefore, I must assume I cannot."
Rekka narrowed his eyes. If she couldn't protect him from a Genius Society assassin, then what was the point? Unless...
Was this about the Simulated Universe?
"Research what, exactly?" he asked cautiously.
"I won't disclose that just yet," Herta dismissed with a wave of her hand. "Your current state is far too unique. I need to observe your Path-shifting mechanics for a while longer. Then, once I have confirmed a suitable and safe research topic, you will be the very first candidate I consider."
"In other words, I am just a backup battery."
"No, you are a backup battery with incredibly great potential," Herta corrected him smoothly. "Besides, you have the ability to resurrect. Your margin for error in lethal experiments is wonderfully high. Do you have any idea how many brilliant Geniuses have been reduced to mere footnotes in history because of a single, fatal lab accident?"
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