Jayr POV - Nasuverse, Moon, SE.RA.PH, Tsukumihara Academy - 2030 AD
We step back into the safety of our Private Room, and for the first time since the battle began, my legs actually feel heavy.
The weight settles in a slow, dragging way, like my body finally realises the fight is over and chooses that moment to complain about every stress I ignored.
My breath catches in that strange limbo between relief and disbelief, as if my nerves are still trying to fire even though the danger has passed.
A thin vibration lingers in my fingertips, the ghost-echo of adrenaline refusing to let go.
Nero materialises beside me in a shimmer of gold, brushing dust and lingering ember-fragments from her dress as if they were nothing more than stage confetti.
Her movements carry the unbothered grace of someone who treats combat as performance art.
Even the faint scorch marks on her dress make her look like she stepped off a ruined stage set with a flair only Nero could naturally command.
Where most Servants shed bloodlust after a fight, she sheds aesthetics, as if the battlefield were merely another arena for her theatrics.
She stretches with a satisfied groan, leaving tiny flickers of burning rose petals floating in the air before she smiles at me and says, "Another flawless victory."
But the smile fades the moment she actually looks at my face, making her say in a softer tone, "…My Praetor? You are quiet."
Her words cut through the haze clouding my mind. It isn't an accusation or irritation.
It is a concern wrapped in velvet, and that tone lands harder than any enemy attack. I almost want to tell her I'm fine out of reflex, but the lie would crumble before it even leaves my mouth.
I sit on the couch without answering, because Helena's last words keep clawing their way back into my mind, 'She distorted my desire...'
The phrase lodges under my skin like a splinter of ice cooling everything it touches.
I drag a hand over my face, feeling the tremble in my palm. Helena's voice wasn't desperate when she said it; it was resigned, as she had already made peace with her own erasure long before the system actually did it.
That quiet acceptance clings to me more painfully than any cry of hate or fear could have.
It's the kind of line that sticks with you long after the moment ends, because it sounds too calculated to be instinct, too precise to be a coincidence.
Nero sits beside me, patient, regal, and, if I'm being honest, a little concerned.
The odd part is that Nero rarely holds still unless she wants to; stillness for her is a message, a deliberate act, a declaration that something else matters more than her usual theatrics.
The fact that she sits that way now tells me she has already noticed the storm behind my eyes.
She leans her shoulder into mine before she says in the same soft tone, but this time with an edge of authority behind it, "Speak. Your Empress commands it."
I exhale loudly before I tell her, "It's Helena… What she said before she disappeared. And the name she revealed. Kang Yaling. A beautiful name on paper… But soaked in the dread of her tone."
My thoughts keep circling the same point, looping instead of landing. The room feels smaller than usual, as if my worry is pressing against the walls.
Even the faint hum of SE.RA.PH sounds heavier than normal, like it's waiting for something.
After a brief pause, I continue slowly, "She's the Champion of Life, and she's the one who… Changed Helena. Twisted her into that cold and soulless version of herself. A version that never laughed, never argued, never tried to hide her curiosity under dry sarcasm."
Nero tilts her head and comments, "Her loyalty was absolute. Unnatural. As if she had been rewritten."
I rub my temples and say, "Exactly. And there's a lot more to that..."
The words echo strangely in my mouth because saying them out loud makes the entire situation feel even more real.
There's a weight behind it now, a pressure I didn't notice during the battle because adrenaline kept me moving.
At this point, the memory of that event before our reincarnation tugs at me as I continue to explain, "The Champion of Life, I remember her quite well. She was the one who was drawn and made her choice right before me. She had chosen to reincarnate in the Terror Infinity Universe, one of the craziest, most dangerous, most overstuffed, most customizable fictional universes imaginable. You could end up with any ability from any other universe, depending on luck, skills, points, and contracts. It was one of my own possible choices for reincarnation, but Kang Yaling had made that choice before me, and now she could have drawn powers from… Basically anything in the Omniverse or something very close to it."
Nero senses the direction of my thoughts and says, "You fear that this Champion of Life may have drawn strength from countless worlds and realities?"
Hearing that, I let out a sigh and admit, "I don't know what to expect... But Helena's last words give us one clue."
I breathe out the sentence again, barely above a whisper, "She distorted my desire."
The phrasing is too deliberate, too specific; it's not the kind of sentence people use casually, especially not people about to be erased.
I straighten and mutter, exposing my thought out loud, "If I take that literally… Then the Champion of Life didn't just brainwash Helena. She rewrote what Helena wanted. She altered her heart."
The idea still makes my stomach twist. Desire is the foundation of self; changing it is worse than killing someone; it replaces them while leaving the body intact.
Nero's eyes narrow as she comments, "Such a violation is revolting. What abomination would dare to defile..."
Before she can finish the sentence, I stop her and say, "I don't know, but I can make a guess."
I shift forward, elbows on my knees, and begin listing out loud the first possible ability that comes to mind, "The first one that immediately comes to my mind is a Geass. A supernatural ability that originates from the Code Geass Universe. The Geass manifests differently in each individual, possibly related to their inner desires and personality. The power of Geass increases with use, and should the user lack the willpower, they may be consumed by it. Some call Geass the Power of Kings, and others state that the Geass is a form of wish. The Geass is represented by a glowing, bird-shaped symbol. All Geass abilities that I know of have been related to the mind, influencing such things as will, thought, memory and perception."
But then, I shake my head and say, "However, every Geass, while powerful, has its own unique set of restrictions, limitations, or idiosyncrasies. These factors allow a Geass to be defeated, or its power limited, by someone who is aware of its characteristics. On top of that, the power of Geass is not absolutely successful, as there have been certain cases shown where a victim is able to resist the effects of Geass, often due to the victim's grudge against the Geass user. For example, Lelouch and Nunnally were able to negate Emperor Charles' Geass due to their acceptance of reality over false memories. Considering the fact that I didn't sense any power like that influencing Helena, I'm pretty sure that the power of the Geass isn't the one that the Champion of Life used on her."
Coming to that conclusion, I move on to the next one on my list, "She could have used the God's Dimension of the Terror Infinity Universe to gain Rohan Kishibe's Stand, Heaven's Door. Heaven's Door's basic ability allows Rohan to turn any living being into a book, with pages unfurling from their bodies in the shape of the body part it opens from, for example, if it opens from the face, the pages take the shape of the person's entire face. The books contain detailed and absolutely truthful information about their subject, including physical characteristics, memories, from their earliest to most recent, thoughts, personality traits, and Stand details, if applicable. But the most fearsome ability of this Stand is that it allows the user to alter or erase memories, or put hypnotic-like commands into the person's mind by writing into the pages of a person or object transformed into a book. All this makes Heaven's Door a strong candidate... But unfortunately, it isn't the only one."
After saying that, I keep listing more and more powers and abilities that could have been acquired through the God's Dimension.
The Needless Fragment Black Attraction allows the user to control a victim by orally transmitting an ESP(Extra Sensory Perception) virus, which then takes over the victim's brain and causes them to only obey what the user has told them to do.
The Demon Blade Saika, which possesses people by cutting them and spreading its influence through the pain they feel.
When someone is possessed by Saika, they become one of its "children," and any blades they wield become Saika's daughter blades, each having the ability to spread Saika's influence and even create their own daughter blades.
Saika's children are able to, for the most part, live their lives normally, but Saika's spirit still lives within them.
They gain the ability to sense the voice and presence of their mother from a long distance away, and when they do, Saika's spirit enters their conscience, and they act like underlings.
They follow the orders of the mother, no matter the consequences to themselves, whether their mother is actually nearby or not.
The superweapon Nirvana, which has the power to turn light to darkness and vice versa.
This works when people are wavering in their emotions and forces people to change alignments between light and darkness.
The signature dōjutsu of Shisui Uchiha's two Mangekyō Sharingan, Kotoamatsukami, which casts a powerful yet subtle mind-controlling genjutsu on a target.
The technique allows the user to enter the mind of any individual within their field of view and manipulate them by giving them phantom experiences, making it seem as if they were doing things of their own free will.
It is regarded by many as the most broken genjutsu of the Naruto Universe, due to the victim being completely unaware that they are being manipulated.
The Telepathy power, like the mutants Charles Xavier, Jean Grey, the alien Martian Manhunter, or any other character with similar power, that can easily allow the user to manipulate their target's mind however they want.
The very similar Esper power from the Toaru Majutsu no Index Universe, Mental Out, is a very powerful ability involving the human mind, which includes mental control, reading other people's memories, telepathy, changing a person's personality, willpower and memory destruction, revelation and transplantation of emotions, brainwashing, and psychometry.
The Millennium Rod from Yu-Gi-Oh, whose unique ability grants the holder the power to control minds by turning people into slaves under the user's control.
By extension, it is also capable of mind manipulation, allowing the owner to see and hear everything they do, telepathically communicate with others, look into their memories, trick their minds into believing what the Rod's owner wants them to, render people unconscious, and leave portions of the owner's mind in people to control them even without the item.
However, its mind control powers do not affect those who own or are connected to the other Millennium Items or have a strong enough will.
The Realbooting ability of the Gigalomaniacs in the Chaos Head Universe, which allows them to falsely trick a person into thinking delusions are real in the case of "errors", or even turn what were originally delusions into the shared reality of all observers by physically manifesting objects that were originally in delusions into the real world.
Realbooting can be used to create as well as disguise beings and objects; even feelings can be created.
In contrast, by pushing antiparticles into a person's dead/blind spot, the manifested delusion is negated, thereby "freeing" the perceiver from the delusion which was made real.
And the list keeps growing bigger and bigger the more I think about it. Some options are so remote that for a moment I'm also surprised that I recall them so swiftly.
Each possibility feels worse than the last; every power on the list carries some new method of corruption, coercion, or soul-deep manipulation.
I can feel the tension gathering in my shoulders as the sheer scope of it presses down on me.
The Omniverse is vast, but its darkest abilities all feel suddenly closer, as if the Champion of Life reached into the deepest shadows she could find and dragged them into our world.
Nero listens for a while, amused at first, but eventually her amusement turns into raised eyebrows as the list gets longer and longer, thirty, fifty, a hundred possibilities spanning anime, games, novels, and systems.
Finally, I flop backwards with a groan and complain out loud, "Damn it! There are just too many! I can't deduce anything from this! It could literally be anything in the Omniverse!"
Nero laughs softly, warm, melodic, the kind of laugh that somehow cuts through all my frustration before she places a hand on my chest and says gently, "Jayr, you are staring at a single tree and forgetting the forest around it."
In response to that, I raise an eyebrow and ask, "…Meaning?"
Nero chuckles and lightly taps her fingers against me as she replies, "You assume she used one great power. But she may have used three smaller ones, or a relic, or a borrowed power... Or, most importantly, she may have contracted with another entity to do the dirty work for her. After all, your very expansive list already revealed that countless already have the ability to do so."
Contract. That single word hits me like a thunderbolt. My breath catches as Helena's final words resurface again.
"She distorted my desire."
In an instant, my mind suddenly accelerates as the pieces slam together in my brain with perfect alignment, like a puzzle that had always been obvious but only now fully revealed itself, 'Wait. Wait. Wait! That's it!!'
The revelation snaps through me like a firecracker. Everything Helena said, everything she didn't say, everything about the fight we just survived, it all suddenly lines up.
I can almost feel the click of realisation inside my skull, for the first time since the encounter, the fog lifts.
I sit up straight so suddenly that Nero jolts, and in a concerned tone, she asks, "Jayr?"
After experiencing that Eureka moment, I look at Nero and with a smile on my face, I say, "I think I know what she used. It's not hypnosis. It's not brainwashing. It has almost nothing to do with the manipulation of the mind."
I swallow and take a brief pause before I add, "It's the distortion of the heart. The corruption of core desires. The reshaping of cognition. The creation of false loyalty."
Hearing that, Nero's eyes widen slightly as she says in a genuinely curious tone, "Go on."
I take a moment to create a dramatic pause before I reveal, "It's the Metaverse. She is using the Phantom Thieves' system from the Persona 5 game, which is part of a very powerful multiverse named the Shin Megami Tensei Universe."
Nero blinks and demands, "Explain. Who are these Phantom Thieves you are talking about? What are their abilities?"
In response to her questions, I start to explain, "Their complete name is actually the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, and in a way, they can literally enter a person's heart. They are a group of Persona users whose goal is to confront 'corrupt adults' by stealing their 'corrupt hearts,' and change the world in order to rebel and fight against the complex, sophisticated and well-ingrained system of slavery they are trapped in, reinforced by the General Public's selective apathy, which enables abuse against them to go unchecked and unopposed. They are willing to exploit the supernatural if it means bringing freedom and liberation to the masses."
While I'm saying that, the irony hits me, a group dedicated to liberating people through heart alteration being mirrored by someone using similar tools for enslavement. It's like taking the symbol of rebellion and turning it into a weapon of tyranny.
I run my hands through my hair as I continue to explain, "To combat this injustice, they surpass the preconceived notions of morality; although it is subjective as to whether the Phantom Thieves are 'right' or 'wrong,' they reject both inability and hypocrisy by carefully establishing their tools while working together towards the same vision of righteousness. Unlike the Champion of Life, the Phantom Thieves change hearts in order to simply set them free rather than control them."
Nero nods and approvingly says, "Umu. These Phantom Thieves do seem to be quite the noble group." But then she tilts her head and asks, "However, Praetor, you still didn't tell me what their abilities are... And what does a Persona user mean?"
I take a moment to sip a bit of water from a bottle I summoned from my Soulbound Territory, and then I say, "A Persona user is a being, usually human, who has the supernatural ability to summon their Persona. After they obtain their Personas, their physical and mental abilities increase to superhuman levels. Some Persona users can summon multiple Personas with the Wild Card."
Before she can ask yet another question, I already guess what is going to be asked next and explain, "A Persona is a manifestation of a Persona user's personality in the Persona series, referred to as a 'mask' for an individual to use to face hardship. As you know, the term 'persona' is Latin for 'mask.' A Persona is similar to a Shadow, and the Shadows are malevolent manifestations of one's inner thoughts, while a Persona is a manifestation of the same feelings but tamed and trained. A fight using Personas weighs on the user's mind and spirit. Continuous use of a Persona will eventually drain the user's strength and stamina. Personas even have an influence on physical and mental abilities, making their users superhumans, for example, giving them mastery over weapons or resistance to terror and madness."
In the end, I conclude my explanation by saying, "The Phantom Thieves dive into a mental world created from someone's desires called the Palace. By the way, a Palace is a manifestation of 'distortion,' strong negative or corrupt thoughts that warp the perceptions of people into a hazard for themselves and others. They steal the 'Treasure,' the core of those desires, and the real person's heart changes instantly. They stop wanting what they used to want. Or start wanting something new entirely."
Nero's expression darkens in a way that reminds me she once ruled an empire, and she comments, "To twist desire itself… that is a power most foul."
At this point, I lean back into the couch and say, while my pulse picks up, "If we use the powers of the Phantom Thieves as a basis, everything fits. Helena thought she always served Kang Yaling because her heart had been rewritten. She wasn't mind-controlled. She was… corrected. Like a Palace ruler whose Treasure was stolen."
Hearing that, Nero muses in a sombre tone, "And if this Kang Yaling has such power, she could twist even the most steadfast soul."
I nod and agree, "Even Champions have strong desires that could be distorted to form a Palace. They too have a Core. This makes them the perfect targets."
Nero leans closer, voice low and serious, "Jayr… She could try to do the same to you."
I meet her gaze and smile reassuringly, "She could try to... But I'm different from the usual case. My Core transcended thanks to my Divinity long ago, giving me an absolute degree of control over it. Even if she were to dare to try, I would immediately notice and use all my considerable power to destroy her. On top of that is highly unlikely that I will form a Palace as I have a clear grasp of my desires and emotions, having tamed and trained them throughout my life. And you also are safe, as our bond should protect you too."
At this point, Nero's hand finds mine, fingers curling around it with unexpected tenderness before she says, "Even so, do not fear, my Praetor. If she attempts to reach into your heart one way or another, she will find my sword waiting inside it."
I laugh quietly and say, "That's not how cognition works." Nero smirks and quips back, "It is how my passion works. Nothing can stop it."
In response, I squeeze her hand and say, "Either way… We know our enemy now. And we have an idea of what she can do."
The room feels heavier, but also clearer, a new threat, a new battlefield, not physical this time, but psychological, metaphysical, conceptual.
We sit together in silence, the comforting, grounding silence, while the reality of our hidden enemy settles in.
However, now that my mind is no longer occupied with the mystery behind the Champion of Life's power, I finally have time to fully focus on the changes in my Blessing.
After all, when we defeated Helena, and she was erased, her Blessing as Champion of Earth merged and empowered my own Blessing as Champion of Culture.
I take advantage of this moment to focus my attention on my whole being, and the first immediate change that I notice is that my Soulbound Territory has once more increased in size. Before it was exactly 5000 km2 now it has become 50000km2 becoming ten times larger.
But that is nothing compared to what happened to the inner workings of my mind, before my Blessing granted me an Enhanced Memory.
Which means that I could retain and recall vast amounts of information with flawless accuracy, operating at the peak of human cognitive potential.
My memory was both eidetic and photographic, allowing me to imprint sights, sounds, words, and even subtle emotional impressions into my mind with perfect clarity.
A single glance, a passing comment, or a brief experience was enough to preserve the moment forever, each detail mentally archived, accessible at a moment's notice.
I could recall nearly anything with precision: an offhand conversation from childhood, the exact phrasing of a book I read years ago, the name of a film I saw only in passing, or a complex Pankration routine I learned during a lesson with Grandfather back at the Sanctuary.
Where ordinary minds lose, distort, or overwrite memories over time, my mental archive remained pristine and untouched.
Time did not degrade my recall, and focus was not required for access; memories came back to me instantly, clearly, and without effort.
This extraordinary ability spanned across all sensory and cognitive domains.
It helped me remember voices, scents, textures, and even the feeling of air pressure or ambient temperature during a particular memory.
A lesson from the Sanctuary could be mentally replayed as if the teacher were standing before me again.
Instructions I've heard only once were as fresh and comprehensible as when first delivered.
Body movements from martial arts practice, dance, or other physical disciplines are recalled with muscle-perfect precision, allowing me to replicate them fluidly even after years without practice. This was the main reason I could master so many arts in these years.
My mind operated like a vast, highly organised library, every detail categorised, cross-referenced, and retrievable with almost no conscious effort.
This allowed me to make rapid connections between seemingly unrelated ideas, identify inconsistencies in patterns or testimonies, and outthink others in debates, strategy, or analysis, and my capacity for learning is virtually unmatched; knowledge was not just remembered, but internalised, built upon, and refined over time without decay.
Though this power is rooted in natural biology rather than the supernatural, it surpasses what most people believe human minds can do.
But now, my Enhanced Memory evolved into Panmnesia. I can now remember and recall everything that I have ever experienced, encountered or learned in my lifetime, both my lifetimes.
I only need to read, hear, see, or experience something once, and I will never forget it.
In addition, I am able to instantly recall any information stored with perfect clarity and no effort and without strain.
My mind now has an unlimited storage capacity, which allows me to continue to learn for the rest of my life, and my brain will simply contain it all without trouble, allowing memory of every event, experience or bit of knowledge from birth to the present.
But more importantly, now my mind is also entirely immune to all kinds of Memory Manipulation and Meta Memory Manipulation, which means that now I'm even more protected against the Champion of Life's power.
The realisation brings a slow wave of calm I hadn't expected; the threat she poses hasn't diminished.
Her reach is still terrifying, her methods still unforgivable, but the fear she might twist me, might corrupt the foundation of who I am, begins to fade.
I can feel Nero watching me, sensing the shift in my mood while her presence grows warmer, filling the space between us like sunlight.
And for the first time since Helena fell, I feel something close to steady. Not safe, not yet, but steady.