Black Swan's consciousness passed through Lucian's eyes as though diving into an ocean with no visible bottom, sinking deeper and deeper into an abyss whose depths could not be measured.
The farther she descended, the more distant the surface seemed, until even the sense of reality around her gradually became indistinct.
At first, the fragments of memories were warm and hazy, carrying only the faint nostalgia of an ordinary life. They were simple memories, devoid of anything particularly extraordinary, yet there was a certain familiarity and warmth within them that made them feel strangely peaceful.
Before long, she witnessed scenes from Lucian's days as nothing more than a normal man: the bustle of a modern city, the crowds flowing through the streets, the countless ordinary lives passing by one another without ever intersecting, and then the instant the airplane he was riding crashed.
After that came the impossible miracle of being brought back to life by the Aeon of Abundance.
In her eyes, it seemed that the Aeon of Abundance's method of bestowing blessings was certainly unconventional.
Even through these memories, Black Swan could clearly feel the bewilderment, disbelief, and faint sense of absurdity that had filled the heart of an ordinary mortal when confronted with something so completely beyond common sense.
Before long, the memories gradually shifted to Belobog, where Lucian had saved an underdeveloped civilization before eventually standing at its summit as its ruler.
Later on, the scenes continued to change, one after another, revealing fragments of the journey that had led him from an ordinary mortal to the position he now occupied.
As Black Swan danced gracefully, ripples resembling scattered starlight spread beneath her feet, causing fragmented scenes to bloom one after another around her. Each movement seemed to stir the depths of Lucian's memories, allowing another piece of his past to emerge from the endless darkness.
She saw Lucian smiling as he flicked Stelle's forehead, laughing as he fooled around with Jingliu and Baiheng, casually reviving Dan Feng as though it required no effort whatsoever, and torturing Phantylia while making one sarcastic remark after another.
All of those were merely the relatively gentle, even amusing, surface memories that floated closest to the top. Compared to the unfathomable depths hidden beneath them, they were almost like insignificant ripples upon the surface of an ocean.
Black Swan couldn't help but chuckle inwardly.
As she had expected, Lucian was someone who lived purely for amusement.
Even the memories surrounding him were filled with lively, carefree moments instead of solemn grandeur.
No matter what she saw, there was no sense of the dignity or restraint one would normally expect from someone possessing such terrifying power. Instead, he seemed to treat even the most extraordinary events as though they were merely another source of amusement.
As she pieced together everything she had learned so far, Black Swan arrived at a conclusion she believed to be perfectly reasonable.
Lucian was a man blessed with extraordinary power, someone who acted entirely according to his own whims while gathering an astonishing network of powerful allies around him.
From Black Swan's perspective, there was nothing beyond the reach of a Memokeeper, so she believed she could read through his past as effortlessly as turning the pages of an open book.
After all, memories were her domain, and there should have been very few secrets capable of escaping her perception.
Lucian had instructed Sunday to borrow the power of Harmony in order to spread the memetic virus called Dreamcluck Chicken, attempting to gather the will of countless people into Sunday himself and practically compete with the Aeon of Harmony for followers.
Lucian had also resurrected countless dead and rewritten fates that should have been irreversible.
"Just how... did you accomplish all of that?"
Stepping closer until they were almost chest to chest, Black Swan spoke in a voice overflowing with temptation. Her eyes remained fixed upon Lucian, as though she were trying to see through the final layers of mystery concealed within his memories.
What she truly wished to uncover was not only the nature and limits of his abilities, but also the reason behind every one of his actions.
Did he do these things merely because they amused him?
Was it genuine kindness?
Or was there an even deeper design hidden beneath everything he had done?
Surely, those memories would be treasures worthy of preservation.
Black Swan's graceful spin carried her gaze deeper into Lucian's seemingly smiling yet unfathomable eyes, but the deeper she ventured, the more she felt that something was wrong.
Unknowingly, the memories no longer possessed the same warmth and familiarity as before, as though she had unknowingly crossed an invisible boundary.
However, the answers she expected never appeared. Instead, several impossibly brief yet horrifying fragments flashed before her consciousness.
She saw Lucian slaughter her over three hundred thousand times.
She saw him hurl an entire planet at her, crushing her body into oblivion with overwhelming force.
She even saw herself tied to a bed by him, subjected to dripping wax, a whip, and an electric vibrator, while her senses of pain and pleasure were amplified tenfold, his fingers reducing her to the point where her eyes rolled back in uncontrollable ecstasy.
Finally, an even more impossible sight appeared.
She witnessed Lucian cleaving the Aeon of Erudition in half with a single slash.
Facing an Aeon head-on?
No, that had already surpassed the concept of simply being 'powerful.'
It was something else entirely.
Before Black Swan could gather her collapsing thoughts, an incomprehensible will suddenly awakened from the deepest reaches of Lucian's memories.
It was a presence she could neither understand nor describe, one that existed beyond every known Path and every law she had ever perceived.
It was cold, utterly indifferent, like the very laws that had governed the universe since the beginning of existence itself, without hatred, malice, or emotion whatsoever.
It existed for one purpose alone—to erase.
In an instant, the entire landscape of memories changed as the familiar bar vanished without warning, replaced by a chaotic void woven together from shattered laws, corrupted data, and fragments of broken reality.
At the same time, the peaceful illusion from before was gone without leaving behind even the slightest trace, replaced by an oppressive emptiness that seemed to stretch endlessly in every direction.
Right afterward, the Lucian who should have been nothing more than a projection within the memory slowly turned his head.
Gone was his usual relaxed demeanor.
Now, his eyes were terrifyingly calm, while an unsettling smile slowly curved across his lips.
"Oh? You're asking me?"
As Lucian spoke, the entire memory space trembled violently before every trace of warmth disappeared, replaced by suffocating darkness stained with deep crimson and bone-chilling cold.
'What... is...'
Black Swan's face froze.
Lucian's arm suddenly became powerful and completely irresistible as he effortlessly reversed the flow of their dance, taking absolute control.
At this moment, his movements no longer resembled dancing in the slightest. Instead, they felt like a compulsory system scan followed immediately by an intrusion detection protocol, leaving Black Swan with no opportunity to react.
In an instant, the confidence on her face disappeared, replaced first by astonishment and then by overwhelming terror as she realized she couldn't disconnect.
Now, her consciousness had become firmly nailed inside the dance itself, dragged ever deeper into Lucian's memories by an irresistible force.
Only then did she discover that what lay beneath wasn't a memory in the conventional sense. It resembled the core of a colossal, emotionless system equipped with an autonomous defense mechanism, one that had awakened the moment it detected an intruder.
Before Black Swan could make sense of it, the symbolic scenery surrounding them transformed completely without warning.
Swans and serpents vanished, replaced by endless streams of data that coiled around her consciousness like countless chains, binding her firmly in place. Her memetic body was instantly identified, isolated, and analyzed with frightening efficiency, just like malicious code striking an impenetrable firewall.
Meanwhile, Lucian's figure continuously shifted before her eyes, at times becoming a cold mechanical construct devoid of humanity, and at others transforming into a boundless shadow of chaos that threatened to consume all existence.
What truly terrified her wasn't the countless scenes of slaughter or destruction, but the absolute feeling of being dominated—the horrifying sensation that her very existence was being dissected, analyzed, and completely understood.
Before this overwhelming force, her abilities as a Memokeeper felt as insignificant as trying to empty the sea of stars with nothing more than a spoon.
By this point, their dance had become something entirely different.
It was now a one-sided system cleansing process.
Using a method completely beyond her comprehension, Lucian was reverse-engineering every aspect of her existence—her identity, her purpose, and every memory she had ever accumulated.
Black Swan felt herself being stripped apart piece by piece. Everything that defined her seemed to be disassembled and absorbed into the endless void surrounding them, leaving her with an increasingly terrifying sense that even her own existence was no longer under her control.
In response, she struggled with all her strength, but no matter how hard she tried, she accomplished nothing, making her no more than a moth hopelessly trapped within a spider's web.
Only then did Black Swan understand that Lucian might never have possessed the grand motives she had assumed, and there might never have been any hidden objective or elaborate plan behind his actions.
Perhaps... he simply did whatever he pleased.
However, from her perspective, that kind of meaningless omnipotence was far more terrifying than any evil ambition.
'I'll die! I'm really going to die!'
Black Swan couldn't help but think in panic.
'What exactly is this power? It isn't the memories themselves!'
'Is it some kind of defensive mechanism attached to his memories?'
'Or is this merely the tip of the iceberg that makes up his true nature?'
Black Swan exhausted every ounce of strength available to her as a Memokeeper, and she even burned away a portion of her precious memoria essence before barely managing to sever her connection to Lucian's memories, escaping just before that terrifying will completely crushed her existence.
In that instant, the music came to an abrupt stop, and the scenery instantly returned to the quiet Party Car.
"Hahh... Hahh..."
Black Swan looked as though she had just been dragged out of deep water as she desperately gasped for air, each breath rougher than the last, while the deep, enchanting eyes that had always remained calm were now filled with unprecedented shock and terror, unable to focus on anything before her.
Her face was also deathly pale, and her delicate body was completely soaked in cold sweat as it trembled uncontrollably.
Supporting her slender waist with one hand, Lucian expressionlessly watched Black Swan struggle to regain her breath.
He had to admit that the sight of her in such a disoriented state was rather striking. Her lips were slightly parted as she continued to breathe heavily, and the usually composed Memokeeper now appeared unusually vulnerable after her encounter with that terrifying power.
Apparently, the Godly Script System had passed judgment upon Black Swan and nearly erased her from existence. Had he not stopped it at the final moment, she would have disappeared completely.
A teasing smile slowly spread across Lucian's face.
"Miss Memokeeper, did you get the answer you were looking for? And what price did you pay for it?"
Still visibly shaken, Black Swan stared at him in silence.
Only now did she finally understand why Lucian had warned her beforehand that it would cost her a little extra.
"No... I made a fatal mistake..."
In her eyes, Lucian was not human, nor was he an ordinary Emanator.
He was an anomaly that could not be defined, could not be understood, and could never be controlled. Attempting to peer into the root of such an anomaly came with only one possible consequence: being completely 'formatted.'
Lucian looked at her with faint amusement.
"Still wanna make another move?"
At his question, Black Swan lowered her gaze slightly before replying quietly.
"I don't..."
===
[A bonus chapter for reaching 400 Power Stones]
[Support and get early access to upcoming chapters at: patreon.com/VALRRR]