The memories he had just awakened showed him—clearly—what he had done back when he first arrived in the world of the First Flame.
Back then, he hadn't yet accepted the Undead Curse. No Dark Sigil dwelled within him. He wasn't plagued by missing memories.
Relying on countless chances to start over, he defeated one Lord of Cinder after another.
He saw himself step into the filth-pits of Farron Keep again and again, crossing blades with the Abyss Watchers—the deadly sword-dance of the Undead Legion.
He crossed the towering walls of the Profaned Capital, Storm Ruler in hand, facing Yhorm the Giant—vast as a mountain.
He delved into the ruined Anor Londo, witnessing the Deep Saint Aldrich, Devourer of Gods—its twisted, viscous body writhing in grotesque hunger.
He broke through the many layers of blockade surrounding Lothric Castle and stood before the last scions of bloodline who refused to link the fire—the Twin Princes of Lothric.
In the end, he gathered the five Lords' cinders. Guided by the Fire Keeper, he entered the Kiln of the First Flame.
Chaos churned. Ash drifted through the air.
There, he faced the Soul of Cinder head-on.
The incarnation's weapon shifted without end; the brilliance of sorcery and miracles tore through space itself.
With one all-out dash and a decisive slash—spent to the last ounce of strength—he finally shattered the incarnation.
The faint First Flame burned before him. He reached for the coiled sword, set himself alight… and slowly sat down.
He completed the rite of Linking the Fire—the ritual that kept the world's lingering existence alive.
Flames surged.
The world rewound.
And then, as naturally as breathing, he opened his eyes once more inside the cold stone coffin of the Cemetery of Ash.
Up to that point, everything was still normal.
But what happened next was a sudden, jarring shift in tone—so bizarre that even Eisen couldn't make sense of it.
In the memory, he went deep into the Cathedral of the Deep and sought out Rosaria, Mother of Rebirth.
Then, through the rebirth ritual, he stripped away all of the boundless soul-energy he had previously fused.
From a warrior who could physically contend with gods, he regressed into an ordinary man who couldn't even lift heavy weapons.
Then he picked up a broken straight sword—unreinforced, unupgraded—and set foot on the path to Linking the Fire again.
Each swing was clumsy and exhausting. Each block carried enormous risk.
Enemies he once could crush with ease now demanded multiple times the blood and sweat.
Failure. Death. Restart.
Over and over.
And using only the most basic combat skills, he forced his way through—and linked the fire again.
That wasn't resilience anymore.
It was a pathological, obsessive self-imposed challenge.
And that… seemed to be only the beginning.
In the next cycle, he abandoned honorable combat entirely.
With invisibility, poison, and frost, he let enemies die in silence.
He used terrain drops and all manner of mechanisms and traps to kill powerful foes.
No one ever realized he was there—yet he again completed the rite of Linking the Fire from the shadows.
To him, the entire world of the First Flame had become an enormous playground.
And he delighted in testing every possible way to clear it.
"Hiss—"
Eisen sucked in a breath.
He truly couldn't imagine how the "joyful monster" in those memories could, step by step, become the current him—someone who had lost everything to save a world.
The sheer disconnect left him momentarily speechless.
This recovered memory was sparse, covering only fragments of his early activity in the First Flame world.
Because during a world rewind, that world contained three critical temporal anchor points.
And the version of him in the recovered memory was, at most, looping repeatedly after the third anchor point.
To Eisen—who had already lived through countless full cycles and long since trod every possibility—that earlier self was nothing more than a newbie who had just pushed open the gate of the tutorial village, still ignorant of the world's true nature.
The greatest significance of this memory fragment wasn't the content itself, but what it proved:
This "repression chat group" truly could兑现 its promise—it had the ability to restore his lost memories.
Pulling his thoughts out of the fragments, Eisen's gaze returned to the private chat window.
[Group Leader (Eisen): So it really can restore memories. Then how long until the chat group's next upgrade?]
[Group Assistant: Evaluating…]
[Group Assistant: The total repression energy required to advance from Lv1 to Lv2 represents an enormous order-of-magnitude increase compared to Lv0→Lv1.]
[Group Assistant: Under current conditions, the host's mental state is extremely repressed; repression-energy output is stable and the base rate is constant.]
[Group Assistant: However, as the host responds to member requests and uses the group travel function to go to other worlds, the host's repression will temporarily be interrupted or weakened.]
[Group Assistant: This behavior will significantly reduce the host's own repression-energy production rate.]
[Group Assistant: Although main-group members and any subgroups established in the future can absorb and convert repression energy, the overall acceleration effect is limited.]
[Group Assistant: And as the host continues helping main-group and subgroup members, it will further reduce the crisis pressure they face—indirectly weakening the efficiency of repression-energy production.]
[Group Assistant: Conclusion: Too many variables. Accumulation-rate volatility is too large. Precise estimation of remaining time to upgrade is impossible. Host is advised to remain patient.]
Reading the assistant's response, Eisen rubbed his chin.
By the chat group's logic, from a purely utilitarian standpoint—if the sole goal was fastest possible leveling—then his behavior of helping group members was… actually wrong?
He should refrain from interfering, keep his power tightly suppressed.
The group members should ideally remain trapped in constant crisis, struggling in misery and suffering fresh blows nonstop.
Only then would repression-energy production be maximized, allowing the chat group to level up quickly.
But he didn't actually feel that recovering his memories was something urgently pressing.
He'd long since grown used to waiting. This was nothing.
If anything, if he truly recovered all his memories, he might return to that earlier state—an aimless living corpse.
So he wouldn't stop helping the group members.
Besides—hadn't the chat group itself already unlocked group travel and the group shop?
What it "said" and what it "did" were clearly two different things.
"Tch… tsundere, huh?"
He clicked his tongue softly, closed the private chat, and decided that after waiting a while he would go find Sakiko to test her mixed-blood clone.
Then another thought struck him: if he created a subgroup, he could freely control whether time in his own world paused while he traveled to other worlds.
In his current world, he could be considered largely idle anyway—so if he didn't pause it, he could at least waste some time there too.
So he closed his eyes and, in his mind, recalled the home in his present world.
Golden mist infused with spacetime power poured forth.
Under the force of [Miracle – Return], Eisen's figure vanished from the office.
Ten seconds later, the office door was pushed open without a sound.
A woman in a black professional skirt suit stepped in, her aura crisp and capable.
She held a slim tablet in her hand, swept her eyes over the empty chair and desk, confirming Eisen had indeed left.
Then, with practiced fingers, she tapped the tablet and pulled up a file.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 90)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 95)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 80)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter70)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter70)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter50)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter60)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 30
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 30
My patreon : patreon.com/queen_sin