Chapter 226: Force Equals Mass Times Acceleration
[Path: [ERROR] -> [ER...] -> Execute Evolution -> [ER...] -> Force Execute Evolution -> Erudition]
"Calm down. You need to breathe—" Long Night Moon's voice echoed, attempting to soothe the frantic archer.
March 7th couldn't stop her hands from shaking. Her knuckles were stark white as she gripped the edge of the Dream Pool. Watching someone irreplaceable devolve into a witless primate right before her eyes... how could anyone just calm down?
The Sleepy Banana Monkey sitting in the viscous fluid tilted its furry head. Its round, glassy eyes lacked the chaotic, brilliant spark she knew so well. Yet, this was Rekka. Her innate connection to Remembrance confirmed it, even as she felt his memories of her dissolving like sugar in boiling water.
Rekka Monkey had already forgotten his own name. The only anchor left in his shrinking mind was March 7th.
But seconds ticked by, and even that final, stubborn fragment of memory evaporated from the primate's consciousness.
For the first time since boarding the Astral Express, March 7th felt her affinity for Remembrance as a curse. She could literally feel the erasure happening—an agonizingly slow deletion of every smile, every joke, every shared moment, vanishing into the void right in front of her.
The Sleepy Banana Monkey tilted its head again, blinking with unfocused, empty eyes. Its jaw slacked, letting out a garbled, meaningless chitter.
Then, it lowered its head and began lazily scratching its ear with a clumsy paw. The vacant expression and sluggish movements were identical to every other mindless Sleepy Banana Monkey she had seen roaming the campus dreamscape.
There was no Rekka left. Just a monkey.
March 7th's shoulders hitched, her trembling worsening. It wasn't fear, and it certainly wasn't disgust. It was the sheer, crushing grief of perceiving a soul being systematically overwritten.
But just as the final byte of his humanity seemed to delete itself, the air in the room shifted.
"March... Senior."
The Sleepy Banana Monkey muttered the words in a raspy, pinched voice. It violently shook its head, scratched its skull with both paws, and gave a full-body shiver.
A fragment of memory had clawed its way back. Just enough for the primate to remember who it was supposed to be.
"Rekka!"
March 7th practically threw herself over the edge of the Dream Pool, her fingers digging into the metallic rim.
"Wake up! Look at me! You still remember who I am, right? Don't go to sleep, stop scratching your ear, just keep talking to me!"
A fierce, deeply human struggle ignited within the monkey's round eyes. The furry paw slowly lowered from its ear and, with visible effort, tapped its own forehead.
"March... Senior, don't shake me. The room is spinning."
The voice was bizarre, sounding exactly like a human trying to speak through a squeezed throat.
[Don't get too close, March.]
Long Night Moon's voice projected sharply into March 7th's mind.
[The meme is actively feeding on his immense power to grow stronger. If his consciousness collapses and he explodes now, every single living being in this entire star system will instantly turn into what he is!]
"There's a whole circus of monkeys banging gongs and cymbals inside my skull. It's so loud," Rekka groaned, his furry face contorting. "Did I almost turn into a banana just now...?"
"You turned into a monkey!"
"It's Dr. Prim... Dr. Bananative..."
Rekka forced the words out, fighting a war against his own devolving vocal cords.
"What... time is it?"
Despite the primate exterior, the chaotic Trailblazer was finally managing to string thoughts together.
"What is a Dr. Bananative?! No, forget that!" March 7th glanced at the digital clock on the wall. "It's... ten minutes to midnight!"
Her pink and blue eyes suddenly widened with a surge of desperate hope.
"That's right! Your Path! You refresh your Path at midnight! Just hold on, Rekka!"
Trailblaze, The Hunt, Erudition, Nihility, Preservation, Abundance, Destruction, Elation, Voracity, Propagation, Remembrance, Enigmata, Equilibrium, Order, Finality, Harmony, Beauty, Permanence...
The cosmic list of possibilities buzzed through Rekka's aching head.
Twelve o'clock.
Twelve-oh-one.
Twelve-oh-two.
Twelve-oh-three.
Nothing happened. The furry exterior remained entirely unchanged.
March 7th's lips lost all their color. The temporary clarity in Rekka's eyes was fading again, his memories draining away even faster than before.
"Rekka—you, just stay right there! I'm getting the others. Right now. You'll be fine, you hear me? You're going to be completely fine!"
She spun around and bolted into the corridor, hammering her fists against the nearest doors.
"Dan Heng! Stelle! Emergency! Get out here!"
Dan Heng's door slid open instantly, spear already in hand, followed a split second later by Stelle, who looked equally ready for a fight.
"What's wrong? Are we under attack?" Dan Heng demanded.
"It's Rekka! Something happened to Rekka!"
The trio rushed back into the room.
The viscous liquid inside the Dream Pool shimmered with a faint, eerie blue light. Sitting dead center in the fluid was a very furry, very confused Sleepy Banana Monkey.
"Nana... Nana."
"My other self said this is a memetic virus specifically designed to infect human consciousness," March 7th explained rapidly, her voice cracking. "His situation is critical. We have to find a cure right now!"
"A memetic virus?" Dan Heng lowered his spear, his stoic expression hardening into grave concern.
Before anyone could move, the Rekka Monkey suddenly opened its mouth.
"Bro... ther, I've discovered... force, equals... mass... times acceleration."
The monkey's previously divergent, glassy eyes snapped forward, locking onto a single point in space with terrifying clarity.
"F equals m a..."
Deep within the primate's skull, dormant neurons beneath the frontal cortex violently reconnected. Sparks of pure, unadulterated logic fired across his synapses.
His furry knuckles began to shorten. The thick, simian nails flattened out into human cuticles. His joints audibly popped and cracked as they relearned the complex mechanics of opposing thumbs. His spine jerked, forcing itself upright by several inches, while the curvature of his cervical vertebrae brutally snapped from a hunched C-shape into a perfect human S-shape.
A brilliant, blinding light ignited in his vision.
"Brother, I've discovered... for every action, there is an... equal and opposite reaction." The voice deepened, shedding the pinched, raspy tone. "I've discovered that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only... be transformed from one state to another..."
"Delta E equals zero..."
"Brother, I've discovered... a changing electric field... produces a magnetic field, and a changing magnetic field... produces an electric field. Brother, I've discovered... the speed of light in any reference frame... is... constant..."
Dan Heng, Stelle, and March 7th stood frozen in absolute disbelief as Rekka underwent a physically agonizing, scientifically impossible evolution right in front of them.
The memetic virus hadn't been cured. It hadn't disappeared. But Rekka's sheer, ridiculous intelligence under the sudden influence of the Erudition Path was overriding the biological and memetic rewrite.
He was literally evolving from a monkey back into a human through the sheer, brute force of mathematical comprehension.
Thirty minutes of bone-crunching, physics-reciting agony later, the blinding light faded.
Rekka slowly opened his eyes.
"Hmm..."
He rolled his shoulders, shaking his head to clear the lingering phantom sensation of fur.
"Rekka...?" March 7th whispered, stepping forward hesitantly.
"Good evening, everyone." His tone was perfectly calm, measured, and entirely devoid of simian chittering.
"Rekka!!!"
"Yes, I am still here. The memetic virus deployed by Dr. Primitive's subordinates is indeed quite a potent strain."
Rekka nodded slightly, analyzing his own hands with clinical detachment.
"There appears to have been a slight delay when switching Paths tonight, likely tied to my connection with Stelle, but that is irrelevant now."
"You absolute jerk—!"
March 7th's pent-up terror finally shattered into tears. She lunged forward, raising a fist to punch him square in the chest, but her hand froze mid-air. Instead, she slumped forward, resting her forehead heavily against his shoulder.
"You almost completely turned into a monkey..." she sobbed, her voice muffled against his shirt. "You almost forgot me..."
Rekka looked down, a soft, highly un-Erudition-like warmth flashing in his eyes.
"Even if I devolved into a monkey, I would still remember March Senior."
March 7th snapped her head up. Her eyes were still red and puffy, but the corners of her mouth were already twitching upward in an uncontrollable, relieved smile. She quickly scrubbed her face with her sleeve, took a half-step back, crossed her arms, and forced her features into a fierce glare.
Stelle, who had been watching silently, suddenly reached out and clamped her hand firmly over the top of Rekka's head.
"What exactly are you doing?" Rekka asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Just confirming if you actually changed back and don't have a banana hidden up there." Stelle withdrew her hand smoothly, her face a mask of deadpan innocence.
Dan Heng sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose before returning to the main issue. "You mentioned Dr. Primitive just now. What was that about?"
"Someone is actively spreading a memetic virus throughout the dreamscape," Rekka explained, his Erudition-enhanced mind easily piecing the puzzle together. "Stelle and I were likely the first ones to encounter it. Thinking back on the timeline, the infection probably took root the exact moment we crossed into the Asdena Galaxy... My consciousness synchronized with Stelle's at the time."
Stelle was a unique existence. As a living vessel for a Stellaron, she acted as a massive cosmic tuning fork. Because his own existence was so closely tied to hers, whatever affected her inevitably dragged him down right alongside her.
[Inorin's Note:
Enjoying the story? Dropping a quick review, comment, or Power Stone means the world to me and keeps these daily updates flowing!
Want to read 50 chapters ahead or just want to help keep a shameless translator alive? (My livelihood actually depends on this, haha 😭). You can support me directly here:
(P.S. Just remove the brackets and replace the [.] with a regular dot . to use the links!)
✨ Patreon (50 Advanced Chapters): patreon[.]com/InorinTL
☕ Ko-fi (Support / Sponsor): ko-fi[.]com/InorinTL
Thank you so much for reading and keeping this project alive!]