It all started in the early morning of that day in the South side of the forest, at the Stone Tablet Clearing. Midas had been testing out his skills and how to use them, starting with [Eye of Judgement] and [Divine Database]. After coming to some understanding about how to fully utilise those Skills, he then started testing out the rest out.
Midas stared at the description and felt that almost all the Skill descriptions were blatantly vague. Was there a reason for this?
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Memory of the World (Lv. 1) |
[Access the memory of of any Existence based on some conditions]
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'Access the memory of an existence? What does that even mean? What is an Existence? What is Memory?' pondered Midas while scraping on a wood block to form some cylindrical shape. Midas realised earlier, that with his [Divine Database] always active, he could literally multi-task now, as if his brain was capable of parallel computation.
No, it was not "as if" his brain was capable of parallel computation. That was exactly what was happening.
Multitasking might seem like a simple thing that anyone could do, but Humans by definition cannot multi-task. This is because thoughts in the brain are like a uniform stream that come out one at a time.
One could think of it like a line of ants just walking across a surface with one ant following another and the human mind being able to only pay attention to one ant that passes by at a time.
This means that What Humans are actually doing when they tell themselves that they are multitasking is time sharing.
They focus thoughts in one direction, then they change and focus on thoughts in another. Using the earlier analogy, it would be like a line of ants, except there would be a stream of blue coloured ants for some time, then there would be a stream of red coloured ants. It's essentially still one line.
Because of the lack of focus, there can never be mastery in a multi-tasking state. That is true at least for normal Humans. But for Midas, his [Divine Database] could instantiate new streams based on his current thoughts, actions, feelings, and commands. Even at this moment, Midas could feel that he had access to almost 200 thought streams occurring simultaneously, intermingling, and creating new streams all the time.
This ability of his to think like this is effectively a superhuman thinking capability. Even his actions and reactions have been refined to their most efficient forms, only limited by the quality of his physical body and its ability to send information about what is happening inside it to other parts of itself.
When Midas thought this far, he was incredibly impressed. His stats for Intelligence and Wisdom may be much higher than normal because of this. Seeing that both his Skills in the Gift of Knowledge were so powerful, Midas started looking forward to [Memory of the World] even more.
Midas calmed himself and grabbed onto one of the seeds that he had picked up and used [Eye of Judgement] on it, thinking that he would then later use [Memory of the World].
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Seed of the Tree of Self |
[A seed from the Tree of Self, located in the First Trial.]
[Round bulb like object of 5 centimetre diameter]
[Was previously ripening into the 'Fruit of the Tree of Self']
[Current progress: 0.1%]
[Unknown consequences if ingested]
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'What?' thought Midas in shock. The Trees are called the Trees of Self? Well it stuck to the theme of the first Trial alright. And it turned out that they were ripening into fruits.
Were these fruits edible? If so… There might just be a way to survive this Trial. Midas needed more information on these seeds. He decided to forgo the Skill test and use [Eye of Judgement] on the rooted and living trees themselves and the living seeds on them.
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Tree of Self |
[Tree of Self, located in the First Trial.]
[4 metre tall tree with bulbous seeds hanging from the ends.]
[Emits a strange fragrance that affects Incarnations through its Bark and Branches]
[Absorbs Emotions from Incarnations through its Leaves and turns the Emotional energy into nourishment for the creation of Fruit]
[Current Number of Seeds: 128]
[Current Number of Fruit: 0]
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Seed of the Tree of Self |
[A seed from the Tree of Self, located in the First Trial.]
[Round bulb like object of 10 centimetre diameter]
[Is currently ripening into the 'Fruit of the Tree of Self']
[Current progress: 1%]
[Unknown consequences if ingested]
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'Woah… So cool.' thought Midas as he ran through the possible meanings of this information.
These Trees that permeate this whole space of a diameter thought to be about 20 kilometres, each and every one of them is one of these 'Tree of Self' trees.
All of them are simultaneously releasing a fragrance that affects all the Incarnations, while simultaneously absorbing the Emotional Energy of the Incarnations.
The absorbed Emotional Energy then gets turned into nourishment for the Fruit of the Tree of Self, which Midas still had no idea what it was or how it would affect him if he ingested it.
Midas thought about the fragrance that is apparently being released and realised it might be a fragrance that causes people to become overly emotional easily, thus allowing the trees to absorb more Emotions to form fruits.
This idea conformed to the law of least action that seems to permeate the universe. If the trees require emotional energy in the form of pheromone emissions, then the easiest way to get as much of those would be to induce more in the trees' prey.
If that was the case, Midas and everyone in this forest could be in trouble. Overly emotional states cause irrationality, and irrationality causes danger to oneself or others.
If these trees were releasing a pheromone that was making everyone emotional, Midas needed to figure out if he could counteract this somehow, in case he was adversely affected.
Midas thought about the rate of progress and figured that it might be related to the number of Incarnations around and the concentration of emotions around the trees. He and Julio had been under the Tree for almost 7 hours and in this time it had filled up one of the seeds to 1 percent.
This meant that it would not take much time to grow a fruit in the case where there were a large number of people congregating together. Considering the number of people in this place, fruit would probably form quickly in some areas, maybe even in days.
Thinking this far, Midas decided to stop hesitating and activated [Memory of the World] on the seed in his hand.
Immediately, his mind was flooded by all kinds of emotional states simultaneously.
An Anxiety that would make anyone despair followed by A Confidence that could break any barrier.
A Boredom that causes the whole world to come to a standstill followed by an Intrigue that paints the world in every colour at once.
A Frustration that makes one want to destroy the world followed by an Epiphany that makes one want to create new things.
A Dispiritedness that would make one feel like they have lost everything followed by an Enthusiasm that makes one feel like a King.
A Terror that would make one feel afraid and threatened followed by an Excitement that would make one feel fearless and Bold.
A Humiliation that would reduce one to his lowliest form followed by a Pride that would engulf the Universe.
He felt them all.
Everything. At once.
After a few seconds in that state, he snapped out of it and started involuntarily hyperventilating. His mind apparently could not bear being stimulated to such an extent. Even then he wanted to cry and laugh and curl up and spread himself out and live and die. He was terrified.
'What the hell is this?' thought Midas apprehensively. Whether Midas meant the Fruit Seeds, or his [Memory of the World] Skill, even he didn't know.
He took a moment to calm himself down. There was something else he felt back then, but he wasn't sure if it was true. In that moment, he felt something else, something he had felt before.
Emotionless Bliss.
When he was in the Great Library during his Actualisation Test, he had first come across this feeling by mistake as an escape for his deteriorating mental state. His memory of those events were as clear as day.
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Due to the isolation and the mountains of books and data that he had to go through during the next few possibly millions of years of his stay in the library, Midas found himself becoming more and more frustrated each day. This frustration made him incapable of even completing the easiest of children's books.
This combined with the inability to sleep and feel pain, caused an anger and wrath inside him that he had never felt before in his life. An anger that almost caused Midas to attempt to take his own life.
Midas one day wanted to test out how ridiculous the Physical State Negation really was.
Midas started small. He found himself punching a wall with all the force his body could muster, which was a lot considering the fact that he is in a perpetual peak state.
*Boom*
When he withdrew his hand and looked at the damage... He found Nothing. He didn't feel pain. He didn't feel bones breaking. He felt nothing.
How frustrating.
How could it be possible for him to feel no pain whatsoever? This was a puzzle he had to solve no matter what! Or at least that is what he was telling himself as he began hurting himself in every way imaginable.
He stubbed his toe on the staircase... Fell down on his knees with no pain or discomfort. Stood up and kept walking.
He banged his head on a wall after a lengthy run up... Bounced back with no discomfort or confusion or anything.
He fashioned a spear out of one of the numerous table legs that exist in the library. It turned out he was the only indestructible existence. Everything else was fair game. After creating and sharpening this spear, he attempted to stab himself in the stomach... However, the spear could not penetrate him at all.
He fastened the spear perpendicular to the wall and ran up to it to impale himself... However he merely bounced back again. When he checked up on the spear, he realised that it had stress fractures along its length.
He did not get hurt, but his spear did?!
That brought him to that crucial moment moment. He rationalised that instead of stabbing, maybe fracturing or dislocating bones could work. He was going to drop down from the table and land on the floor but the high metal railing would most definitely push his arm up.
Luckily he had fastened the counter weight on the other side of the arm to make sure that it would force the arm's midsection to bear enormous pressure and thus break or dislocate bones.
"Haha, this is definitely going to work" said Midas sporting a crazed look on his face. Without saying anything else, he jumped off the table.
*Bonk**Crash*
The arm ,which Midas had expected to break, stayed intact and instead, the other side with the counterweight got pulled up inexplicably. The counterweight made of Encyclopedia books that were strung up together could not hold up to the upward force that was exerted on them, and that lead to them crashing onto the floor.
"Fuck, Fuck, Fuck it's impossible. It's impossible!! No! No!" screamed Midas while running up the stairs. "I just need more height. Energy is the product of the mass, gravity and the difference in height. I couldn't apply enough energy to break it because there wasn't enough height. That's right. That's right."
After a few minutes, Midas stood on the corridor of the 18th floor and looked down at the lobby of the main building. He dragged a step ladder which would normally be used to reach hard to reach books off the tops of bookshelves and dragged it all the way to the side railings of the corridor. After climbing onto the railing and looking down he realised that he could see the side railings of every floor beneath him from here.
"Okay. I can test it now. I have to test it."
There was still a voice of reluctance in his head telling him not to do this but he didn't care anymore. He was going to do it.
He was going to jump.
And so with a spring forward, Midas jumped into the air and started free falling to the ground floor lobby. While in midair his thoughts were ringing in his headWhile in midair his thoughts were ringing in his head.
"What the fuck! What the fuck! What the fuck! What the fuck!"
"I'm gonna die!"
"Please, somebody, make it stop..."
"Well done Midas. You've gone absolutely INSANE!"
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Midas smiled wryly to himself, thinking about how frail the human psyche is for being vulnerable to that extent. What he had experienced was the onset of psychotic episodes on multiple occasions even after that event. The only way he ultimately came out of it was by later meditating and attaining inner peace.
That was when he got his first taste of Emotional Bliss, an emotionless state whereby one feels everything but nothing at the same time. He used that as a platform to rebuild himself and change for the better, thus allowing him to continue the actualisation test and complete it.
'Okay, I'm going on a tangent now, let us deal with this current issue first.' thought Midas. Midas refocused himself on his current problems. What did his feelings and visions mean exactly? What was the nature of his [Memory of the World] Skill?
Midas rationalised the situation to his best abilities and could not come up with a reasonable explanation for his experience. It seemed [Memory of the World] would need some more investigation.
With regards to these seeds, considering the fact that they were incomplete, Midas would not eat them. He would rather find someone else to test it out. Ideally someone without a link to Midas. Midas augmented his future plans with these ideas in mind and continued with what he was doing previously.
'Okay, next… [Eye of Truth].' thought Midas and immediately the world around him changed.
'What the fuck?!'