Chapter 516 - 513: Unfinished Business

Chapter 516: Chapter 513: Unfinished Business

’It’s over...’

By the time the captain realized something was wrong, the starlight had already forced its way past his eyelids and completely filled his pupils. In an instant, his consciousness was dragged into a sea of stars.

Those familiar voices returned, his team members speaking unconsciously around him, used as bait by the starlight.

’It was all fake...’ The captain understood at once. What he had just heard were merely phrases pieced together by the starlight, but under the influence of its glow, he hadn’t been able to tell the difference.

The captain was filled with self-reproach. ’How could I, the captain, make such a rookie mistake?’

He felt an indescribable longing for these stars well up from the depths of his being, a desire to merge completely with this sea of stars.

But the feeling soon vanished, and with it, his control over his own body.

He had become a mere point of light, a consciousness completely detached from its body.

’Does the temptation disappear once your consciousness completely detaches from your body?’ he realized in a flash.

Gazing at the endless stars, the captain knew he couldn’t just wait to die.

His team members had to be in this sea of stars, too.

"Of course they are," a voice sounded beside the captain.

"Who are you?" The captain was instantly on guard.

"I am the Eye of the Stars. I am the one who brought you here."

"What’s your objective?" the captain demanded.

"I have no objective. Once you can empathize with me, you will understand. Your mental defenses are too strong right now. You must let them down, feel your surroundings, and you will know just how beautiful this starry sky is..."

After speaking a string of baffling words, the Eye of the Stars vanished. No matter how the captain called out, there was no response.

’Mental defenses?’

The captain didn’t understand what the Eye of the Stars meant, but he knew one thing: if the enemy was telling him to lower his mental defenses, then he absolutely could not.

He remained vigilant as he approached the surrounding stars.

As he drew closer to the stars, he gradually came to understand their origins:

They were all creatures or living objects from the Sky Island. The Eye of the Stars had stripped them of their consciousness and brought them here.

The Eye of the Stars wanted to form a collective consciousness, which required an endless supply of minds. The creatures on the Sky Island were finite, so the Eye of the Stars used the spread of its animating power to continuously create living objects, which it then harvested for their consciousness.

"’Once a collective consciousness is formed, all things in creation can serve as our vessels. At that point, everyone will be able to empathize with one another. There will be no more struggle, no more conflict...’"

"’Bullshit!’ The captain recognized it at once. This was an incredibly idealistic plan, one with no chance of ever succeeding.

It sounded beautiful, but it was all an illusory pipe dream.

Most of the points of light here had already given up. ’Things are already this bad,’ they figured, ’so we might as well join the fusion. Once the fusion reaches a certain point, we can return to our original bodies.’

"You can go back?" The captain was surprised.

"Of course you can go back. It’s just that you probably won’t get your original body back."

Their bodies had all become "shared vessels." Anyone could use them. Just as the Eye of the Stars had said, the body was no longer important. Once consciousnesses merged, a body was just a piece of "clothing," a mere tool for experiencing the world.

Although the captain scoffed at the idea, he felt it might offer a way out.

But for now, the most important thing was finding his lost teammates.

And in this ocean of consciousness, the most effective way to find other points of light was through "consciousness resonance"—in other words, "empathy."

Nothing was more efficient than a connection between minds.

But to achieve that empathy, he would have to let down his mental defenses.

The captain was out of options. Ensuring his team’s safety was his duty, but doing so would mean playing right into the enemy’s hands. He was torn.

"What happens when consciousnesses merge?" he asked another point of light.

"You lose your sense of self. You forget who you are. You become apathetic. Your mind grows dull, battered by the storm of colliding thoughts. Your perspective becomes increasingly ’vast,’ and you start to see things only through the lens of ’all living beings,’ gradually forgetting what it feels like to be an ’individual.’"

The points of light answered the captain selflessly.

Just as the Eye of the Stars had said, the consciousnesses here seemed to make no distinction between friend and foe. They trusted each other completely. Even knowing what the captain intended to do, they still answered his questions without reservation.

This gave him another opening.

He asked the point of light that had answered him, "May I merge with you?"

"Of course," the point of light replied.

"But I don’t want to lose myself. I want to remember who I am," the captain stated his condition.

"No problem. I will empathize with you, so of course I will respect your wishes. I won’t cause you any grief. Since you don’t want it to happen, we won’t let it."

A flash of guilt crossed the captain’s mind, but it vanished just as quickly.

"Let’s merge. Let’s empathize."

"Empathize..."

The two points of light converged. They completely lowered their mental defenses, exchanging the thoughts in their hearts. And just as it had promised, the other point of light gave up its entire self, allowing the captain’s consciousness to occupy the whole of its being.

"Why... did you give up everything?" the captain asked, his thoughts filled with sorrow.

"You still have things to do. You have to save your teammates, lead them off the Sky Island, and destroy the animation plague. You have so much left to accomplish. But me? I’m just a living stone. I have no dreams. My life has no meaning. So what if I let you take it all?"

"You’re lying..." the captain thought in anguish. "You wanted to leave the forest and see the wide world. You wanted to see the setting sun with your own eyes, to go to the shore and watch the tides ebb and flow. Weren’t those your dreams?"

As they merged, the captain had come to understand the other’s desires. They were such simple dreams, yet they filled his heart with an unbearable sorrow.

The stone would never have the chance to realize those dreams.

"It’s okay... In your memories, I saw it all..."

"The beautiful sunset... the ebb and flow of the tide... high mountains, deserts... and close friends..."

"The human world is so beautiful... You have to keep going. Find your teammates. Take them to see that sunset and those waves one more time."

"It would be such a shame if you couldn’t see them again."

The stone’s thoughts murmured on, its mental voice growing fainter and fainter, until it could no longer be heard.

Just as it had promised, it relinquished all of its consciousness, handing over its entire mental space to the captain. This way, the captain could control two points of light at once without losing himself to the interference of another consciousness.

In gaining everything from the stone, the captain also lost it forever.

Invisible tears streamed from the captain’s heart. At that moment, he truly understood empathy... he felt it for a stone that no one had ever cared about before.