Chapter 4666: Risk

Once the family sparring session ended, Rui returned to work. He had a lot on his mind. Much of it absentmindedly returned to his battle with Amare, where she had managed to maintain an advantage even up until the very end. The fact that he wasn’t able to win made him intensely obsessed with the battle from start to finish, studying his shortcomings and his flaws.

"Time travel, dual Martialverses, and a very rock-solid, powerful foundation- these are her three main assets."

Dealing with the former two was what consumed almost all of his power, though dealing with her foundation was easy, because his was much greater. He had two whole Realms of power that she didn’t, including the Gene Realm and the nascent Hyperdimensional Realm. Without those two advantages that she lacked, she would have crushed him.

The Gene Realm allowed him to essentially erase any damage she inflicted on him, which was important to prevent her from consolidating any gains in the battle. If she was able to ’stack’ damage from each blow, then she would have won the battle. But Rui could erase wounds and heal so magically that it was on par with reversing time.

Hyperdimensional maneuvering allowed him to maneuver on par with her despite the fact that she was time-traveling. Without it, even with Echoes of Divine Revelation, he wouldn’t have been able to evade her trans-temporal attacks.

On top of that, she had yet to master hyperdimensional Martial Art herself, a very straightforward way for her to grow stronger. With her growth speed, she wouldn’t be too far behind him.

"I can’t slack off."

But for now, he put the matter aside. He had other matters to attend to. He hadn’t forgotten that the Divine Mothers of the War Faction were preparing for the total destruction of human civilization once they fully mastered Transcendent impunity.

He needed to make all the preparations that he could as soon as possible.

The first thing he did was make a call to a familiar acquaintance.

"What can I do for you, Rui?" the Psyker’s preoccupied voice emerged from his commpad.

"We need to talk," Rui replied. "About the test subject that you’re working on right now."

The Psyker remained silent for several moments before heaving a sigh. "You need her back because she’s a chip for negotiations, is that it?"

The man was aware of the fact that Gaia Prime had been under attack, of course. He couldn’t possibly miss such an event. But he was remarkably unmoved compared to a lot of other people.

"That’s right," Rui said with a grim tone. "And... I need your help with something that needs to be done in regard to her."

"...Sounds serious," the Psyker remarked curiously. "Come over. Let’s speak in person."

Less than a minute later, Rui found himself seated opposite the hemosapien, who poured him a cup of green tea in a laboratory office in the Esocline Federation, before taking a seat opposite him.

"What exactly is it that I can help you with?" The Pskyer asked with a curious tone of voice.

Rui took the time to explain his predicament without reservations. The sage already knew the full truth about Ria, so there was no need to hold back.

"That is quite the conundrum indeed," he murmured with a troubled expression. "I suppose you want to know how you can return her while ensuring she doesn’t remember?"

Rui nodded. "That’s the goal. I don’t understand arakai neurology, certainly not as well as you must. I need help with erasing those memories, specifically, in her head. And it needs to be done without leaving a single trace in her psyche and brain."

Hypnosis did have memory manipulation techniques, but those were based on human neurology. Arakai had a different model for neurology, and it needed to be catered to. That was why he enlisted the help of the Psyker.

"Arakai neurology is more annoying because it isn’t made up of cells the way our brains are," the Psyker remarked thoughtfully. "They have webs that can store a lot of integrated information. It is high in homogeneity, and that makes identifying information much harder."

Rui nodded. He knew because he had read a lot of her memories from her mind web, which was why he knew that destroying the memories that he was looking for was much more complicated than simply wiping clean a certain part of the brain. Their brain webs were much more interconnected across its entirety than human brains, which was much more fragmented and sectioned.

In other words, the odds of a lot of noticeable side effects occurring from destroying memories was much higher. In the worst case, it might even affect her phenomenological uniformity, which the arakai weren’t going to let go.

And he needed to do this while also remembering the fact that she would disappear very soon after he removed her from the temporal crystal she was inside because of the state she had been in when he had sealed her.

Which means he would likely have to prepare a body to transfer her consciousness to. He didn’t think the arakai would appreciate it if he told them that she had disappeared because of the price before he could give her back to them. He couldn’t afford to piss off the neutral Divine Mothers.

He knew that when she was returned, there would scan her mind with a magnifying glass, looking for any signs of tampering or sabotage. And with the many experienced mind specialists at their disposal, they would discover any crude effort at trying to simply erase her memories.

But he also couldn’t send her back with her memories intact.

He needed a more elegant solution. That was why he had consulted the Psyker.

Thankfully, the immortal sage didn’t disappoint.

"I can think of a way you could alter her memories without any consequences, but..." he continued. "...it will not be perfect.

Rui raised an eyebrow. "Not perfect?"

The Psyker nodded.

"This method will have a minute risk of her regaining her memories."