Academic gathering with a lich-Chapter 733 - 677: Dream Making

Lyle once again failed to suppress his laughter. After coming back from Posuwa, he had been maintaining a merged state with the Phantom, which felt like having five or six excited kids clinging to him during a spring outing. Waves of joy surged in his heart one after another, and due to the continuous smiling, he had muscle soreness, which even caused him problems in communicating with his companions these past few days.

The ability boost from the Phantom was also a delight, just as conspicuous as that persistent laughter.

Lyle looked at his new creation and the three companions who were participating in the tests.

Dream Crafter, that was the name of the new Fleshcrafted Demon Flower. Lyle’s ability in Spirit Summoning Studies had advanced further under the enhancement of the Four Locks, and Mental Analysis had integrated his knowledge and fully combined it with the creator’s code. He not only understood the composition of the Mutant on a deeper level, but he was also able to write certain logic instructions within the creation itself. Simply put, Lyle could now create relatively simple biological computers in his creations, which made them smarter and possessed a certain intelligence, even without the infusion of a soul.

The undercarriage of the Dream Crafter had eight sacs, inside of which were criss-cross neural networks made up of connective tissue entwined with Magic Power, each functioning independently. The tentacles contained information conduits that screamed with messages, and Lyle used a structure similar to cables— more plant-like in appearance, akin to phloem— to ensure stable and swift transmission. The thorns on the petals, after penetrating the experimenter’s epidermis, would soften into cilia with mental conductive effects, completing the psychic connection between the subject and the neural network.

Dreaming. Lyle used his knowledge to interpret it as the not necessarily correct, vague memories produced during the soul’s stabilizing phase through empathy. In other words, if you wanted the Liches to experience dreams, all you needed to do was to stuff a fabricated and absurd memory into their souls while they were asleep.

All souls possess a strong sense of self, and fabricated memories can cause confusion, panic, and similar rejection reactions in a healthy soul. It used to be very difficult to eliminate this disparity.

After advancing to the Four Locks and gaining the assistance of the Phantom, the Dream Crafter he created had the ability to break down barriers. The Phantom’s mental analysis played a major role here. When the bodies of those subjects were captured by the Dream Crafter, those cilia would paralyze their bodies, inducing a death-like sleep, while their souls were analyzed. The mental information would be transferred through the conduits to a unified psychic space set by Lyle, the neural network of the Dream Crafter. This mental information was like a series of character settings, to be used by the actors, and under the director’s arrangement, they would perform on stage. The Phantoms were the best actors, with the script determined by Lyle, and the absurdity of the dreams dictated the scale of the play. In the end, these performances would become memories that seemed to have occurred, stuffed back into the souls of those subjects.

Close your eyes and open them again, and it felt like something had transpired in that time.

That was what dreaming was, and the dreams were even vivid and interesting.

The vision of the future plan excited Lyle, but it was a pity that it was still in the experimental stage, with some risks and minor details still present. Lyle’s idea was to eventually make the Dream Crafter available to all races, not to help those with insomnia. The Dream Crafter had an additional ability; it could collect those complex and tedious character informations to enrich the professional templates of Dreamland.

Lyle shook his head and saw a skeletal arm dangling from the bud belonging to Mr. Shiny, allowing himself a slight smile as he wrote down improvement items on parchment.

[ Item Twelve: Change the dormant buds to a horizontal position, as it is known that the vertical position leads to spinal fractures. ]

[ Item Thirteen: The carnivorous nature of the Dream Crafter needs to be removed, as it is known to consume flesh as a disguise. ]

Putting down the pen, Lyle bent down and reached out to touch the base of the Dream Crafter. Under Mental Analysis, his consciousness was diving, falling into that psychic space of his own fabrication.

The sun, shaped like a fried egg, hung in the sky, and the mountains in the background were like doodles. In such a childlike environment, three Liches were racing over hurdles. With dumb smiles easily read on their transformed skeleton faces, they hopped and skipped, joyously overtaking the chocolate-colored hurdles in a naive and merry chase.

Lyle only felt a chill down his spine, as he had been mentally attacked by the very script he had designed. The little Phantoms, transformed into the likenesses of the members of the Necromancer Figure Club, frolicked about in the environment Lyle had casually drawn, completing this absurd performance.

"End it, I can’t watch this anymore."

The Phantom obediently nodded, and Nia’s tentacles, which had transformed, crawled back into Lyle’s body. The actor left, the scene dissolved, and the specially engraved information was transported through the conduits and injected into the souls of the three.

Lyle sighed with relief, laid his head down beside the hanging bud, and listened intently.

"Hmm, no sounds of explosions or bone fractures, the memory should have been successfully implanted."

The petals reopened, and three skeletons covered in red mucus were spat out onto the ground, their soul fire still burning in their eye sockets. There shouldn’t be a problem.

Staring under Lyle’s gaze, Shiny stood up. He held his head and surveyed the surroundings, glanced at Lyle, and then his gaze lingered on his two companions. Lyle sensed a renewed vigor in Shiny’s soul flame, with something new added to it.

Better perform a Mental Analysis, just to be safe.

Lyle took control of Shiny.

"You are Shiny."

"I am Shiny."

"You are a member of the Necromancer Figure Club."

"I am Cameron, a hurdling marathon runner."

"..."

Lyle ended the Mental Analysis. There was no saving him; the first Lich experiment was too forceful, and the changes to memory were too great—Shiny had gone mad. Shiny bent over, supported himself on his hands, and assumed a runner’s starting position, still muttering something.

"Three, two, one... Go!"

His left foot tripped over his right, and he fell to the ground with his jaw wide open, falling into a panic of self-doubt.

"Why can’t I run?! Are my legs broken?! No! The heavens envy the talented! They envy the talented!!"

Lyle sighed with relief.

"It seems even Shiny’s memories of how to act like a normal person have been washed away, but that’s alright."

"There’s no cure for this; it can’t get any worse... Just craft a dream again to wash him back to normal."

Ultimately, the three members of the Necromancer Figure Club recovered their memories after twenty minutes. The temporary loss of self was just a side effect of dreaming; the absurd dreams Lyle injected weren’t profound enough to overwrite their individual memories. Compared to the deep-rooted recollections of Shiny and his companions, the mild side effects were acceptable to Lyle.

Lyle adjusted the internal space of the Dream Crafter, copied a set of information into the Soul Stone, and deleted the hastily designed script and other mental information. He weighed the Soul Stone of his dark past in his hand and chuckled, while the members caught in his scheme trembled in Lyle’s shadow.

"Thank you all for your cooperation, my companions."

"Hmm, it’s time to go to the dean and submit the application for the academic meeting."