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ArabicHonkai Star Rail: Summoning the Chrysos Heirs — Chapter 8
Chapter 8: Memory Imprint
“So, there were witnesses who saw the scene after Phainon cleaned up the Abomination? They moved that fast?”
Listening to the System’s breakdown of where those one hundred Memory Traces had just come from, Cyrene blinked. Surprise rippled through her azure, diamond-shaped pupils. She had originally assumed that damp, bloodstained alley was just a forgotten corner of the city, never expecting an ‘audience’ to arrive before the dust even settled.
That surprise quickly cooled into suspicion.
Cyrene sat cross-legged on the soft mattress, her slender fingers unconsciously twirling a loose strand of pink hair by her temple. “One hundred Memory Traces… according to your algorithmic conversion rate, that definitely isn’t a value provided by just one or two random passersby.”
She tilted her head. Her gaze drifted past the balcony, sinking into the heavy, suffocating darkness of the urban night. “It’s the middle of the night. That alley is remote, dark, and completely uninviting. Why would a large group of people deliberately march into a godforsaken dead end like that?”
“Could it be agents from this country’s Authorities?”
Phainon’s voice broke the quiet. The young man had been standing silently by the balcony glass, a statuesque guardian bathed in the faint moonlight. He leaned against the railing, lightly rubbing his chin as a sharp gleam of contemplation crossed his eyes.
“Of course!”
Phainon’s suggestion struck like a bolt of lightning, instantly burning away the fog in Cyrene’s mind. She clapped her hands together, the crisp smack echoing sharply in the quiet bedroom.
“Combine that with the news broadcast I saw online earlier—the one desperately trying to cover up the incident. The Special Anomaly Bureau, or whatever official Authorities handle this, must have sensed the Abomination’s presence long ago. They’ve probably been running secret cleanup operations under the cover of night.”
She slipped off the edge of the bed. Her bare feet padded softly against the cold hardwood floor as she began to pace, her mind spinning at high speed.
“That low-level Abomination was likely being hunted by their strike teams. It panicked, fled into that alley to hide…”
“…And had the absolute worst luck imaginable,” Cyrene finished, stopping in her tracks to look at Phainon. Her tone grew urgent. “It ran face-first into you halfway through its escape and got instantly intercepted.”
“When the Authorities followed the trail and finally caught up, all they found was a freshly executed corpse… The sheer shock of seeing their target instantly annihilated is definitely worth a hundred Memory Traces.”
Having pieced the puzzle together, the thrill of the windfall faded from Cyrene’s face, replaced by a heavy shadow of worry. She bit her lower lip, her brows knitting together.
“But this also means we’ve officially stepped into their field of vision.”
“They won’t follow the forensic clues and track us down here, will they?”
Cyrene knew almost nothing about the official power structures of this world. She only knew the golden rule of every novel and film: an ‘unstable anomaly’ like her—a rogue variable possessing supernatural abilities and commanding humanoid weapons—usually met a very grim end once dragged into the light. At best, she would be conscripted, stripped of her freedom, and turned into an exhausted government laborer. At worst, she’d be strapped to a dissection table for research or simply erased as a national security threat.
True, she had Phainon. She also had the ‘Physical Data Space’ she could retreat into at a moment’s notice. Survival wasn’t the immediate issue.
But her foundation in this world was pitifully shallow. These one hundred Memory Traces were the very first drops of capital she had earned. If she had to abandon her safehouse and start running for her life right now, her perfect, comfortable plan to ‘stay low and develop’ would be completely shattered.
That was the absolute last thing she wanted.
Sensing the shift in her breathing, Phainon straightened up and closed the distance between them with two measured steps.
“Probably not.”
His voice was steady, a low, grounding timber that carried an absolute, reassuring calm.
[I have already overwritten all surveillance data captured along Phainon’s route to and from the site.]
“I deliberately avoided all lines of sight while moving through the city,” Phainon added, his words overlapping perfectly with the System’s mechanical chime. “I also purged any physical traces left behind. Aside from the corpse itself, they will not find a single thread pointing back to this apartment.”
Cyrene froze. Her gaze darted back and forth between the towering young man and the glowing blue panel suspended in the void. Slowly, she let out a long, shuddering breath.
Her tense shoulders slumped. She patted her chest, feeling her racing heartbeat begin to settle.
“So, whether it’s physical footprints on the concrete or digital ghosts in the cameras… everything is wiped?”
[Yes. You need not worry.]
“That’s good… You guys scared me to death.”
Cyrene collapsed back onto the edge of the bed. The invisible Sword of Damocles that had been hovering over her neck finally dissolved into mist.
With her safety guaranteed, her natural, playful curiosity began to bubble up again. She looked up at the floating holographic interface, her eyes sparkling.
“System, since you can scrub street surveillance, does that mean you can hack into surrounding electronic devices whenever you want?”
[Yes, though it requires energy consumption.]
[Currently, my intrusion capabilities are limited to civilian-grade electronic networks. If you are willing to spend Memory Traces to upgrade my computing power, I can open the doors to military-grade, high-security databases for you.]
“Understood.”
Cyrene snapped her fingers, a sly, fox-like curve tugging at the corner of her lips. “Meaning, I’m carrying an omniscient, all-powerful super hacker in my pocket. As long as I pay the toll, I can go anywhere and see anything.”
[You could understand it that way.]
The affirmative answer made the light in Cyrene’s eyes burn even brighter. In a modern information age, controlling the network meant controlling the entire board.
“Perfect! This way, our efficiency in gathering intelligence on Abominations will skyrocket!”
“But before we get to that…”
Cyrene shifted her focus to the upper right corner of the glowing panel. There, the number ‘100’ pulsed with an enticing, golden warmth.
“Spending this windfall first and converting it into immediate combat power is the only correct move.”
She pressed her palms together, bowing dramatically toward the empty air with a teasing grin. “I don’t know which hardworking agent from the Authorities contributed these shock points, but thank you for your generous donation~”
Dropping the silly ritual, Cyrene’s expression sharpened into serious focus. She issued her command.
“System. Spend 100 Memory Traces to unlock a basic ability.”
[Command confirmed.]
The moment the words left her lips, the golden counter plummeted to zero.
Instantly, a rush of freezing, ethereal air materialized out of nowhere, plunging straight through the crown of her head and flooding her mind. It felt like swallowing a shard of glacial ice on a sweltering summer day. The lingering grogginess from staying up late and the adrenaline crash vanished, leaving her brain terrifyingly clear. Her thoughts accelerated, snapping together with flawless precision.
At the same time, a strange, deep energy circulated through her veins, eventually pooling and condensing right between her brows.
[Ability unlocked: Memory Imprint]
Several lines of crisp, light blue text projected directly onto her retinas.
[Description: Can extract a specific segment of a creature’s Remembrance and condense it into a physical page composed of Memoria.]
[Characteristics: The extracted pages will be automatically stored within the host’s mind. The host can consume mental power to manifest a duplicate page into reality, allowing other creatures to browse and experience the Remembrance.]
[Restrictions: This ability is entirely harmless to the target. However, the prerequisite is that the target’s mental defenses must be completely open and unresisting, or they must be in a comatose state devoid of conscious resistance.]
Cyrene read every single word carefully. Her brow furrowed.
“So, I can turn other people’s Remembrances into literal books to read? And even share those memories with third parties?”
She reached out, her pale fingers grasping at the empty air as if trying to catch the phantom pages of Memoria. “But these restrictions are a bit steep…”
Cyrene puffed out her cheeks, a quiet groan escaping her lips. “The target can’t have any mental resistance? Then isn’t this completely useless in a fight? I can’t exactly ask a rampaging monster to stand still, open its heart, and let me channel a spell.”
As for non-combat applications…
She was currently an undocumented anomaly hiding in a bedroom. Aside from Phainon, there wasn’t a single living soul around her. Where was she supposed to find a willing guinea pig to let her dig through their most private Remembrances?
“Having a skill to view memories is great—it’ll be a massive help for interrogations and intelligence gathering later—but it doesn’t give me any immediate use right now. It feels like I should have just dumped those hundred Memory Traces into upgrading Phainon…”
Sighing in frustration, Cyrene let herself fall backward, her spine hitting the mattress as she stared blankly up at the ceiling.
Her gaze drifted lazily over the glowing text still hovering in her vision.
[Can extract a specific segment of a “creature’s” Remembrance…]
Suddenly, Cyrene’s pupils constricted.
She sprang up from the bed as if she had just touched a live wire, her eyes locked onto that specific word.
“Creature…”
“It didn’t specify that it had to be other creatures, did it?”
Cyrene’s heart began to hammer against her ribs. The implications flooded her newly sharpened mind.
If the wording was literal…
“Then can I… extract my own Remembrance?”
Once the thought took root, it blossomed wildly. If she could extract her own memories, crystallize them into Memoria, and review them with perfect clarity whenever she wanted…
Wouldn’t that effectively give her a flawless photographic memory?
“Let’s test it!”
Cyrene didn’t hesitate for a fraction of a second. She closed her eyes, steadying her breathing as the ambient sounds of the city faded away. Sinking her consciousness deep into the quiet depths of her own mind, she turned the newly acquired power inward.
“Memory Imprint. Target—myself.”