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ArabicHonkai Star Rail: Summoning the Chrysos Heirs — Chapter 9
Chapter 9: Near-Infinite Thinking Time!
Driven by her will, Cyrene felt a faint hum echo from deep within her mind.
Her originally chaotic thoughts seemed to be swiftly organized by an invisible, giant hand. The fragmented images she had just experienced—from her initial confusion upon waking up in this strange world to her current experimental attempts—transformed into flowing bands of golden light.
The luminous bands circled and intertwined in the dark void of her consciousness, eventually condensing into a single golden page. It radiated a faint, warm glow, floating quietly within the center of her brain domain.
“Mm… is that it?”
Cyrene blinked her azure, diamond-shaped eyes and tilted her head, a hint of hesitation in her expression.
Aside from a slight sense of emptiness, as if a thin sliver of mental energy had been siphoned away in that exact instant, the entire process felt incredibly smooth. There were no flashy special effects, nor was there any heavy physical burden weighing down her body.
“Since it’s in my head, can I take it out to look at it?”
She extended her right hand, turning her palm upward. Her fair fingers curled slightly inward as she tried to guide the ethereal page out from her consciousness and into reality.
She encountered zero resistance.
A faint ripple distorted the air above her hand, followed by a concentrated speck of golden light gathering directly in the center of her palm.
The light rapidly expanded and solidified. In the blink of an eye, a physical piece of paper with a texture as delicate as spun silk drifted lightly into her grasp, carrying that same faint golden glow.
“So this is the… paper condensed from my memories?”
Cyrene curiously rubbed the surface of the sheet with her fingertip. It felt warm to the touch, carrying a strange, lingering heat that seeped into her skin.
She impatiently brought the paper close to her face, eager to see exactly what her memories had turned into.
However, in the next second, her expectant little face completely collapsed.
“Huh? What kind of gibberish is this?”
The surface of the paper was packed tight with strings of golden symbols. Their structures were highly complex, twisting and circling in sharp angles and elegant curves. They did not resemble any human script she knew, nor did they look like the common tongue used in the games she used to play.
Cyrene turned the paper horizontally, then vertically. She even held it up against the ceiling light, squinting hard. Finally, she had to admit a deeply tragic fact.
She was completely illiterate in this language.
“I can’t read a single word of it… System, is this corrupted code? Or is it because my localization patch wasn’t installed correctly?”
Cyrene puffed out her cheeks in sheer discouragement, poking the so-called heavenly book powerlessly with her index finger.
“If I can’t read the words, isn’t half this ability entirely useless?”
Just as she was fretting over this piece of glowing scrap paper, a sudden flash of inspiration hit her.
A very specific memory surfaced in Cyrene’s mind.
“Can I… just rip this thing up?”
She remembered the previous plotline clearly. When the Trailblazer fought Lygus, they used the specific method of tearing books to forcefully rewind time.
“Tearing books… rewinding time…”
Cyrene murmured to herself, her gaze refocusing on the golden paper resting in her hand.
Although she did not possess a full book right now, only a single isolated sheet of paper, perhaps the underlying principle remained exactly the same.
“Anyway, it’s just paper copied using a little bit of mental energy. I won’t feel bad even if it breaks permanently. Let’s try it!”
Thinking of this, the lingering hesitation in Cyrene’s eyes vanished completely.
She gripped the top edge of the paper with both hands, took a deep breath to steady her nerves, and then applied force with her fingers, pulling the sheet gently to both sides.
A crisp sound of tearing silk echoed loudly in the silent bedroom.
There was no dramatic scene of paper scraps flying about the room.
The exact moment the paper tore in half, Cyrene felt her entire vision go pitch dark. An intense, overwhelming sensation of weightlessness instantly enveloped her body, making her feel as if she had suddenly stepped off a cliff and fallen into a bottomless vortex.
When her vision finally cleared again, Cyrene found she was no longer standing in that familiar pink-and-blue bedroom.
All around her was a pure, boundless expanse of absolute darkness.
Directly in front of her floated a massive widescreen display, making her feel as if she were sitting in a giant IMAX theater with only herself present in the audience.
At this exact second, a moving scene was playing on the massive screen.
A pink-and-blue glow, a messy set of bedsheets, and a pink-haired girl rubbing her eyes as she sat up from the mattress with a completely blank expression.
That was… herself.
‘Is this the place to browse and experience memories? How amazing.’
Cyrene floated freely in the dark void, watching herself on the screen as she pinched her own face in the mirror. Her heart filled with a deep sense of novelty.
This feeling was incredibly subtle, almost exactly like an out-of-body experience, allowing her to examine her every single move from a detached, god-like perspective.
‘So I looked that stupid when I first woke up…’
She silently complained to herself, watching her own bewildered expression.
Soon, Cyrene discovered a distinct problem.
In this isolated space, she seemed to have completely lost the concept of a physical body. Aside from staring straight at the screen in front of her, she could not turn her head, could not shift her posture, and could not even feel the existence of her own hands and feet.
‘I can only watch and not move? This is way too passive.’
The moment that specific thought arose in her mind, the flow of the images on the screen suddenly accelerated.
As if an invisible fast-forward button had been pressed down hard, Cyrene’s movements in the footage became comical and rapid, making it look like she was acting in an old silent comedy film.
‘Eh? I can fast-forward?’
Cyrene’s mind stirred with curiosity, and she deliberately tried thinking the word pause.
The moving image instantly froze in place.
Cyrene was left staring blankly at her own reflection in the mirror with her mouth hanging wide open. That silly, cute look was perfectly fixed on the giant screen.
‘Rewind.’The footage immediately began to play backward.’Drag the progress bar to the very end.’
The image instantly jumped forward, skipping directly to the exact moment she summoned the golden paper into her hand.
After a bit of focused experimentation, Cyrene excitedly discovered the truth. In this dark space, her own will acted as the absolute remote control, allowing her to freely manipulate the playback progress and the exact speed of this recorded memory.
After tossing this short memory clip back and forth several times like watching a favorite movie, Cyrene’s initial sense of novelty finally passed.
‘That’s enough, how do I get out of here?’
The moment this thought popped up in her consciousness, the footage on the screen automatically paused.
A line of glowing text appeared floating in the surrounding darkness.
[Do you wish to instill the remaining unbrowsed memories?]
Cyrene paused for a brief second, then quickly reacted to the prompt.
Was this system going to stuff the remaining content she had not finished watching directly back into her head?
She thought her agreement silently.
In an instant, the giant screen shattered like fragile bubbles, turning into countless specks of brilliant light that surged violently toward her position.
Cyrene felt her mind swell slightly under the pressure. Following that brief sensation, the memory from tearing the paper all the way to the present moment was imprinted incredibly clearly in the deepest depths of her mind, feeling exactly as if she had just experienced it personally all over again.
In the real world, Cyrene abruptly snapped her eyes open.
The disorienting feeling of weightlessness vanished entirely, rapidly replaced by the solid, grounding sensation of her feet resting on the floorboards and the phantom touch of the now-disappeared paper in her hand.
She subconsciously shook her head to clear the lingering daze. Aside from feeling that her mental impressions had deepened slightly, there was no physical discomfort whatsoever.
“Wait…”
Cyrene suddenly realized something critical, her azure pupils contracting slightly as the thought hit her.
She abruptly turned her head to look at the small electronic alarm clock sitting on the desk.
The digital numbers on the display were ticking quietly, entirely normal.
“System, how long has it been since I just tore the page?”
[5 seconds.]
The system’s cold, mechanical voice immediately sounded in her mind, accompanied by its usual precise data analysis.
[However, in these 5 seconds, from the moment you opened your eyes to asking me about the time, nearly 4.9 seconds were consumed. According to my observations, from when you tore the page and your consciousness entered that space until your return to reality, only an instant passed in the outside world—approximately less than 0.1 seconds.]
Hearing this exact, calculated number, Cyrene’s heart skipped a heavy beat.
Less than 0.1 seconds!
What did this actually mean?
It meant that while she had spent a long, leisurely time inside that mental cinema, watching the replays several times over and even spacing out for a while to experiment, time had almost completely stood still in the real world!
Cyrene’s breathing became rapid and shallow. The intense frustration she had felt just moments ago from not being able to read the golden text instantly vanished into thin air.
How was this a simple book reading ability?
This was clearly a disguised Hyperbolic Time Chamber for the human mind!
“If I encounter a difficult problem, I can just imprint my current memory, then tear it up to go inside and think…”
The more Cyrene thought about the tactical applications, the more visibly excited she became, eventually unable to resist pacing back and forth across the bedroom floor.
“In that isolated space, I have plenty of time to review, analyze, and find a perfect way to break any deadlock. By the time I figure it out and come back out, only a fraction of an instant will have passed in reality!”
It was exactly like sitting in the middle of a high-stakes exam when everyone else was desperately racing against the ticking clock, but she alone could hit a universal pause button. She could open a book to slowly look up the required information, carefully plan her next move, and even take a relaxing nap before coming back to continue answering the questions!
Used in the middle of high-speed combat or a deadly game of wits, this specific ability was simply a cheat-level divine skill!
“It seems this ability is much more useful than I initially expected. It’s not just photographic memory; it’s an absolute domain of thought!”
Cyrene looked at the [Memory Imprint] icon resting quietly in her ability bar. At this exact moment, she found the small graphic incredibly pleasing to the eye, as if it were literally sparkling with infinite potential.
“Such a useful thing… should I make one for Phainon to try out too?”
Just as Cyrene was seriously wondering whether to pull Phainon in for a shared experience, a sharp noise broke the silence.
“Beep-beep—”
The computer speakers resting on the desk suddenly emitted two crisp, loud notification sounds.
The electronic chime was exceptionally clear in the quiet room, instantly interrupting Cyrene’s racing thoughts and pulling her attention back to the physical world.
“Hmm? There’s news on the forum already?”
Cyrene raised a delicate eyebrow, immediately regaining her absolute focus.
She had specially set this unique notification sound to only trigger when a specific reply appeared on the underground forum—one that perfectly passed her strict keyword filter and actively applied to claim her posted bounty.
This meant someone had officially taken the job.
“It seems the sheer efficiency of money power is indeed not to be underestimated.”
Cyrene walked quickly over to the computer, pulled out the heavy chair, and sat down. Her fair fingers gripped the plastic mouse slightly hard due to her rising anticipation.
The cool glow of the monitor screen reflected brightly on her delicate little face, casting a curious, sharp light deep within those diamond-shaped pupils.
“Let me see exactly which person discovered traces of a suspected Abomination…”