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Bonus chapter! Thank you to alyanna for the donation! ^^
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After studying hard for more than a decade, with the entire family invested, just before the final simulation exam before the actual college entrance exam, you’re answering questions when suddenly, you lose all your memories, forget everything you’ve learned...
And this happened in a school where academic performance was equated with the student’s life.
Several players rubbed their arms.
What kind of horror story was this?!
No wonder the students were so anxious—tearing up their test papers might be the best outcome.
Ning Su raised his head and looked at Ling Xiao.
Ling Xiao looked him in the eyes for a few seconds before speaking. “Judging by the behavior of Wang Zhiqiu and Xia Mengyu, memory loss occurs in stages.”
“They suddenly stopped while answering questions and couldn’t answer anything else. At that moment, they only lost the knowledge stored in their brains; they still knew they were taking an exam and who they were.”
“Right, when Wang Zhiqiu was dragged away, he still knew he ranked third in his grade,” a player chimed in.
As they recalled Wang Zhiqiu now, their feelings became more complicated.
Until the very end, he kept shouting that he was third in his grade, emphasizing the only thing he could still remember.
The last thing he could remember might have been the most important thing in his life.
Being third in his grade. Scoring 700 points.
Ling Xiao said, “There are two possible orders in which memories disappear.”
“One possibility is that knowledge and skills vanish first, followed by instinctual emotions, until everything is erased, leaving behind an empty shell of a body.”
“The other is a tree-like pattern, where memories fade, starting from the least important details and continuing until the most crucial, fundamental memories are gone.”
The atmosphere grew even heavier.
Initially, they were focused on the horror of high school seniors losing their knowledge.
But now, there seemed to be something even more terrifying.
A player said, “If this happens to us, we might forget our own names, forget that we’re players.”
They forgot that they were players, forgot how to deal with monsters, and forgot that they could leave the dungeon.
—What would that be like?
Is memory important?
Maybe some people would say it’s not.
But what if the memory included knowledge, skills, and emotions?
“Yes, this assumption is correct. In the end, Xia Mengyu carved her name into her arm because she was afraid of forgetting her own name, wasn’t she?”
Mentioning Xia Mengyu made the expressions on several players’ faces even more somber.
After understanding what happened, thinking about her name carved on her arm and the tears at the corner of her eyes brought about another kind of feeling in their hearts.
They had all heard the story.
The girl had a grandmother who was sick and urgently needed her scholarship money for treatment, as well as a younger brother who needed the scholarship to attend a school for the deaf and mute.
These were experienced players, and they could understand the situation at this school at a glance.
There were noble children who entered the school through wealth and influence, and there were certainly many outstanding students brought in through high-value scholarships.
Xia Mengyu was the latter. She needed the scholarship to save her grandmother and to support her deaf-mute brother.
Others lost their knowledge from the college entrance exam, lost their memories, but she carried much more weight on her shoulders.
When they thought about her sitting in the examination room, panicked, desperate, and in tears, no one felt at ease.
But unlike Wang Zhiqiu, who went mad, she hid her feelings, went up to the roof with her draft paper.
No one knew what she did on the rooftop or how she carved her name into her arm.
“Did Xia Mengyu jump off the building herself?” A female player with twin ponytails focused on her death and asked.
“Probably. She was an ordinary high school senior, and someone like Wang Zhiqiu was already driven to collapse by fear. How desperate must she have been, so desperate that she felt she couldn’t go on living?”
Several players supported this view.
The female player continued to ask, “But at that time, shouldn’t she have forgotten everything? Forgotten her grandmother, her brother, forgotten that she was a senior in high school—so why did she jump?”
“It must have been before she completely forgot, when she could no longer remember knowledge, but still remembered her grandmother and brother, who were waiting for her scholarship.”
The female player frowned and reluctantly said, “Okay.”
Ning Su glanced at her, but before he could ask, he heard others on the side begin discussing.
“So, scoring 600 points on the college entrance exam isn’t enough. We have to frantically absorb knowledge while protecting our memory. It’s very possible that just as we manage to reach five or six hundred points, our memory suddenly disappears. Isn’t this absurdly difficult?”
“We don’t even know how memory disappears, so how are we supposed to protect it?”
“Are there any triggering conditions? Or is it random?”
“It all happens in the exam room. As we look at the test papers, our memory suddenly vanishes. Could it be the exam itself, the test papers, or maybe certain words on the papers?”
“How the hell do we guard against that?”
“It feels more like there’s some kind of an invisible monster in the school, secretly devouring memories bit by bit.”
“...”
This genuinely gave them the creeps.
“Ring! Ring! Ring! ——”
The warning bell rang.
The players glanced out the window at the beautiful and luxurious school, then walked heavily toward the exam room.
So far, no player had been injured in this instance, which was quite different from other instances of the same level.
But this didn’t bring them any comfort; instead, it made them even more uneasy.
There was a vague sense that an even greater danger of death was brewing, something they couldn’t possibly resist or prepare for—something intangible.
Just as Ning Su and the other two were about to enter the exam room, they saw Shi Tianzhu walking over with two female players. Their exam room was at the far end.
Ning Su asked, “President, do you know that Xia Mengyu and the others lost their memories in the exam room?”
Shi Tianzhu nodded. “Our exam room had three cases like that this morning.”
Ning Su wasn’t surprised that she knew. When it came to deducing the rules of an instance, no one in the entire base could match her.
The invigilators were walking toward them, about to enter the classroom.
Shi Tianzhu glanced at the teachers and said to Ning Su and the others, “Now we know what the system prompt about memory means. What about the name of the instance?”
After saying this, before the teacher could call them in, she led the two players into their exam room at the far end.
The name of the instance?
<Shared Memories>
In <Shared Memories>, the word “Memories” was now clearly understood as recollections, but what did “Shared” mean?
Ning Changfeng said, “Stop overthinking it. Let’s investigate after the exam when classes are re-arranged. I have a feeling that many students at this school know what’s going on.”
He walked into the exam hall first, while Ning Su and Ling Xiao exchanged glances behind him.
Ning Su blinked and said, “What should we do? I have a feeling this instance isn’t that simple.”
It’s not something they could solve with brute force.
Ling Xiao responded with a hum, “I didn’t expect it to be this difficult either.”
The difficulty didn’t lie in death, but in the “Memories” and their passivity.
Ning Su asked, “Can you sense the loss of the students’ memories?”
Ling Xiao shook his head. “As a player, I have a lot of limitations, and the things here are not ghosts born from me.”
Most of the students in the exam hall were seated, waiting for a new test to begin. The entire school building was filled with a heavy, oppressive atmosphere.
The sound of the invigilator’s high heels clacking on the marble floor approached rapidly.
When they looked into each other’s eyes, they shared the same emotion.
Ning Su reached out to tug the sleeve of his white school uniform shirt, and Ling Xiao immediately grabbed his hand in return.
A much larger hand tightly encircled the pale hand of the young man.
Ning Su also held his hand tightly, his clear peach blossom eyes reflecting him clearly. He pressed his lips together and asked, “Who is this instance targeting?”
Ling Xiao looked deeply at him and was about to speak when the sound of high heels stepping on the floor grew even more urgent. “You two students—”
“What are you doing?! Don’t you know Qingyi High School strictly prohibits early love!!!”
Ning Changfeng, who had just walked into the exam hall: “Huh?”
Dad's reaction, I wonder if he'll see the details
ReplyDeleteThanks for the update 🤗 🤗