Chapter 1086: Dream Editing Technology
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 1086: Dream Editing Technology
"Sage Sister, can you put me down? I want to try walking in reality by myself!" Fool's Dream said to me, excitedly kicking her short little legs.
"Mhm~ Just be careful, okay?" I nodded, granting her request and carefully placing her on the ground.
Her delicate little feet stood amidst the grass, feeling the coolness of the blades. Her expression was one of novelty mixed with intense anticipation.
I watched as she, standing on solid ground for the first time, found she couldn't simply float and play as she did in the soul dream of the Land of Fool's Dream. She had to drop to all fours, struggling to push herself up.
I didn't step in to help, but I kept up a steady stream of encouragement. After all, there are some things a Fool's Dream must try for herself—like a creature that has never entered reality before, she needed to experience gravity and balance, and learn to stand and walk based on those sensations.
Practice is a beautiful thing.
Through her constant attempts, this Fool's Dream eventually did something that exceeded my expectations. Before she even learned to stabilize her center of gravity to walk upright, she instinctively mastered the use of her Dreamification talent!
"Huh? Eh?!"
Fool's Dream looked at herself as she began to float, realizing that this state was almost identical to how she felt back in the Land of Fool's Dream!
"This is what I told you all a while ago~ Since you were born from dreams, even when you descend into reality, you still possess the instinct to return to the dream. This is the bloodline power you've mastered—the Primitive Bloodline power of the Fool's Dream!"
"So... so amazing!" Having returned to a dream-like state, Fool's Dream began to play freely, like a fish returning to the sea.
"Be careful. Don't float too high. If you return to reality at that height, you'll fall!"
I called out a warning as I watched her drift higher and higher.
As expected, the little Fool's Dream reverted to reality while high in the air, giving her a firsthand taste of a freefall.
After all, a newborn Fool's Dream cannot yet control her talent with perfect precision.
With a wave of my hand, I cast a spell to catch her.
I grabbed the blanket wrapped around her, tied a knot, and lifted her up.
"Behave now~ If a little body like yours falls from that high, you'll die... Although death for your kind is just returning to the Land of Fool's Dream, it would be a huge hassle for me to bring you back to reality again. Do you understand?"
"Wuu... Yes! I understand! I'm sorry, Sage Sister... I got... I got too carried away!" Fool's Dream squirmed inside the blanket, apologizing profusely and promising not to play such jokes with her life again.
"You little rascal~ First, find some fitting clothes to wear. But before that, learn to walk properly. Since you've come to reality, you should learn to utilize the rules of reality rather than just relying on the dream to take shortcuts. Understand?"
"Understood!"
"Good. Out of these hundred Fool's Dream eggs, you're the first to hatch. That makes you the big sister to the other ninety-nine. As a big sister, you have to set a good example. Look to Yulan and Yu Yun as your role models, okay?"
"Mhm! Sister Yulan and the others are role models for all of us Fool's Dream!"
"Then keep working hard!"
After soothing the lively and curious little creature, I began preparing clothes for them.
Actually, Fool's Dream clothing was specifically designed and produced within the Witch Academy. The Witch Cat Cafe, in particular, loved designing all sorts of cute and unique outfits for them, ensuring they almost never wore the same thing twice.
The clothes I had prepared for them were the latest styles I'd picked up from there.
By now, after several more tumbles, the Fool's Dream had managed to stand up unsteadily. She wobbled over to where I had laid out the clothes, picking up a few pieces to measure them against herself, her eyes sparkling with delight.
In terms of knowledge reserves, a Fool's Dream was no inferior to an ordinary human. When I was shaping the Fool's Dream eggs, I had tucked a Great Knowledge Seed into every single one.
Thus, even in reality, they could use the Great Knowledge Seed to acquire vast amounts of information, much like how they were nurtured by the Tree of Great Knowledge back in the Land of Fool's Dream.
The hatching of the Fool's Dream eggs had kept me waiting for many days.
I hadn't been idle during this time. I had asked Yulan and the others to come over and help guide the new Fool's Dream in adapting to life in reality, while also teaching them how to master their bloodline talents.
As more and more Fool's Dream broke through their shells, I realized that the uncontrollable Dreamification talent was also a source of danger for them.
The danger I spoke of wasn't just falling from heights when the effect ended, but rather a sudden Dreamification that could cause them to plunge into a very deep dream. Some curious Fool's Dream might even slip past the shallow areas of the Primitive Dream Realm and enter the deep layers, becoming lost.
Even though Fool's Dream are dream creatures, that doesn't mean they can't get lost. For most life forms, getting lost in a dream means the gradual fading of the self. While a Fool's Dream wouldn't suffer that, getting lost in the dream is like losing one's way on a road—they simply can't find the path home.
This made me realize the importance of one thing.
A Great Knowledge Seed that could reconstruct Dreamification!
I had experimented with this idea back when I first entered the Primitive Dream Realm and created the Dream Domain.
Unfortunately, the results of those experiments were barely "usable" and far from forming a complete system.
[Transcendent Knowledge] itself is a concept that can exist within dreams, so a Dreamified Great Knowledge Seed was the final insurance policy I prepared for the Fool's Dream.
The Land of Fool's Dream and the place guided by the Great Knowledge Seed—that is home.
However, reconstructing the Tree of Great Knowledge and its seeds within a dream was no easy task. The original Tree of Great Knowledge existed within the soul dream of my personal consciousness, but adapting that form to the Primitive Dream Realm was difficult. After all, the Primitive Dream Realm lacked the order of transcendent power found in reality.
Therefore, everything had to be built from scratch.
It was a challenge, but certainly not an impossible one. After I had mapped out the order of the Primitive Dream Realm Domain, I understood that nothing was impossible there.
There were only wrong methods and wrong mindsets.
Failure only stemmed from three reasons: insufficient power, wrong ideas, or lack of ability.
To facilitate my research on the dream level, I simply transformed into a Fool's Dream and entered the Primitive Dream Realm directly via Dreamification. My previous method of entering via my soul essence felt too restrictive.
Although I haven't experienced a glaringly obvious difference yet, there is an indescribable distinction between entering the Primitive Dream Realm through Dreamification versus soul essence.
It's a very subjective feeling... but considering this is the Primitive Dream Realm, nothing seems strange.
After several days of attempts, my progress on completely reconstructing the Dreamified Tree of Great Knowledge remained somewhat unsatisfactory.
Until... a flash of inspiration hit me, and I thought of a concept.
Real Editing Technology!
This was a technique—or a skill—unique to the Witch race, used to edit and create spellbooks using Real Time as a foundational platform.
Obviously, using this skill directly in the Primitive Dream Realm wouldn't work.
Because there is no Real Time in the Primitive Dream Realm.
It's like trying to write code without a computer. Not only do you lack the computer, but it's as if you've realized you're in a dream!
Thus, Real Editing Technology is meaningless in the Primitive Dream Realm.
That's an easy conclusion to draw.
But the current me could say... that's just a lack of ability!
Before I had the Dreamification talent, I could say I lacked a foundation in the Primitive Dream Realm, such as soul essence and the accompanying Self-Awakened Body Cultivation.
Soul essence is an individual's foundation in the Primitive Dream Realm, and Self-Awakened Body Cultivation is the means of utilizing that foundation.
It's like how solid, liquid, and gaseous matter are the foundations of the physical world, and boiling water is a method or means. Now, starting from there, please build a modern civilization!
That's a very vivid analogy.
Things that seem like basic foundations are often the most important, because they are the cornerstones and origins from which everything develops! What I needed to do now was take the foundations, methods, summarized experiences, and tested laws—the entire constructed order of soul essence and Self-Awakened Body Cultivation—and convert them all into the driving force for the development of the "Dreamification talent."
It was a process of constant trial, adjustment, and integration, but I relished it.
Because with every step forward in this novel discovery, I found a brand-new concept that left me wanting more! It was an unknown territory that few predecessors had ever reached!
Compared to the combination of soul essence and Self-Awakened Body Cultivation, the effect of the Dreamification talent was like the difference between a purely mechanical difference engine and a high-precision supercomputer.
The gap between the two was beyond comparison.
Even as I researched and experienced this, I didn't forget my original intention.
To construct a Dreamified Tree of Great Knowledge.
From this idea, a greater ambition sprouted: to construct a complete set of Dreamified spell systems, or even a transcendent system.
However, one thing was certain: the Primitive Dream Realm lacked a transcendent foundation or trace—meaning there were no rituals, no derived rune concepts, no spell frameworks, and no spell principles.
But dreams had their own set of disordered logic and order.
To achieve a goal, one didn't necessarily have to replicate the same patterns and templates. Moreover... spell effects were equally meaningless in a dream.
Of course, by "meaningless," I referred to the "damage" attribute of spells; exotic utility attributes were a different story.
Besides, killing or harming someone doesn't necessarily require direct damage.
To realize these means, I needed to construct a system in the Primitive Dream Realm similar to the "Real Editing Technology" used in Real Time.
So, before succeeding, I gave this ambition a tentative name.
"Dream Editing Technology."
It reminded me of the Dream Rewriting Spell I had created back then. That was my first attempt at using any means necessary to achieve my goal.
I believe that if I had known more about formal magic back then, I might have had my thinking restricted by mature spell systems and frameworks. But because I knew nothing and feared nothing at the time...
I succeeded.
However, as Teacher Ji Niang said, that success was filled with too many coincidences; even I would find it hard to replicate.
I'm not saying this to preach that knowledge is useless.
On the contrary, knowledge is incredibly useful!
But knowledge and ideas unconstrained by conventional thought and shackles... are even more terrifying.
In this moment.
My mind was immersed in the knowledge of "Real Editing Technology" within the Tree of Great Knowledge. Most of this knowledge had been contributed by Sister Bai.
A significant portion also came from Belica; after all, she had traded her life's research to reserve that reincarnation spellbook.
I was constantly learning—learning a technology that I could not yet master or use.
This wasn't the kind of learning that went "understand, practice, summarize, practice again." It was a learning that skipped the surface-level "practice makes perfect" and delved straight into the underlying principles and logic.
Even though this method of learning was difficult and had a high threshold, it was excellent for training one's mode of thinking.
The essence of a spellbook is the composition and application of spells, and the foundation of its use is an "editing" skill distinct from the spell framework itself.
It utilizes the high-level mastery characteristics of Real Time over the transcendent to summarize the application of editing.
A spell framework is the application of rune rituals; editing technology is another application entirely. No one ever decreed that runes must be used or composed in a specific way.
Just like the composition of spell arrays and rune stones, or the principles of alchemy—the paths are different, but they all achieve the goal of "mastering" the transcendent.
In the Primitive Dream Realm, there is nothing besides the dream itself and the information deposited from reality.
But from the initial soul to the Dreamification I now possessed, these had become concepts existing within the dream—the foundations.
Therefore, Dream Editing Technology was essentially an application of the soul and the Dreamification talent.
If Real Editing Technology used Real Time as a platform to edit the foundations of the transcendent (rituals and derived runes)...
Then Dream Editing Technology used the Primitive Dream Realm as a platform to edit the foundations of the dream (the soul and the Dreamification talent).
Of course, the foundations of the dream weren't limited to just these. There was Dream State Soul Essence, Dream State Souls, the Dreamification talent, [Transcendent Knowledge], and even Dream State Consciousness, Dream Information, and Dream Ley Lines.
But not everything could be utilized—like the Dream Ley Lines. And not everything was easy to use—like Dream State Soul Essence.
In the end, what remained were Dream State Souls, the Dreamification talent, and basic Dream Information.
These were the foundations of my conceptualized Dream Editing Technology. One could easily reach this conclusion through the process of elimination.
Perhaps the Primitive Dream Realm held far more foundations than these, just as the transcendent system contained things like totems that were neither understood nor utilized.
Being overly ambitious isn't suitable for the starting phase. Only after one has begun to run along the path does looking toward the horizon cease to be foolishness and become a testament to courage.