Chapter 121: CPU Burnout

In the next moment, several images from his memory were unearthed: Simba, Scar, Timon, Pumbaa... followed by scenes: the lion cub lifted by the baboon, the savannah sunset, playtime with the warthog and meerkat, then the music...

A flood of images was dredged up from the depths of memory, rapidly filled with details under the spell's influence.

Deeper and deeper... Murphy felt a dull pain as if a machine was grinding away. The details from his memory became clearer and clearer; he almost fully recalled the story, even the dialogues.

A vast torrent of information was extracted from deep memory, with countless details vividly presented.

Gradually, he felt transported back to a summer afternoon, squatting in front of the TV, watching the animation, even smelling the mosquito coil and hearing cicadas outside. Ah, right, there was also a plate of watermelon... cut by his grandmother...

Murphy was thrilled; it was like a scene replay, a holographic memory!

Continue, keep going...

He wanted to see how much of the memory could be restored.

Could he recall every scene in the movie? Could he see the pattern on the cloth covering the TV?

Could he control the self in this memory?

If he turned around now, could he see the elder fanning himself on the lounge chair?

The grinding noise of gears was deafening, and the pain almost split his brain, but Murphy, as if bewitched, didn't want to stop. His consciousness seemed to extend a tendril towards that memory scene.

Closer, even closer...

He had somehow left his past self's perspective, now hovering above the room.

The tendril stretched down from the void, its tip struggling to approach the boy engrossed in front of the TV.

Finally, the tendril touched the boy's hair.

"Ha," Murphy rejoiced, but before he could do anything, suddenly, everything went dark, as if the screen had been turned off.

...

In a distant time and space, a boy felt an itch on his head, scratched it, but this action didn't distract him at all. He remained fixated on the TV.

Simba was fighting Scar; even if someone pulled his hair, he might not react.

...

Murphy woke up in a hospital room.

"Laura?"

His assistant was by the bed. Hearing his voice, she immediately woke up, "Director, you're finally awake."

"What do you mean...ouch..."

Trying to recall what had happened, Murphy's head felt as if pierced by thousands of needles, nearly fainting again.

"Don't rush..." Laura said, "Our medical experts conducted a comprehensive tomographic scan of your brain and found extensive neural damage, similar to symptoms of brain hypoxia. However, they treated you promptly with methods like hyperbaric oxygen therapy, avoiding irreversible damage, but symptoms like neural edema will take a few days to recover..."

"You might experience headaches, nausea, and vomiting in the coming days, which are all normal symptoms."

"I've been unconscious?" Murphy asked, puzzled, "For how long?"

"Three days," Laura replied. "After you fell unconscious, a house-elf immediately noticed something was wrong and alerted us. Omid said you might have been experimenting with Legilimency, so we checked your brain... After treating you, you've been asleep."

"The experts and Professor Serika thought of many solutions, but due to it involving the brain, we didn't dare use too many potions, only a bit of Felix Felicis, opting for conservative treatment." Laura helped Murphy sit up, "How do you feel now?"

"Not great, a bit of a headache. I remember, I was using Legilimency to sort through my memories, might have gone a bit too far..."

Recalling now, he had viewed himself from a third-person perspective and ignored other emerging information to delve deeper into memory, thus neglecting physical signals.

That detached feeling was like transcending the physical body, devoid of bodily and emotional constraints, allowing the will to be more fully executed, and thus becoming aggressive.

Ultimately, he was too inexperienced with the spell. Next time, he'd remember to retain some physical sensations.

However, paying such a price, he had essentially mastered the method of using Legilimency to sort memories. Now, recalling The Lion King, every detail of the animation was clear, and he could recite all dialogues without missing a word.

This was astonishing and highly unscientific.

He definitely hadn't paid that much attention when watching the movie.

Theoretically, he hadn't processed the information at the time, so it shouldn't have entered his memory programming. How could something "unremembered" be recalled?

The only explanation was that magic had filled in those details, much like how magic completes the details of Transfiguration.

Naming this Legilimency usage "Total Recall" seemed more apt.

Yet, if every Total Recall session led to brain edema, the cost was too high.

Three days later, medical experts confirmed the link between brain edema and "Total Recall."

"The brain areas you damaged, we believe, were due to a significant increase in synapse numbers. This rapid synapse proliferation is likely one of the reasons for brain hypoxia and neural edema."

"Why don't other wizards who use Legilimency to extract memories have issues?" Murphy asked.

"I think it's because their use of Legilimency differs from yours," Furness admitted guiltily. "After your incident, we researched and speculated that they extract memory indexes and associated fragments."

"Sorting those memories and constructing scenes is not done by their brains but by the Pensieve's magic."

"Otherwise, wizards could achieve photographic memory without a Pensieve."

In other words, most wizards process their scattered memories with a Pensieve, like a server, while he had directly used his brain, like running server tasks on a PC.

Using a PC for server tasks, no wonder it overheated. It's a miracle his brain didn't explode.

But now he faced a dilemma.

He wanted to increase his knowledge through memory duplication, aiming for omniscience.

Just The Lion King had nearly fried his brain. How could he encompass all knowledge?

Should he wear a Pensieve on his head?

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