Chapter 58: Aftermath

In the end, all the goblins that ran away came back. Although it did take a few minutes of urging from the child.

With the goblins as his hands, the child got all the goblins that were still alive and injured healed. Some of them may have been dead but could still be saved due to their consciousness not dissipating yet.

All the child had to do was take the dead bodies that still held their consciousness to the dungeon core. There, he would extract their consciousness from their dead bodies and create new ones to house their consciousness. In this way, the energy used to create them is much lower, while the time used is also lesser.

But still, a lot of third-order energy was still needed to fully reconstruct a body. Luckily, though, some left-over parts of the dead goblins could be used. All he needed to do was use a whole lot of life-type Ether to revive a part of the body. For instance, a dead leg, after he revived it, he would then use third-order energy to reattach it to another goblin. Thus saving both time and energy to create a new leg.

Too bad this can't be done way too many times on the same body; otherwise, even with third-order energy assisting, a sort of reattachments will ultimately occur as the brain and consciousness will be confused where they are.

But even with all these frugal methods at hand, a lot of third-order energy was needed due to the staggering number of dead goblins. But because of the loads of preparation he had done for the battle, he did not have an excess amount of energy at that moment. So some goblins were left over in his dungeon core without being revived.

And because of their great strength, revival was focused mainly on the hobgoblins. Sadly, they had the highest casualties as they had to go head-to-head with the giant wolves. The goblin deaths were mainly due to the wolf alpha ranking up its at the last second(Aka super sayaiyan).

And Sadly, because of how destructive the universal pressure was, most of the consciousness killed by the wolf alpha could not handle existing for the few minutes the battle had lasted. So in the end, only about nine hobgoblins could be revived and brought back from the dead, while the remaining few had their consciousness dissipate without any chance of reviving.

"Well, it's not truly reviving; it's more like reincarnation, to be exact."

As the child had tried it before, bringing goblins truly back to life was not possible; he could only take their consciousness and plant it somewhere else. And according to the universal belief, as long as the memory is different and the soul is nonexistent, the person is not the same.

Some may argue that their past selves are them and that they are the same person, but as long as you do not remember these past selves, are you really the same?

No.

At least that's what people in this universe believe. To them, consciousness is nothing but a medium of life and the being of a persona, but it is not the person itself. What makes a person is instead the experiences and memories of said person since their birth.

And to a certain extent, they are right. as consciousness barely contributes to the formation of a person's persona. In one life, they could be evil and cunning, and in the other, they could be kind and benevolent. The only thing the consciousness brings to the table would be 'nature,' which is like a set trait that each consciousness has. For instance, laziness could be a set trait. But in most cases, these traits could easily be overruled by experience. After all, nurture always bests nature.

So unless the consciousness has developed a soul and reincarnated with its memories, it's not the same person.

So coming up to this point, the child couldn't help but wonder, "Am I the same as I was before I reincarnated?"

After all, all he knows about himself is that he used to be a human living on earth just before he became a dungeon. That would mean he has memories of his past life. But Who is to say that the these memories are truly his? What if these memories were just implanted and he is truly a dungeon?

After all, the child did notice that the way he thinks seems to be a bit different from how he used to be back when he was on earth. At first, the child liked to believe that it was because of the body change. After all, most of our human actions can be attributed to our bodies. Emotions like sadness and happiness are all born from our brains spewing out hormones. As a dungeon, he did not have hormones. He was completely different from how he used to be as a human. So It was okay to be different, right?

"Well, I'm now not so sure."

"Wait a minute, when I reincarnated, did I reincarnate with my consciousness, or was it only just my memories?"

"And if it's only my memories, am I still the same person as I was before I reincarnated?"

It was worth a thought. Although the people of this universe have pointed out that memories are what make a being, memories have one flaw.

It's information.

And information can easily be copied and transferred to other mediums. So if a person's memories were copied and pasted onto a computer, would the artificial life born from that be the same as the person who owned those memories? But what if another artificial life was made with the same memories? Are these two artificial lives now the same person?

Many questions seemingly came into the child's mind. But he did not have the answer to them. And somewhere in between, a question that seemed to ring quite higher than all the other questions came up.

"Who am I?"

Crack!

Right after that question was asked, the crack in the child's core grew longer. His head, or rather, his core, tried hurting. Pain unknown to him started assaulting his mind.

"Ahhh!"

The child stared, screaming. So much so that a sound was projected from his core to the outside world. But all the goblins and still living wolves, the sound was akin to a billions of ghosts howling all at once. Not that they have ever seen or heard any ghosts. But the sound was horrid and terrifying.

All who heard it felt a certain aversion in their minds. a feeling no different from how one would feel if someone scaled their nails on the chalkboard. Only this feeling was magnified ten times. Making all the working goblins and hobgoblins step away from the portal.

Luckily, this chilling sound did not last long. It was a few minutes later that the sound came to a halt. Bringing peace once more to all the goblins

The child stayed silent for a few more minutes, taking the time to calm himself and not try once again to trigger whatever it was he had just triggered. And after a few probes here and there, he finally figured out what caused it.

"My mind is averted to my very own existance." To be more exact, it's like his mind was furiously avoiding his own memories. As everyone he remotely thought of anything important about himslef, the pain returns.

For a moment, the child stopped. A certain realization that, for some reason, had never come to him appeared and shocked him.

"I don't know my name."

And the moment he tried to dig deeper into his mind to see what he was called in his past life...

"Ahhh!"

The crack in his core grew deeper. ﹰThe pain in his mind returned immediately. Recreating that horrible experience the child never wanted to feel again. But the more he thought of It, the more curious he became. And the more curious he was, the more questions popped up.

"Could it be that... That it was not that I do not remember how I died, but that I do not want to remember?"

After all, he still does not know exactly how or if he died. He just woke up a dungeon. After that, he just pushed everything about himself aside.

"Have I been subconsciously avoiding the topic of my past life?"

Crack!

The crack on his core spread even more. Finally occupying a tenth of the whole core.

"No, i have to stop thinking about myself. Otherwise I could really die."

So the child decided to stop. All those questions about his continuous existence and mysterious reincarnation were once again pushed aside.

"Let's think of something more peaceful, like slavery."

...

AN: For a period of time, I won't be updating. The next coming chapters will not only be fast pased, but will require more delicate care to write. As it is time for us go go a little deeper into the child's past life and finally uncover the longest secret I have ever kept.

The child's name.

Plus, I need to decide on something... I'll come back when I make my decision.

But don't worry, I shouldn't take long. Prolly 4 to 5 days. I should still be ready by the next week.