Chapter 177: 175. A Musical Prisoner

Frost scoured the first half of the 3^rd floor. Each floor increased by 50% as one descended. As large as it was, traversing them was a simple task for their speed. Frost had been compiling the Attributes of the Corrupted and aligning them with the Affinities.

What she gathered was interesting. There were a total of 11 Attributes, but she only had 10 Affinities. The missing Affinity was Amalgamation no doubt. Each Attribute-related Affinity were:

Righteousness – Judgement

Religion – Civilization

Meaning – Purpose

Vigor – Wrath

Trepidation – Ego, which was one of the newer Affinities.

Obsession – Attachment, which made her remember that Caldera Industries had a motto that went by “Endorse Attachment.”. Even the Spatial Distortion I Ability she possessed mentioned something about Attachment. By this alone she pinned them with the Attachment Affinity.

Ignorance – Hope. This made sense in the context of the Blood Festival, but not so much Snap. When Frost asked, Snap responded with: “Ignorance in how we forget about our happiest moments. How they’re fleeting, and how the smallest things can blind us from these truly happier times.”

Kind of like how people get mad at their parents but forget about the love they gave them during their upbringing, huh.

“It depends, doesn’t it?”

It does. And I hate that I can’t draw on experiences. Not with my memory.

… Nihilism – Despair

Sorrow – Lament

Aspiration – Desire

And finally, Identity for Amalgamation.

“Maybe the Manual will have something. We’ll check it out later.” Frost said, keeping a copy of the Overseer’s Manual close.

Another observation was that these Corrupted were vastly different from the ones they had faced. The Archivist confirmed that none of them were a part of any of the Archetype’s tale. They were just… ‘normal’ Corrupted.

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“Frost. Can I call them Main Sequence Corrupted?” Nav asked for the Archivist.

For which group of Corrupted?

“The non-Awakening ones, silly. A-Ah… Er… You know the stars, correct? O to M follows that classification. They called it Main Sequence Stars in our world.”

Our world… You know what, I remember something like that. O were the brightest stars, right?

“Yep! And the biggest! ImpulseWorks must have knowledge about this! It can’t be a coincidence!”

Exactly. By the way, are you sure you weren’t a Navigator in your past life?

“You saw how much freedom we have in our memories. Maybe not you, but I spend a lot of time recording things. I spent a lot of time archiving what was left of our world.”

Frost then questioned if Nav was a Navigator again, to which it denied. Rather, Nav equated itself to an AI since Navigators were humans.

“Or I may be the voice resulting from the Third Man Factor syndrome.”

Hey. Don’t say that. You’re real. How many times do I have to say this? You’re not a figment of my imagination.

The Third Man Factor was a syndrome that caused people to hear guiding voices in near death experiences. This voice would help them, and from what Frost recalled from her life on Earth, this was actually a real phenomenon experienced by people, particularly ice and rock climbers.

Nav and the Navigator resembled this phenomenon. The Workers were in a constant near-death environment, and Frost began hearing Nav in the Black Forest. Still, it was a farfetched idea since Nav could interact with the System. Also, Jury, Ignis, Snap and other people confirmed Nav’s existence.

Afterwards, Frost moved to explore the latter half of the 3^rd floor and came across a peculiar Corrupted.

 

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