Stop Writing! [Magical Academy Litrpg]

As the magic circle started spinning to life, albeit at a slow pace like that of a sloth, little beads of sweat appeared on Alec's forehead. Evan was constantly twitching on the ground, possibly trying to fight against the loop he had put himself into.

As Alec's mana joined the fray, Evan's brain became a battlefield. Alec could feel an invisible, nigh undetectable presence in there. And this feeling didn't even come from the being itself. Rather, Alec could only feel it through the disruptions in Evan's mindscape. Kind of similar to dark matter, which wasn't visible by any conventional means but its gravity signaled its existence nonetheless.

What was horrifying was, that no matter how much he concentrated his mana in accordance with the mind magic, his prods and pushes against the thing were left unresponsive. It didn't budge. Not even a little bit. It was as if Alec was trying to move a mountain with all his strength.

The next moment, however, another intent joined his mana. It wasn't malevolent and felt deeply familiar. It was filled with zeal and a will to stand up. This was Evan. Even if he had lost control of his mind, he was still capable of producing some intent. Alec was baffled when he realized this. He took a deep breath and followed Evan's intent.

There was one major and one minor block between a mage and manipulating another’s memories using mind magic. The major one was that, it was really easy to put up a fight against such forces. The mind was like a heavily protected bastion, and the assailant had to bring a much bigger force than the defenders to beat them into submission.

The minor block was how hard it could be to interpret other's memories, especially doing so quickly. When Alec's magic entered Evan's head, he was met with a metaphorical library with unopened books. Sure, Alec could walk up to a memory and read its title, but that was nowhere near enough to get a complete grasp of the memory itself.

Unless of course, he was being aided by the librarian himself, which would be Evan in this particular situation. His magic breezing through the mindscape of Evan, Alec started picking out memory after memory and sending them over to himself using the magic circle. Although he didn't know their contents, Evan was the one who knew what he needed to remember.

To be honest, even if the two came together and tried stopping the process using all their expertise and mana, they would have failed spectacularly. The only thing they could do was to scrap whatever they could and jump ship into Alec's mind.

An excruciating five minutes full of precise mana-work later, Evan's mind had been almost completely wiped. At one point, around the four-minute mark, Evan's intent had faded and disappeared, leaving Alec to his own devices in his mind. Although there wasn't much left, Alec did his best to get whatever he could and extracted himself from his mind, not coming in contact with the anti-meme any further.

And shortly after, the sparkles around Evan's head completely disappeared. He laid still, with his eyes closed, similar to how Alec had gone into a coma after being mind-wiped.

Just as Alec was about to plop down to the ground with a deep sigh, he saw Evan's hand twitch. Although he doubted it at first, with even further movement, he realized Evan to be quickly regaining his consciousness.

'Just how high is his mind stat?' Alec couldn't help but ask mentally while regathering his focus. 'He wouldn't have put all of his free points in mind, right?'

Before Alec could go down that line of thought further though, Evan's eyes shot open in confusion. He looked around like a newborn, taking in his surroundings. Alec walked to his side and tapped his cheek with worry.

Then, a sharp look appeared on Evan's face. Even with no memories, his mind seemed to be working to decipher his situation. Alec had no intention of leaving him like this, so he took out a low grade mental cleansing potion he had prepared for such a situation. Although it wouldn't persist as long as the average one, it would help him at least implant the memories he took over from Evan.

He had to admit, he had been tempted to at least briefly glance over those memory packages left to him. However, there were two problems with that. The first problem was that it wouldn't be right for him to do so as Evan's friend. Unless explicitly told so, it was a really rude thing to look at other's memories.

The second problem was the probability that Evan had handed over some of the forbidden knowledge to him. From what Alec assumed, Evan had tried accessing his childhood memories, probably from outside the academy. If some of those were amongst the memories handed over to him and he accidentally opened it, that would probably be their end. Both of them would be anti-memed and lose most of their agency in the academy.

The fact that the anti-meme had cut off the academy from the outside world was already known to Alec, however, he hadn't known how far that went at the time. He already had no memories of the outside world after all.

And now that this had happened to Evan, Alec got a better understanding of the anti-meme. This whole, 'cutting the academy from the outside world' seemed to be one of, if not the entire goal of the thing. One quick glance at his past and Evan's memory had been completely wiped out.

'This probably happened because of the fact that we had loosened the shackles around our mind too much,' he contemplated while looking at his friend's eyes. Raising his hand, he calmed him down and started the infusion of memories. 'If we were outside the library's second level and not under the effect of the mental cleansing potion, Evan wouldn't have been capable of asking a question about the past at all. Even if he did, he wouldn't follow through with that thought process and think back to his childhood. I wonder what was hidden behind that reminiscent look in Evan's eyes...’

As the memory packs flowed from his mind into Evan's, Alec watched his eyes go from sharp to confused, then to surprised, and finally, relieved.

"Thank you..." he muttered with a low voice. If not for Alec's enhanced senses, he wouldn't have been capable of picking that up. "Thank you, Alec. I managed to pull through thanks to you."

"No problem. I am technically the one who caused this to happen to you," Alec answered, plopping down onto the ground. With a confused look, Evan sized him up and down before asking.

"What do you mean?"

"If I didn't pull you into this, you wouldn't have to deal with it. Maybe ignorance is bliss after all..." Alec muttered. Even though he knew that logically, he did the right thing by asking for help, he couldn't help but feel like he had caused Evan to sacrifice a lot.

"Huh... That's the stupidest thing I have heard you say in a while," Evan commented. They looked at each other briefly before breaking down into laughter. If Alec wasn't there, Evan might've fallen into the exact same situation as him. Well, disregarding the whole thing about him being a transmigrator of course.

"So, how much of your memory is okay?" Alec asked. His question caused Evan to frown and close his eyes for a second, probably trying to do a damage calculation.

"It's hard to say. I have about... 10% of my life’s memories left," he answered. "But it is enough for me to continue my daily life as normal. Considering that you have lost much more and did just fine."

"Yeah," Alec confirmed, his tone trailing between relaxed and nervous. While Evan got up to finish the rest of his notes and add in the events that transpired in the library, Alec himself sat in silence for a moment.

'About 10% of his life is roughly 2 years. It seems to correspond to his life in the academy. So nothing before that?' he questioned in his head. Although his gaze turned toward Evan for a moment, he quickly averted his eyes and went back to his own table.

'So, what I should understand from this is that I'm not the only one who knows little about the outside world, but every other student in the academy? Maybe even the professors are in the same situation...' he thought while para-phrasing his thoughts down in the journal. 'How could the academy function like this? How could no one come to disturb this place from the outside world?'

[...Those are some of the questions I leave to you, myself. The mysterious nature of this world seems out of my reach. It looks so far out there that I cannot perceive even its outline. But there is a hunch in me that the mystery will start unraveling soon, showing its naked face. I need more allies, and I need more power. With the happenings of today, it seems that more drastic measures are needed. So from this week onwards, I will turn my focus towards memetic magic.]

[Don't give up...]