Hero Chapter 38: Memory Manipulation and Looting Trial and Error (Patreon)

After using Heal, the pain in his shoulder vanished instantly. As for “replaying” how the bolt hit him—there was no need to Imitate that.

This was the first time Keyaru had truly used the skill in the Dungeon. All those spars with Mikoto had stayed at the “hurts the muscles” level—never to the point of true bodily trauma.

Catching the girl’s puzzled look, he felt a little awkward and shook his head. “You use magic yourself… I shouldn’t have to explain this.”

“Healing magic…” Lili trailed off. She wanted to say that restoration-type magic was extremely rare in Orario, but seeing how casually he treated it, she swallowed the words.

She glanced at the bloody scene. Once her resolve faded, the question of cleanup became a problem she had to face.

“What do we do with them?”

He couldn’t very well tell her, “I’m about to do human trials and see if I can skim some stats from these Soma Familia adventurers.”

He analyzed coolly instead. They hadn’t known who he was before this, but if adventurers suddenly vanished, that would draw attention. Fighting Level 1s was already pushing it. And Lili’s situation in Orario would become dire—at least until he could solve her Familia problem, she wouldn’t be able to show her face.

At that thought, another use of Transformation came to mind.

While raising stats, you could also tweak the target’s memory; back in the Redo of Healer world, he’d used a trick like that on the crown princess.

“There are two options.”

“We can bury them somewhere. But captain Zanis will notice they’re gone, and for a while you’ll have to live under a new face.”

“…That might be hard.” Lili shook her head. It wasn’t that she hadn’t tried; she’d even implicated the kind florist who took her in. How they sniffed her out—she still had no idea.

“It isn’t that I won’t change my face. If it were that easy to leave the Familia, there wouldn’t be a ‘Liliruca the Supporter’ in the Dungeon.”

“Then we’re left with the other method.”

“…”

“What method?”

She lifted her head, confusion filling her eyes.

“Simple: rewrite their memories.”

“How is that simple?!”

Her expression twisted. In her world, no adventurer could do that. But when her eyes slid to the clear-eyed brown-haired boy—and the sunny smile on his face that somehow held no warmth at all—an icy chill ran through her.

He could absolutely do it.

“So… you’re not going to rewrite my memory, are you?”

“You’re overthinking it. If helping you leave the Soma Familia ends with you forgetting, wouldn’t everything I’ve done be for nothing?”

His brown eyes were deep. He was still smiling, but his tone left no room for doubt. “At the very least—I could hold that over you for a lifetime, couldn’t I?”

—

Keyaru already had a concrete process for developing Heal’s derivatives:

Cancel the healing, change the spell’s output form, and—using Looting of the target’s stats as a base—apply a full-body buff to himself.

Looked at another way, isn’t that still a kind of “recovery”?

But he’d need to test it to know the effect. In the Redo of Healer world, Looting only stole EXP and MP; DanMachi doesn’t even have those.

Great deeds to level up are fundamentally different from EXP.

“If…

“I can set Looting to go after overall stats, then I won’t have to worry about hitting a bottleneck later by relying on training alone.”

Full of expectation, Keyaru walked toward the burly leader.

After Corruption, the man’s vital organs were ruined; he couldn’t even crawl in the dark, yet he stayed conscious.

Hearing footsteps draw near, Drake—that was his name—trembled uncontrollably. Waiting for death was the cruelest part.

“I…”

“I-I’ve got money!”

A low moan scraped out of his throat. Afraid Keyaru wouldn’t understand, he tried to prove it—but his limbs wouldn’t move.

He could only watch that figure come closer.

He didn’t even notice the reek spreading through the air.

“Tsk…”

Keyaru wrinkled his nose at the stench—the man’s bodily functions had failed and fear had made him soil himself. He remembered their earlier “chat,” shook his head, and murmured, “I liked you better with that cocky sneer.”

…

Mercy to an enemy is cruelty to yourself.

Keyaru knew the rule. Meeting Drake’s terrified eyes, he pressed his palm to the man’s shoulder and focused.

Heal flared.

Casting back-to-back, with his reserves already low, his mental power was drained to the dregs in moments.

He didn’t remove Corruption. Instead, like drawing with a syringe, he stole the man’s not-yet-hardened stat gains.

Subjectively, though, Keyaru didn’t feel an immediate boost. What he did feel was the out-of-mana dizziness easing.

“Right direction.”

“But how many ‘units’ can I pull in one go? I’ll need Hestia to update my status before I get a clean read.”

He looked at the slack-eyed leader, then—rather than use Transformation to erase memories straight away—he moved on to the others. Looting, copy-paste, across the board. He’d collect every bit of “reward” he could from this fight.

Ignoring Lili’s confusion, he offered no explanations. Imitation and Looting were cards he would never, under any circumstances, show in Orario.

“Honestly, you should be grateful.

“I’m not yet in a position to take on the Soma Familia outright.”

Round and round—and he was back in front of Drake. Patiently, he crouched. If he merely used Transformation to “erase this encounter”… then once they got back, Zanis would still be asking questions. In the coming dives, more lackeys would tail them. That was way off the growth plan he’d set for himself.

A chaotic Soma Familia.

Not his place to judge—but in that chaos, having a crew of “defectors” to slow the chase mattered a lot to him.

“If I’m changing memory…”

“Why not go all the way?”