Faelyn’s mental toolbox, he mused, wasn't entirely empty. For one, there was this utterly bizarre, potentially life-saving, skill system. And then, lurking in the dusty attic of his brain, resided a collection of… facts? Impressions? Fuzzy memories? Whatever they were, they related to the world he’d apparently stumbled into – the world of demon slayers, ripped straight from the pages of… well, a Japanese anime. This, he had to admit, was his biggest, and possibly only, advantage. Assuming, of course, that ‘vague anime trivia’ actually counted as an ‘advantage’ in a real-life, demon-infested scenario.
But the anime knowledge, let's be brutally honest, was less a detailed roadmap and more a tattered postcard from a vacation he’d taken years ago. He’d binged the show, sure, probably fueled by instant ramen and questionable sleep schedules, sometime back in the mists of… was it college? Or just post-college, pre-existential-crisis? The timeline was as blurry as his memory of minor character names. Years had passed, brain cells had presumably atrophied, and the finer points of demon-slaying lore had, shall we say, faded around the edges.
He could dredge up the broad strokes, the big, splashy plot points. Main villain? Definitely there. Vaguely menacing, and, if memory served, possessed a disconcerting resemblance to a certain pop icon prone to gravity-defying dance moves and sparkly gloves. Michael Jackson demon-guy, filed under ‘Antagonists, Surprisingly Groovy.’ Then, the demon slayer exam – a perilous obstacle course designed, apparently, to weed out the merely enthusiastic from the certifiably insane. Hashira – check. Top-tier demon slayers, the elite of the elite, vaguely intimidating, probably ridiculously powerful. And, of course, Tanjiro. The protagonist. Kindly, earnest, perpetually furrow-browed, and, with a demon sister.
But specifics? Details? Useful information that might, you know, actually keep him alive for longer than five minutes? Those were stubbornly elusive. Character names beyond the main trio? Vanished into the ether, presumably replaced by equally useless trivia about 80s sitcoms and obscure breakfast cereal jingles. The precise location of Tanjiro’s quaint, probably-demolished-by-demons, family home? A blank. Demon Slayer HQ? Equally nonexistent in his mental map. He was essentially armed with a Cliff’s Notes version of ‘Demon Slayer,’ and Cliff, bless his concise heart, probably hadn't anticipated the need for real-world, demon-dodging application of his summaries.
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He needed a mental re-up. A data dump. Some way to haul those flickering, fragmented memories back into the forefront of his mind before they winked out entirely, leaving him with nothing but a vague sense of déjà vu and a lingering craving for instant ramen.
Because, and this was the nagging worry at the back of his mind, memory was a fickle beast. He wasn't even sure how permanent, how reliable, these anime-derived nuggets of information even were. Were they etched in his brain, ready to be accessed at will? Or were they more like… volatile wisps of thought, transient, ephemeral, destined to fade and vanish like morning mist if not actively and repeatedly… what? Recalled? Re-watched? Performed a frantic mental re-enactment of key scenes while humming the opening theme song? He honestly had no clue.
But, ah, yes. Skill system. Enter deus ex machina, stage left. This was where his newfound, utterly improbable, ability might just come to the rescue. He knew, or at least, thought he knew, a thing or two about memory. Bachelor of Education, vaguely relevant, surprisingly unhelpful in most real-world scenarios, but perhaps, just perhaps, about to earn its keep. He’d sat through lectures, vaguely absorbed information about synapses and neural pathways and the mysterious workings of the human brain. Enough to sound vaguely knowledgeable at a cocktail party populated entirely by underemployed Education majors? Probably. Enough to weaponize memory against actual demons? Significantly less certain.
But, hey, theory was theory. And theory, in his current predicament, was about all he had to work with. Two types of memory, if he recalled correctly. Short-term, fleeting, like a goldfish’s attention span, useful for remembering where you put your keys for approximately five seconds, and then… gone. Long-term, the good stuff, the durable, lasting memories, the ones that stuck around like particularly persistent earworms. And the magic trick, apparently, was transferring short-term memory into long-term storage. Repetition, association, something about neural pathways being reinforced through repeated use, or maybe emotional connections… it was all a bit fuzzy.
Association, though. That sparked a flicker of something resembling an idea. Could he, somehow, use association to drag those half-remembered anime details kicking and screaming from the murky depths of his subconscious? Could he link them to… something? Sensory input? Emotional triggers? Badly sung karaoke renditions of anime theme songs? The possibilities, however improbable, were…intriguing. And in his current state of utter cluelessness, ‘intriguing’ was about the best he could hope for.
