Blind Box World - SSS-Rank Eye of Truth

Chapter 61: The Point Thief

Ethan looked at the charred black corpse of the Harpy Queen, and a thought suddenly sprang up in his mind.

He extended his left hand.

It was a hand formed from the shard of Primordial Armor, silver-gray metal blanketed with red veins fine as thread, and those veins were now faintly pulsing in time with his heartbeat, as if the arm itself were a living creature. Beneath the hazy green light cast down from the ocean hanging upside down overhead, that arm looked all the more bizarre.

He circulated his strength faintly, and the Disintegration skill was activated.

Exactly as he had predicted, the moment his silver-gray hand touched the corpse, the Harpy Queen’s body began to break apart. Each layer of flesh, each block of bone, was all decomposed into tiny particles of energy.

But at the same time, Ethan also felt the energy in his own body draining away rapidly, like water being pulled out of a bathtub with no plug. This was the price of Disintegration. The higher the quality of the matter he decomposed, the greater the consumption and backlash he had to bear.

Fortunately, this process didn’t drag on too long.

Perhaps because the Harpy Queen was already dead, her body’s resistance was almost gone, so the decomposition became far easier than decomposing an intact object. After only a few breaths, the Harpy Queen’s large body had completely vanished.

Leaving only one thing.

It was a lump of flesh, about the size of a ball, lying on the black stone floor.

This lump of flesh was deep red, its surface glossy, giving off a slightly fishy scent. But the thing that drew Ethan’s attention wasn’t its appearance, but the rich current of energy it radiated, a current of energy that wasn’t even inferior to the crystal he had just obtained from the monster’s ribcage.

Laira looked at that lump of flesh, only a little surprised.

But Lěng Ruò Yān was different. Her eyes went wide, her mouth agape wide enough to fit a whole fist, staring hard at Ethan’s left arm then at the lump of flesh, unable to close her mouth for a long while.

She had just witnessed with her own eyes the dragon bring down the Harpy Queen, and before she could recover from that, now she saw this Awakened lightly touch it with his hand and make that whole large corpse dissolve into a lump of flesh. This ability, she had never heard of, and had never seen before.

"This is..." Ethan looked at the lump of flesh, frowning faintly.

"Crystallized flesh," Laira spoke up to explain. "In a monster’s body, apart from the energy crystal at its core, its flesh itself also contains a great deal of energy. This is precisely why the monsters out there often eat one another’s flesh to cultivate. They eat their own kind, or eat the flesh of stronger creatures, then absorb the energy contained within to advance."

"But if that’s so," Ethan asked, "why decompose it? Wouldn’t just eating the whole thing be faster?"

"Because normally, that energy is distributed throughout the monster’s entire body." Laira shook her head. "To absorb all of it, you have to eat the whole thing, and it takes a very long time to digest before it’s complete. Very slow, very troublesome. But when you use Disintegration..."

She looked at the deep red lump of flesh, her gaze flashing.

"...then you’ve compressed the entire amount of energy scattered throughout the Harpy Queen’s body, condensed it all into this one single lump of flesh. Eating it is the same as eating the whole monster, but takes only a fraction of the time."

Hearing this, a little curiosity unconsciously rose in Ethan’s mind.

A lump of flesh condensing the entire energy of a Gold-tier Awakened. He really did want to try and see how great an effect it would have if eaten.

But that thought had only just kindled when he remembered the Harpy Queen’s shape.

That thing, though a monster, had a body like a human’s, with hands, with a face, and could even speak human words. At the thought of eating the flesh of such a thing, a wave of nausea immediately surged up in Ethan’s stomach.

He glanced over at Laira.

Laira was also looking at the lump of flesh with the exact same awkward expression, shaking her head. Clearly, she had thought of the same thing, and felt no less nauseated.

To throw it away was a waste. But to eat it, neither of them could get it down.

Ethan sighed, and in the end had no choice but to pick up the lump of flesh, wrapping it carefully in a piece of cloth.

"Well, let’s just keep it for now," he muttered. "Who knows, maybe it’ll come in handy for something later."

At that point, he didn’t yet know that this casual decision of his would, before long, become a pivotal chess piece.

Right at that moment, a pale blue notification panel suddenly appeared before him.

[Congratulations on eliminating the Harpy Queen, you have received 2,500 points.]

"Points?" Ethan started.

He had never seen anything like this. This notification panel wasn’t like the lines of text his eye usually displayed. It was like something belonging to this ruin itself, a law carved deep into the space of this place.

Beneath that line of text, there was something else hazily appearing, looking like a ranking board, with positions and numbers.

Ethan immediately understood.

This isolated world wasn’t simply a ruin containing treasure. It was a special kind of trial space.

And the more frightening thing was, it wasn’t reserved solely for humanity. From the Bone Demon Serpent to the Harpy flock, to the countless bizarre creatures that had all gone into the pillar of light, all of them, every species with intelligence, could step into this place. They came here not only to seek fortuitous encounters, but could also eliminate one another to steal points, climb the ranking board, and in the end, the one at the top would receive a reward.

A place where every creature was a predator, and also prey.

Ethan had only just understood this when the notification panel changed again.

[Do you wish to display your name on the ranking board?]

Ethan looked at that line of text, and an alarm bell immediately went off in his head.

If he let his name appear on the ranking board, then every creature in this trial space would know that someone named Ethan had just killed a Harpy Queen.

And someone with the ability to kill a Gold-tier Awakened was, to other strong ones, a target full of value. They would come looking for him to steal his points.

That would be a hundred thousand times more troublesome.

Ethan frowned, about to choose "no," when suddenly, a thought flashed in his mind.

He remembered his eye.

The [Eye of Truth] could see through the essence of everything, could read the hidden currents of energy that ordinary eyes couldn’t see. So then, for this notification panel, a thing that was itself merely a form of energy structure...

Could his eye see through it?

The thought had barely finished when Ethan immediately activated his eye, looking straight at the ranking board.

And he saw it.

Behind the lines of text and the numbers were countless currents of energy flowing, interweaving with one another, forming the structure of the board. This was precisely the framework of laws governing the operation of this entire trial space.

Ethan tried raising his hand, lightly touching one of those currents.

And indeed, he could change it.

Just a little. Very slightly. The moment he acted upon it, the energy in his body was immediately sucked away in a rush, far more than when he had decomposed the Harpy Queen’s corpse. Clearly, interfering with the law of an entire space was an extremely costly matter.

But he could do it.

The reason he could do it was perhaps because the law of this small isolated world wasn’t overly powerful to begin with. It was only a trial space, not a complete world, so its framework of laws had gaps too that his eye could exploit.

That much was more than enough.

Ethan glanced at the crystallized lump of flesh, then looked at the ranking board again.

The corner of his mouth slowly lifted, forming a smile both cruel and cunning, exactly like a devil who had just thought up a wicked prank.

Laira saw that expression of his, and tilted her head in puzzlement, asking: "What are you smiling about?"

Ethan didn’t answer. He only leaned close to her ear and whispered a few words.

He didn’t explain how his eye had managed to do that. He only told her what he intended to do.

And Laira, just like every other time, didn’t ask a single further question. She only listened obediently, then after hearing it out, the corner of her mouth slowly lifted too, breaking into a smile exactly like Ethan’s.

The same cruel smile. The same cunning air.

Lěng Ruò Yān stood beside them, watching the two of them suddenly break into smiles at the same time like two devils just crawled out of hell, and for some reason shuddered, a chill running down her spine.

She didn’t know what the two of them had just said to each other.

But instinct told her that something extremely insane was about to happen.

’This isn’t good...’ She silently swallowed. ’I have a feeling I’m about to get dragged into some more troublesome business again.’