Chapter 104: Another Hopeful Day
Swordflower College, meditation room.
As soon as her consciousness returned to her body, Sonya couldn’t help but collapse on the ground in exhaustion. She barely managed to prop herself up against the wall and breathe heavily. The fatigue of her soul was reflected in her body, and before long beads of sweat were flowing down her cheeks and dripping down her collarbone like pearls sliding into the depths of her dress.
She was completely worn out.
It was still dark outside, the first time she had exited the virtual world this early, and Sonya felt like she had come out too slowly.
Just now, a full eight knowledge creatures had chased her and the Observer for over an hour in the sea of knowledge. No matter how far or fast they fled, the knowledge creatures tenaciously pursued them, even when the Observer deliberately crashed into other knowledge creatures’ territories. The pursuers didn’t hesitate at all!
Moreover, after the Observer did that, the number of pursuers increased from eight to nine.
In principle, they shouldn’t be so afraid. After all, they were only silver sorcerers. At worst they could just give up their virtual lifeblood, since sorcerers were bound to die in the virtual world anyway, just with varying frequency.
Being able to last until condensing the Silver Wings and then dying, compared to all the sorcerers throughout history, they would be among the most outstanding few. If there was a “Latest Sorcerers to Experience Their First Death Ranking List” in the sorcerer world, while they might not make the top ten, Sonya felt they could at least make the top hundred.
But the moment they discovered they were surrounded by knowledge creatures, Sonya suddenly came across a hidden piece of knowledge. As they fled, the Observer introduced her to the “poison” brought by this hidden knowledge.
“Eviction Venom”
“Venom Details: When a sorcerer stays in the same place in the virtual world for too long, their scent will be noticed by the surrounding knowledge creatures, provoking hostility from the knowledge creatures who see it as an affront to the natives. The virtual world is the home of the knowledge creatures. They do not allow invaders to settle here, and are determined to drive away and kill any invaders with ‘settling tendencies’. They will devour any invading souls completely.”
“Number Infected with Venom: 31”
“Venom Strengthening Degree: 31%”
“Current Venom Effects: Easier to notice surrounding knowledge creatures (when strength reaches 51% this turns into a negative effect, drops to 10% for great increase in benefits).”
Sonya understood why the professors always said that “you cannot stay in the same place in the virtual world for a long time” was a taboo, but no one could say why, even though sorcerers loved to dig deep for answers. It turned out it was because it was a venom.
Unlike the Whirlpool Venom which had extremely high use value, so informed people were willing to share the secret with their loved ones, even at the risk of being poisoned.
But the Eviction Venom was meaningless. Now that Sonya knew the truth about it, she would always remember “never stay in one place for a long time” in the future – but the school had already taught them this lesson!
Therefore, people who knew about the Eviction Venom would not actively spread this venom. The number infected was naturally pitifully small, most likely from accidentally staying too long, thus unfortunately getting infected.
Moreover, based on Sonya and the Observer’s harrowing experience last night, most people who knew about this venom had probably been devoured immediately by the knowledge creatures.
They had a small boat to sail quickly over the waves, plus the two of them teaming up to barely shake off the pursuers and exit the virtual world in the nick of time.
Sonya couldn’t even imagine how desperate a solo sorcerer who could only swim to move would be when discovering they were surrounded by several knowledge creatures.
The most terrifying thing was the knowledge creatures’ “quantitative change” leading to a “qualitative change” in the sorcerers’ deaths.
As mentioned before, there were serious consequences when a sorcerer died in the virtual world, because when the sorcerer’s consciousness returned, remnants of the soul still lingered in the virtual world. The knowledge creatures would take the opportunity to take a big bite, damaging the sorcerer’s soul.
But after being bitten by the knowledge creatures, the sorcerer’s soul also became lighter and returned faster, so the loss would not be too severe.
This was why Sonya and the Observer had fled so desperately – they weren’t being chased by one knowledge creature, but by nine!
Each monster taking a bite would be enough to completely devour their two souls, maybe even not enough to share for other monsters.
This was the real reason “staying too long in the virtual world leads to death”: the sorcerer is torn apart and eaten by the knowledge creatures, the soul simply cannot return to the body. The body waits for too long and mistakenly thinks the soul has abandoned it, directly dropping dead on the spot.
Because of this sudden incident, they didn’t get to explore at all tonight. They shook off their pursuers at top speed and directly exited the virtual world. Apart from slightly increasing their faction boundary, it was basically a wasted night, even a negative return – just having one “Whirlpool Venom” was already annoying enough, and now there was another “Eviction Venom” too, making Sonya feel her mind becoming less and less pure.
Although with the low number infected, the “Eviction Venom’s” effects were currently beneficial, sooner or later if this venom spread it would definitely turn into negative effects.
But in any case, being able to survive was a good thing. Just now Sonya had almost thought she and the Observer were going to die in the virtual world.
Sonya heaved a long sigh of relief as she left the meditation building.
The night sky was filled with twinkling stars, as bright as daylight. The largest was the “Waning Moon Star”, its crescent shape casting deep blue light that illuminated the school’s paths.
According to the moon phase calendar, the meteorologists were going to replace the Moon Star with a “the Lower Moon Star” tomorrow…Sonya suddenly wondered what the blood moon looked like on Observer’s side. Was it also managed and replaced by the Meteorological Bureau like the stars in the Starchild Nation?
Suddenly, a rainbow halo burst in the night sky, startling Sonya. Looking closely, she realized it came from the white tower.
Being listed as a warning area, and converging sorcerers from all of Cailleach, Sonya vaguely sensed the “virtual chaotic flow” that dropped people from the white tower was very important. But her status was still too low to access such high-level intelligence, so she could only watch from afar, guessing whether a group of professors was having a wild party inside.
Returning to her dorm, Sonya moved lightly without waking her roommates. With no hot water late at night, she took a cold shower and went out to the balcony to stand and let the wind blow dry her hair.
She tapped her Miracle Bracelet, bringing up the light screen, wanting to watch the new drama starring Dahlia.
There was also a full length mirror on the balcony. Sonya’s eyes glanced at her reflection, and she suddenly adjusted her posture, tidying her hair, scrutinizing her appearance from all angles.
“What are you doing so late at night?”
Adele, who had been hiding in her blankets watching shows, poked her head out curiously to ask Sonya.
Sonya looked at Adele and pondered for a moment before asking, “Do I count as a cute and innocent beauty with a nice figure?”
Adele blinked. “You do, but you’re still a little lacking compared to me.”
She held out a hand, making a gesture indicating the gap wasn’t very big at all.
Shattered Lake Prison.
Ashe jerked up from the bed and rolled onto the cold floor. The icy ground seemed to reach his panicked soul, slightly soothing the turmoil after the escape.
After getting up off the floor, he realized his whole body was drenched in sweat, so he went to take a hot shower. Although the regular dorms didn’t have bathtubs, hot water was available 24/7 – not providing hot water could be seen as abuse by human rights organizations.
Leaning against the white tiles, letting the water sprays on his body, Ashe opened up the light screen to organize tonight’s gains.
Yes, tonight was fruitful. Although to others, the “Eviction Venom” might be purely a burden, but for “Aurora’s Sorcerer Manual” it had generated new changes.
“You are infected with ‘Eviction Venom.'”
“The ‘Eviction Venom’ has enhanced the apocalypse observer’s perception of knowledge creatures in the virtual world. The virtual world map has undergone changes.”
“Note: The virtual world map has been updated. You can now discover knowledge creatures within observational range on the map, and obtain simple information about them.”
Earlier in the virtual world, when Ashe opened the map, he noticed some changes in the 24 surrounding grids. Most were still “Waste of effort” and “Not worth mentioning”, but several grids had popped up with more info:
“Mist Fish Dragon, Worth a visit”
“Blast Fish Dragon, Bit of trouble”
“Umbrella Bird Dragon, Bit of trouble”
Although it just showed the knowledge creatures’ names, for virtual world exploration this was a huge breakthrough!
Before this, Ashe could only make a rough judgment on whether a region contained legacy islands or knowledge creature habitats based on the map prompts. Generally, “Worth a visit” was mostly legacy islands, while “Bit of trouble” was basically knowledge creatures, although occasionally it would misjudge. But it was still better than blindly barging around.
Now the areas where knowledge creatures lived were marked out, so the other unlabeled areas where battles still occurred must be legacy islands!
Not only that, although Ashe didn’t know much about knowledge creatures, the Swordswoman had read “Knowledge Creature Compendium” so she could judge the corresponding monsters’ favored factions, approximate strength, and even specific weaknesses just from their names. They could specifically target knowledge creatures they had advantage over!
They could even hunt knowledge creatures that dropped swordsmanship gems, like ‘Cleave Fish Dragon’ and ‘Umbrella Bird Dragon’, to raise the Swordswoman’s swordsmanship boundary to gold rank, helping her advance to Two-Winged Gold!
Once the Swordswoman reached the time spirits, Ashe could naturally use the same trick to hitchhike to the time spirits through her.
Just like becoming a silver sorcerer in the sea of knowledge, Ashe could also advance to a gold sorcerer in the time spirits, even if he didn’t have a single factions at gold rank, or had never cultivated a day in his life, relying entirely on clinging to the Swordswoman’s thighs to ascend – saying that out loud would probably make other sorcerers explode with anger.
With Ashe’s exploration abilities and the Swordswoman’s knowledge, as long as they didn’t deliberately trigger taboos and court death like earlier, exploring the sea of knowledge from now on would be smooth sailing without danger!
But the premise for all this was that Ashe had to survive, had to escape from this prison, had to regain his freedom.
Turning off the shower head above, he grabbed a towel to wrap around himself and walked to the sink. Ashe looked at his sopping wet self in the mirror, water dripping from his bangs onto his bony shoulders, sliding along his collarbones.
“Crap, I’m starting to like this world a little.”
The corners of his mouth turned up in a slight smile. “Today is another hopeful day too.”
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