Azure Scepter

Page 49

[Within this area, all divination spells you cast will gain an additional 2 points of caster level; you will also gain an additional 2 points of luck when resisting all divination effects.]

Trier quietly observed the slowly rotating device above his head. He realized that this star map was exactly the same as the star map in the game, and there was not a trace of the past world in the sky full of stars.

Noi remained motionless, completely stunned by the magnificent sight before her.

Trier turned to look at the towering storage shelves not far away. The huge objects that had just been filled with a mysterious and solemn feeling now exuded a sense of orderly technology under the starlight. The huge pure white shelves were labeled in Chinese as "Necromantic Spell Experiment Records (Conception Area, Experiment Area, Completion Area)", "Research on the Relationship between Demon Anatomy and Mathematical Probability", "Spell Simulation of Divine Magic", and so on.

He walked to the storage shelves and slightly raised his head.

The pungent smell of formaldehyde hits you.

A pair of hollow eye sockets, each the size of a fist, were staring down at him, the dark brown face with its skin peeled off was inches away!

“It’s an anatomical specimen of a seductress, and my skills are quite good.” Trier observed the specimen with satisfaction for a while, then casually pulled out a journal from under the tag “Anatomy Specimen 136: Seductress C”—

"Through extensive experimentation and simple statistics, demons have 20 possible forms after death, including turning into tar-like black corrosive pus, vanishing into granular powder, rotting flesh and blood leaving only bones, being devoured by worms that appear out of nowhere from the wound, or remaining unchanged like normal organisms in the Prime Material Plane..."

"The probabilities of these outcomes are completely consistent, regardless of the type of demon or the manner of death. The probability of any form appearing is around 5. The reason behind this phenomenon is worth pondering. In the game, these are determined by the internal twenty-sided die in the algorithm, but what are the reasons and logic in reality?"

"Or is it just a pure coincidence?"

Trier closed the logbook and then stuffed it back in as is.

He knew what this storage room was for—whether it was for drawing intricate and vast star charts or studying demon anatomy, the underlying purpose was to explore the relationship between reality and the game. Currently, the experimental results were very clear: there was absolutely no connection between the two.

This storage room is undoubtedly incredibly valuable; the extremely complete star map overhead alone is enough to cause a huge uproar. As for the value of the various experimental data and research results on the shelves, they are incalculable. The contents of just one shelf are conservatively estimated to be equivalent to the lifetime research achievements of some legendary spellcasters.

But Trier's brow was furrowed at that moment—

He didn't find the 30 magic stones, the ancient weapon, or the various items he had left for himself. This storage room seemed to truly be just a laboratory storage room.

"Given my personality, I would definitely anticipate choosing the location of the storage room to enter, so if I were to hide something, I would definitely leave corresponding clues in the storage room," he thought to himself.

Trier narrowed his eyes and scanned his surroundings—and soon he spotted a huge map on the storage shelf.

This is a floor plan of the laboratory.

The laboratory on the floor plan looked extremely large, with a dense network of passageways intertwined like a maze—its area was large enough to be considered a dungeon.

He is currently located at a core node of this complex road network, where a circular area on the north side has been specially marked in red, and next to it is a thoughtful sign in Chinese that reads "Deadly Trap".

"They're killing the natives, aren't they?" Trier thought to himself. "People who don't understand Chinese will definitely think there's a treasure trove there."

He observed the map and found a tiny, inconspicuous dot on the north side, on which were written in messy handwriting: “Storage Stone/Diary/Weapons and Equipment”.

"This is it," Trier thought.

Suddenly, Noy's voice trembled as she said, "This is the secret base you told me about before? I thought it was just something like a tree hollow..."

"Only a small part."

Feeling the shock and admiration that kept coming from his heart, Trier was quite pleased, but he did not show it at the moment. Instead, he deliberately did not turn his head and maintained a calm tone.

"..." Noi fell completely silent, her brows furrowed slightly, and she gripped the holy emblem in her left hand tightly.

The next moment, Trier took Neu's cold right hand and said with a smile, "Come on, let's go outside."

Sister Neu was stunned for a moment, then her tightly furrowed brows relaxed, and a faint smile appeared on her lips. The smile, like ripples on water in a gentle breeze, quickly swept across her face and transformed into a bright gleam in her eyes.

"it is good."

The exit of the storage room was at the end of the towering shelves, next to which was a huge one-way mirror. Through the mirror, Trier could see outwards, but the outside could not see the storage room.

Without a doubt, this was also a special arrangement he made in the past.

Standing in front of the observation mirror, Trier suddenly stopped, his smug smile of complete control freezing on his face.

"What's wrong?" Noi asked instinctively, but then she realized the question was pointless, so she looked up herself.

The corridor was a scene of utter chaos. The purple gas of the Death Cloud spell permeated the air like grease, and corpses lay scattered haphazardly on the ground. Shattered steel golems, demon remains, and human bodies lay broken and fragmented in various pits, and at one corner of the corridor, a decapitated tomb knight sat slumped helplessly.

The grave knight held a greatsword in his arms, which gleamed with the faint light of its enchantment, and beneath him lay a shattered box.

“Someone has already come in.” Trier’s tone was calm, but at this moment, Noe could sense the anger and unease surging within it. “It should be that necromancer known as the Shadowless One.”

Noe was equally shocked—this was the first time she had seen Trill show such emotions since he awoke in Beavertown.

Even when facing dragons, even when leading a weak militia against powerful undead, even when he was ambushed by himself, he had always remained calm and composed, as if he were devoid of any negative emotions. But now, Noe could clearly sense that Trier was angry.

So she voiced her doubts.

“That damned bastard smashed my spare life box!” Trier said coldly, pointing to the broken box beneath the Grave Knight.

PS: Updates may be unstable for a while, probably until the end of June.

Chapter 90 The Shadowless Man

As an extremely calm and rational person, Trier understands the importance of controlling anger.

Anger can stimulate the secretion of adrenaline and testosterone, which in turn greatly increases blood flow and oxygen levels, thereby significantly enhancing an individual's strength and energy; however, just as it has a violent effect on the body, this violent emotion can also shatter a person's rationality like a hammer, causing them to act impulsively.

He stared at the shattered life box, then closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and quietly felt the air flowing through his nasal cavity.

The cold wind brushed against the mucous membranes, causing a slight stinging sensation in the capillaries.

"1...2...3..."

When he opened his eyes again, his anger had completely vanished, and the increased oxygen from his dilated blood vessels made his mind extremely active.

Every lich has a phylactery, which is the true embodiment of their immortal nature. As long as the phylactery exists, even if the lich's physical body is destroyed, it can be resurrected after a period of time and retain all its abilities completely.

Destroying a lich's phylactery is a fundamental condition for completely eliminating a lich. Conversely, any attempt to destroy a lich's phylactery is essentially the most heinous act of hostility, and no lich can tolerate such behavior.

This is outright murder.

Generally speaking, if a spellcaster wants to transfer their immortal essence to the scabbard, they must perform a ritual that is extremely challenging in terms of personal knowledge and wisdom. In this special soul transfer ritual, they need to successfully defeat all kinds of things that covet their soul, and their physical body will completely perish after the ritual is performed.

In other words, theoretically, a living person cannot have a life box.

However, the level of necromancy development can greatly improve over time. In the "Sword of Strife" version, due to the increasingly turbulent situation, more and more spellcasting players began to die one after another, most of them having completely used up their three built-in resurrection opportunities.

Based on various considerations, Trill, who had become a complete master of necromancy, joined forces with several other necromancy experts in the Great Swamp region to organically combine and improve cloning techniques with the lich conversion ritual.

The improved lich transformation ritual has changed from being actively performed to being passively triggered. Although the conditions for transformation have become extremely stringent, once the improved transformation ritual is performed, the ritual will automatically run after the caster's death, transforming them into a new lich that retains all their abilities and feats.

"In other words, if the Shadow Man hadn't smashed this life box, even if I were killed in Beaver Town, I wouldn't be truly finished. On the contrary, I would become a lich." Trier's thoughts raced. "This Shadow Man is truly evil. Stealing from tombs is one thing, but he even smashed the life box—this kind of evil must be purified."

"The fact that the Shadowless Man was able to find the Life Box proves that he must have found the place where I buried the supplies, which is terrible news; however, the human corpses in the corridor prove that he didn't have time to take the bodies of his followers with him, which means that he left in a very sorry state, and may even have died here."

"Furthermore, I don't need to be too angry. Given my cautious nature, it's unlikely that I only prepared one life box. I'll probably have 3-4 more. Moreover, a life box can be anything. The one that was broken fits the stereotype of a life box too well, so it's most likely that this life box was bait I threw out."

Trier took a deep breath and made his final decision: "But I must get to the supply depot as soon as possible—and if I encounter the Shadow Man, I will kill him."

With that thought in mind, he opened the door next to the one-way observation window.

As soon as the door opened, the lingering purple clouds and mist in the corridor clung to it like drowned ghosts.

A foul, pungent odor instantly filled Trier's nostrils, and his exposed face felt as if it had been hit by strong acid, with every pore sending out a burning, stinging sensation.

“It’s Death Cloud Spell. Luckily, I had Noy cast it on me beforehand to delay the poison’s effects.” Trier remained expressionless as he quickly crawled over the mountain of corpses piled up in the corridor and arrived at the headless body of the Death Tomb Knight.

With the lighting system restarted, the dark and deep corridor was illuminated again. The cold, silvery-gray light refracted through the purple-yellow mist of the Death Cloud spell, then transformed into dazzling flashes of light, like light pollution.

The bizarre and dazzling light reflected off the Death Knight's black cursed armor, stinging Trill's eyes.

He couldn't help but think of the incessant neon lights in the night before he crossed over.

Trier reached out his left hand and scooped up a handful of purple dust from the mirror-smooth wound on the Death Knight's neck.

“It’s a disintegration spell, but the entire corpse didn’t completely turn into powder. This proves that the other party used a modified version of the disintegration spell. This kind of disintegration spell does not directly destroy the entire body, but eliminates the point of contact. So, the spellcaster who killed the Tomb Knight was a guy who was capable of improving and developing spells.” Trier frowned slightly.

He sensed the death winds surrounding the Tomb Knight: "This Tomb Knight can no longer resurrect automatically. This is no coincidence. The Shadowless Man definitely understands the characteristics of all kinds of undead creatures—his destruction of my Life Box was premeditated."

At this moment, Trier had roughly analyzed the information about the "shadowless man".

A necromancer who came in pursuit of his inheritance. He understands the weaknesses of various undead, acts ruthlessly, and dislikes leaving behind trouble. Judging from his nickname, he may have already transformed into a lich.

He raised his vigilance against the Shadowless Man to the highest level in his mind. If he considered the worst-case scenario, there was a very high probability that this guy had approached, or even reached, the legendary level.

In short, this is an extremely dangerous enemy.

Trier stood up and carefully recalled the beings in the game's Great Swamp region who were codenamed "Shadowless Man," but after pondering for a long time, he came up with nothing.

“Master, this corpse is still relatively intact.” Noi’s voice suddenly rang in his mind.

He turned around and looked in the direction Sister Noy was pointing at the steel golem that was almost torn to pieces.

Beneath the dazzling, multicolored flashes, the golem remained a shadowy gray. Only then did Trier realize that the golem was not made of simple steel, but of shadow steel from the shadow plane.

Beneath the golem lay a mangled corpse, its two thick arms piercing through the golem's body. The large hands were nearly rotten to dust, but they still gripped the golem's extinguished core tightly.

The corpse was riddled with holes from the corrosion of the Death Cloud spell. Beneath the dissolved flesh, one could vaguely glimpse the high, hooked nose and the cheekbones full of holes.

—These are the racial characteristics of people in the broken desert region.

“I see,” Trier thought. “The Shadowless Man isn’t from the Great Swamp; he’s a traveler from the Broken Desert.”

A sudden clang of metal armor clashing came from the end of the corridor not far away. Trier was startled. He gripped his longsword tightly, pressed himself against the wall, and quickly hid himself in the shadows.

The dazzling, multicolored rays of light fragmented the shadows in the corridor, and they were constantly shifting. However, thanks to the greatly improved stealth technology, Trier moved with the changing shadows like a skilled dancer.

He completely blended into the shadows.

"Hey, isn't this amazing? The treasure we've been searching for has been lying right under our feet all along!" A familiar female voice came from the end of the corridor. "Who would have thought that just by letting a child go, a huge hole would explode in the prison cell? This is truly a divine intervention!"

"Say less," the goblin said curtly. "It's dangerous here. This is the tomb of a legendary necromancer; he might still be alive!"

P.S.: Guys, there probably won't be any updates for the next few days. I need to spend 2-3 days writing a course paper.

Chapter 91 Temple Guardians

"Maybe he's still alive!" Although the goblin lowered his voice, the faint sound still traveled along the passage, and the walls on both sides reflected and echoed the goblin's whispers like vengeful spirits.

"Are you scared?" The female barbarian sneered. "I thought the goblins who escaped from those magic madmen in the Great Swamp would be braver, but I didn't expect you to be just as cowardly as your little kin."

The barbarian woman, Jia Erbei, did not lower her voice. Her rough voice boomed through the colorful and chaotic mist, like a heavy warhammer shattering ice. Wherever her voice reached, even the thick mist of the Death Cloud spell trembled slightly and thinned.

The goblin's tone remained steady, devoid of any emotional fluctuation: "Our orders were to track the Shadowless Ones and find the tomb of the legendary necromancer. Now that we've caught up with their shadow, why should we risk exploring further?"

“This is the graveyard of a legendary mage! If we get just one magical item, we can retire immediately. Imagine, with that money, you could go and save your people!” the female barbarian exclaimed excitedly. Her voice grew louder and louder as she drew closer, echoing down the corridor.

The judge's hoarse voice interrupted the argument: "Yes, this is indeed the graveyard of a legendary mage. We can retire once we get a magical item. But if we encounter a large group of high-ranking undead, we can retire right away too—Galbee, stop talking. We'll scout the situation and then retreat. Bishop Vercingetorie won't treat us badly."

Trier, hidden in the shadows, listened intently and quietly watched the corner of the passageway.

Under the illumination system, the Death Cloud spell resembled a luminous, venomous snake. Through the pervasive mist, a line of twisted black silhouettes wriggled into his field of vision. The Death Cloud spell refracted the light, its multicolored glow as dazzling as neon lights, tinting the edges of the grotesque silhouettes with layers of hazy, bright yellow.

“About 12 people, most of them are temple guards. Judging from their voices, most of them are wearing plate armor and have divine magic on them.” Trier quickly calculated the enemy’s combat capabilities in his mind. “A standard exploration formation, with the goblin at the front acting as the scout.”

He glanced at Noy out of the corner of his eye; she was floating silently above the corridor, clutching the holy emblem. Sensing Trier's gaze, she turned her head slightly, then blinked, as if asking if he should make a move.

Trier shook his head.

From a risk perspective, the secret chamber where he hid his treasures was very well hidden, and the temple guards would not find it easily; moreover, Saint Seir had just been watching this place, and if he rashly killed someone, it could very likely cause unforeseen changes.

From a profit perspective, his laboratory must be riddled with deadly magical traps and mechanisms. He has no memory of setting up the laboratory's defenses, and accidentally triggering a trap would have dire consequences. In this situation, sending the temple guards to the front lines is a wise choice.

Secondly, the shadowy figure suspected to be a lich is very likely still here. Although the temple guards are not very powerful, as long as they can attract the shadowy figure's attention, Trier can remain hidden in the shadows and maintain his first-mover advantage.

In conclusion, keeping the temple guards is an option that is definitely profitable.

Finally, he was now, after all, a paladin, and after the bloody battle of Beaver Town, he vaguely sensed that his heart had been touched.

"If only Futia were here, magical traps and mechanisms would pose a great threat to me. If she were here, none of these things would be an obstacle," Trier thought to himself.

Suddenly, from around the corner of the corridor came the female barbarian's exclamation: "Radiance! What's that thing?"

“It’s Death Cloud,” the goblin replied. “A great battle recently broke out here—watch your step, there’s a trap!”

A tall silhouette suddenly stopped moving, and the black lines swayed as if they had been teleported.

At this moment, the temple guards were even closer. Through the hazy Death Cloud spell, Trier could still not see the details of their forms, but he could see the multicolored light reflected in their eyes.

Trier narrowed his eyes slightly, carefully observing the gazes of the temple guards.

Most of the guards were stunned by the pile of corpses that appeared like small mountains in the Death Cloud spell. Their eyes, like rusty bearings, were fixed on the bloodstains and bodies scattered on the ground.

The barbarian, who had been chattering incessantly, seemed to have lost her ability to speak. Her eyes flickered as she looked at the steel golem buried beneath the corpses. The massive remains of the steel golem cast a shadow, a shadow that exuded a chilling, metallic aura.

The robust female barbarian shrank back slightly, looking uneasy. She strode towards the golem, carefully poked its forehead with her greatsword as it lay on the ground. Sparks burst from the golem's forehead, and amidst the piercing, sharp scraping sound, she was astonished to find that the golem hadn't even left a mark after being poked.

The judge's gaze shifted slightly. He first looked up at the dazzling lighting system overhead, which resembled a star map, and then his gaze slowly moved, as if he were staring at the blood-stained dust suspended in the air.

He slowly walked towards the pile of corpses, quickly scanning the broken steel golems on the ground, his gaze finally lingering on the headless tomb knight. Staring at the tomb knight's corpse, he swallowed hard, then suddenly looked up into the far depths of the corridor.

Trier noticed an unnatural red glow emanating from the judge's irises. Looking down at the judge's feet, Trier realized there was no shadow.

"This bald judge is actually a vampire," Trier thought to himself. "The Church of Radiant Light really has all sorts of monsters and demons."