In the Far North, on the vast ice plains north of Stonefort Dungeon.
"Hiss—! So cold!"
"Indeed... Haven't experienced this bone-chilling cold in a long time. Should've brought a Heat Puffshroom!"
Two Mycodescendants rubbed their nearly frozen arms, sitting on a simple plank cart.
The cart was piled high with various magic materials, and pulling it were two rows of hardworking Sled Puffshrooms, running energetically across the ice and snow.
Their destination was a small open-air testing ground established against a steep ice wall.
This was a place Lin Jun had specially selected for testing dangerous abyss magic.
Remote enough, desolate, surrounded by vast expanses of creep.
Even if any accident occurred, there would be sufficient buffer zone to calmly deal with it.
Starfire had already arrived ahead of time and was currently using materials to draw a structurally complex magic circle on the ground.
The abyss-related magic books originally obtained from Margas recorded profound and mysterious high-level abyss magic that Lin Jun could only roughly understand.
But after picking up many more foundational abyss magic tomes in the stone forest, Lin Jun finally understood one thing: abyss magic's failure to develop was truly deserved!
Its most notable characteristic was that all abyss magic had to be cast through complete "rituals"—there was no type that could be instantly cast at will like fireball spells.
Moreover, for magic of equivalent levels, the complexity and list of taboos for abyss rituals far exceeded other schools.
Take the relatively basic "Minion Summoning Ritual" Lin Jun was about to attempt—an entire book, with only a quarter of the content explaining the materials and arrangement methods required for the ritual, while the remaining three-quarters kept nagging endlessly about various precautions, warning signals, and safety measures!
For example, besides the conventional materials required at the magic circle's core and a low-tier contract scroll, the ritual also had to include an additional independent "disruption array" to ensure the caster could forcibly interrupt the ritual at any moment before summoning completion.
The book recorded many similar safety measures, with every word seemingly soaked in lessons learned through predecessors' blood.
Sacrifices were also a hard requirement of the ritual, and they had to be healthy, conscious, vigorous intelligent beings.
Their purpose was to "resist abyss erosion" at the critical moment when the caster activated the ritual.
According to Lin Jun's understanding, these sacrifices were essentially "human buffers" for carrying junk information—before they were filled up and collapsed, the junk information stream wouldn't directly impact the caster.
However, Lin Jun didn't plan to use sacrifices this time.
Every living intelligent being, even those collected social scum, were precious talents in his eyes and couldn't be wasted like this.
Furthermore, Lin Jun already had the intention of collecting and analyzing that "junk information"—not using sacrifices would kill two birds with one stone.
The most pitfall aspect of abyss magic was that even if you meticulously prepared everything, the results were still filled with enormous uncertainty.
In the book Lin Jun had on hand, dozens of abnormal situations were listed that required immediately activating the disruption array once signs appeared—reading it made one's scalp tingle, with the normal casting success rate feeling desperately low!
At the end of this book, written in bold text was a concluding statement: "The abyss grants no gifts, only equivalent exchange. Every bit of power you obtain is built upon the ashes of sacrifices and the risk of yourself sliding toward the edge of collapse. No exceptions."
Below that, in different handwriting and slightly messy script, was what appeared to be a previous owner's reflection:
"These aren't knowledge—they're the materialization of curses... but the power is real..."
Mystical nonsense.
After the arrangement was complete, Lin Jun sent the Mycodescendants back. A group of Puffshrooms emerged from the creep.
Controlling the Puffshrooms, he carefully checked every detail of the array again, confirming there were no flaws.
Then, several Puffshrooms voluntarily climbed onto the magic nodes that should have been occupied by living sacrifices and quietly squatted down.
Finally, a Puffshroom specifically responsible for casting activated the entire ritual array.
The pitch-black magic patterns suddenly lit up, emanating an ominous ghostly light.
Almost the same instant the array activated, Lin Jun clearly felt those complex and chaotic "junk information" streams again!
[Arm length: 1.2 meters, four-finger structure]
...
[Reproduction capacity level: 3.3]
...
Perhaps because this ritual's tier was relatively low, the intensity and total amount of the information stream was far less terrifying than when directly facing the void last time.
The feeling was like an old radio with poor signal, continuously emitting ambiguous noise.
Lin Jun felt that with his current information processing capability, continuing to receive like this didn't seem to be a big problem.
The only problem was that this temporarily constructed low-tier magic array underfoot couldn't support such a long duration...
He temporarily set those junk information streams aside, focusing his main attention on the ritual itself.
The magic ritual was proceeding smoothly. In the center of the array, a mass of chaotic and blurry black mist appeared out of nowhere and began gradually coalescing.
The fog churned, and something within seemed to be struggling to condense into a physical form.
Through the blurry mist, the gradually forming outline looked like... a yarn ball?
A tangled, continuously wriggling ball of thread?
This form wasn't among the 7 known forms recorded in the magic book as considered "safe," but it also wasn't on the blacklist enumerating 42 "dangerous" forms.
Unknown form. According to the book, the most prudent action at this moment should be to immediately interrupt the ritual.
But Lin Jun didn't do this. Because he'd already seen its panel information:
[Race: Shadowbug (Scrapped Design)]
[Level: LV3]
[Skill: Shadowmeld LV1]
The yarn ball was actually a tangled insect body. It writhed, bit by bit melting into the shadow cast by the stone wall—the speed wasn't particularly fast.
Before it completely merged into the shadow and disappeared, Lin Jun forcibly issued a command through the pre-established contract connection, pulling it back out from the shadow's edge.
However, Lin Jun's attention was no longer on the summoned creature itself.
What the hell, "Scrapped Design"? When contacting abyss information before, he'd felt those things were like some kind of discarded data—now it seemed this was indeed the case!
Could this world really just be a game?
Then who would be the game's "designers"?
Were they those several legendary lofty deities?
Lin Jun felt very unsettled now. If this world was truly just a designed game, then who exactly was he?
A player immersed in it without realizing?
Or an NPC who thought he possessed free will when his fate had already been written?
Then what about Little Black, Norris, Piggy, Shou... what were they?
Segments of data with rich backstories that could be reset or deleted at any time?
Such a horrible feeling, even more horrible than being dried out...
(End of Chapter)
Comments