Speaking of which, it was thanks to Little Pig's magic crystal equipment that Lin Jun recalled Ivan and discovered he was still unconscious.
Otherwise, with so many things happening on the fungal mat every day, Lin Jun really wouldn't have noticed this small matter.
[Status: Metamagic·Mental Overload]
Lin Jun initially thought it was an overdrawn state similar to magical exhaustion—the kind that could be recovered from with a few days' sleep.
But the Silver Thorn Squad had tried so many methods over several months without success, so it was clearly unusual.
After all, the Silver Thorn Squad weren't ordinary adventurers—they had both money and connections. If they currently had no solutions, there truly were none.
This made Lin Jun somewhat curious, and with some free time, he came to take a look.
There was a reason for coming quietly.
Having a numbered Puchi come over openly under the pretense of treatment wasn't impossible, but if he later discovered he couldn't handle it, that would be embarrassing.
Coming quietly was different—he could research boldly, and if he accidentally researched the patient to death, that would just be helping him find release early, with no one knowing it was the Puchi's fault.
The key point was not having to take responsibility.
A bit of hallucinogenic spores to establish a connection, then...
[Mental Guidance]
...
Ivan's dream was a massive circular library with no visible ceiling. Countless dark wooden bookshelves extended upward in rings, disappearing into the hazy dim light at the edge of vision.
The scale far exceeded Inanna's tea party manor and Little Xi's throne hall.
Pale golden specks of light floated in the air like solidified magical embers.
There were no windows or lamps here, but the spine of every book emitted its own soft, varied glow.
What surprised Lin Jun even more was how real this dreamscape felt.
Puchi Puchi—
The wooden floor had a very solid feel when stepped on.
Brushing tentacles along the bookshelf, he could even feel the texture of the wood grain's bumps and ridges.
Generally speaking, the more detailed parts of dreams became increasingly blurry—even like Inanna's case, where even her mother's face was unclear, which was normal.
Let alone a library like this where even the details were so realistic—and such a large library at that!
Ivan sat on a tall book ladder.
He wore mage robes, facing the bookshelf, flipping through the book in his hands, showing no reaction to the Puchi's arrival.
The Puchi climbed onto the vertical bookshelf, running along until reaching Ivan's side: "What are you doing?"
Ivan flipped through the pages in his hands, his gaze rapidly scanning the glowing runes flowing across them, answering without pause: "I need to finish reading all the books here."
Lin Jun raised his mushroom cap, his perception climbing along the spiraling, seemingly endless wall of bookshelves. Even he couldn't sense an end.
Well, now he understood why this guy couldn't wake up.
It would be truly strange if he could wake up from this.
Ivan finished the book emitting an orange-red glow in his hands, closed it, returned it to its place, then immediately took down another volume from beside it that was wreathed in blue-purple flowing light without pause.
Lin Jun rolled up the book Ivan had just returned and opened it to look.
Everything in the dream library was superficial—essentially it was a mental space, so the Green Puchi "finished reading" the book in his hands after just a few moments.
Inside, it explained how to condense and transform raw, attributeless magical power into a stable flame form.
The principle was similar to the most basic fireball spell, but the writing approach was completely different.
The magical texts Lin Jun had read in the past mostly taught "how to cast," like operation manuals.
But this book explained the "why" of the principles.
So much so that even the simple process of "creating a flame" was written in such profound and complex terms that it gave Lin Jun a mushroom cap headache.
Lin Jun closed the book and put it back.
Lin Jun returned to the bottom level and randomly pulled out a book—the content was indeed much simpler.
It seemed the knowledge hierarchy of this library increased from bottom to top.
The content in the books was clearly organized and well-reasoned—obviously not the wild imaginings conjured from thin air by a dreamscape.
But with such a large quantity, it didn't seem like the mage's own knowledge either.
So what exactly was this [Metamagic]?
A few more Puchi burrowed in, and Lin Jun invested more mental power.
Without causing any destruction, the Puchi each extended tentacles, grabbed books from the nearest bookshelves, sat down on the spot, and began reading.
One after another, dozens of times more efficiently than Ivan reading above.
Throughout the endless library shrouded in dim light, only the sound of Ivan and the Puchi turning pages remained.
...
The next morning, Nova pushed open Ivan's door carrying a basin of warm water.
He came to change the old mage's padding and wipe his body. Afterward, Gal would take over to pour some liquid nutritional potions into Ivan, who couldn't swallow.
Night Owl went out to gather various underground information, hoping to find some folk remedy or the like.
There was no choice—all publicly recognized reliable methods had been tried. Ivan had now truly reached the point of "treating a dead horse as if it were alive."
Looking at the old mage's unknowing face, Nova could only sigh helplessly in the end.
His movements were as gentle as possible, only hoping the old friend's final days wouldn't be too uncomfortable.
...
Meanwhile, in the Puchi Underground City, deep level.
A full night of continuous reading hadn't brought much fatigue to Lin Jun's spirit.
[Mental Guidance] was now level 9, but the mental power that could be transmitted in a short time was still too small relative to Lin Jun's total amount.
For Lin Jun, this skill's ceiling was somewhat low.
Lin Jun now needed to conduct an experiment to see what exactly was gained from that night.
A Puchi raised a tentacle. Invisible magical power began gathering toward its tip. After a few seconds, a stable, gentle orange glow lit up at the tentacle's tip, dispelling the dimness of the surrounding rock walls.
Illumination spell!
A spell so simple it couldn't be simpler—Lin Jun had naturally long known how to use it.
However, this successful casting left Lin Jun somewhat shocked.
Because this time, Lin Jun hadn't relied on magic crystals to cast—the Puchi had completed it independently!
Puchi were different from humans.
Even without magic crystals, humans could still cast spells—magic crystals were spell power amplifiers for humans.
But Puchi couldn't. Without magic crystals as an operating environment, Puchi themselves couldn't cast spells.
This was caused by structural differences between the two.
Humans, elves, or demon races all had seven magic nodes within their bodies.
Magical power flowing through the seven nodes via different pathways to form circulation was the process of spellcasting.
Essentially, their bodies were highly versatile "living magic arrays" that could adapt to multiple spells.
And extremely complex magic like teleportation required external complex magic arrays precisely because its circuits exceeded the carrying capacity of internal nodes and even ordinary magic crystals.
As for Puchi, they only had one magic node.
Therefore, even for the simplest illumination spell that only used two magic nodes to construct circulation, Puchi had to rely on magic crystals to cast it.
Yet now, Lin Jun had accomplished this theoretically impossible feat.
Lin Jun seemed to somewhat understand what [Metamagic] was.
The essence of magic?
(End of Chapter)
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