“Talk?” Ethan asked.
Roly nodded frantically.
“That’s not what you were saying earlier.”
Roly's lips trembled violently.
She opened her mouth to speak, but Ethan’s right hand had already pressed against her chest.
Roly’s body suddenly tensed.
Her limbs thrashed frantically against the vines binding them, her fingers splaying open before clenching tight, her nails digging deep into the flesh of her palms.
Her mouth fell open, and a horribly hoarse shriek tore from her throat.
The seed exploded inside her chest.
There was no fire, no smoke—only a dull thud echoing from within her body, like something detonating inside a sealed space.
Her chest ballooned for a fraction of a second before collapsing inward.
Broken ribs punctured through her skin, pale green blood spurting from the tears.
Wooden spikes began to sprout outward from within her body, bursting from her eye sockets, her ears, her mouth, the tears in her chest, and beneath the skin of her abdomen.
Emerald-green sprouts pierced through her pale green skin, unfurling in the sunlight.
Within a few breaths, the sprouts grew into thick branches, which budded into even more branches, spreading out in dense layers.
The plants growing from within warped Roly’s body into a grotesque shape.
While her limbs remained suspended in midair by the vines, her torso was completely engulfed by a dense thicket of branches.
The branches continued to grow, draining the last of her nutrients to bloom into several thumb-sized, pale yellow flowers.
【Life Energy +876541. Current Life Energy: 4031928.】
Ethan raised an eyebrow.
“Oh?”
Over eight hundred and seventy-six thousand.
He had killed quite a few First-Tier lifeforms by now.
Andiyu had yielded three hundred and thirty thousand, the Priestess one hundred and thirty thousand, and the three Sentinels from earlier only a little over three hundred thousand combined.
The Life Energy of a First-Tier lifeform varied wildly; the strong could yield up to five hundred thousand, while the weak might only give tens of thousands, depending entirely on their strength and condition.
Yet Roly had yielded eight hundred and seventy-six thousand.
“How is this possible?” Ethan stared at the plant-covered corpse, his fingers rubbing together unconsciously. “Generally speaking, even a peak First-Tier lifeform should only yield five hundred thousand Life Energy at most.”
Wait!
Ethan's gaze swept over Roly's corpse.
The World Consciousness.
“I see. It was the previous infusion from the World Consciousness.” He reached out and plucked a pale yellow flower, crushing it between his fingertips. The petals dissolved into tiny specks of light, drifting down through his fingers. “The world origin infused into her body hadn't fully dissipated, remaining trapped in her flesh and soul. When I killed her, those residual fragments of the origin were harvested along with her.”
He opened his hand, letting the last few specks of light slip from his fingertips.
“Interesting. It seems I should look for more natives capable of enduring infusions from the World Consciousness in the future.”
The vines receded from Roly's corpse.
Stripped of mana support, the branches that had sprouted from within her withered, shriveled, and turned into ash-gray powder at a visible rate.
Her remains fell from midair, crashing onto the pile of rubble and scattering her pale green bones across the ground.
An emerald-green crystal rolled out from among the bones.
Ethan's gaze was drawn to the crystal.
He bent down and picked it up.
The crystal was only the size of a thumb, shaped like a teardrop.
It was completely transparent, with countless tiny specks of light slowly swirling inside.
The movement of the light specks was not random; they traced intricate patterns inside the crystal, and every time the patterns pulsed, they sent faint ripples of energy through the air.
The crystal felt slightly cool to the touch, entirely different from any energy crystal he had seen before.
The moment Ethan's mental sea came into contact with that cool sensation, it shuddered slightly. His thirty-six runes lit up simultaneously, their emerald-green light flickering within the gray mist.
Ethan held the crystal up to his eyes.
The light specks inside the crystal began to swirl faster, as if in response to his gaze.
The patterns traced by the light grew clearer and denser, finally condensing into a tiny symbol at the very center of the crystal.
The symbol belonged to no language he recognized, yet its structure was incredibly complex, looking like countless runes compressed to their absolute limit and layered over one another.
Ethan's pupils contracted slightly.
“This shape, this feeling...” He turned the crystal, studying the symbol from different angles. “A world fragment?”
He had read records about world fragments in the library of Blood Bone Tower.
They were an extremely rare resource, produced only when a World Consciousness was severely damaged or when the world origin was forcibly stripped away.
Every world fragment contained a portion of that world's laws and information, making them priceless treasures for Official Wizards to comprehend laws and increase their strength.
The value of a single world fragment, even the smallest one, was enough to buy half of the Three Rings Wizard Academy.
“Could I really be this lucky?”
Ethan examined it a few more times before storing the crystal in his storage ring.
Ethan stretched his neck, his joints letting out soft popping sounds.
It was time to leave.
He had just lifted his foot, but before he could take a step,
A sensation of being watched pressed down from above.
The feeling came entirely without warning.
There were no energy fluctuations, no exposed aura, and no signs that could be sensed.
It was purely his Combat Instinct screaming at him, telling him that someone was watching.
Ethan's mana erupted violently.
Emerald-green light surged from beneath every inch of his skin.
Wood Armor condensed in a fraction of a second, overlapping plates covering his torso and limbs.
Wood Shield was activated simultaneously, a basin-sized curved wooden shield appearing on the outside of his left forearm.
The sandy ground beneath his feet exploded as dozens of vines burst from the soil, weaving into an impenetrable wall of vines around him.
He spun around abruptly, his gaze sweeping toward the source of the watching sensation.
“Who's there? Show yourself!”
His voice boomed across the empty ruins, causing the surrounding rubble to vibrate slightly.
“Hehehe.”
A laugh drifted down from above. The voice was as raspy as two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together, drawn-out and ending on a rising note, carrying a playful tone like a cat playing with a mouse.
“Not bad for a little apprentice. To think you can maintain a spell over such a large area.”
Ethan looked up toward the sound.
High in the sky, on a cloud, a hunched figure leaning on a cane was slowly walking down.
It was an old woman.
She trod upon the empty air, each step she took rippling with a faint gray wave in the void.
As the ripples spread, they left a trail of faint gray imprints behind her.
Her pace was not fast—one could even say it was very slow, as if she were taking a leisurely stroll.
Yet with every step, the distance between her and Ethan shrank significantly.
She walked down from the cloud, landing on the top of a collapsed stone pillar.
Her cane tapped against the giant stone, letting out a crisp click.
The old woman wore a dusty gray robe.
It was impossible to tell what material the robe was made of, but its surface bore no runic patterns, looking as gray as a rag salvaged from a trash heap.
The hem of her robe dragged against the stone pillar, its edges already frayed.
Her back was severely hunched, her entire body curled inside the robe so that she looked less than half of Ethan's height.
Yet the aura radiating from her made Ethan's eyelids twitch violently.
An Official Wizard.
First-Tier.
Tsk, is this old hag trying to rob me?
If I kill her, it should... probably... more or less... be fine, right?
With that thought in mind, Ethan secretly activated the small crystal tucked at his waist.
Rate on N.U.
