【Is she going to find the king's location next?】
【Yeah, this newcomer is probably about to kick the bucket.】
【What do you mean "probably"? It's a certainty.】
【The king's location is not easy to find. Especially since she's a Witch. If she wants to find the king's location, she has to act in accordance with her character setting.】
【Meaning she can't ask ordinary people and can only use unconventional means. Even if she's lucky enough to find out the king's location, how does she plan to get there?】
【Holy crap, is it really that strict? This dungeon didn't intend to let players who drew the Witch identity card survive at all!】
【To be precise, this dungeon isn't suitable for newcomer players at all. It never intended to let newcomers leave alive.】
【Forget newcomers, even veteran players with some savings might not be able to leave in one piece.】
The bullet comments were right. Unfortunately, they had run into Cen Yao, who was a Witch herself—and this Witch was clearly much stronger than the original one.
Having finished searching most of the room, Cen Yao turned her gaze to the crystal ball sitting right in the center of the desk.
The crystal ball was about the size of an adult's fist and completely transparent, with a wisp of faint purple mist floating inside.
She had noticed it earlier when she was flipping through the diary.
If a Witch wanted to find the king, she naturally couldn't go downstairs to ask for directions like an ordinary person.
That wouldn't be very witch-like.
A Witch should use a Witch's method—divination.
The viewers in the live stream room had clearly figured out her intentions as well.
【???】
【What is she doing with the crystal ball?】
【No way. She isn't planning to use the crystal ball to divine the king's location, is she?】
【Does she even know how to use it?】
【Did the newcomer misunderstand something? Drawing the Witch identity doesn't mean she actually knows Witch skills.】
【It's over, she's digging her own grave.】
【This is the most frustrating part of the Witch identity. You have to act like a Witch, but the game won't give you a Witch's abilities.】
【If she picks up the crystal ball and fails to use it, she'll suffer mental backlash at best, or trigger identity collapse at worst.】
【I bet she'll cough up blood in three seconds.】
【I bet five seconds.】
【Newcomers always have to pay some tuition. It's just that this tuition might cost her life.】
People died in the Horror Game every day.
Having watched it for so long, many players had long since become numb.
They feared death, yet they also spectated it.
The screams and blood of others became a faint stimulus to confirm that they themselves were still alive.
So at this moment, many in the live stream room were waiting for Cen Yao to fail.
They waited for her to suffer the backlash of the crystal ball, waited for her to scream, and waited for her to die in the high tower like the newcomers who had drawn the Witch identity in the past.
Cen Yao naturally couldn't see these bullet comments related to the dungeon's mechanics.
She simply placed her hand over the crystal ball, closed her eyes, and channeled the magic power within her body.
The purple mist slowly spun inside the crystal ball.
At first, it looked like a sleeping fog.
As Cen Yao's magic power poured in, the clump of purple mist suddenly lit up.
Fine specks of starlight emerged from the depths of the crystal ball, connecting into lines before weaving into a blurry map.
Cen Yao softly chanted a divination spell.
The fire butterfly rested on her shoulder, its wings slowly opening and closing.
The map inside the crystal ball gradually grew clearer.
Mountains.
Forests.
Rivers.
City walls.
Finally, the image froze in the east.
A grand royal city appeared in the depths of the crystal ball.
Towering white walls, dense patrols of soldiers, and golden flags fluttering atop the castle. Deep within the palace, a flash of rainbow-colored light flickered and vanished.
Cen Yao opened her eyes.
To the east, five hundred kilometers away.
A nation with powerful military forces.
Her target was very likely right there.
The live stream room fell into an eerie silence.
After a full three seconds, the bullet comments began to flood in like crazy.
【??????】
【Wait, what's going on?】
【How did she do that?】
【She didn't cough up blood?】
【She actually activated the crystal ball?】
【What on earth is this newcomer's background?】
【An item, right? It must be an item.】
【What kind of item could allow an F-rank newcomer to directly activate the dungeon Witch's crystal ball?】
【A Talent, it has to be a Talent.】
【But didn't she just release a phoenix earlier? What rank of Talent can be used twice in a row?】
【You have to know that the more powerful a Talent is, the greater its restrictions. For a newcomer like her, being able to use it once in a dungeon is already ridiculous enough.】
【If this is a low-level Talent, do low-level Talents have such powerful effects?】
【...No.】
【So her Talent is at least A-rank?】
【Maybe even S-rank.】
【A newcomer with an S-rank Talent? That's insane.】
【I have a hunch that this might be another big shot on the Peak Leaderboard in the future.】
【Hunch my foot. That's in the future. As for this dungeon, whether she can make it out alive is still up in the air.】
In Cen Yao's mind, the orb's backend system began to chime noisily again.
【Ding—Shock points +50.】
【Ding—Shock points +30.】
【Ding—Shock points +20.】
【Ding—Shock points +40.】
Cen Yao was about to let go of the crystal ball when the barrage of notifications made her fingers twitch. The map inside the crystal ball wobbled along with her movement, nearly exploding into a cloud of purple smoke on the spot.
She quickly stabilized her magic power, a vein on her temple throbbing slightly.
“Stop.”
The orb: “Huh?”
“The orb, can you turn off the voice notifications? Just keep the final earnings alert,” Cen Yao said, taking a deep breath. “I almost blew up the crystal ball just now.”
“I can, I can,” the orb said in a serious tone. “But Host, your psychological resilience still needs some improvement. To think a mere notification sound could startle you.”
“You're going to be the greatest Witch in the entire universe in the future. How can you be so timid?”
Cen Yao: “...”
She said expressionlessly, “Like you said, that's in the future.”
“We'll talk about the future when it comes.”
“For now, turn off the notification sound.”
The orb mumbled softly, “Fine, fine. Real-time notifications have been turned off. Total shock points earned this time: 1,000.”
Honestly.
It had never seen such a good system as itself.
It really didn't know how its Host would survive without it.
Cen Yao paused.
“Why is it so much this time?”
Earlier, when she purified the room, she had only received a little over two hundred shock points.
“It's normal,” the orb said, happily looking at its backend account balance. “This means more people are feeling emotions toward you, or the intensity of their emotions has increased. The more people there are and the more intense their emotions, the more points we rake in.”
Looking at the freshly earned shock points, its tone was as loving as if it were caressing a pile of gold ingots that had just come out of the furnace.
Cen Yao opened the live stream room and checked the viewer count.
The online viewer count was already nearing five hundred.
No wonder.
She closed the stream panel and focused her attention back on the dungeon.
Now, her target was roughly clear.
The king was in the royal city five hundred kilometers to the east.
Cen Yao walked to the window and looked down.
The high tower was extremely tall.
Below was a bottomless black forest. The trees were densely packed together, their branches and leaves looking like countless twisted hands.
When the wind blew, the tree canopies swayed slowly, and she could vaguely see white shadows flashing through the forest.
There was no door.
At least, in the top-floor room she was currently in, there was no door leading downstairs.
Cen Yao stared out the window, falling silent for two seconds.
Very well.
This was very Rapunzel.
Other players trapped here would most likely have to look for ropes, hidden doors, or risk their lives climbing down the window.
But she was a Witch.
Why would a Witch climb a tower?
A Witch should naturally fly.
But at that very instant, she caught a casual glimpse of something.
She saw a familiar object.
Rate on N.U.
