Translator: AnubisTL
The rapidly depleting golden liquid within the bracer crystal instantly snapped Black back to his senses.
He swiftly drew another backup sixth-tier mental protective spell artifact from his robes—a bone pendant engraved with thorn patterns.
As he poured his mental power into it, the pendant emitted a pale white glow, instantly erecting a second "Thorn Heart Barrier" around his body.
Only after adding this extra layer of insurance did Black dare to observe his surroundings more closely.
He noticed that not all the wizards had succumbed.
Roughly twenty or thirty others, like him, remained conscious, having clearly deployed high-level protective measures.
However, lacking Black's ability to suppress his presence and hide, they were now under a frantic assault from the swarming tentacles.
These conscious wizards had already spontaneously gathered, their spells flashing continuously to repel the attacking tentacles as they tried to strike the fleshy walls and find a way out.
"Good, things aren't at their worst yet. As long as these main forces can hold their ground, combine their strength to break this 'prisoner cage,' and then rescue those trapped in the hallucinations..."
Just as a flicker of hope ignited within Black, a sudden, violent change struck!
The giant beast seemed enraged by the wizards' counterattack, or perhaps the pain they had inflicted was finally enough. Its massive, cavernous body shuddered violently, emitting a low yet piercing drone.
This drone was no mere sound; it was a roar that struck directly at the soul!
Crack!
Another distinct sound of shattering echoed through his soul.
Black's pupils constricted. He watched in disbelief as the newly formed Thorn Heart Barrier shattered like fragile glass, dissolving into nothingness.
The glow from the bone pendant instantly dimmed, and the runes on its surface fell silent.
"...This kind of power?!"
A storm of shock surged through Black's mind.
Another sixth-tier protective wizard artifact, destroyed so easily?
The mental shock from the giant beast's casual roar had undoubtedly reached the seventh tier!
He whipped his gaze down to his left wrist.
The Mind Barrier Bracer still emitted a steady, gentle glow, faithfully fulfilling its duty.
The fluid adamantine within the crystal, though depleting at an alarming rate, had not yet run dry. It continued to ward off the omnipresent erosion of the hallucination force field.
This stark contrast made Black momentarily doubt himself: Am I... caught in an even deeper hallucination? Is the sight of this still-functioning bracer the real illusion?
But reality gave him no time to ponder.
The energy ripple from the second protective magic's shattering, though faint, had still drawn the attention of several nearby tentacles.
Like sharks scenting blood, they writhed and probed toward Black's approximate position.
Fortunately, the "Presence Fading" spell was still in effect.
The tentacles merely clawed aimlessly at the empty air, unable to pinpoint Black. They then retracted in frustration, returning to their "fishing" for more conspicuous targets.
But the other conscious wizards weren't so lucky.
The giant beast's "Soul Roar" was clearly an indiscriminate area-of-effect attack. The once-orderly wizard formation instantly dissolved into chaos!
Many of their protective shields shattered instantly. Their eyes turned vacant and blissful as they smiled, allowing tentacles to coil around them and drag them away.
Even more terrifying were the wizards who had barely withstood the initial shock, their shields not completely broken. Their attacks became utterly chaotic.
One moment, they were unleashing a barrage of spells at empty air; the next, they were ruthlessly attacking their own comrades!
Black saw a wizard suddenly scream in terror, as if he had witnessed something utterly horrific.
The wizard's protective magic flared with blinding light. Immediately after, a deep, bone-exposing gash appeared on his arm out of nowhere, blood spurting from the wound.
It was as if an invisible monster had attacked him.
Another wizard charged into an empty space, laughing wildly as he slammed his body against an invisible wall.
Yet, the empty area seemed to contain a truly solid wall. With every impact, his bones shattered and he spat blood, yet he remained oblivious, his face twisted in manic excitement!
"Blurring of reality and illusion... So that's what the intelligence meant by 'the boundary between reality and illusion is blurred'!" Black understood instantly, a chill racing from his spine to the top of his head.
The hallucinations here aren't just mental trickery!
If a victim "believes" the illusion, their body will manifest the corresponding damage in reality based on what they "believe"!
The recent Soul Roar not only shattered many people's defenses but also dragged the remaining, barely clinging wizards into an even deeper illusionary realm!
Black forced himself to calm down quickly.
He first performed several common Soul Branch techniques, cross-verifying the reliability of his own perceptions to confirm that he was still likely in a state of true cognition.
Then, his gaze returned to the bracer, and he began to mentally calculate based on the consumption rate of the adamantine.
The result made his heart sink.
"At this rate... the adamantine in the bracer can only last for five days at most!"
Combining the information provided by Jieming with the fact that two sixth-tier protective wizard artifacts had been instantly destroyed, Black could essentially conclude: Inside this giant beast, a continuous hallucination and mental interference force field, equivalent to a sixth-tier high-grade strength, was permeating every moment!
And when provoked, it could instantly erupt with the terrifying power of a seventh-tier impact!
The good news was that the giant beast didn't seem to have any intention of killing all its prey immediately. Instead, it appeared to be "farming" them, treating them as food reserves or energy sources.
But the bad news was that being trapped here was a certain death sentence. A solution had to be found quickly.
Fortunately, locating a core was precisely the specialty of a soul mage!
Black suppressed all his aura, pushing his "Presence Fading" to its absolute limit.
Like an invisible ghost, he began to retrace the giant beast's vast and complex energy conduits.
The journey was unexpectedly smooth. Without ever engaging in a single battle, Black easily followed the energy conduits to the core's location.
Finally, he pried open a concealed shield that looked like two black carapace plates sealed together and slipped into a relatively small chamber.
In the center of the chamber floated a strange creature.
It wasn't very large, about the height of a person. Its main body resembled a translucent purple jellyfish, but it extended dozens of octopus-like tentacles covered in suckers.
The creature radiated intense spiritual fluctuations that distorted reality—this was the very source of the giant beast's entire hallucination force field!
The purple creature had clearly not expected anyone to barge into its core nest without warning. Its dozens of eyes, encircling its body, seemed to freeze in bewilderment, unable to comprehend how the layers of illusion magic and mental misdirection on its perimeter had completely failed.
But instinct drove the creature to react instantly. Its dozens of tentacles flailed wildly as the dense spirit energy within its hollow body surged and coalesced!
Seeing this, Black's heart tightened. He instinctively prepared to activate his backup defenses.
However, the earth-shattering spirit shock he anticipated never came.
In his vision, the purple creature was merely waving its tentacles in vain. The surrounding energy fluctuated violently, yet no actual attack landed on him.
As his eyes met the creature's dozens of eyes, the two stared at each other in momentary, bewildered stalemate.
Black immediately realized something was wrong. Without hesitation, his soul power extended like an invisible hand, easily seizing the soul core of the mere fourth-tier purple creature.
For a fourth-tier soul mage, controlling the soul of such a creature was as easy as taking candy from a baby.
He skillfully began to search and sift through the creature's soul memories.
A moment later, he released his hand, his face a mask of lingering terror and utter shock.
From the creature's memories, he learned just how perilous his journey had truly been!
The experience was different from what he had perceived. In the creature's memory, the energy veins themselves were concealed beneath layers of hallucinations, the paths distorted, and invisible mental cues subconsciously nudged intruders away from the correct direction.
Every single energy node he had "ignored" was rigged with a hallucination so vivid it could ensnare even a sixth-tier wizard.
The entrances to the chambers he had passed through were guarded by illusions that felt almost real.
Countless subtle mental suggestions, like subconscious whispers, had been designed to make any intruder unconsciously avert their gaze from the true path...
And just now, the purple creature's final flail of its tentacles hadn't been a mere bluff.
It had channeled all the energy it had drawn from its symbiotic giant beast to instantly construct and unleash a powerful illusion spell—one nearing the strength of a seventh-tier high-grade attack. It was enough to completely shatter or permanently imprison the mind of any sixth-tier wizard who dared intrude.
But in Black's eyes, the creature's final act of defiance had looked like nothing more than a mime performance.
Black snapped his head down again, staring at his left wrist.
Sure enough, in those few seconds where it seemed "nothing happened," the liquid adamantine inside the bracer crystal had silently plummeted by more than half!
The terrifying illusion magic, powerful enough to insta-kill a sixth-tier wizard, had been brutally "consumed" by the bracer the moment it touched Black!
As a result, Black himself had felt almost nothing unusual, other than the depletion of the adamantine!
This... is this right?
This can't be right, can it?!
Black screamed inwardly.
He wasn't an idiot. He now fully understood.
The reason he and the purple creature had such a massive gap in perception, the reason he could treat those lethal traps as if they were nothing, was entirely because this seemingly unremarkable bracer on his wrist had taken all the illusion-based attacks for him!
But... could a second-tier wizard really have created something like this?!
This effect, this performance, this unfathomable defensive potential... it completely overturned his entire understanding of alchemy spell artifacts!
(End of the Chapter)
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