booktalesy Chapter 4379 Skip to Level
Chapter 4379 Skip to Level
Chapter 4379 Skip to Level
Travel cabin.
Blanche and Kema looked at Uriel as if he were a god descending from the heavens.
Uriel's journey through the forest dream was full of twists and turns, like a thrilling adventure of a brave puzzle solver. Yet, he managed to solve all these challenging levels, full of twists and turns and traps, in just a few minutes?!
Even more outrageous is that all the previous scenes combined took less than twenty minutes!
Even if it's an open-book exam, it shouldn't be this fast, right?
This isn't a challenge; it's a speedrun.
Uriel's expression, however, remained unusually calm.
In his view, if one cannot even determine direction by sound, then one is far too slow-witted.
The three "slow learners" present could only stare at Uriel silently, unable to utter a single word for a long time.
Finally, Angel broke the silence gently: "You just said that the Wonderland notification popped up with information about a new fragment of the evil spirit's truth... What exactly is it?"
When this matter was mentioned, Uriel's expression immediately became more serious.
He immediately shared the information in the text box.
"You have discovered the living soul hidden within the body of the 'evil spirit.' (Expandable)"
Leaving aside the reactions of others, Angell's eyes clearly flashed with astonishment when he saw those words.
Why... a living soul?!
What is a living soul?
Its essence is the opposite of the dead soul or the soul of the dead.
Simply put, when a person is alive, the soul within their body can be called the living soul.
When a person dies, their soul no longer has a place to reside, and at this time it is called a dead soul; if a dead soul encounters the erosion of negative energy, it will be twisted into a ghost.
From this perspective, the soul within every living person's body can actually be called the living soul.
Here comes the problem.
Even though the "evil spirit" is clearly dead, why is there a living soul inside it?
Angel paused for a second, then a thought flashed through his mind: No, he had misunderstood; the evil spirit itself was not actually dead!
His body appeared to be on the verge of death, but in reality, there was still a glimmer of hope, a state similar to that of a living dead.
This can also be confirmed by the name of the instance, as its full name is "The Living Dead of the Misty Swamp".
It's somewhat plausible that a still-living body could accommodate a wisp of "living soul".
but!
All of this is predicated on the fact that this "living soul" itself belongs to the living dead.
In other words, if there really is a living soul inside the undead, it should be "Priest Shien" himself.
But that's not the case. According to Uriel's experience and the scene he finally saw underwater, the "living soul" mentioned in the fairy prompt was not Priest Seymour, but Rigota!
That's really strange.
How did Rigota's soul end up in Priest Seymour's body?
Is this the second piece of the truth?
Filled with doubt, Angell began to explore the Wonderland's hints.
The text field immediately filled with a large amount of text information.
Before Angell could even read it, he saw that the information contained a lot of obscured content, marked with "■■■", which seemed to represent unanalyzed intelligence.
However, it is worth mentioning that when Angell looked curiously at this kind of obscured content, a warm yellow light flashed across the text bar.
At the same time, a message appeared on the light band.
"You have gathered relevant clues, and some hidden information will be revealed."
Immediately afterwards, Angell saw part of the “■■■” in the text box slowly fade, revealing the text information underneath—Clerk Sean.
Seeing this, Angell instantly understood.
The obscured content actually refers to the "first fragment of truth" that Kemai obtained from the one-eyed dragon.
Because they already knew the true identity of the evil spirit was Priest Seymour, this hidden information was automatically unlocked.
The remaining sections, still shrouded in darkness, will likely only become clear once the third fragment of the truth is obtained.
This decryption method is quite ingenious; it can even infer the direction of finding the third fragment of truth by looking at the uncovered, locked content.
Thinking of this, Angell suddenly realized something.
Wait, something's not right?!
Could this be the correct way to play the Misty Forest dungeon?
To be honest, judging from the current situation of the Misty Swamp Forest, although the difficulty of this dungeon is not comparable to large dungeons like Modern City, it is not as low as E-level.
Don't be fooled by their fast progress, which seems to fit the E-level difficulty level. In reality, there are two factors at play: first, Angor's illusion nodes and intelligence transmission; and second, Uriel's inherent intelligence advantage.
Imagine if it weren't for the contributions of these two parties, this dungeon would never have reached its current progress. Subjectively speaking, the difficulty would definitely be at least D level, or even higher.
But the fact is, this instance is indeed E-rank; that's an objective fact.
So where did the problem lie?
Angell had been puzzled for a long time, but the moment he saw this hint, everything became clear to him.
He tried to simulate it in his mind—
How will an ordinary challenger team, without any external assistance, conquer the Misty Swamp Forest?
First of all, they had no large map, no small map, no outside intelligence, and knew nothing about this place.
You can only figure it out on your own.
The background of the instance provides two very obvious keywords: evil spirits and the Forty Thieves.
They will most likely go in one of these two directions.
If you go after the Forty Thieves, since they don't have the backing of a caravan, the outcome will likely be unfavorable if you clash with them. Even if you manage to escape unscathed, you'll probably pay a price.
Then, knowing that the Forty Thieves were not easy to deal with, they turned to seeking out "evil spirits."
After encountering an evil spirit, the outcome was quite obvious.
They will most likely be forcibly pulled into the dreamlike scene by the "Whispering Curse".
In the dream world, they cannot see the road, distinguish sounds, or avoid traps. There is a high probability that someone will fail the challenge and be kicked out of the instance.
Those who are kicked out will not die in vain.
They would probably consult with their think tank, and anyone in that think tank who isn't incompetent would surely see that the dreamlike scenes in the Whispering Curse are meaningful.
Then they would think about how to conquer this meaningful "dream scene".
Soon, the outsiders will reorganize the team and specifically add members skilled in music to enter the instance.
Once this member skilled in music enters the dreamscape, he might just as easily overcome all obstacles as Uriel, reaching the end of the dreamscape, meeting Rigota, and obtaining the fragments of truth.
If there were a sequence to the three fragments of truth, the fragment at the end of the illusion should be the overarching principle of all the fragments, and also the "first truth".
By obtaining it, the challenger will gain a basic overview of the entire event.
The synopsis contains a lot of obscured information, but this obscured content will clearly guide them on what to look for next, who to ask, and which clue to follow.
Step by step, the next step is to follow the clues to unlock the second and third truths.
In this way, the whole process is clear, the guidance is specific, and the difficulty is moderate.
At this point, the E-level difficulty truly lives up to its name.
In other words, the reason why the Kerma team made this dungeon so difficult is most likely because of the help given by Angor, which allowed them to skip the level.
Through various accidents and shortcuts, they obtained the truth of the second half first, but skipped the initial framework and guidance.
This is the source of the sense of incongruity in terms of difficulty.
Angell sighed, "Sometimes offering help might actually be a bad thing."
……
With mixed feelings, Angell began reading the "basic outline" of the truth.
"The 'Whispers of the Living Dead' is something that Priest Sean obtained from [unclear], and it attracts people's spiritual senses, drawing them into Priest Sean's consciousness space."
"To protect the secret treasure deep within the consciousness space, Father Sean set up layers of illusions here, each layer a deadly obstacle."
"And you, as an adventurer, have overcome countless obstacles and finally reached the end of the dream... Such perilous difficulties, the final 'treasure' must be of great importance to Priest Sean, perhaps even his consciousness, reason and soul."
"But when you see the 'treasure,' you're stunned, because you discover that it actually contains the soul of a woman named Rigota!"
"You already know from other clues that Rigota was accidentally injured by Priest Sean and fell into the river, disappearing long ago. She should be dead by now. Why then is her spirit appearing in Priest Sean's consciousness?"
"Where did Father Sean's own soul go?"
"Most importantly, a soul leaving the body should die quickly, but here it remains intact. How did Priest Sean manage that? Could it be related to [unclear]?"
"There's another question: why did Father Sean place Rigota's soul here? Did he intend to...?"
"The answer to all these mysteries may only be found by finding the person who created all of this in the first place."
After reading it, Angor became even more convinced that this was the true outline of the entire Misty Forest instance.
In a normal challenger team, the first piece of truth they obtain is information related to Rigota, and then they will get this summary of the truth.
They will see that this truth summary contains a lot of obscured information, whether it is the identity of Father Sean or the news of Rigota falling into the river, it is all completely blacked out.
Because they had unlocked the relevant information in advance, the overall plot was quite clear.
Moreover, from this basic outline of the truth, Angell also confirmed one thing.
The last piece of the truth will most likely lead to finding the root cause of the current predicament of Father Sean and Rigota.
The fundamental reason here does not refer to the Forty Thieves' robbery of the Dao.
The actions of the Forty Thieves were merely the trigger for this tragedy, not the core issue.
The real key question is what happened after the two fell into the river: why did Father Sean turn into the living dead and evil spirit he is today?
Why was Rigota's soul able to break free from the fate of extinction and be sealed in the consciousness space of Priest Sean?
What method did Father Sean use to protect this wisp of soul?
This is the core that the final fragment of truth aims to reveal, and the key to solving all the mysteries.
To find the answer, we might have to follow the obscured information in the synopsis to explore the truth behind the river incident and the unmentioned secrets behind Father Sean.
Angell shared his thoughts, and also mentioned his views on the "basic outline".
Kemai and Blanche had also finished reading the intelligence information and were still in a daze until they heard Angor's thoughts and slowly came back to their senses.
“It should be just as you said, sir.” Blanche pushed up her non-existent glasses, her tone carrying a sense of confident reasoning. “I just paid special attention to the progress bar. This time, the fragment of the truth about Rigota’s soul only gave 20% of the exploration progress; while the fragment that Kerma got from the one-eyed dragon gave 30% of the exploration progress.”
She paused, then added, "You can tell from the progress bar that this fragment related to Rigota should be the real first truth fragment. After all, in a normal level progression, the progress percentage of the first fragment should be lower than that of the subsequent fragments."
"Looks like we skipped a level at the beginning."
After sighing, Blanche once again adopted the posture of Levre: "But it doesn't matter. It's not too late for us to correct our course now. In fact, with the follow-up information, we can lock onto the third piece of information even more quickly."
Following Blanche's lead, Kemai added, "The last piece of the truth should be related to the secrets that followed the fall into the river, just as Lord Angel said."
Ke Mai paused, a hint of hesitation flashing in his eyes: "But, although we've deduced the general situation of the third fragment of truth, where should we look for it?"
Based on the current intelligence, it seems that it is not enough to support their next move.
Does this mean we still have to contact the indigenous people in the swamp forest?
As Kemai and Blanche fell into thought, Uriel suddenly spoke up.
"Rigota is currently in a living soul state... Does 'living soul' mean that there is still a possibility of her being resurrected?"
Compared to the third fragment of truth, Uriel was more concerned about Rigota's situation at this moment.
Ke Mai didn't know how to respond, so he remained silent.
Blanche pondered, "If we can find Rigota's body, and if her body is still as active as it was back then, there's a chance of resurrection. However, so many years have passed..."
Blanche didn't continue, but Uriel wasn't stupid and understood the meaning behind her unfinished words.
Rigota's body could not possibly maintain its former vitality... If it could, Priest Seymour would not have sealed her soul in his own consciousness space.
However, even though Uriel understood, he still longed for a miracle to happen.
She longs to reunite with Rigota in real life.
He clenched his fist, his voice trembling almost imperceptibly: "If...if her body is gone, can she be brought back to life?"
Faced with Uriel's burning yet humble gaze, both Kemai and Blanche were at a loss, lowering their heads and avoiding his gaze.
Just as Uriel's eyes were dimming and he was sinking into despair, Angel's voice rang out.
"It's not entirely impossible."
Uriel suddenly raised his head, staring intently at the ceiling, trying to see Angel, who was hidden in the sky.