Richard held the camera, feeling rather reflective.
Speaking of the camera, it was indeed a bit of serendipity. It wasn’t specially prepared for the treasure; after all, he didn’t have Pandora’s Prediction Magic abilities to foresee the deployment of protective spells on the treasure.
The camera he took out was actually made while he was in White Stone City for Sherlock. Initially, when he went there to find Metal Palladium and saw how Sherlock struggled with moving statues, he suggested capturing the statues as mementoes using camera technology.
However, due to his busy schedule in White Stone City, he only made a prototype. Although operational, it was too ugly, and considering Sherlock’s personality who would definitely not like it, he didn’t give it away. Thus, it remained in the Space Iron Ring until now, proving to be useful.
Thinking back, even without this camera, creating one on the spot wouldn’t have been too difficult.
After all, a camera really isn’t high technology.
On modern Earth, as early as 1550, ideas related to the camera already existed, only a few decades after the Medieval period. With advancements, by August 19, 1839, French painter Louis Daguerre had invented a portable camera.
The scientific knowledge of cameras only involves simple applications of optics and some basic chemical reactions. The entire process can be summarized simply:
Through the camera lens, the target scene is projected onto the film, which contains crystals of silver compounds. With exposure for just a fraction of a second, the silver compound crystals begin to decompose into black silver. Then, by washing with developer, the unexposed crystals dissolve, forming the negative. Once the negative is obtained, it’s enlarged through a lens to create an enlarged image. With photo-sensitive paper, developed, and fixed in red light insensitive to the photo emulsion, a photograph is created.
With these thoughts in mind, Richard took out a black, rough tripod from the Space Iron Ring, set it up on the ground, and mounted the camera, aiming at the scroll spread out on the table.
After a slight adjustment of the lens to clear the image, Richard pressed the button with a "click".
Just as the button was pressed and exposure began, with a "bang", the entire camera exploded, sending shards in all directions. Richard reacted quickly, casting a thin air film to deflect the shards, then looked at the scroll on the table with a grim expression, suspecting something unpleasant.
As expected, he saw the photographed scroll, despite being on the stone table, suddenly turn to dust.
And that wasn’t all; several scrolls on adjacent stone tables, as if affected by the exposure, also turned into dust without even being opened.
Richard struck the stone table, causing the dust to rise, staring at the rising dust for quite some time, his face contorted with anger as he muttered, "Predictive Magic protective measures!"
Yes, predictive magical protective measures!
Though no one had explained, the phenomenon before him could only be explained this way.
At this, Richard felt rather helpless, not expecting the protective measures set by the Black Spirit King to be so extreme, employing the effects of Prediction Magic. This method, akin to Causality, virtually eliminates all possibilities of cheating or theft and can be considered the highest level of protective technology.
Compared to that, the security measures at the Jungle Hut Dark Forest Gathering Place’s internal library are barely worth mentioning.
Predictive magical protective measures are truly impossible to decode!
Because many spells of Prediction Magic are unreasonable and unscientific, at least for now.
He believed that Prediction Magic has its principles of operation, but it is definitely more complex than Shaping Energy Magic or Transformation Magic, so it cannot be decoded in a short span, only treated as a black box—only the inputs and outputs are visible, but what happens in between remains unknown.
That meant, regrettably, that he wouldn’t be able to take the scrolls of knowledge from the palace; the only way to take them was to look with his eyes and remember with his mind.
If it were another time, he would have accepted it, willing to spend years, staying there to forcefully memorize and absorb all the knowledge of the scrolls.
Not far away on the ground, the decisive battle changing the entire East Coast was underway, and it was entirely uncertain how much the battlefield would expand. It seemed safe where he was, but it was unpredictable when a group of fighting wizards might fly over.
He was underground, and what if his opponent released a powerful Earth Magic spell during the battle that caused the entire underground space to collapse and bury him alive?
This was the method he lacked the strength to use against the wizard Suo Men before, and he didn’t want the same fate to befall him due to the cycle of cause and effect.
At the moment, there was only one choice.
He had to abandon the impractical method of taking away the entire treasure and choose to use his eyes to see, his brain to remember, and take as much as he could carry!
Be content with what you have!
Richard bit his lip, sighed deeply, and made the reluctant decision.
Nevertheless, before preparing to collect the treasure in the most foolish way, he needed to make another preparation.
Without hesitation, Richard turned around and walked back toward the outside of the palace.
Soon after, he walked out of the palace, reached the surface, and stopped near the entrance of the passage. He flipped his hand, took a Space Handbag out from the Space Iron Ring, placed it on the ground, quickly opened it, and shouted, "Pandora!"
Inside the Space Handbag, Eden.
Pandora lay on a circular lab table, intently looking at a Papyrus Scroll with a quill in hand—there were many problems on the Papyrus Scroll that Richard had previously assigned, and she was diligently working on them.
While looking at the scroll, Pandora scratched her head. Next to her lab table, on a small egg-shell-shaped clock, the pointer ticked loudly, reminding Pandora of the time.
Pandora stared at the scroll for a long while, distressed by a math problem on it, feeling utterly perplexed with no idea how to solve it.
"How do I do this, it’s so hard!"
Pandora muttered to herself, raising her hand and scratching her head irresistibly.
Once, twice, three times...
Suddenly, an idea struck Pandora, and she stopped scratching her head, having figured out a solution.
"Richard said, ’If direct approaches fail, try the opposite.’ If the normal thinking doesn’t work, what about reversing it? If, for example, we look at it from the latter part of the question, then it is..."
Pandora whispered to herself, her eyes growing brighter and her expression excited. The next moment, she grabbed her quill and rapidly started writing on the scroll.
"Shhh, shhh, shhh..."
She breathlessly wrote down everything she thought of on the scroll. Pandora glanced at the answer she had written, nodded lightly, feeling it was probably correct.
Pandora exhaled lightly, feeling an indescribable joy deep inside her, gently moved her body, and stretched her arms and legs, feeling even better than after a fight.
She slightly turned her head and glanced at the mechanical clock nearby; the pointer had only moved a small arc and not much time had gone by.
"Since there’s still a lot of time until the scheduled time, maybe I should rest a bit first," Pandora thought, ready to slack off for a while, and started to daydream.