"It’s like an LED breathing light..."
Watching the flickering glow that brightened and dimmed on the street, Siqu murmured softly.
The city, long since turned to ruins, showed no trace of its past structures.
He could only see countless pieces of rubble scattered across the streets. Even the street itself could only be faintly made out as an outline.
Siqu narrowed his eyes slightly.
At that thought, he suddenly realized a problem.
The buildings here... seemed too neatly destroyed.
The streets and scattered stones made it clear this was once a city.
But beyond that foundation, all the buildings—be they residential or functional—were without exception meticulously ruined. They were even destroyed to the point where one couldn’t tell whether they were homes or functional buildings.
... Although it was unknown what had caused the city to become as it was now.
But it was also too unnatural.
If it had been a meteor shower, there would still be some houses that were more intact; if it had been a massive earthquake, there should have been relatively strong buildings that suffered lighter damage. Not to mention fire, tsunami, or some other natural disaster... even if the sky had fallen, some low houses should have been less damaged.
But here, all the buildings were destroyed to the same degree.
Just enough to completely destroy any traces of life within each house, yet enough remained to tell that a house once stood there.
"It’s like it was done on purpose... right?"
Seeing Siqu’s expression turn serious, Defu also walked over to Siqu’s feet and meowed, posting on the forum.
Siqu nodded, "I’ve been catching up on your streams these past few days, filling in knowledge about this world... I believe such obvious man-made marks can’t just be for eliminating traces.
"Combining the intel gathered from Xitan Pulan, I conjecture... it might be a ritual."
Defu asked in confusion.
Siqu nodded: "Kid brother should indeed have entered a nightmare.
"What I’m thinking is, if the Elves created such a massive ritual base merely to preserve the legacy and knowledge of old... then this type of ’external hard drive nightmare’ surely isn’t the only one.
"But over at the Black Tower, it seems they have no clue about this? From the intel shared by Longjing Tea and Salvatore, the Black Tower seems to treat it only as a pool for drawing influence. This indicates that at least the Black Tower is also unaware of the Elves’ nightmares storing past knowledge."
"... Yes, your analysis is good."
Defu couldn’t help but nod its cat head.
Attracted by Defu’s previous shenanigans, other players joined the barrage of discussion:
"— I think there might be something sealed here?"
"— Is it possible that Bofis is a BOSS?"
"— I don’t think that’s very likely, I rather think Bofis might be a lock..."
"— It could also be that Bofis has been hiding from the wizards of the Black Tower, so that’s why she can’t be seen."
"— No, no, no, it’s also possible that Bofis herself is special. Only the Pale Princess’s priests can see..."
Annan, seeing this, couldn’t help but comment:
"— It has nothing to do with Bofis. It’s normal that the Black Tower can’t find it because the Elves have a Transcendent’s spiritual body of the silver rank, which ordinary wizards can’t detect at all."
Just as Transcendents of the bronze rank could see Xitan Pulan, but ordinary people couldn’t.
At first, Annan thought that all Transcendents should be able to see Spiritual Bodies....
But this speculation was rejected by Old Vasily.
Before obtaining the Book of Truth, one must have a soul rank at least one level higher than the other to see another’s soul before the soul leaves the body. This has nothing to do with the perception attribute itself... only with the level, or rather, the soul rank.
And the Black Tower wasn’t completely unaware of the problem here.
That’s because Salvatore’s initial statement to Annan was that it was possible to find "Elementary Influence: Remnants of a Silver Soul" here.
The series of influences called "Remnants of the Soul" proves that the wizard had come into contact with a silver-ranked soul and had been entangled with, or even possessed by it.
In other words, the Black Tower had long known that there were many Elves, all floating here in the state of souls.
Given the security level of this ruin and the fact that Salvatore could directly inform Annan about it... it’s probably because the wizards of the Black Tower were convinced that they could not enter this collective nightmare.
Being able to enter the nightmare must be because the child himself has an elvish lineage like "Jungle Walker."
The Wizard’s Tower is itself a cloud library, and such knowledge from the Third Era is definitely preserved.
In that case, only the menial workers would come here to collect influences.
Unless the influence needed for the ritual can only be taken from oneself, the mentor would definitely not come to extract the influence personally.
It is precisely because Pale Princess is herself the deity of Specters and Spirits... that Xitan Pulan could earn the privilege to look directly at Bofis.
As soon as Four Dark Keys saw Annan’s barrage of comments, he shouted, "Hey, wait, everyone stop—there’s a sage in the barrage of comments.
"Come, it’s this sage who said that Elves have silver-ranked souls and silver-ranked wizards can’t detect it... I think what you said makes some sense. The rest of you quiet down, will you continue?"
...What the fuck, why!
What’s with this look, with so many comments talking at once, how did he just single me out?
Annan was bewildered.
But he pondered for a moment, and it seemed to be a good thing.
He could just use it to remotely control the players’ actions.
"—If you think about it the other way around, the truth is quite simple."
"—Since the Black Tower doesn’t send a professional team to conduct inspections, it can only be because there are no wandering souls surviving in the regular ’Specimen Preservation Vault.’
"—Bofis would have remained undetected by anyone only if the Black Tower had never sent anyone to inspect. Even if only the priests of the Pale Princess could see Spiritual Bodies, would it be difficult for the Black Tower to invite a half-dead girl over? Keep in mind that Xitan Pulan is currently a pure newbie without a single new Divine Art, and she can see it; others definitely can too."
"—And since it’s a rare exception for Bofis to have such an occurrence, it means there must be something here that caused the accident...
"—So I speculate that there’s something sealed here, or at least something exists that could cause Bofis to have an issue."
Annan sent out a long string of comments in one breath.
Then he immediately sent a side quest to Four Dark Keys, Xitan Pulan, and Defu:
[You have received a side quest: Search Specimen Preservation Vault III-251-11]
[Quest Requirements: Collect Frostspeaker’s Permafrost Blood (0/1), Confirm an accident that occurred here (0/1)]
[Hint: One of the players in the team is in an abnormal timeline]
Four Dark Keys’ eyes widened in disbelief: "Incredible, there really is a sage!"
Part of the reason for this task was to force a verification of his just-made speculation and to convey some information that wasn’t convenient to mention... like the fact that the wandering children had entered the instance, but they couldn’t see it.
And another part of the reason...
Was that Annan was planning to delay them.
He was about to arrive there—