Chapter 562: Connection

Chapter 562: Connection

“It has already become this serious…?” Moser looked at the stone pillar that showed severe signs of melting. The short sword in his hand was surrounded by swirling black energy. This Dark Power was highly lethal against the Soul Spirits that appeared in High-Risk Zones. While exploiting elemental weaknesses was one way to increase lethality, fighting poison with poison was also quite effective.

Some weaker Soul Spirits touched the black energy, and their bodies were immediately tainted black, quickly turning to powder and dissipating in the air. Slightly stronger ones only lasted a little longer. There was a reason Oro had asked him here. With Moser’s help, they could avoid many unnecessary fights during the investigation here, preventing these Soul Spirits from reaching the ground.

Otherwise, once some Soul Spirits made contact with the Human Forms hidden underground, they would immediately form high-level combatants, which would be extremely troublesome. Oro was here to investigate, not to start trouble… He observed a severely melting stone pillar up close. Holding a wooden stick, he poked and prodded at it gently, like a mischievous child…

When the wooden stick touched the melting stone pillar, it pierced in easily. Then, the melting pillar extended something like a tentacle, trying to wrap around him. In that instant, Oro gave his bodyguard a look. The bodyguard quickly grabbed the tentacle and yanked it outward with force.

He tore it right off the stone pillar. The detached tentacle immediately broke apart, turning into a large number of Soul Spirits. These Soul Spirits didn’t have time to dissipate before they were completely erased by Moser’s Dark Power. The bodyguard opened his palm. The center of his hand showed a purplish-black color, and there was a sticky, stone-gray residue left on his palm, like the secretion of a mollusk.

“How does it feel?” Oro asked.

“Sensation is a bit reduced. Don’t even think about touching it. If that’s how I feel, you’d be completely paralyzed if you touched it,” the bodyguard said. “This thing can sever the connection between the Soul and the body. You might even die.”

“Understood.” Oro nodded, abandoning any fleeting thought of touching it. As for the purplish-black color on the bodyguard’s palm, it quickly returned to normal. What would be a serious injury for others was just a matter of resting for a while for him. Even something that could easily kill others wouldn’t have any extra effect on him.

“Yesterday, the situation here wasn’t this serious, right?” Oro said softly. Information about the exploration of High-Risk Zones was updated daily, so this change must have happened today. “Hmm, this is a good thing.”

“A good thing?” Moser thought for a moment. “You want to use these changes to find a breakthrough?”

Compared to an unchanging Stone Forest, a situation with changes was clearly easier to find useful information from.

“Yes. Now, keep watch around me. I need to look up some information.” Oro opened the Magic Weapon Summoning Book and contacted the ‘customer service’ of The Church. He directly had the customer service transfer the connection to the Church’s book warehouse Administrator, asking the Administrator to search for the information he needed. Some people in The Church had previously suggested storing information from some books in the book warehouse into the Magic Weapon Summoning Book, just like storing goods.

But this suggestion was directly rejected. After all, the Magic Weapon Summoning Book was not something The Church could control. Uploading information from unique copies or the like would be rather foolish. For physical items, having records was enough; as long as the Creator cared about their reputation, they wouldn’t tamper with those things. But information in text form was different.

The Creator could casually copy that stuff a few times, and no one would know. Browsing records? What significance would that have for the Creator?

So The Church definitely wouldn’t do that. Of course, The Church didn’t ignore this suggestion either. Instead, they chose to upload some books that were very common in libraries, or some that were rare but could still be found—the kind that could be found… Well, at least The Church believed these books were easy for the Creator to find.

So they went ahead and uploaded them. Even if the Creator obtained them, it wouldn’t have any lasting impact on The Church… In fact, that was exactly the case. Zheng Yichen wasn’t very interested in the book warehouse The Church uploaded to the Magic Weapon Summoning Book. He could basically find everything in there in the witches’ Library.

The significance of the book warehouse was for The Church to serve Adventurers and Mercenaries. Books Zheng Yichen could easily obtain weren’t necessarily available to ordinary people. They would have to go through great effort to see such books, or might not even have access at all. By creating this book warehouse, The Church gave those people an opportunity. Of course, this service wasn’t free.

Even so, it irked Zheng Yichen a little. How should he put it? The Church had actually beaten him to this idea. But then again, Zheng Yichen thought even if The Church got the jump on this, it didn’t matter. As long as he had time, he could free up his hands to create something extra… Something he had used almost every day before his transmigration… Baidu!

What was a book warehouse? He would directly create something that could monopolize everything from all aspects. Even if someone later thought of something novel and implemented it before Zheng Yichen, he wasn’t worried about falling behind, because it would be meaningless. Once he created something like Baidu,

Wouldn’t those book warehouses and the like, wanting to develop better, all need to connect to the function he developed? Just like the mechanism currently used by the Mercenary Guild.

So, even though he was a step behind, Zheng Yichen wasn’t in a hurry. There was plenty of time. Your ideas were good, but the next second, they would be his.

After about half an hour, under Oro’s remote direction, the warehouse Administrator quickly gathered all the information Oro needed. After reviewing the materials, Oro frowned slightly. “Time is a bit tight. To clarify some things, I need more detailed information. Ideally, I could go out to The Church’s book warehouse…”

“You wish,” the bodyguard said. Even though Oro was a special person, similar to a special envoy, he had no privilege to leave the Containment Zone. No living being could leave this place.

“Then we’ll just poke around slowly. It’s not me who’s getting tired anyway.” Oro gently rubbed his chin. Although the previous review time was short, it at least allowed him to learn some additional Church-recorded secrets. “This Stone Forest probably has some connection to the Death Witch.”

The information Oro just reviewed was about the interpersonal relationships of the Undying Witch. The Undying Witch was an evil type of Witch, so The Church took her very seriously, with many countermeasures. They had truly forced her into slumber several times, so there was relatively abundant information about her. In the records of her relationships, the Undying Witch had once had a major conflict with the Death Witch. This happened after the trust crisis within the Witches’ Alliance caused its collapse.

The fighting between the two Witches was frequent. As for the reason… Oro frowned, tapping his elbow with a finger. Generally, conflicts between two Witches with similar abilities were troublesome. The Death Witch’s ability was death-related. If you really wanted to counter her, the difficulty was no lower than dealing with the Witch of Life.

The former, because her ability was death-related, had many ways to avoid death, evading its approach. You could say she had a form of immortality. As for the latter, the Witch of Life could truly make you unkillable. During the Abyssal Calamity, the Witch of Life was active. In The Church’s related records, her most dominant display of power was turning an area of hundreds of miles into an utterly barren wasteland.

And that place directly buried hundreds of thousands of Abyssal Monsters that had targeted her!

Later, during their investigation, they also learned how the Witch of Life had managed to kill so many Abyssal Monsters at that time. She had indiscriminately drained all the ‘Life Force’ from that area. Then, all the Abyssal Monsters in that area were literally burst to death by the concentrated Life Force!

Perhaps bursting hundreds of thousands of Abyssal Monsters at once was difficult, but doing it in batches was possible. After the concentrated Life Force burst one part of the Abyssal Monsters, it wouldn’t disappear. Instead, it would become new ‘fuel,’ rolling forward in a cycle. It was like a Spellcaster who could cast corpse explosion throwing one corpse into a crowd; that one corpse could achieve total annihilation!

One corpse exploding could produce more corpses. Those subsequent corpses, after being subjected to corpse explosion, would chain into explosions… The Witch of Life used this rolling effect at the time. But later, for some reason, she didn’t return the Life Force she had forcefully drained back to the land, leaving that area barren and infertile to this day.

The Death Witch, as the Witch who had been opposed to the Witch of Life from the beginning, wouldn’t be much weaker in comparison. Unless the Undying Witch was out of her mind, she definitely wouldn’t easily make an enemy of her. She wasn’t crazy; she couldn’t possibly not know that The Church would be happy to see Witches fight among themselves.

Moreover, fighting the Death Witch might even lead to her own death. But the Undying Witch still did it and successfully killed the Death Witch. Only she knew how much risk was involved. There must have been a compelling reason for her to do this!!

The True Spirit the Undying Witch cared about! For that True Spirit, the Undying Witch even committed a major taboo, turning her attention to Abyssal Creatures and even threatening the Containment Barrier. Although she failed in the end, according to some information The Church obtained, that True Spirit fell into the Abyss. But that didn’t mean the matter was over.

The Abyssal Creatures, even when suppressed, always wanted to stir up major trouble. Besides, the Containment Barrier wasn’t absolute. It had absolute suppression against Abyssal beings, but it wasn’t as perfect for beings from outside the Abyss. Otherwise, some Veteran Evil Gods from inside wouldn’t have escaped to cause trouble before, although the unluckiest one died right at its doorstep, which was utterly pathetic.

In short, Oro’s analysis concluded that the reason for the conflict between the Death Witch and the Undying Witch was largely related to the owner of that True Spirit. Hmm, that allowed further speculation. For example, after the Undying Witch dealt with the Death Witch, what happened to the Death Witch’s remains?

In the records he checked, the disappearance of the Death Witch wasn’t uneventful. It was only long after her death that The Church confirmed the Death Witch had died…