Chapter 30: Two Shards

The only problem was that Xiao Fen couldn’t find that control center in this small building. He had even searched the basement, but there was no trace of it.

Standing on the third floor, seeing that time was running out, Xiao Fen began to constantly recall the previous steps, wondering what he had missed or forgotten due to preconceived notions.

In that instant, the fingerprint mark and the two toe prints suddenly appeared in his mind.

Xiao Fen suddenly realized what he had forgotten before, which was that the timing of the handprint and the footprint was wrong.

The Trial World started on November 5th, and Sylvia’s team hadn’t even entered this small building at all. In other words, no Trialist had entered this small building.

Those two traces came from before this World was constructed by the World Tree, or rather, in real history, before November 5, 1888, these two traces had already appeared in this small building.

And the mission said that Lux fought alone against Jack for a long time, during which he didn’t get any support from the Awakened. This meant that after Lux became the Web, no one entered this small building.

So, those two traces could only be from Lux, not left by latecomers.

According to this reasoning, Lux first had a fierce battle with an enemy here, and after being unable to defeat the opponent, he turned himself into a huge Web.

What this reasoning couldn’t explain were the five long blood scratches and the strange footprint.

At this moment, he suddenly remembered the sentence from the mission prompt when he first completed Traces of Lux.

“Remember, Yggdrasil is watching you. Your reasoning may be correct, or it may have huge errors. Everything can only be revealed by you in the future.”

In other words, his previous reasoning was not necessarily right. That footprint might be the real clue.

Thinking of this, Xiao Fen rushed down to the second floor, stood at the position of the two footprints, stood on his tiptoes, and looked left and right. Sure enough, next to his head, in a gap on the bottom layer of the wooden steps on the third floor, a small crystal was shining.

He stretched out his finger and dug hard twice. The steps, which were about to rot, made creaking dangerous sounds under his feet. Fortunately, this action didn’t last long. A few minutes later, Xiao Fen dug out this small irregular crystal.

To his surprise, there was actually a long thread trailing behind this crystal. Each thread was connected deep into the steps.

Xiao Fen only gently pulled this crystal, which caused the entire room to shake violently. On the wall on the other side of his body, strands of blood suddenly began to seep out.

At the same time, Xiao Fen could feel that the entire building seemed to make a certain sound, just like the effect of a Monster that had been sleeping for a long time being suddenly disturbed, conveying its dissatisfaction from underground to the ground.

In that instant, Xiao Fen realized that the building he was in was actually a living life form, and the crystal in his hand that felt very much like resin should be a shard of the World Tree.

He hurriedly called out the Light Screen. Sure enough, new information had appeared on it.

“Mission Name: Radiance of Lux”

“Mission Completion: 105%”

“Mission Difficulty: S”

“Congratulations, you helped Lux solve a big problem. From now on, you have won the Web’s recognition and friendship.”

“Mission Reward: 5,000 Gene Points, 2 Skill Points.”

“Please select the direction to use Gene Points.”

Xiao Fen chose to upgrade without hesitation. 5,000 Gene Points were enough for him to be extravagant. Now it was best to pile up some levels. According to Sylvia, the higher the level, the higher the resistance to negative effects.

“Current level 0. Choose to pay 2,000 Gene Points to raise existing level to Level 1?”

He let out a long breath, vaguely feeling like he was waving goodbye to the past. Xiao Fen clicked to agree to the upgrade.

The Projection screen was quiet for a while, and then began to show new text.

“Trialist upgrade preparation in progress”

“Upgrade Tip: The Trialist’s ability comes from the twisting and changing of genes in the body. The higher the degree of change, the more power ful the ability the Trialist possesses, and the corresponding level is also higher.”

“At the same time, the danger of gene collapse will also be higher. To avoid the situation where gene distortion is too intense, leading to final collapse, a Trialist can only perform a maximum of 1 level of level increase within a day, and can only perform the next upgrade after 24 hours.”

“Trialist upgrade system preparation complete”

“The upgrade system is scanning the Trialist and setting up the digital model.”

“Scan complete, constructing digital model.”

“Digital model established, about to display, please wait.”

“Trialist Name: Xiao Fen”

“Body Type: Standard”

“Strength: 8, Evaluation: Low”

“Spirit: 16, Evaluation: Excellent”

“Stamina: 10, Evaluation: Normal”

“Agility: 14, Evaluation: Excellent”

“Attribute Description as follows”

“Strength: Quantifies your muscles and body strength. Strength can increase the damage of most physical Skills, and every 2 points of Strength adds 1 point of damage to normal attacks.”

“Note, powerful Strength requires Constitution to support it and Agility to coordinate it.”

“Spirit: Represents your willpower, common sense judgment, perception, and intuition, and can improve your memory ability. Spirit is the foundation of all your magic-type skills. Each point of Spirit increases your base Energy by 5 points.”

“Note, a powerful Spirit will greatly enhance your reaction to harmful external things, lowering your mental endurance.”

“Constitution: Represents the character’s health and stamina. Each point of Constitution increases your base Health Value by 5 points; for every 5 points of Constitution, extra Defense +1.

Note, people with high Constitution need Agility to coordinate their movements more than average people.”

“Agility: Quantifies hand-eye coordination, flexibility, reflexes, and balance. For every 5 points of Agility added, Ignore Opponent Defense +1.

Note, you cannot rely solely on dexterity to defeat others.”

“Body attributes have some hidden advantages or disadvantages, for the Awakened to experience themselves.”

“Note, any attribute may be linked to other attributes. Simply raising one attribute excessively may cause other attributes to decrease.”

As if to let Xiao Fen understand this concept more intuitively, a hexagonal chart appeared in the upper left corner of the Light Screen. Raising any single indicator with a finger would cause the arrows in other directions to change. Such changes made Xiao Fen seem to return to the era of playing racing games; the car didn’t matter if it was good or bad, but rather which car suited him better.

Upgrading was the same; there was no absolute good or bad way, only the way that suited him best.