Originheart City, second floor of the library.
Angel sat by the window, letting the brilliant sunshine drape over him. In his hands was a thick-bound book titled "Architecture and Art," which he was leafing through slowly.
About a third of the way through, the gray-haired old man sitting opposite Angel let out a regretful "Oh dear" sound.
Angel looked up, and the first thing he saw was a wisp of dust floating leisurely in the air, followed by Nis’s helplessly grim expression.
"I chose the wrong activation path at the forty-eighth node of the third wandering," Nis sighed, casually sweeping the debris and dust on the table into the waste bin below.
—These fragments and dust were from a stone slab that bore some representative symbol of the Quest World. Because of the failed decoding, the slab would shatter.
At this point, the trash bin was already filled with sand and stone.
Nis picked up a handbook filled with data information from nearby, which recorded every failed decoding pathway to avoid repeating mistakes. The handbook had used up ten pages, each brimming with notes, indicating the numerous times he had failed over the past few days.
After recording his failure once again, Nis looked up at the other side, rubbing his hands and sheepishly saying, "Angel, you see... I failed again."
Though Nis didn’t express any demands in his words, his eyes and expression were filled with intense hope.
Angel paused for a moment, set down the thick book authored by Jon, and slowly said, "This is your fourth failure today, and when you add the failures from the past few days, it’s already over twenty times. Are you planning to fail at each node once?"
Nis, with a sour face, denied it: "Of course not, I calculated the correct nodes seriously. For those nodes whose pathways were hard to determine, I only started activating when I had compressed the margin of error to a bare minimum of two choices. If I really failed at every node, I would have failed nearly four hundred times already."
Nis, for the past five days, had only failed around twenty times in total, and he personally thought that was a very reasonable figure.
But he wasn’t one to boast, especially not in front of Angel. —Angel had practically been living at the underground altar recently, frequently entering and exiting the Wilderness of Dreams, and delivering a complete stone slab to him periodically. If Nis had to do this job, he’d find it quite irritating himself, so he dared not lose his temper, fearing that Angel might get fed up and quit.
Seeing Nis’s pitiful look, Angel remained silent for a moment, ultimately resigning himself to reality and used the Dream Conch to pull another stone slab with symbols into the Wilderness of Dreams. After all, he had already promised Nis, and he himself hoped Nis could find the Quest World’s coordinates through the constancy contained within the symbols.
When Angel returned to the Wilderness of Dreams, Nis had already started delving into the new slab with his research.
Angel gently tapped the tabletop with his finger, and only then did Nis raise his head in confusion.
"Don’t rush with the research yet, there are some things I want to discuss," Angel said.
Though Nis was concerned about his decoding strategy, he dared not ignore Angel when he took the initiative to speak. He quickly put down the stone slab, signaling Angel to go ahead and speak.
"I’m planning to leave the Revelation Continent."
Nis let out a "huh": "You’re planning to return to the Barbarian Cave?"
Angel shook his head: "No, I need to make a trip to the Old Earth Continent to handle some things I couldn’t do before."
Things he couldn’t do before but can do now? Nis wondered quietly in his heart, but didn’t inquire further, instead asking: "And then?"
"So I can’t keep staying at the underground altar. If I want to continue helping you pull the slabs, I’ll need to pry up the stone slab ground on the altar and take it away." Angel inquired, "I want to know if that will have any effect?"
Nis pondered: "You’ve brought the slabs here these past few days without damaging the symbols, so it seems there wouldn’t be any impact from prying the symbols off the slabs."
After getting the answer, Angel nodded and signaled Nis to continue his research, while he returned to reality.
After Angel left, just as Nis was about to pick up a slab for further research, he heard the sound of footsteps coming from outside the typically quiet construction hall.
A visitor came in.
When Nis saw the visitor, his eyes lit up; she was a beautiful lady.
Given Nis’s usual nature, he would have approached for a chat, but he currently prioritized the slab research, so he merely glanced before bowing his head to proceed with his work.
But right then, the lady walked over to him.
"Excuse me, sir, I just saw a young man sitting opposite you from the library below through the open window," the lady asked politely. "Do you know where he went?"
Meanwhile, after Angel returned to reality, he remained near the underground altar.
However, he wasn’t alone; Frode and... Tullas were also there.
Tullas was sitting at the center of the altar, voraciously absorbing the dense death energy around him, while Frode was standing outside the altar, wide-eyed, blankly staring at Tullas in disbelief.
"How’s it going?" Angel approached Frode.
Frode had yet to come to his senses and instinctively replied: "Sir, what did you say?"
"I’m asking, how’s the progress of Adar, Shanni, and Tullas?" Angel inquired.
Frode took a while to sober up, somewhat embarrassed as he responded: "Adar and Shanni have already started to understand the Soul Tricks, but since it’s their first exposure to such specific skill training, it might take some time before they can formally begin. As for Tullas..."
Frode glanced at Tullas on the altar: "From what you can see, sir, Tullas has been absorbing the death energy here for three solid days without hitting his limit, which is beyond the range of ordinary undead!"
Angel was quite calm: "Tullas was, after all, once an undead that existed for thousands of years, and a very special one at that. It’s normal for him to have a high limit for absorbing death energy."
Though Frode was aware of Tullas’s background, as a fellow undead, he was too familiar with the soul’s capacity limits, and Tullas seemed entirely on a different level compared to them. This stark contrast was what shocked Frode.
Frode said, "An hour ago, Tullas woke up once. Based on what he said, he should reach the peak of his death energy absorption today. However, perhaps due to his cheerful nature, like Adar, he has an extremely high tolerance for death energy, showing no emotional fluctuations; despite reaching the death energy peak, I doubt any signs of deterioration will appear."
"Though it is advised, sir, to let him practice Soul Tricks later on, even if he reaches the peak capacity of death energy, he should ideally familiarize himself for another month or two to start safely..."
Angel had brought Tullas to reality with the intent to have him practice the Soul Tricks.
However, seeing Frode’s suggestion, Angel was willing to consider. Practicing sooner or later made little difference to Tullas.
"That works; during this time, Tullas can stay with me and act as a messenger between me and Nis, preventing the need to continually come and go just for the slabs."
Angel made his decision and waited for Tullas to wake up.
Watching the swirling death energy being voraciously swallowed by Tullas, Frode, after a period of silence, remarked: "I feel making Tullas practice ordinary Soul Tricks is somewhat underwhelming for him. Sir, you might want to consider—if there were special undead for him to absorb, it might further enhance his abilities... Tullas is more suited to absorb special undead than I am."
In the case of Adar and Shanni, Frode wouldn’t suggest this, as he didn’t think they could absorb special undead. But Tullas was different—having been a special undead himself, he had experience utilizing special abilities, and with his cheerful disposition, it had taken him quite a while to fall in the enclosed space on Silver Palm Island; now, even if he absorbed special undead, he might finish without any degeneration.