Part 6 The Light-Exporter Chapter 6: Reflections
”There were no roads in the normal sense of the word in most of the Abandoned Lands, but they weren’t difficult to navigate either, as they were vast expanses of barren wilderness, with deep black as the dominant color.
On top of the wilderness, there are occasional hardy plants, which are so strange and twisted that Klein can’t even tell what the prototype of these things is.
All around, where the lantern firelight could not reach, the night seemed to have a life of its own, and seemed to be writhing silently in the depths, trying to devour everything it covered.
As an “ancient scholar”, Klein just swept the corner of his eye, and saw that the surrounding deep black extended one “spirit line” after another, they are illusory, thin, countless, indicating that a large number of monsters lurking in the darkness.
These monsters were extremely quiet, just like that, watching the ancient magician dressed as Amon and the current era gentleman image of Klein, watching them walk in the barren wilderness under the cover of the dim light.
Klein eyed ahead, casually carrying the leather lantern without the slightest worry about when it would go out.
When he and Amon were about to leave this wilderness and enter the hill area, in the darkness behind the slant, a monster with a deformed body, two heads, five arms and curled up into a ball of flesh suddenly trembled.
It had become Klein’s secret puppet.
Manipulating the “Spirit Body Thread” was silent, and the distance was not more than 500 meters.
In the next second, the monster quietly collapsed and lost its life.
Amon, who was on Klein’s left and wearing a peaked cap, smiled, raised his right arm, spread his palm, and revealed an object:
It was a transparent worm with a three-dimensional pattern.
”Worm of the Spirit.”
Amon had stolen it along with the “Spirit Body Thread” from the secret puppet.
Without waiting for Klein to say anything, Amon easily formed a fist with his fingers and crushed the transparent worm.
Klein immediately felt the pain from the depths of his soul, as if his head was about to split open.
Fortunately, he had made the “Yesterday Revisited” spell and the “Spirit Controlling Bullet” many times before, so he was more accustomed to this feeling, and only distorted his face without losing his temper.
Amon kept the same smile he had earlier, and shook his palm and said:
”You are too formal, you can be a bit bolder.”
Klein, who had recovered from the pain, raised his hand and rubbed the corner of his forehead, feeling that his body and mind were exhausted, and that every “spirit worm” was calling for rest.
During the process of being chased by Charatu, the spirituality that Klein had borrowed from his past self was almost depleted, and the subsequent “teleportation” and use of the “Angel’s Embrace” to eliminate traces of it had long been close to its limit.
After returning to the safe area, he originally intended to go above the gray fog to check the surrounding conditions and then enter a deep sleep to recover his energy, but he was ambushed by Amon and was miserably “parasitized”, and he was tossed all the way to this God-forsaken land. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was in a desperate situation that naturally squeezed his potential, he might have fallen asleep on the way, or shown signs of losing control.
”I need to rest now.” Klein lowered his right hand and said frankly.
He believed that Amon would fulfill his request, because the more he tried his best but couldn’t escape, the more he could satisfy the pleasure-seeking mentality of the “God of Mischief”.
”Good.” Amon’s face in his monocle turned slightly, and he said to the side of the hill, “There’s a resting place there, you can get there soon, of course, I don’t mind if you want to sleep out in the wilderness, I just have a feeling that you humans might prefer a place that provides a sense of security.”
”Just go there.” Krynn would have liked to just maneuver the lantern’s flame to complete the jump, but his parched spirituality stopped him, and he had to follow Amon, relying on his feet, one step at a time.
On the way, Klein held the mindset of asking more questions to understand more and said to Amon:
”Why don’t you steal the distance and arrive at your destination directly.”
Amon turned his head sideways and glanced at Klein with his right eye that wore a crystal monocle, the corner of his mouth slightly hooked and said:
”I’m not the one who wants to rest.”
…… Klein closed his mouth and quietly moved forward.
After about a dozen lightning strokes, Amon raised his hand and pointed diagonally ahead:
”There it is.”
In the shadows of the hill less than a hundred meters away were scattered several half-built structures resembling the tops of spires, and a dozen or so giant stone pillars only as tall as Klein’s knees protruded from the ground around them, a handful of barren grasses growing out of their crevices, their tips dark red like blood.
”This place was once inhabited?” Klein asked, rubbing the corner of his forehead again as he opened his mouth.
Amon pressed the second joint of his right index finger against the rim of his monocle and smiled:
”This was originally a very large city-state, and when the Cataclysm hit, the earth cracked open and the entire city was swallowed up, leaving only these to prove that it once existed.”
The Destruction of Civilization …… Klein’s mind steeped in such a thought, and quickened his pace, arriving at his destination in the midst of the strange wasteland.
Upon entering a half-collapsed building, Klein instinctively looked around and observed the place.
The gray stone walls, which were cracked with a gap, had murals that had been washed away by time over thousands of years; they had long since been blurred, and it was only vaguely obvious that the people of this city-state were proud to enter the Kingdom of Heaven after death.
Klein adjusted his breathing, threw away the leather lantern in his hand, and leaned against a thick stone pillar, barely observing the cascading orbs of light.
He didn’t give a damn about the dangers of slumbering in such a place in such an environment.
Let the danger come harder! Before falling asleep, Klein shouted in his heart.
Amon, dressed in classical wizard robes, glanced at him, casually sat down next to him, and snapped his fingers.
Inside the leather lantern, the candle that was about to burn out stopped melting, but the dim light of the fire continued to glow.
What could only last a few more minutes seemed to last hours or even days again.
It was like a mistake, a mistake against the laws of nature.
After sleeping for an unknown amount of time, Klein finally regained his energy and awoke to the sound of the “magician” lady’s prayers.
For the time being, he had no way to respond, closed his eyes and pretended that he was still in a dream.
Non-deep “parasitic” state, Amon should not be able to monitor my thoughts, can only distinguish whether my current thoughts are harmful to k …… Klein’s heart moved, quietly made a call to the gray mist.
He borrowed a state from the orifice of history, from his past self, a state that was not directly directed at the matter of escape.
It was the state he was in when the island of his mind suffered the invasion of Hwyn Lambeth.
This attempt was not stopped, not stolen.
With the help of this state and his own special ability to stay awake in the invaded dream and mind worlds, Klein’s self-awareness split off and resided in the spiritual sky, calmly looking down on the islands of consciousness.
He began to scrutinize his mind for any abnormal, parasitic thoughts within it.
After some rigorous discernment, Klein initially confirmed that there was no problem with his mind world.
In other words, even if Amon still had the “Worm of Time” in his body, it was still a shallow level of “parasitism” and could not listen to his thoughts.
After finding such a “safe zone”, Klein was finally able to let go of his bound and suppressed thoughts, analyze his current encounter, and consider how to save himself:
”Amon is the ‘God of Mischief’ and the ‘God of Fraud’, k can never play this game simply for the pleasure of …… really want to do so. k could have waited until he rendezvoused with the main body, stole my destiny, and got the ‘Source Castle’ before making the attempt, that way, even if there were an accident, k’s main purpose was accomplished, and he wouldn’t have lost anything ……
”What purpose is k hiding in this matter? If we can grasp the key, we might be able to find a real chance of survival ……
”Also, after he recited the incantation for the ‘Transit Ceremony’ in Chinese, he turned out to be indifferent to this particular language, failing to ask questions, which is completely inconsistent with the curiosity k has shown ……
”Uh …… Was k’s utterance of the word ‘Bug’ afterward a deliberate attempt to test what I would associate with it ……
”But k didn’t steal my idea ah, no, if a whole idea that has nothing to do with either before or after was all stolen, then I wouldn’t have been able to find out ……”
Klein recalled the situation, confirming that he hadn’t had his thoughts stolen at that point in time based on the logical connection between the before and after thoughts.
And that made him reverse-affirm one thing.
That is, in the deep “parasitic” state, Amon could directly listen to his thoughts without stealing them!
Amon was acting fraudulently by acting like he had to detect harmful thoughts before he could manipulate them!
”I told you that the deep ‘parasitism’ experienced earlier seemed a bit different from what Parleys described ……
”By that extrapolation, all my inner thoughts since along the way should have been heard by Amon, including the Earth, the old country, the education of my children ……
”It’s really scary ……
”Fortunately, in planning to sabotage the promotion ceremony of George III this action, I have foreseen the situation of being trapped in a desperate situation by Amon ‘parasitism’, the idea of leaking half of the instinctive reaction, half of the intentional indulgence, in this way, not only spilled out the secret, ‘gained the trust of ‘ to Amon, while hiding the most crucial and central thing.
”As it is, K must have been well aware that I intend to extract more hidden secrets of history from K in order to digest the ‘Ancient Scholar’ magic potion as quickly as possible, but K will not know that I am not far away from completely digesting it, it’s just a matter of two or three steps or an opportunity… …
”Is it possible that Amon deliberately lifted the ‘parasitism’ and played such a game because k had once heard about the earth from the ancient sun god and came into contact with a certain hidden secret, intending to use self-help to drive me to help k to accomplish something k was inconvenienced by or had no way to do? If that’s the case, something is definitely going to happen next ……
”Well, I’ll have to act like I’m not aware of that and plot my escape like normal.”
”Once I’ve adjusted my physical state, I’ll make my first ‘attempt’!” After ‘sleeping’ for a while longer, Klein opened his eyes.
Amon, who was wearing a pointed fedora, sat next to him and looked at him with a smile on his face:
”Have you thought about it? When do we start?”
K acted as if he was Klein’s accomplice rather than the target of his escape.