78: Chapter 78 Strange Harvest

Richard took a step forward, spinning his halberd in a semicircle.

The halberd blade swept across, smashing both face-clones lunging from the side simultaneously.

These clones had a very simple attack pattern; they tried to attack with their twisted, deformed mouths, but their movement speed was not fast, and one could dodge them with quick reflexes.

The real trouble was their numbers.

These things split too quickly; every time one was smashed, the scattered powder would re-coalesce into a new clone, making them seem like unkillable monsters.

While using his halberd to clear the approaching clones, Richard looked back and shouted to Selina, "It's up to your divine magic!"

He knew that a cleric's divine magic was the best counter to this type of undead creature.

Selina's holy symbol was glowing to its limit.

She grasped the holy symbol with both hands and held it high above her head; silver-blue electric arcs burst from the edges of the holy symbol, and a visible silver-blue halo erupted from her, expanding rapidly outward.

The moment the shockwave of the Dispelling magic hit those face-clones, they all froze simultaneously.

Immediately after, they began to peel away layer by layer from the edges, the grayish-white powder dissolving silently in the silver-blue light, like ice and snow being doused with boiling water.

Dozens of clones let out a final, overlapping, shrill shriek simultaneously, falling from mid-air and crashing onto the ground, turning into piles of grayish-white powder that could no longer move.

The hall returned to silence, with only the sound of Selina panting slightly remaining.

On the other side, Cecilia felt uncomfortable all over; she had been accidentally affected by Selina's Dispelling magic.

She hurriedly pulled a small bottle from her bosom and poured all the red liquid inside into her mouth, which made her feel a bit better.

"These things seem to be the product of some kind of twisted magic as well."

Morpheus crouched down, picked up a pinch of the powder with his fingers, sniffed it in front of his nose, and frowned slightly.

"It's a residual consciousness created after being forcibly fused together by some kind of magic power... So many people, so many cries for help... What on earth did the Orians do in this tower?"

No one answered him; they didn't know the answer either.

At the end of the corridor on the next level up, the group encountered enemy attacks once again.

Three desiccated corpses floated in the center of the corridor, wearing fragments of robes so tattered that their original colors were almost unrecognizable.

Their withered skin clung tightly to their bones, and in their eye sockets were two balls of eerie green phosphorescent fire.

They were likely mages in the tower during their lifetimes, continuing to exist in undead form after being trapped for a thousand years.

But they had been trapped in the tower for too long, and their magic power had decayed to the extreme.

Their attack methods also confirmed this:

One desiccated corpse extended a withered finger and shot a dark green corrosive ray at the group.

The ray hit Cecilia's kite shield and splashed into a hissing mist of acid; the sturdy Enchantment on the shield surface was corroded into a shallow dent, but there was no substantial damage.

Another desiccated corpse tried to cast some kind of necromancy spell, but after a thousand years of consumption, its magic power was so weak that even Morpheus could easily deploy a shield spell to block it.

Selina raised her hand and cast a lightning bolt; electric arcs shot from her fingertips, striking the chest of the nearest desiccated corpse, blasting its ribs and the remnants of its robes into fragments.

The half-elfs' arrows and Morpheus's flame ray pierced through the second desiccated corpse's skull and chest cavity.

Richard pierced the third desiccated corpse's abdomen with his halberd, pinning it to the wall, then drew his dwarven roaring battleaxe and smashed its skull with one axe blow.

The Anti-magic Rune lit up the moment it touched the undead magic power; the eerie green phosphorescent fire inside the desiccated corpse flickered reluctantly in the rune's light before extinguishing completely.

[Killed Low-Level Undead Mage × 1 — — Obtained 100 EXP.]

He continued to allocate the EXP to his Mage class, and the progress bar moved forward a little more.

[Level 6 Brand Warrior (0/3200) / Level 4 Mage (450/800) Blacksmith Level 2 / Beast Tamer Level 1]

Richard put away his battleaxe and began to rummage through the area with his other teammates for valuable supplies.

The bookshelves and storage rooms in this tower contained a large number of books and some magic items.

In a storage cabinet half-buried by rubble, he found an item that still barely retained magical fluctuations, and his teammates also found two magic items.

After scanning them one by one using Appraisal, the expression on his face changed from initial anticipation to disappointment, and in the end, he could only sigh helplessly.

First, there was a seemingly ordinary pebble lying at the bottom of the cabinet.

The pebble's surface was smooth and round, and when held in the hand, one could hear the faint sound of gold coins clinking.

The information given by Appraisal was [Wishing Magic Stone].

Effect: The user can make a wish to obtain any non-magic item with a value not exceeding one hundred gold coins, the stone will immediately "teleport" it over.

It sounded like he was about to get rich, but the note on the panel coldly shattered this illusion:

The teleported item was actually stolen from the pocket of some unlucky person nearby.

Moreover, every use of the Wishing Magic Stone would erode the user's soul, and eventually, the user's soul would be gradually sucked into the stone, becoming the source of the power to cast the "wish."

Another item identified was called [Cube of Pain].

Its appearance was a fist-sized brass cube, with a groove on each of its six sides, and the surface was covered with tiny gear-meshing marks.

It could store every bit of damage the user received as special magic energy, and once full, it could release a powerful force field shockwave.

But every time it was used, tiny metal wires would grow inside the user's body, until the metal wires pierced through vital organs from the inside, killing the user.

The most sinister item was a piece of high-level Enchantment equipment discovered by the black cat, the [Demon Crown of Domination].

It appeared as a rusted black iron crown, with an open demon eyeball embedded in the center.

The wearer could issue single-word commands to creatures with lower willpower than themselves — "Kneel," "Flee," "Kill," and so on.

But every command would make the user become more paranoid, until they completely split into another evil personality, after which the user would fall into complete madness.

"What kind of trash did these Orians create? The side effects are just too great."

Richard thought for a moment, then still put these three pieces of equipment into his dimensional bag.

Even if he didn't use them, he could hand them over to an auction house later or contact some mages or scholars to trade them; there would always be someone interested.

It was Cecilia who found something truly usable in a small iron box pressed under a collapsed bookshelf: a monocle-style circular lens.

The lens was a piece of processed purple crystal, extremely thin, with a dark silver metal frame inlaid around the edge.

Looking at things through it, the field of vision would have a faint purple halo.

The information given by Appraisal was concise and practical:

[Eye of the Demonologist], the wearer gains a bonus to Demon Lore and gains an advantage when determining a demon's true name, weakness, or habits.

Once per day, the wearer can use it to see whether a creature is possessed by a demon; the outline of the possessed person will emit a faint dark red glow.

Richard handed the lens to Morpheus: "You take it and use it first. This thing can boost Demon Lore, it will definitely be a great help to your current research, and you can also use it to detect possession once a day."

When Morpheus took the lens, he showed a joyful smile: "This thing is a great help to me. Thanks, Captain."

Richard replied: "We're on the same team, why be polite? Just distribute the loot uniformly when the time comes."