88: Chapter 88 Choice, Nightmare Butterfly Spirit
Lin Fan pondered.
"All four paths are of Superior Earth Spirit grade, yet there are significant differences in their focus."
The first is the Aurora Dream Moth.
Dual Illusion and Light attributes. The advantages are obvious.
The Light attribute provides restraint against many Dark-type and Ghost-type entities, and "Light" often carries purification properties.
It could cause Armor Skills to produce effects similar to blinding flashes, enhancing crowd control and surprise attack capabilities.
Although the "Light Stone" and "Aurora Crystal" Materials are not common, they are not extinct.
However, the problem also lies in the "Light."
Tongtong's core is "Illusion," weaving dreams and bewitching hearts.
Integrating an overly intense "Light" might dilute the eeriness and depth of the "Illusion."
It would make the abilities become direct and lack variety, possibly even creating a subtle conflict with deep mental skills like the "Heart-Bewitching Dream Domain."
It's more like lighting a searchlight beside an illusionist's path; it's bright, but it might also expose too much.
The second is the Nightmare Butterfly Spirit.
It is a pure Illusion attribute.
The evolution Materials are "Psychedelic Nectar," "Tears of the Nightmare," "Soul-Devouring Grass," and "Sleeping Cocoon."
Just looking at the names, one can tell this is a path specializing in the Illusion system.
This means that taking this path will extremely strengthen its Origin attribute, and all existing skills could receive a qualitative improvement.
It is the purest and most extreme extension.
But the drawback is that the difficulty of obtaining the Materials is likely the highest.
The "Sleeping Cocoon" is by no means an ordinary material.
The third: Mirage Shadow Mantis.
Dual Illusion and Dark attributes; these attributes grant it stealth and corrosive characteristics.
This path is the most aggressive of the four, but the concept of a "Mantis" form might mean the combat style would shift from long-range mental control to a style requiring close-quarters combat.
This deviates significantly from Tongtong's positioning as an illusion-based crowd controller.
The fourth, Gold-Jade Dragonfly.
Dual Illusion and Wood attributes.
The Wood attribute is usually associated with life, growth, and the power of nature.
It would grant it healing and amplification abilities.
The "Life Dew" and "Jade Wood Heart" in the Materials also confirm this.
This is undoubtedly a path more inclined towards support, which could gain auxiliary healing abilities, but it also means the Illusion-type abilities would have their growth space squeezed.
Scanning back and forth, Lin Fan's thoughts raced.
The Mirage Shadow Mantis path is the most aggressive, but the risk of a style shift is too great, so it was excluded first.
As for the Gold-Jade Dragonfly, while the Wood-attribute support path is certainly safe and can greatly enrich team functions, Tongtong's core talent lies in "Illusion," in weaving that crowd control ability where truth and falsehood are indistinguishable.
If too much Origin is diverted to healing and amplification, its most unique eeriness and control power might be diluted, ultimately reducing it to a generic support-type Armor Spirit.
In the end, his focus fell between the Aurora Dream Moth and the Nightmare Butterfly Spirit.
Both paths are purely crowd-control oriented.
One adds the Light system, while the other is extreme in Illusion.
The Aurora Dream Moth's Light attribute can indeed bring tactical surprise.
Especially when facing dark environments or evil enemies, a strong flash of light could turn the tide of battle.
Moreover, the combination of Light and Illusion is not necessarily a conflict; if one could use Light as a curtain and Illusion as the performance, perhaps a composite Domain of "Illusion hidden within Light" could be created, letting enemies fall into a deeper dream while dazzled.
But the premise for all of this is that Light and Illusion can perfectly blend, rather than suppress each other.
As for the Nightmare Butterfly Spirit... this path points directly to the Origin.
The essence of illusion lies in "believing it to be true."
Extreme Illusion is enough to make flowers bloom in the Void Realm and turn steel into dreams.
If Tongtong can evolve along this path, its "Heart-Bewitching Dream Domain" might no longer just disturb the mind, but be able to weave a near-real "Nightmare World," completely imprisoning the enemy's consciousness within it.
Lin Fan's gaze wandered back and forth between the names "Aurora Dream Moth" and "Nightmare Butterfly Spirit."
In the end, he chose the evolution path of the Nightmare Butterfly Spirit.
Purity sometimes means the most powerful possibility.
Tongtong's essence is "Illusion," an artist who weaves reality and illusion and manipulates perception; the inclusion of any other attribute might dilute the purity of this talent.
The Nightmare Butterfly Spirit path can push its core potential to the extreme.
Lin Fan took a deep breath and made his decision.
"That's it. The Nightmare Butterfly Spirit."
He looked at Tongtong in the air; the little guy was watching him with those huge compound eyes, the colorful light spots on its wings blinking.
"Let's stick to this path to the end, how about that?"
Tongtong flapped its wings, sprinkling a patch of colorful light spots as if in response.
Lin Fan smiled, then bit his finger and touched it to Tongtong's forehead.
A bright red bead of blood fell between its compound eyes, like a tiny cinnabar mole.
Tongtong's body trembled slightly, and those golden patterns began to flash wildly.
A strange connection was instantly established between them.
Contract formed!
"Tongtong, Armorization!"
Tongtong hovered in front of him, its body beginning to glow, turning into a flowing mass of golden light mist.
The light mist swirled and surged toward Lin Fan's left eye.
A warm sensation came from his left eye.
The golden light mist spread along the edge of his eye socket, from the center of his brow to his cheekbone, from the inner corner of his left eye to his temple.
The moment the light mist touched his skin, it solidified, turning into a layer of translucent golden crystal.
Lin Fan hurriedly took out his phone, turned on the camera, and took a look.
The phone screen reflected a strange eye mask covering his left eye, covering a quarter of the left side of his face.
It was not metal, but a translucent crystalline substance flowing with a pale golden luster.
The edges extended naturally, fitting perfectly against his skin as if it had grown out of his flesh.
On the surface of the eye mask, countless tiny, pale purple light patterns that looked like circuits or neural pathways appeared and disappeared.
The most striking thing was his left pupil.
The original pupil color was replaced by a layer of dreamlike, pale golden luster.
Deep within the pupil, it seemed there was a miniature, constantly rotating colorful vortex; staring for a while gave a feeling of one's mind slightly swaying.
He tried blinking; the crystal armor fit seamlessly with his skin, without any sensation of a foreign object or obstruction, instead transmitting a gentle, cool sensation.
The vision in his left eye was not obstructed; on the contrary, it became clearer and sharper, and he could even see the faint trajectories of energy flowing in the air.
Even more miraculously, an indescribable perceptive ability was spreading from the Armorization site.
He tentatively concentrated his spirit and looked at a pebble on the ground.
As his thoughts stirred slightly, the air around the pebble on the ground rippled like water, and the outline of the pebble began to blur and stretch.
In an instant, it transformed into a lifelike phantom dream flower.
Lin Fan could clearly perceive that he was using his left eye to project a pure force of Illusion onto the target, temporarily covering and distorting its "sense of existence" in reality.
This was not an Armor Skill, but a basic ability of an Illusion-type Armor Spirit, although the range of the illusion was currently limited to small objects, and the duration was short.
But that sense of control, of "making the false look real" and interfering with the appearance of reality, still gave him an indescribable excitement.