Chapter 305: Life's Counterattack
In Lilith's Cottage's potion resource storage vault, Wizard Francis looked with puzzlement at the five black wizards who had stopped their assault.
At the same time, he saw three ghost brides standing behind the black wizards, dressed in exaggerated black wedding gowns.
Wizard Francis attempted to use plant magic, striking toward the three brides. As a result, the Bellflower King's [Cannon Flower Artillery] passed through their bodies with no effect whatsoever.
Wizard Francis's eyes widened. "How is this possible?"
"What are these things? They're neither undead nor curse creatures, and they ignored my magical attack."
The three ghost brides paused around the Life Force Field, then, under Advisor Francis's shocked gaze, they actually lifted their legs, stepped forward, and walked right in.
The behavior of the three ghost brides passing through the Life Force Field almost shocked Senior Advisor Francis so much that his eyeballs were about to fall out.
"What is this principle? Life Force Fields inherently carry anti-undead fields. It's impossible for them to have no effect on undead creatures at all. Curse creatures would also be resisted by Life Force Fields. Life Force Fields are formed by stimulating life energy, and their energy exists within a certain living body. It's just a question of the strength or weakness of these living bodies."
Wizard Francis quickly retreated and ordered his several students to also retreat and not approach the three ghost brides. "Retreat, retreat."
"What... exactly are these things? The Blood Curse Court actually still has this kind of thing in their possession." "No, they also can't precisely control this kind of thing. It looks like they can only roughly issue commands, so these ghost brides can only move in one direction. Even after entering the barrier, they neither attack me nor take the opportunity to destroy the Life Force Field generating device to let those three black wizards outside come in."
"If I'm not mistaken, these ghost brides were only given simple commands to move in a certain direction. If it's just this, then there's still hope."
The three black wizards outside the small Life Force Field all laughed.
"Francis, I say you shouldn't be so stubborn. With your abilities, wouldn't it be better to abandon these students and resources and just escape directly?"
Advisor Francis looked at them and snorted. "I said, you black wizards wouldn't understand anyway."
Advisor Francis was anxious in his heart, thinking, 'Locke, now it's all up to you. As long as you can redeploy the barrier, then all problems can still be saved.'
...
On another side, Old Witch Forbes looked at that group of ghost brides who had intruded into the alchemy cottage protected by the Life Barrier, her eyes wide. "How is this possible?"
"What are all these things?"
She vaporized a bottle of Minor Viridian Potion and injected it into a ghost bride's body. Immediately that ghost bride's body began to twist, her face began to swell, but before long, she recovered to her original state and continued walking forward according to some kind of mechanical pace.
Old Witch Forbes, as a formal potion master, had a solemn gaze. "What is this thing that can actually ignore Minor Viridian Potion?"
"Stay calm. At least she didn't immediately launch an attack on me."
Old Witch Forbes looked at the various First Circle potions piled like garbage inside the alchemy cottage behind her and said, "Try the potions one by one. I don't believe there's no potion that can work on this thing. Even if I use an exhaustive method, I'll find the reagent effective against you."
...
Inside the underground defensive facility, after Locke entered, following the direction Witch Gabriel guided him, he headed to the bottom level of this defensive facility.
Witch Gabriel introduced the outside situation to Locke. "The current situation is like this, Locke."
"Right now there's one ghost bride who also passed through the magic door, entered this underground facility, and is searching for you."
"Because she can ignore Life Force Fields, it's unknown whether she can harm formal wizards."
"Currently there are no records of ghost brides engaging in combat with any of our wizards."
Locke entered this facility's core control room. Unexpectedly, Locke actually saw Anglon here.
At this moment, Anglon was sitting in a corner with red eyes, holding his head. When he saw Locke, he was startled. After sensing Locke's magic pressure, his emotions became even more intense.
"Don't come over!"
"This isn't my fault, you can't blame me for this!"
Anglon roared with red eyes, "Locke Augustine, do you know what it feels like to be the center of attention?"
"When I first enrolled, the way Teacher Halen Vera looked at me was like a talent scout seeing a thoroughbred horse."
"No matter what I did, his eyes were full of smiles when he looked at me. But after you came, everything changed. Teacher Halen looked at you with the same eyes he used to look at me with."
Anglon gritted his teeth and roared, "Today's situation is all because of you."
"I just wanted to regain Teacher Halen Vera's approval of me, nothing more. So I could only seek out those black wizards, hoping they would share some data with me."
"Time after time. Originally I just wanted to dabble lightly, but at that time, you just happened to become Teacher Halen Vera's student." Anglon said maniacally, "You drove me mad."
"I just wanted to become excellent, more excellent than everyone else. I just had to become more excellent than all of you. Why couldn't you all let me have my way!"
"Why!!!"
Locke frowned. "You explore truth to gain others' praise?"
"But I'm just acting out of my own interest."
"This is your own problem, it has nothing to do with me. What does it matter to me whether you're excellent or not? I only care whether I can explore what I want to know."
Madness flashed in Anglon's eyes. He actually charged directly at Locke, wanting to fight a formal wizard, but the next moment, Locke directly deployed his Life Force Field permanent defensive magic, knocking him away, directly sending him flying and causing Anglon to faint on the ground.
Locke didn't look at him but looked at the device covered with buttons before him. Some devices had been damaged by Anglon's methods, but he was just a wizard apprentice with limited knowledge. Witch Gabriel indicated in the Nibelung System that those damaged buttons didn't matter.
Witch Gabriel said, "First, place your palm on the Life Force Field's core crystal ball."
That was something Anglon didn't have the ability to destroy.
Locke walked up and pressed his palm on it. Immediately his consciousness infinitely elevated, as if he could overlook this land, looking down on the entire ecology of Lilith's Cottage port city.
He could see that those ecologies were gathering their life energy toward this large-scale Life Force Field generating device, except this large-scale Life Force Field had been shut down.
But at the same time, he discovered that it was now impossible to directly activate it either, because originally the Life Force Field relied on the life energy flood of the ecosystem that Lilith's Cottage had created to deploy the field. But currently the plants of the entire ecosystem had comprehensively gone on strike. The entire earth had been cursed into cursed land. The souls of the dead had been twisted into curse spirits. Ghost brides were spread throughout this cursed land, moving about freely like entering uninhabited territory, scattering everywhere.
At this time, at this moment, the life force of the entire land had been suppressed to its minimum!
"Hmm, that's not right." Locke said with surprise, "I thought the curse power had completely suppressed this land's natural ecology, but unexpectedly there's still hope."
"This is..."
Through this crystal ball, Locke noticed that the ecology of the entire Lilith's Cottage headquarters had indeed been comprehensively suppressed, but at this very moment, there were actually still some moss-type plants striving to resist this curse energy flood.
It was just that they were too weak, a disorganized rabble, trying to stop a chariot with a mantis's arms. But because these moss-type plants were numerous in number, their locations were scattered, their life force was strong, and they were relatively tiny and difficult to attract specialized attacks, they had surprisingly become fish that slipped through the net under the Blood Curse Court's previous several curse offensives, becoming a part that could still operate within the current ecosystem.
"Avoiding those curse attacks is one thing, but didn't the Blood Curse Court bribe this land before? Why are these mosses unaffected?" Locke fell into thought. "Wait, I know why now. The Blood Curse Court's model missed one thing."
"In the ecosystem, the first to obtain energy levels are those tree-type plants, then those herbaceous and vine-type plants, fern plants. As for moss-type and lichen-type plants, they fundamentally can't compete with other types of plants, so they probably didn't grab much energy in the previous bribery."
Locke's expression became strange, his understanding of ecology becoming more multifaceted. "The ecosystem that Lilith's Cottage constructed is much more resilient than I imagined."