Chapter 213 : Chapter 213
Chapter 213. The Temptation of Knowledge
Logaris turned his gaze toward the third problem.
This time, he frowned.
It was a biological problem: Rejection Neutralization Between Extraordinary Creatures and Mortal Blood.
This touched upon a weak point in Logaris’s knowledge. His main fields were magitech machinery and energetics. He had only limited experience with biological modification.
“This is a little troublesome.”
Logaris stroked his chin as he watched the bloodline model collapse over and over again.
He quickly laid out several sets of data in the air.
Deduction.
Failure.
He adjusted the parameters and ran the deduction again.
Three hours passed. Logaris’s forehead was drenched in sweat, and his face had gone somewhat pale from the strain of such intense mental calculation.
At last, he jabbed a finger sharply at the core of the model.
Hum!
The two blood-red energies, which had originally been raging against each other in violent mutual rejection, miraculously fused together and formed a stable double-helix structure.
Golden light shone for the third time.
[Diagram: Analysis of the Blood of One Hundred Extraordinary Creatures]
As the golden light entered his body, a heavy rumble came from the depths of the hall.
The invisible barrier that had been blocking the space behind the statue slowly melted away like thawing ice and snow, revealing a passage that led deeper into the darkness.
“It opened!”
A flash of delight passed through Sylvia’s eyes. She spun Moonfall lightly in her hand. “Come on, Logaris. Let’s see what that lunatic actually left behind.”
She took a step forward, intending to head inside.
After two steps, however, she realized there was no movement beside her.
Sylvia stopped and turned around.
Logaris was still standing where he was. He did not immediately look toward the passage leading to the core. Instead, he stood there with his head tilted up, his gaze slowly sweeping across the sea of floating golden runes through his lenses.
His expression was calm, yet it carried an almost stubborn focus, like a traveler who had wandered through the desert for ages and suddenly found a clear spring.
“Logaris?” Sylvia frowned. “Why are you standing there? The barrier is already open.”
“Sylvia, wait a little longer.”
Logaris’s voice was steady and gentle. He raised a hand, his fingertips tracing faint motions through empty air, as though outlining the paths of those runes.
“Wait for what?” Sylvia was puzzled. “We do not have much time. This is still the Great Howling Rift, enemy-occupied territory no matter how you look at it. If Carlisle suddenly comes in with a few Sixth-Tier people at his side—”
“There is no ‘if.’”
Logaris cut her off. He turned his head, pushed up the glasses on the bridge of his nose, and let a faint, confident smile curl across his lips.
“If that pack of trash really does come in...” He gave a quiet laugh, his tone thick with undisguised contempt. “Then they had better be prepared to stay here forever.”
Sylvia looked at his utterly composed expression and let out a helpless sigh. “Then what exactly are you trying to do?”
“Look at these.”
Logaris pointed at the thousands of unsolved problems overhead, his eyes filled with pure admiration and longing.
“Three thousand four hundred and twenty-one puzzles. Those three just now were nothing more than appetizers.”
Like a man introducing a cherished private collection, his tone grew slightly lighter. “This place contains advanced concepts in spatial folding, long-lost ancient rune architectures, and even reverse analysis of Divine Power... Even in Saint Arcadia Academy’s forbidden archives, you would never find such a complete and systematic body of higher knowledge.”
At that point, Logaris drew in a deep breath, and his eyes became incomparably clear.
“This is a mountain of gold, Sylvia. For a mage who seeks truth, turning a blind eye to it would be a crime.”
He pulled out a bottle of spirit-restoration potion from his pocket and tipped it back like water, then elegantly wiped the corner of his mouth.
“The core region is right there. It is not going anywhere, and neither are we.”
Logaris turned his eyes toward the fourth puzzle, reason blazing within them.
“Let me solve a few more. A chance like this—to converse across a thousand years with the greatest geniuses of the past—is not something one gets every day.”
Time passed little by little.
Glug.
An empty potion bottle was tossed behind him and shattered on the floor.
Logaris did not even turn his head. Another spirit replenisher was already in his hand. It was a strange purple liquid that tasted like chili water mixed with medicated oil. A normal mage would bare their teeth and wince for ages after a single mouthful, yet he downed it in one gulp as though he were chugging an ice-cold cola.
“Ah, that hits the spot!”
He let out a belch tinged with magical residue. Fine blood vessels had spread across his eyes, yet his mind was more frenzied than ever.
Before him, the flying golden runes were no longer dull and tedious puzzles. They were more like mountains of gold waiting to be toppled.
“The fourth one is solved.”
Logaris’s fingers moved wildly through the air, as though he were playing a manic piano concerto. As the final rune fell into place, golden light burst apart, and a new stream of memory flooded into his mind.
[Alchemy Formula: Berserk Potion · Revised]
[Description: Removes 90% of the original version’s fatality rate while preserving pain suppression, adrenal stimulation, and full-body muscular activation. Side effect: total exhaustion for one day after the effects wear off.]
“Good stuff!” Logaris’s eyes lit up. “Dilute the concentration a hundredfold, and this becomes a standard ration for the Northern Legion.”
Without the slightest pause, he immediately threw himself at the next one.
“The fifth one... done!”
[Inscription Technique: Mana Overload · Self-Destruct Type]
[Description: Causes a weapon’s mana circuits to erupt at 200% output in an instant, at the cost of a high probability of material destruction.]
“The sixth...”
[Biological Modification Procedure: Titan’s Muscle (Incomplete)]
[Description: Stimulates unlimited proliferation of muscle fibers through the injection of high-tier earth drake extract. In theory, it can create super-soldiers capable of tearing steel apart with their bare hands.]
“There are a few flaws, but I can fix them,” Logaris muttered to himself as he scribbled furiously in his notebook.
Sylvia stood off to the side, Moonfall lowered slightly in her hand.
As she watched that increasingly frenzied figure from behind, her brows drew tighter and tighter.
Something was very wrong with Logaris now.
If he had been a rigorous scholar at the start, then now he looked like a gambler with bloodshot eyes—or a rat that had fallen into a granary. The magical fluctuations around him were beginning to grow chaotic and sharp, even carrying a faint crimson aura that made people deeply uncomfortable.
“Logaris, I think you should rest for a while,” Sylvia said. Her voice was still cool as ever, but a layer of hard-to-detect worry had already appeared between her brows.
“No time! Stop bothering me!”
Logaris did not even turn around. “Just a little more... just a little more! This one—Soul Severance and Reconstruction... as long as the soul is sliced apart and stuffed into an alchemical puppet...”
He stared fixedly at the extremely complicated dark-red puzzle before him.
This one touched upon a blind spot in his knowledge. Soul studies were far too abstruse. But he did not want to stop. That sensation of being “all-knowing and all-powerful” was eating away at his reason.
It was as if whispers from the unseen were ceaselessly tempting him, corroding his sanity.