Blind Box World - SSS-Rank Eye of Truth

The moment the last monster fell, the pale blue notification panel appeared before Ethan again.

[Congratulations to the Bone Demon Serpent for eliminating four Orc Kings, seventeen Goblins, one White Tusk Boar, one Starstone Crab, one Snow Lion, receiving 6,800 points.]

[The Bone Demon Serpent continues to lead the ranking board.]

Lěng Ruò Yān stood beside him, and after reading that line, a question suddenly arose in her mind.

"Hold on." She turned to look at Ethan, frowning. "If the ranking board says Bone Demon Serpent, then doesn’t all of this score fall into that monster’s hands? In the end, the one who receives the reward will be it too, not you."

The more she spoke the more sense it seemed to make, and her voice grew louder.

"You went to all that trouble scheming and plotting, luring a whole horde of monsters into fighting to the death, and in the end you’re doing free labor for a snake? You—"

"Who told you I was doing free labor?" Ethan burst out laughing.

He crossed his arms, looking at the ranking board hanging in the air, the corner of his mouth lifting full of smugness.

"I only changed the name displayed on the outside. The connection between this place’s law and me is still fully intact, not changed in the slightest. In other words, this whole trial space still knows perfectly well that the one who killed those monsters was me, the points are still on me, and the final reward will come to me too."

He jerked his chin toward the ranking board.

"It’s only when others look at it that they see the name Bone Demon Serpent."

Lěng Ruò Yān stood frozen in place.

She opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again, and in the end couldn’t get out a single word.

She had assumed this Awakened had merely fabricated a false name to conceal his identity. At most it would be some small trick that fooled other people’s eyes.

But now he was telling her that he had separated the displayed name from the internal connection. One side displaying outward as the Bone Demon Serpent, the other side recording the truth as still him. The two things running in parallel, without contradicting each other.

That was no longer deceiving people.

That was deceiving the very law of this world.

Lěng Ruò Yān had lived to this age and had seen countless strong ones. She had once seen her old master, a Silver-tier Awakened, shatter an entire hill with a single move. She had also just witnessed with her own eyes Tuyết Cơ speak a single line and send a whole flock of hundreds of Harpies fleeing.

But all of them, however strong, were only those who played well inside the rules of the game.

And this person before her was reaching in and rewriting those very rules.

A chill ran down Lěng Ruò Yān’s spine. She looked at Ethan, and for the first time in her life, a thought rose in her mind that even she found absurd.

’If he can change the very law of a world...’

Her fingers unconsciously clenched tight, her nails digging into her palm.

’...then perhaps, he could save my mother too.’

The moment that thought sprang up, she gritted her teeth in alarm and snuffed it out, like someone who had just carelessly touched fire. She had been disappointed far too many times already. She wouldn’t permit herself to hope even one more time.

But that seed, once sown, was very hard to pull back up.

Ethan paid no attention to Lěng Ruò Yān’s strange expression. He had already set to work on the thing he was looking forward to most.

Collecting the spoils.

He went to the Goblins and the four Orc Kings first. The silver-gray left hand rested on each corpse, the Disintegration skill was activated, and those bodies broke apart one after another into tiny particles of energy.

But this time, he didn’t keep the crystallized flesh.

"No need." He waved a hand when Laira was about to ask. "I already said it, these humanoid things I can’t get down."

He only picked up the energy crystals that remained. Four from the four Orc Kings, of fairly good quality, plus a handful of crystal fragments from the Goblins.

But when he moved on to the three other monsters, everything was entirely different.

The moment the body of the White Tusk Boar, that is, the colossal white boar, began to break apart, apart from a lump of crystallized flesh half the size of a person and an energy crystal, several other things also remained on the ground.

A pair of red crystal tusks, still fully intact, radiating a brilliant red light. And a thick hide of white fur, soft yet strangely sturdy, on which those mysterious red symbols were still imprinted.

Ethan picked up the hide, felt it, then looked at Laira in surprise.

"This..."

"That’s material." Laira stepped over, her red-orange eyes flashing with satisfaction. "There are some monster species that, after cultivating to a certain level, will temper some part of their own body into a weapon or armor. The White Tusk Boar tempers its tusks and its hide. See those red symbols on its hide? Those were carved in by natural energy over many years, like a kind of magical additive."

She jerked her chin toward the stone crab’s corpse.

"That Starstone Crab’s shell is worth far more."

Sure enough, when Ethan decomposed the stone crab, what remained was a translucent blue shell, glittering inside as though it held a whole starry sky, so hard that even using all his strength he couldn’t scratch it. And from the Snow Lion, that is, the white lion, he obtained a set of sharp fangs and a hide of snow-white fur.

In just a short while, a pile of spoils had stacked up before the three of them.

The problem was that the pile of spoils was too large.

Ethan looked at the heap of goods nearly as tall as himself, then looked at his own two bare hands, the corner of his mouth twitching.

Three lumps of crystallized flesh, each half the size of a person. One colossal crab shell. Two furred hides. A pair of crystal tusks over a meter long. A set of fangs. Plus a whole pile of energy crystals.

Never mind three people, even with ten people they couldn’t have hauled all of it away.

"I really do wish," Ethan muttered, his voice full of bitterness, "that I had a storage pouch. Even just a small one would do. A tiny little bit of space to stuff all this into."

But storage pouches were extravagant treasures, and even in all of Safe Zone Number Seven only a handful of people owned one, each expensive enough to trade for an entire building. With his current status as a penniless wanted man, even thinking about it was idle dreaming.

In the end, he had no choice but to make a decision.

"Bury it." He clapped his hands decisively. "Find a hidden spot, dig a hole and bury all the bulky things, then mark it. We’ll only take the crystallized flesh with us. When we get out of here, or when we find a way to transport it, we’ll come back for it."

No sooner said than done.

The three of them found a hidden rock hollow at the foot of a bone pyramid, dug a deep pit, stuffed in all the hides, the shell, the tusks, and the fangs, filled the dirt back in, then Ethan used his left arm to carve a small symbol on a nearby boulder as a marker.

He looked at that symbol and nodded, looking satisfied.

If he had known at that moment that this treasure cache would later be dug up first by another group of people, and that the day he came back to claim his goods would drag him into a whirlpool of trouble of what magnitude, he probably would have chosen to just haul it all away and be done with it.

That left the three lumps of crystallized flesh.

Ethan looked at those three lumps of flesh each half the size of a person, then slowly turned his head, his gaze coming to rest on Lěng Ruò Yān.

Lěng Ruò Yān was stared at until a chill ran through her, and she instinctively took a step back.

"What... what are you looking at me for?"

"Ruò Yān." Ethan broke into an extremely friendly smile, the kind of smile that one look at told her boded no good. "Are your puppets strong?"

"What if they are?" She was on guard.

"How many kilos can they carry?"

Lěng Ruò Yān: "..."

Half an hour later, in that bizarre world of bone pyramids beneath the green light cast down from the upside-down ocean, an extremely odd scene was unfolding.

Leading the way was an Awakened carrying nothing, both hands in his pockets, strolling leisurely.

Beside him was a gorgeous red dragon, likewise carrying nothing, occasionally even letting out a yawn.

And bringing up the rear, dragging one step at a time, was a wooden puppet about two meters tall, on its back tied a colossal cloth bundle holding three lumps of crystallized flesh, so heavy that every step it planted made the ground sink slightly. The wooden puppet walked in fits and jerks, its two gaunt wooden legs trembling violently, looking about to snap at any moment.

And the one controlling that puppet, Lěng Ruò Yān, muttered curses the entire way.

"My puppets are for fighting, not for being porters..." She gritted her teeth. "I’m a Puppet Master... a Puppet Master... not a baggage hauler..."

"Just think of it as training." Ethan turned his head back, consoling her very sincerely. "Controlling a puppet carrying a heavy load is also a way to train your control ability."

"Go train yourself!"

Ethan chuckled and turned back to keep walking.

In truth, what he said wasn’t wrong. While the puppet was hauling the goods, he noticed that the threads of energy running from Lěng Ruò Yān’s fingers to the puppet were bearing a far heavier load than usual, forcing her to distribute her control force more finely. This was indeed a method of training, she simply hadn’t realized it.

But there was something else that concerned Ethan more.

He glanced at the eye on his forehead. This whole time, it had been growing faintly hot in waves, as if trying to remind him of something.

And Laira, walking beside him, was frowning too.

"Ethan." She said quietly. "The Solar Flame Seal is resonating more strongly. Much more strongly than when we first came in here."

"Meaning we’re getting close to that purple halo."

"Not only that." Laira shook her head, her gaze turning serious. "I have a feeling... the thing inside it is about to wake up. If we don’t hurry, I’m afraid someone else will get their hands on it first."

Ethan fell silent.

Inside him, a feeling of urgency began to rise. The clock was running, and here he was still wandering around hauling meat.

But before he could quicken his pace, the ground in the distance suddenly shook.

About a mile away, the ground split open.

From underground, a gate of black stone slowly rose up, about twenty meters tall, its surface carved all over with ancient symbols. When the gate had fully emerged, its two heavy doors slowly swung open.

And from within, they came pouring out.

Puppets.

Countless wooden puppets poured out of the gate like a flood. Each stood about two meters tall, its body assembled from blocks of glossy black wood, its joints made of brass, on its head a wooden mask carved with the lines of a human face, its expression blank and lifeless. In the hand of each was a curved blade of brass-yellow.

And above their heads, in midair, were fine invisible threads pulling and jerking, making the whole mass move in fits and jerks yet at a frightening speed.

One. Ten. A hundred.

They kept flooding out without pause, quickly blanketing a vast stretch of ground.

Ethan looked at that scene, and his expression immediately changed.

It wasn’t that he was afraid of those puppets. With his and Laira’s coordination, fighting a few dozen of them was no problem.

But the problem was their number.

Looking at that flood pouring endlessly out of the gate, this was likely not a group but an entire army. Fighting an army that knew no fatigue, no pain, no fear of death, then however strong Laira was, she could only be ground down to death.

He wasn’t insane enough to burn his stamina on that pile of wood.

"Laira!" Ethan shouted. "Take off!"

Laira didn’t ask a single word. Her wings burst open, one arm scooping up Ethan, the other grabbing Lěng Ruò Yān who was still standing there dazed, then beating her wings and shooting straight up into the sky.

The wooden puppet hauling the meat was left behind below, clumsily running after them a few steps then rooting itself in place, lifting its lifeless wooden mask to stare blankly after its master.

"My bundle of meat!" Lěng Ruò Yān wailed in midair.

"Forget it!" Ethan shouted back. "Your life matters more!"

But as they flew higher and looked down at the pitch-black sea of puppets churning below, Lěng Ruò Yān suddenly fell silent.

She stared hard at those invisible threads jerking the puppets along, and in her black eyes, something very strange flashed.

It wasn’t fear.

It was longing.