Translator: AnubisTL
With the precise intelligence extracted from the purple symbiote's soul, the next steps became much simpler.
The information obtained from this creature's soul allowed Black to quickly grasp the basic situation of this plane.
The overlords of this world were two types of symbiotic creatures: one was the colossal, ever-changing giant beasts, which provided nearly infinite energy and physical bodies.
The other was the purple symbiote he had just dispatched. They acted as the giant beasts' "external brains," providing "intelligence" and primarily responsible for creating and controlling the omnipresent, terrifying hallucinations and mental guidance.
Neither could exist without the other; together, they formed this plane's unique ecological and defensive system.
The giant beasts were clearly stratified by power level, based on their age and size.
And Black and his companions had indeed been utterly unlucky. When they crossed the spatial rift, they happened to stumble right into the regular hunting grounds of the strongest giant beast in this precinct. That was why they were caught like "turtles in a jar" the moment they arrived.
From the symbiote's memory fragments, Black not only learned the weakness of the current giant beast but also mapped out the approximate active regions of all seventh-tier and above giant beasts across the entire plane.
And most crucially, he obtained the precise coordinates of this plane's most powerful eighth-tier giant beast and its symbiote!
As the purple symbiote within the core cavity died, the "processor" maintaining the giant beast's hallucination force field instantly crashed.
In an instant, the wizards inside the giant beast, who had been immersed in beautiful illusions, were jolted awake as if doused with a bucket of ice water. They stared in horror at the gruesome environment surrounding them and the fleshy tentacles entwining their bodies.
After a brief moment of chaos, their survival instincts and exceptional combat training allowed them to quickly organize.
They soon established contact with the wizards outside who were still fighting desperately to rescue them.
With a coordinated internal and external assault, the now "mindless" and sluggish giant beast was swiftly torn apart and destroyed from within by the enraged wizards!
After breaking free, Black immediately exchanged intelligence with the other wizards, piecing together the full picture of the planar war's dire predicament:
These giant beasts were massive and easy to locate.
The real challenge lay in the powerful hallucination force fields they emitted.
Without a high-rank wizard personally leading and continuously shielding them, ordinary wizard legions and alchemy cannon fodder units would instantly lose their combat effectiveness upon entering the field. They would either turn on each other or suffer severe injuries from the hallucinations they fought against.
Worse still, if a giant beast sensed a fatal threat, it would choose to self-destruct, with its symbiote burning all its essence in the final moment. This would unleash illusion magic that manifested as "real" attacks, forming a terrifying monster legion in the wizards' eyes and inflicting massive casualties.
Wizards had attempted to break through from the inside before, but the illusion magic within the giant beast was even stronger. Moreover, the core symbiote was hidden so deeply, protected by layers of hallucinations and mental misdirection, that it was impossible to pinpoint its location.
This brought the war to a stalemate.
High-rank wizards could protect themselves but couldn't shield the entire army. Low-tier wizards were merely cannon fodder. Without locating the symbiote, the giant beasts couldn't be effectively killed, and attempting to do so risked forcing them to self-destruct.
Most daunting of all, this plane also concealed an eighth-tier giant beast!
If it sensed that the invaders possessed the power to destroy the entire plane's ecosystem, it would likely drag the whole plane down with it in a final, suicidal act!
Having learned all this, Black wasted no more time. He immediately used his magic net terminal to send all the critical intelligence he had gathered—including the eighth-tier giant beast's precise coordinates—directly to the eighth-tier wizard commander stationed in the rear.
The moment the intelligence arrived, the eighth-tier wizard, who had been resting with his eyes closed in the distant command center in the void, snapped his eyes open. A sharp, piercing light erupted from his gaze!
"Good! Well done!"
Without a moment's delay, a terrifying will that spanned nearly half the plane locked onto the coordinates.
In the next instant, an indescribable power descended, forcibly twisting and solidifying the laws of the plane.
The eighth-tier giant beast hidden in the plane's deepest reaches, along with its cunning symbiote, didn't even have time to form the thought of self-destructing. Under the absolute gap in power, it was instantly transformed into a mindless specimen.
With the loss of its top-level suppression and unified threat perception, the remaining giant beast packs crumbled into a disorganized mess.
The tide of war turned in an instant.
Led by several high-rank wizards, the wizard legion advanced like an unstoppable force. Following the intelligence Black had provided, they prioritized precision strikes on the core symbiotes of the seventh-tier giant beasts, then systematically eliminated the "brainless" beast bodies.
With this strategy, the wizards' combat efficiency soared by over a hundredfold!
A campaign that was once estimated to take centuries and cost a devastating toll had been completely won and suppressed in less than a decade, all thanks to the overwhelming advantage of information.
The victory was so smooth that even Black found it surreal.
As he stood on the stage of the victory ceremony, receiving military merits and resources so lavish they were staggering—personally bestowed by the eighth-tier wizard commander—a preposterous thought resurfaced in the depths of his mind:
Could all of this... have been a meticulously woven hallucination from the very beginning? Have I been trapped in an illusion since the moment I entered this plane?
The eighth-tier wizard seemed to see through the doubt deep in Black's eyes. During their private audience, he said with a playful smile, "Little one, still doubting the reality? I'll teach you a trick—rather dangerous, but very effective."
Seeing Black's confused expression, he lowered his voice: "The manipulator of an illusionary realm can also access information leaked by the spell's victim."
"Based on this principle, you could try... softly chanting a fragment of a Ninth-tier Master's true name, or a law characteristic of theirs that isn't widely known."
"If you don't die, it means you're either not in an illusionary realm, or the one who cast it is so powerful they can even resist a ninth-tier wizard—though that possibility is vanishingly small. If you do die... well, don't be too sad. It just means you were trapped in the illusionary realm all along, and in the real world, some Ninth-tier Master has likely already taken personal action to wipe out this plane—along with the mastermind behind it—for daring to pry into the secrets of the wizard civilization."
Black's scalp tingled with dread.
This method wasn't just dangerous—it was insane!
But... it sounded damnably consistent with the wizards' logic of pursuing "absolute verification."
After a long time of agonizing over the decision, his craving for certainty finally outweighed his fear of the risk.
Inside an absolutely secure and silent secret chamber, Black whispered a fragment of a Law's code name, one widely known to belong to a certain ninth-tier wizard of the Star Orbit Tribunal.
...Nothing happened.
No divine judgment descended, no soul was torn asunder. He could even clearly feel the normal flow of elemental energy in the air.
This isn't an illusion! It's all real!
An immense wave of relief washed over him, and he let out a long sigh, as if a thousand-pound weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
Immediately, Black's gaze turned incredibly fervent.
He abruptly raised his left hand, staring intently at the bracer on his wrist. It looked utterly ordinary now, with only a thin layer of golden liquid remaining inside.
This is it! This is the thing!
This was the "Mind Barrier Bracer," crafted by the second-tier wizard Jieming and sold for five hundred thousand military merits.
Not only had it saved his life, but it had also indirectly shaped the course of a planar war!
Having experienced the bracer's formidable effects firsthand, Black knew all too well that its true value could never be measured in military merits.
He glanced subconsciously at the massive military merit reward he had earned for providing critical intelligence and his outstanding performance. The string of numbers was so long it made his head spin.
The daze lasted only a second.
The next moment, Black jolted as if awakened, shot up from where he stood, and sprinted toward the planar teleportation formation at top speed—too rushed to even say goodbye to the wizards he knew.
Only one thought raced through his mind, utterly clear and urgent:
Find Jieming! I must! Right now! Buy as much liquid adamantine as he has! Every last drop!
(End of the Chapter)
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