Chapter 879: A larger stage?
Chapter 879: A larger stage?
“A larger stage?”
It had to be said that at this moment, I was drawn by Cheryl's way of putting it.
Only… my expectation for a larger stage was not for the sake of pursuing a better opportunity to showcase myself, but for the sake of filtering out the people around me.
It was just as people of a certain level liked to stay within a certain kind of circle.
“I see a bit of expectation in your eyes. I guess in your heart, you actually still hope for it, don't you?”
“So what do you mean by a larger stage? The Void outside the Main World?”
“It is indeed not wrong to say so. You should go and see the world outside the Main World. Outside, there are many geniuses like you, and there are many opportunities that you wouldn't even dare to dream of. In the final analysis, the Main World is merely a world that has been occupied, developed, and utilized. Many things here have already been digested, resulting in the only remaining resource here being… the population.”
“So the model of Transcendent academies is a place used to extract the last bits of value from the Main World?”
I asked quite casually in response.
“At least from the perspective of current development, it is indeed so. After all, Spirit Vision… is a very precious talent. In fact, after advancing to Transcendent, the Spirit Vision level is directly inherited into True Vision.”
“But it sounds quite average…”
I evaluated.
“Perhaps it is because you have never experienced a life without Spirit Vision? Spirit Vision in the Main World is the ticket bestowed upon you by the World Consciousness to cross into the extraordinary. Ordinary people in other worlds spend their entire lives without even being able to see the flow of so-called Transcendent energy. This gap is like how a person born with sight cannot understand the hardships of someone born blind.”
“Alright… I roughly understand.”
Actually, speaking of an ordinary life without Spirit Vision, I had experienced it in my previous life.
Leave aside Transcendents; there wasn't even a shadow of the Transcendent in that entire world.
What was developed was technology, and what was researched was boiling water and throwing stones.
Social development was merely changing to higher-level methods to boil water faster and throw stones further…
“Then I'll just assume you understand. However, I am also surprised. Your sense of belonging to this Main World seems low to a degree that shocks me as well. Even when I said just now that the final value is the population of the Main World, what you resonated with was the perspective of a witch.”
“After all… no matter what is said, I am a Lesser Witch now.”
I gave a light laugh, not explaining any very deep problems.
Instead of analyzing this complex problem, it was better to categorize the answer to this question into a simpler way of saying it.
“Is that what you were thinking? How interesting.”
Cheryl also spoke quite easily, as she felt that the conversation with Little Han had entered the right track.
“We've strayed a bit from the topic, haven't we? Let's return to the previous topic. Little Han, what do you think is the resistance hindering you from rushing toward a larger stage?”
“It's… the life tier, I suppose.”
I responded casually.
Actually, it wouldn't be long before I could solve the problem of elevating the life tier of my soul essence as my mastery of the Soul Depiction technique deepened.
It was just that right now I didn't have much time to try this.
“Do you like to find problems within yourself? I thought you would say it was Academy Head Mei Linde.”
“Why would you think it was her?”
I asked with a frown.
I didn't feel that the Academy Head would block me from rushing toward a larger stage.
Could it be that she still wanted to keep me here and, along the way, leave the position of Academy Head to me?
Thinking about it, it was unlikely.
Furthermore, I wouldn't be an Academy Head either.
If I truly were to be one, I'm afraid I would become a second Academy Head Bev Ailana.
I am not good at managing people.
To discuss previous attempts, I'd have to go back to that stage of being the Class President of Class 14.
Even during that brief identity, the matter of managing the class was the job of that Vice Class President.
I was almost forgetting what her name was.
Seemed to be called… Tu Xingyue?
But these matters were no longer important.
While I was thinking, Cheryl spoke again.
“As the Academy Head, I heard Mei Linde took notice of you very early on. When you displayed your talent, she gave you a lot of assistance, but similarly, she became your shackles. Think back—for whatever you want to do now, do you instinctively take into account that Academy Head's thoughts?”
“Isn't that normal? I don't like proactively causing trouble for others. I said that just now, didn't I?”
“That's why I'm telling you not to take others' views into account. What is the meaning in that? Remember the promise Mei Linde gave you back then? Letting you harvest that Game World… but she went back on her word. To be honest, that world was truly suitable as a place for you to gain experience at that time.”
“There, you would have learned many things that cannot be learned in the Main World. You would no longer view this world from a personal perspective, nor would you wait to be arranged from the perspective of a student. You would learn how to become a rule-maker, how to master your own destiny, and how to dominate the destinies of others. You could even understand how many kinds of endings there can be for a person who overestimates themselves… The Main World you live in has too many rules and regulations binding your thoughts, leaving you unable to understand the true darkness and ruthlessness within the Void. When you find someone weaker than you eyesore, then that person should die. This is the most brutal environment of the Void……”
“……There's no need for it to be like that…”
I spoke instinctively.
“When you say there's no need, you are already intoxicated under the comfortable rules others have established for you. This is equivalent to you delivering your destiny into the hands of the witch who established the rules—namely, Mei Linde.”
“She feels you shouldn't do something, then you won't do it. Don't think that those troubles you caused her were breaking her rules; actually, those were all things she could accept by default. Mei Linde used her own means, then borrowed those Transcendents of other Transcendent academies, to cleverly outline a red line for you.”
“She believes you shouldn't die, nor should you take risks, so you are very well-behaved. So well-behaved that… you only stay in the Witch Academy, or at most in the Expansion Realm. But the Expansion Realm is similarly the territory of the Witch Academy. She described the Expansion Realm to you as very dangerous…… Really? In the Expansion Realm without the Great Weakening Spell, no matter which Transcendent stirs up trouble over there, even without her taking action, many witches would go and kill those obstructive fellows.”
“What she's afraid of you going to… is the Game World.”
Cheryl's words stopped here, seemingly to give me time to digest and understand.
And Cheryl's words did indeed give me quite a bit of inspiration.
That was a description that viewed this world from another perspective.
Will I… truly not go and take risks?
But looking back, for every matter in the past, I seemed to have made attempts in a way that cherished my life.
Even that death attempt back then with the Resurrection Spell was built upon the confidence that I would not die.
Everyone felt I did something very crazy, but from my perspective, it was an attempt where there would be no accidents.
“Regarding that Game World, Mei Linde told you the coordinates were hidden by those fellows, right? Guess what… so much time has passed, what has become of that world?”
“Probably still hasn't been found.”
“No. Actually, it has already been found, but it’s just that that world has become more complex now.”
“More complex? What did it become—wait, how do you know?”
I asked with a frown, somewhat puzzled.
“It's just a world. Even if the objective Void Beacon in the Void was covered up, how long could it be hidden? Those Transcendent Academies can all establish contact with such a world; why can't I?”
“But… since it's been found, why doesn't the Witch Academy take this world—”
“Did you forget the Transcendent Non-interference Witch's Contract? If a witch violates a Witch's Contract, she will become a Traitor Anti-Witch.”
“The contract…… fine.”
I quickly thought of this matter, but other confusion also arose.
“I actually want to ask: do you know the specific contents of this contract?”
“I do After all, it's a Witch's Contract. There are always some means to obtain the contents of this kind of open-type contract. Do you want to understand the specific contents?”
“Mhm. Can you tell me the coverage range of this Transcendent Non-interference? If all Transcendents in the Void cannot interfere… a Witch's Contract couldn't possibly achieve such a thing, could it?”
I asked, then took a sip of Fool's Dream Drink to moisten my mouth.
“I can tell you but before telling you, I want to correct a thought of yours: that is, a Witch's Contract can achieve restricting all Transcendents in the Void from interfering.”
“What? How… how is that possible?”
My eyes widened instantly in disbelief.
“Naturally it is… 'possible.' An ordinary Witch's Contract uses contractual power to complete the execution of the contract. If the witch race truly forcibly signed this kind of restrictive contract with all Transcendents, then the ones executing this contract would be the entire Transcendent witch race and all Transcendent Witches. And this contract ultimately has only two results.”
Cheryl said this while holding up two fingers.
“One is the witch race completing the contractual order, and the second…… is the witch race completely perishing in the Void. After all, if the witch race perishes, then the Witch's Contract naturally has no meaning. But you also understand that under normal circumstances, the witch race won't have a problem with their brains and sign this kind of contract with no gain.”
“So is this the execution? Fine……”
I nodded without refuting anything.
This kind of execution was not meaningless.
A Witch's Contract that risked the entire witch race represented that the witch race possessed the determination to fight any Transcendent power to the very last witch!
“Alright back to the topic from just now. You want to know the scope covered by that contract. I'll just be blunt: the restricted scope is naturally all Transcendents of the Main World.”
“What about Transcendents outside the Main World?”
Having obtained this expected answer, I asked following the momentum.
“Little Han, you have to understand. Transcendents are merely not interfering with that world, but it doesn't mean if some Transcendent outside the contract wants to interfere, the witches won't beat them to death.”
“Oh.”
I understood.
So power still determines the right to speak.
Even if the Witch's Contract signed by Academy Head Mei and the others had its loopholes exploited, it still didn't hinder the Academy Head and the others from being able to do what they wanted to do by relying on their own power.
“How about it? Is there anything else you want to know?”
Cheryl rested one side of her cheek on her other hand, looking as if she were expecting me to ask something else.
“Then… What is the trouble with that Game World?”
I continued to ask.
It had to be said that the Anti-Witch opposite me had suddenly touched upon a topic I cared about very much.
Perhaps… it was the groundwork laid by those analyses she spoke of earlier.
“Naturally, it is the people below the Transcendent level. Now, too many outsiders are gathered in that world. The situation is very chaotic.”
“Below Transcendent? Outsiders? Are there many?”
I recalled what the Academy Head told me when she had a showdown with me back then—that many people were stirring up trouble in the Game World, seemingly primarily Wizard apprentices from the Wizard Academy.
“Yes, there should be quite a few. If you want to ask me for detailed contents, I cannot give you an accurate number right now either.”
“Are there… that many outsiders below the Transcendent level? Do they not have the same Earth Vein Chains as us?”
I asked with some puzzlement.
You had to know that currently in the Main World, as far as I knew, I was the only person below Transcendent who had also severed the Earth Vein Chains.
Perhaps there were others, but they certainly wouldn't be many.
After all… the price I paid to sever the Earth Vein Chains back then was a Demon Lord's heart!
To let a non-Transcendent sever the Earth Vein Chains early and leave their original world, “sacrificing” a Transcendent—no matter how you looked at it, it didn't seem quite worth it, did it?
Were there so many geniuses outside the Void worthy of doing so?
“Mm-hmm You actually guessed right! This concept of Earth Vein Chains actually still has differences across different worlds. For example, in the extremely protective type like the Main World, because the World Consciousness knows we are abducting her children, it is very hard to sever them. Even with such a thought, many troublesome matters will be involved.”
“There are also those similar to the Wizard World, which prioritize world invasion. Such Wizard apprentices can conditionally ignore the Earth Vein Chains to descend into another world. And the method for this is a 'declaration of war' with a world as the unit. Transcendent Wizards are also called pirates of the Void. They use worlds as ships, building the boarding planks to step onto the opponent's world, conducting the most primitive and violent boarding battles.”
“Of course without severing the Earth Vein Chains, no matter how the World Consciousness cooperates, there are ultimately still many restrictions. Therefore, most non-Transcendent wanderers in the Void are actually those whose original worlds were forced into extinction. Their original worlds were destroyed, so naturally the Earth Vein Chains no longer exist.”
“So that's how it was?”
Regarding the differences and variations of Earth Vein Chains, this was indeed the first time I had heard of it.
However… I had also learned about another method to leave a world without severing the Earth Vein Chains, which was… being a Child of Destiny.
But there was no way that method could be popularized on a large scale.
As for the method where one's own world was destroyed, I had learned about it before.
At that time, it was back in the Expansion Realm, and Fu Xinglan and the others told me.
They had also exchanged those pieces of intelligence for a favor from me.
“People who survive after a world is destroyed might, if lucky, also inherit the will of the world. That is the heritage of a world. Therefore, geniuses who stun everyone easily appear among those people whose own worlds were destroyed, leaving their own traces within the Void.”
“And such people are also talents that various Void factions try their hardest to recruit. Now, this Game World is probably a gathering place for a group of such fellows.”
“But… Why have they come to this Game World? It makes no sense. It couldn't be… that those Transcendent races arranged them to come specifically to cause trouble for the Witch Academy, could it?”
Regarding this, I was still puzzled.
“That is naturally because… there is something here that attracts them to come.”