Chapter 412

Chapter 412: Academic Exchange.

Ever since they left the mountaintop, Vanna and Morris had been fighting the endless replicas in this fog. They no longer remembered how many monsters made of elements they had destroyed on the way, but one thing was clear: no matter how many they killed, the monsters were always quickly replaced by more coming out of the mist.

Simply killing these replicas was useless.

Morris cast his gaze into the thick fog. Faint silver light flowed now and then in his eyes. He tracked the flashes of thought that sometimes appeared in the mist, trying to use them to find where the controller behind those monsters was.

After a while, he suddenly raised his head and looked in a certain direction: “This way.”

Vanna immediately reached out and grabbed at the air. A new greatsword condensed from the omnipresent fog. She strode ahead of Morris.

They moved through the fog, along empty streets where no one was left. They relied on the dim streetlamps around them to barely tell where the nearby buildings were. From time to time, distant sounds reached their ears—sometimes the Guard Corps of the city-state fighting monsters, sometimes eerie howls and roars, and sometimes even cries for help that sounded as if they were right beside them.

But wherever the cries for help came from, there was only surging black sludge.

The fog flowed, and the outlines of buildings inside it seemed to flow with it. The hazy shapes looked as if they had come to life. Towers in the mist turned into flesh-and-blood giants. Huge tentacles and eye stalks spread from the rooftops. Even the streetlamps on both sides began to sway, their dark posts bending like soft plants, while the lights turned into clusters of murky yellow eyes.

Just then, a low, gentle prayer sounded from ahead. It broke Morris’s thoughts and made the scene before his eyes snap back to normal.

Vanna was murmuring a benediction. Layers of radiance, like ripples on water, spread outward from her and stirred the dense fog.

After finishing a short prayer, Vanna spoke without looking back: “Be careful. Something in the fog can disturb people’s minds. We have stayed in it for too long.”

Morris answered casually: “It actually doesn’t affect me much. Seeing and hearing things that aren’t there is normal for me. I am already used to it.”

“…Next time I write to Heidi, I should talk with her about your ideas of health.”

Morris’s mouth twitched. He was about to say something when a stream of moving fog suddenly drifted in from the side. His vision blurred for a moment, and then Vanna vanished from in front of him.

The Old Scholar stopped at once, watching the surroundings with full alertness as he called out: “Vanna?”

The fog quietly flowed. No one answered his call.

Morris’s nerves grew tighter bit by bit as he quickly scanned the area.

He did not know when it had happened, but all around him there was only endless pale fog. The buildings he could barely make out before were gone. Even the dim streetlamps had disappeared from his sight. In the depths of that pale chaos, he suddenly saw something.

They were vast Shadows, like huge towers. On a closer look they subtly swayed and wriggled. They seemed to be tentacles of some enormous sea monster, stretching from the sky down toward the ground, licking at everything on the earth. Morris was unconsciously drawn to the blurred outline of that huge tentacle. He stared at it and felt as if he could draw Truth and secrets from its huge, terrifying Shadow—

The next second, Morris frowned and shook his head.

There was no Truth in that thing. It was only some kind of mind-twisting illusion.

“Hm?”

Morris heard a voice in the fog. It sounded like someone was surprised. He instantly looked toward the source of the sound. The huge illusion in the distance vanished, and a tall, thin figure walked out of the fog.

The newcomer spoke in surprise: “You actually weren’t affected—that is truly surprising.”

The tall, thin figure grew solid. It was a middle-aged man in a dark blue coat, holding a Black Leather Tome in his hand. Behind the man, a black chain stretched from the bones of his neck up into the air. At the end of the chain floated a jellyfish-shaped creature, swelling and shrinking like smoke.

Morris said nothing. He used his gaze on the cultist who had a symbiotic pact with the Smokewisp Jellyfish, watching every one of the man’s movements.

The middle-aged man smiled instead, his tone oddly calm, and said: “Don’t be so tense, old man. I actually don’t mind chatting with you. The final day of descent has already come anyway, and I have plenty of time now. I’m really curious. After seeing the form of the Lord, why weren’t you affected? You can see those visions, which means your Spirit Sight is strong enough. But you… didn’t go mad?”

Morris spoke calmly while silently reciting the name of the God of Wisdom Rahm in his heart: “Sorry. My mind has always been healthy. I am not going to fall into chaos because of a few mind-twisting illusions. Where did you take my companion?”

“You should stop worrying about others first, old man. Right now you—”

The cultist had only said half a sentence when Morris’s eyes suddenly sharpened. He raised his hand and pointed at the man: “Lomonosov Inequalities!”

Vast knowledge compressed into a single phrase. A flood of information crashed into the target’s thinking. The cultist’s body shook at once, and he lowered his head as if in great pain.

But just as Morris was about to unleash a second Mental Blast, a strong sense of alarm suddenly sounded in his heart. He snapped his mouth shut and forced his thoughts to a halt. Almost at the same time, he saw the cultist suddenly raise his head, a hint of mockery in his eyes.

The Mental Blast rebounded. Morris felt a wave of dizziness at once—but thanks to his quick reaction, the dizziness was not too serious.

The cultist spread his hands and looked mockingly at the swaying Old Scholar: “What a pity. I don’t seem to be very afraid of that…”

“Boom!”

Before the cultist finished speaking, the Smokewisp Jellyfish floating behind him began to contract violently. The next second, as the jellyfish suddenly swelled, a huge black fireball appeared in front of the cultist. The fireball screamed through the air and, a heartbeat later, smashed hard into the spot where Morris had been standing!

Black smoke and dust spread, making even the thick fog around them shudder violently. The Annihilator looked at the still-rolling smoke and shook his head with regret: “So many ‘shells’ were wiped out by your mental shocks. Did you think I would show up without any preparation? Sadly, knowledge is not the same as wisdom.”

“Clang—crack!”

A sudden clatter of something falling to the ground cut off the cultist’s muttering. His eyes widened. He used a spell to call up a violent gust of wind that blew away the black smoke. A shattered Prismatic Lens appeared before his eyes.

On the broken surface of the Prismatic Lens, there was still a faint afterimage of Morris.

“A Prismatic Lens? *Optical Deceptions*?!”

The cultist suddenly understood and looked toward a spot nearby. Almost at the same moment, Morris’s figure appeared in that empty stretch of ground.

The figure raised his right hand toward him and spoke slowly and clearly, word by word: “McKafini Conjecture and Proof.”

This time, the cultist who had a symbiotic pact with the Smokewisp Jellyfish did not even sway. He dropped all pretense and grabbed the chain floating behind his neck. As he drew on the power of Abyssal Demons, he stared hard at the Old Scholar not far away and said: “Sorry, but I actually graduated from the mathematics department of Morka City-State Central University…”

“Click.”

The crisp sound of a gun’s action reached his ears. Another figure of Morris appeared directly behind the cultist. A revolver pressed against the back of the cultist’s head.

“Bang!”

With the shot, the head-split corpse fell to the ground, and the Abyssal Demons bound to it by a symbiotic pact let out a howl and quickly dissipated.

“You could have mentioned earlier that you graduated from university.”

The Old Scholar blew on the gun barrel, put the gun away, and shook his head. In front of him, the other “Morris” faded like morning dew. At the spot where the illusion vanished, a small crystal Prismatic Lens fell to the ground and shattered.

Morris looked at the broken Prismatic Lens with some heartache. Then he lowered his head and poked the cultist’s corpse with his Gatekeeper’s cane in disdain.

“You made me waste two prisms—and your university degree.”

As he spoke, the fog around them suddenly started to flow again. The scene inside the mist changed quickly. The building outlines and lights that had vanished appeared once more in Morris’s sight. Right after that, he saw Vanna running quickly toward him from the side.

Before she even reached him, Vanna called out nervously: “Are you all right? You suddenly disappeared just now…”

Morris waved his hand: “I thought you were the one who disappeared. Looks like it was only some kind of temporary illusion… wait.”

Something suddenly came to his mind, and at the same moment, Vanna stopped a few meters away.

The two of them spoke at the same time: “First we need to confirm if it’s really you.”

They looked at each other and, again in unison, said: “the Vanished!”

“Looks like it’s really you,” Morris said with a nod after making sure nothing was wrong with either of them. “There is nothing wrong with being careful.”

Vanna was the first to notice the cultist’s corpse on the ground. Her eyes changed slightly: “You dealt with this?”

Morris nodded: “I ran into someone with a high level of education. We had a round of academic exchange. Luckily, I had a better way to solve the problem.”

Vanna: “…?”