Chapter 366: Prototype S16ir112... Part-2.
Chapter 366: Prototype S16ir112... Part-2.
Once he opened his eyes, Neo found himself standing in a gigantic hall made up of silver- white marble with various ancient designs made on the floor and the walls in gold.
'Pure gold is used to make carvings on the floor and walls; moreover, silver and mithril have been used as materials to create this building...'
Silver and gold aside, the mithril needed to make all this alone would cost an immense fortune, and that's not even the most expensive thing.
Neo glanced all around him, and he noticed the presence of an invisible magic circle carved on these walls and the floor.
This magic circle is not only strengthening them but is also blocking any sort of mana fluctuation.
In other words, even an SS-rankers mana detection will be ineffective inside this place, and only a small area can be detected.
'Unless someone has perfected 'Mana Field,' I highly doubt anyone can deal with this magic -circle...'
'Which means even the attacks of an SS ranker will have not much effect on the walls and floor of this place...'
The more Neo analyzed this place, the more fascinated he became with it.
'There's no doubt about it now; this is the exact place I was looking for...'
With a wide grin on his face, Neo headed into one of the few corridor entrances from the giant hall.
[Summon: Gluttonous Golden Worm King!]
A massive golden-colored worm appeared from the summoning circle, and it was so huge that the whole corridor was blocked.
"Explore ahead and eat anything that comes in your way..."
With his amazing intuition as an SS-ranker, Neo was easily able to pinpoint which corridor was best for him from all those corridor entrances in the giant hall.
Thus he entered the one that his intuition was telling him to and used his worm-type summon to deal with any defense mechanisms that might be placed ahead.
'This place is specially meant to deal with SS-rankers; I need to keep my guard up...'
'In terms of threat level, this place is likely equal to a peak SS-rank dungeon gate... thankfully
I have the 'Orb of wayward paths' or I might get stuck in this place...'
That glowing Orb that Neo used to locate this place is an 'SS++' rank item, called the Orb of wayward paths.
As long as you have a selfish and depraved goal in your mind, it can lead you to any destinations that you might want to go to.
The only requirement to use it is that you must harbor extremely selfish goals in your heart, which others may perceive as evil.
You don't even need any mana to use this thing; it can lead you to any destinations as long as you can fulfill the condition to use it first.
'As an item from the arsenal of King Allen himself, this orb is indeed mysterious and amazing... Good thing I took my time to find it...'
During the fifty-year orc war, Neo found an old map that was pointing to a location in the orc nation.
Neo went ahead and slaughtered thousands of innocent orc civilians to reach that location and finally found this orb hidden by a massive magic circle.
'Although I don't know how it ended up there, it's a good thing that I found it... Now this orb will help me create a lot of variables for myself...'
The more Neo looked at that orb, the more pleasing to the eye it seemed.
'Alas, it won't work inside here; otherwise, I would have used it here too...'
This orb and this hidden place are both of the same rank, so it's not possible for the orb to work here.
It was already good enough that it worked outside and helped him find this place without much trouble.
*Crunch!*
While Neo was contemplating in his mind, the giant worm chewed and broke all the defense mechanisms ahead.
Even when the worm got injured, Neo just embedded mana into it to forcefully heal it; this way, all the damage was taken by that worm, and Neo remained unharmed.
He directly ignored most of the intersections and diverging paths and kept heading in the direction that his intuition was pointing to.
'Good thing I only found this place as an SS-ranker; if I was lower in rank, then I would have already gotten lost in this massive maze-like area...'
Although most of the corridors and everything in this place are still intact, there are still signs of wear and tear.
After all, the place is more than two millennia old, and it's been abandoned for a long time, so it's in a more dilapidated state.
'Hoh, so there are more floors to it?'
After walking for half an hour, Neo reached the end of the path, and a staircase appeared in front of him that was leading to the lower floor.
Without hesitation, he descended downward.
An SS-ranker has nothing to fear after all; he can come and go as he pleases.
While heading down, Neo sighed and thought,
'This isn't even the real thing; it's just a prototype, and yet it's so vast and so brilliant that it
gives a sense of insignificance to others...'
This place is extremely vast, yet everything here is well decorated with gold and silver.
All walls are made up of rare and precious materials like Mithril and Adamantium.
Even SS-rankers will have difficulty damaging such objects.
'The Mithril and Adamantium used to create the first floor of this place alone can be said to be a hundred times more than the whole reserves of the world alliance...'
Mithril and Adamantium are extremely rare items that are used to create 'SS+' rank weapons and artifacts; there is only a very small reserve of them in the arsenal of the world alliance.
Which means it's already extremely rare in the whole world, yet so much of them has been used to just create walls and floors here, which can be said to be a massive waste.
'If it becomes possible to break these walls and harvest these materials, there would be enough mithril and Adamantium to arm every SS ranker in the world with a full-on armor and weaponry made up of these rare items...'
'I am sure that Ashtel would have immediately started to think of methods to harvest these... He would have liked to arm everyone with armor made up of this... That way, the war against demons will go even smoother...'
Ashtel is the type of person who will help out others if possible, and he doesn't care whether others get stronger from his help.
He has the confidence to defeat anyone, no matter who it is; thus, he often helps out others in
improving.
But Neo is different.
Unlike most SS-rankers who have the burden of a race on their shoulders and are working as
saviors and heroes, Neo has nothing of that sort.
He has always considered himself free of all constraints and limitations.
'Let's not dilly-dally on this matter; I need to hurry...'
Neo shook his head and directly ignored the matter of harvesting the rare items.
Unless there's someone with perfected 'mana field' it's basically impossible to do such a thing
anyway, so it's better to focus on your own goal.
Neo crossed another floor and moved downstairs even further.
He ignored various hallways and diverging paths and headed towards the places that his
intuition was telling him to.
After repeating this process over and over for thirteen times, Neo finally reached the lowest
floor and arrived at a gigantic altar-like place.
'No wonder this place is mentioned as a 'prototype' by the orb of wayward paths; the altar here is incomplete and unusable.'
Neo shook his head and stopped caring about the altar; he didn't come here for that anyway.
[Summon: Barrier eating parasite!]
A small spider-like being was summoned by the summoning circle, and it directly latched itself to the core area of the altar and started to eat away at the barrier of the altar's core.
'The speed is slow...'
The barrier-destroying speed of the parasite turned out to be slower than Neo was expecting; thus, he summoned a hundred more of those parasites and threw them at the barrier.
These parasites are extremely competitive in nature, and if there's another of their own kind in the vicinity, they speed up and do things faster.
With so many around the barrier, the eating speed of all those parasites increased immensely, and they broke apart the barrier in just half an hour.
Neo de-summoned the parasites after the barrier was broken and grabbed the core of the
altar.
Then he crushed it with his hand, and a stream of golden energy flew into his head.
'Yes! This is the knowledge I was looking for! Good! I knew that there would be a method like
this!'
A wide grin appeared on Neo's face after he absorbed all the knowledge provided by that core. Two portals appeared in front of Neo at that moment.
One was shining with a bluish tint, and the other one was pitch black in color. 'Hmm, the blue one will lead outside; that means the other one will likely lead to...'
...n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om
Author's Notes.
Yo! It's your beloved author here!
And here's yet another mystery now... Question of the day.
What do you think Neo is trying to accomplish? (Tell me your thoughts in the comments!!) By the way, don't forget to use those power stones!!