CPU Burned Out

"Wait! I know Feather Fall! Give me a moment to adjust my spells."

Seeing Hopp jump down without a word, Carl hurriedly explained how he could be useful.

That was exactly why he had picked up all that classic fashionable junk in the washroom earlier. Those things were spellcasting materials.

Holding the wrench he used as a focus, Carl sat on the ground and began meditating with focused concentration.

Vaguely, Carl felt that the spirituality of his soul had met some requirement. He knew that he could advance to a level 2 Artificer.

Without hesitation, he directed his spirituality toward the Spiritual Core that carried his Artificer class.

There was no resistance at all. As a sense of satisfaction welled up from the depths of his soul, Carl became a level 2 Artificer.

After another two minutes, Carl replaced the two level 1 spells he had prepared with Feather Fall and Longstrider Spell.

Both spells were meant for escaping, and they could greatly increase the chances of Carl and Hopp making it out alive.

Opening his eyes again, Carl stood up. As he took a tuft of wool from his pocket, he called down to Hopp, "I'll count to three, then we jump together."

"One, two, three!"

At the signal, they jumped almost simultaneously. Carl swiftly made several gestures with his fingers, and the wool in his hand turned to ash. Their falling bodies suddenly became light.

They slowly "floated" down like sheets of paper. It seemed to be Hopp's first time experiencing something like this, and she even did two somersaults in midair.

Soon, they landed steadily on the rocks at the bottom of the tunnel.

The tunnel on the final level looked exceptionally dark, making one wonder whether it connected to some underground city.

So they would not have to move forward in the dark, Carl cast Prestidigitation and tapped a rivet on his armor with a finger.

The rivet immediately began to glow, illuminating roughly ten feet ahead.

"Magic really is convenient!"

Having witnessed the miraculous effect again, Hopp murmured enviously.

"You've never been in a party with spellcasters before?"

Eberron's overall civilization was already close to the level of Carl's previous life around the nineteenth century. Magic and magical items were quite commonplace here; ordinary people could afford them if they saved up for a while.

So after seeing Hopp's reaction, Carl felt that she was being a little overdramatic.

"Zhuomu is chaotic. Those with strength either leave to become mercenaries or enslave Zhuomu's ordinary people. Anyone with spellcasting ability is someone high above us. How could I possibly be qualified to party with them?"

Though her words sounded somewhat self-deprecating, Hopp's tone was full of mockery.

"That's good, then. At least you escaped. If we get out of here, do you want to come back to my hometown with me? The Eldeen Reaches are recognized as the most peaceful place on the Continent of Khorvaire."

"You're from the Eldeen Reaches?"

At the mention of Carl's hometown, something seemed to flash in Hopp's eyes.

Her expression made Carl instinctively take half a step back. Only after confirming that she would not pounce on him did he ask hesitantly,

"Is there something wrong with the Eldeen Reaches?"

"Nothing's wrong!"

Grabbing Carl's hand, Hopp had completely lost her former icy demeanor. Instead, she was as excited as a devoted Harry Potter reader about to head to Hogwarts.

Carl's hometown, the Eldeen Reaches, was a region governed by Druid circles. The most powerful Druids on the Continent of Khorvaire were its spiritual leaders.

Its agriculture and animal husbandry were extremely developed, supplying most of the continent with affordable, high-quality farm products.

After taking several deep breaths, Hopp placed a hand on her chest and calmed herself down.

"My dream is to buy a piece of farmland in the Eldeen Reaches someday and live a peaceful, stable life there."

"If possible, I also want to become a Druid Apprentice!"

Hearing Hopp's dream, Carl patted her shoulder.

Tieflings were a race that easily suffered discrimination in Eberron because their bloodlines came from devils.

Long-term oppression by other races had driven most Tieflings into crime. Zhuomu might be chaotic, but as long as a Tiefling was strong enough and evil enough, they could thrive there instead.

For kind Tieflings unwilling to join them, however, the Eldeen Reaches were their only best destination.

Druids were highly accepting of all races, provided that one harbored no evil intentions and was willing to be close to nature.

"Let me say this first: life in the Eldeen Reaches may not be as wonderful as you imagine. Everyone has to work. Druids will teach people to farm and raise livestock, but they won't allow you to expand your fields or grazing range, because that would disrupt nature's balance."

Seeing Hopp's yearning expression, Carl appropriately poured a little cold water on her hopes.

People always held a certain amount of fantasy about things they did not truly understand.

"What are you saying that to someone who was stuck in a mud pit not long ago and had to live every day with her head on the line?"

Seeing that she was completely unmoved, Carl found it hard to say anything more.

Many people thought life in the Eldeen Reaches was idyllic, but after experiencing it for a few days themselves, they could not take it anymore.

"All right, let's move on first. If the two of us die here, there won't be any future to talk about."

With a sigh, Carl started walking forward.

Hopp stayed close beside him, occasionally asking questions such as, "Why didn't you become a Druid?" "I heard Redleaf Village's maple syrup is the best on the whole continent." and "I heard you use Giant Eagles to deliver letters over there?"

Chatting on and off, the two finally reached the deepest part of the tunnel.

"This is... a Ritual Site?"

Standing at the end of the tunnel, Carl looked at the hemispherical cavern carved out ahead of them and was uncertain for a moment.

Thirteen stone pillars stood in the cavern, arranged in a circle and carved with writing neither of them understood.

But aside from those, there was no opening leading outside.

Yet the airflow was indeed coming from here. Standing at the junction between the tunnel and the cavern, they could even feel a breeze against their faces.

"Could some Illusion School spell have been cast here?"

"Impossible. That Mind Flayer only mastered psionics. I saw the battle when he started a rebellion in Graywall City. Even when he was about to die, he never cast a spell."

"Then that's strange. It can't be these stone pillars..."

Carl reached out and touched a stone pillar. Just as he was about to voice his thoughts, psionic energy flowed from the writing on the pillar into his body when his fingers touched it.

A sharp pain suddenly struck Carl's head, and he collapsed straight to the ground.

"What's wrong?"

Hopp caught Carl and anxiously asked about his condition.

But Carl's condition did not improve at all. Instead, it showed signs of worsening.

At that moment, deep inside Carl's brain, the Mind Flayer Tadpole that had stopped moving shortly after entering his body began struggling incessantly.

After parasitizing Carl, it had once shut down because it could not read the vast amount of otherworldly information contained in Carl's memories from his previous life.

Originally, as long as it was given time to slowly digest it and grow a little more by absorbing Carl's nutrients, it would be able to gradually read Carl's memories and complete its transformation.

But the psionic energy released by those strange words awakened the Mind Flayer Tadpole from its dormant state.

At the same time it awoke, the otherworldly memories from Carl's previous life once again flooded over the Mind Flayer Tadpole like a deluge.

Now, the Mind Flayer Tadpole was like a graphics card forced into mining by a shady merchant, helplessly enduring the influx of massive amounts of otherworldly information.

What made things even worse was that the writing on the stone pillars was Illithid Script, another kind of "compressed archive" containing compressed information.

Already overwhelmed, it was stimulated by the psionic energy carrying Illithid Script information, like an old laptop already running at its limit being assigned a decompression task.

And so... after one final violent surge of psionic energy, the Mind Flayer Tadpole's CPU burned out.