Mystery 2

"Host survival probability: 5.15%. Apart from the reserved plan, no rescue options are available." Zero gave him a despairing reply without hesitation.

Anglie had expected Zero's answer long ago. He was not surprised. It seemed there was only one final method left. He had once tried using the special energy to instantly amplify his speed. He had intended to store it carefully and save it for future study, but he had never expected to be forced to use it now. This was also his last trump card, but his original plan of intercepting the pursuers could no longer be carried out.

"Activate the reserved plan."

He lay flat on his back in the grass and looked directly up at the sky above the woods.

Several clouds drifted slowly across the azure sky. A black bird swept lightly through the air, letting out a clear cry. "A sky as pure as a gemstone..." Anglie felt slightly dazed.

"Gemstone?" He suddenly froze.

A pair of mysterious characters slowly emerged in his mind.

Without realizing it, he suddenly shouted, "Mans!!"

Hiss... An intense green light abruptly blossomed across his body. The green Halo shone like the sun, exceptionally dazzling within the forest.

The two knights' expressions changed drastically. "It's a Magical Item! Retreat!!!" As if they had encountered something terrifying, they turned and fled.

Crack!! Everything around them froze. All things turned black and white.

The running knights were frozen in place, one foot still suspended before it could land. Falling leaves hung motionless in midair. In the distance, cavalrymen had only half-raised their crossbows, intending to aim this way. Even the golden sunlight had become black and white.

There was no sound. Even the wind had stopped.

Anglie lay blankly on the ground, his entire body radiating intense green light from within.

Everything around him had become a world of black and white. Like a frozen world, everything but himself had been instantly immobilized.

A strong, fishy saltwater scent drilled into his nostrils. Anglie felt as if gusts of gentle breeze were enveloping him.

"Warning! Warning! Radiation energy is massively eroding the host. Radiation energy is massively eroding the host. Stored energy rapidly depleting... 10%, 9%, 8%, 7%..."

The cold mechanical voice kept issuing alerts. Anglie finally came back to himself. He swiftly climbed to his feet, the green Halo around his body rippling like flowing water. Gripping his longsword, Anglie quickly walked behind the two knights.

Sshh! Sshh!

In an instant, the black and white faded away. The green light vanished. All sounds immediately returned to normal—the knights' footsteps, the rustle of leaves, the crisp calls of birds. All colors also swiftly returned as the green light dispersed.

The two knights desperately ran forward, but their heads suddenly rolled backward and landed by Anglie's feet. Blood spurted from their necks like fountains. With two thuds, their bodies collapsed to the ground, never to move again.

Anglie held the longsword blankly, lowering his head to look at the two heads that could not close their eyes in death. "This is... the power of a Wizard?"

"Energy depleted." The Chip's prompt continued.

Anglie awoke as if from a dream and immediately ducked. Three crossbow bolts shot through the space where his upper body had been. With a flick of his hand, a throwing knife shot out. A scream sounded in the distance, followed at once by a commotion. The remaining three men turned their horses around in terror and fled.

Anglie rushed forward, searched the two knights, and pulled out two money pouches. Then he quickly turned and chased after the Baron. He felt as though something had numbed his body. The pain from all his wounds had temporarily left him.

Only inside his brain, waves of violently tearing pain surged toward him like a tide. Anglie's vision went dark, and his sight grew blurry. He merely kept running stubbornly in the Baron's direction.

He did not know why using the energy this time had differed from his previous attempts, nor did he know what that scene of the entire world instantly freezing meant. That mysterious and terrifying power still filled his heart with lingering dread.

He ran forward with all his strength. He did not know how long he ran.

Through Anglie's blurred vision, the Baron's familiar figure was charging rapidly toward him.

"Anglie!! Heavens!!" The Baron's trembling voice came faintly to him.

Anglie suddenly pitched forward, falling right into the Baron's arms. The Baron's terrified face, his anxious expression, and the suppressed cries of alarm around them—Anglie felt the agony in his head growing worse and worse. In his father's pupils, he saw what he looked like.

From his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, crimson blood streamed without end. His face was deathly pale, his eyes vacant.

Chip Zero seemed to be giving some kind of alert, but he could no longer hear anything. The violent agony in his head completely drowned every thought.

Fifteen days later...

Across the boundless green prairie, three black carriages moved slowly like ants.

Strong winds blew the grass endlessly sideways across the plain, sending wave after wave of wrinkles rolling through it like the sea. In the lead carriage,

a brown-haired youth was looking out from inside the compartment. His body was wrapped in layer upon layer of gray bandages. There was not the slightest trace of color in his face.

"Anglie, are you feeling better?" A deep male voice came from within the carriage.

Anglie nodded. "Much better, Father. Given some more time, I should be able to recover completely."

"That's good." The Baron let out a slight sigh of relief. "Next time, I will never let you do something like this alone again."

Anglie gave a faint bitter smile.

It had been fifteen days since they left the forest. From those grave injuries, he had remained unconscious for two whole days before slowly waking. According to the Chip's examination, he had suffered extensive muscle strains, excessive blood loss, a notch in the Bone of his left arm, a fracture in his right hand, a moderate concussion, and cerebral hemorrhaging.

In merely fifteen days, the physical constitution of people in this world truly surpassed that of Earth by far, far too much. Anglie himself had thought that if this had happened on Earth, he would definitely have been bedridden for around two months. Yet here, he had recovered more than halfway in just over ten days. It showed how exceptional his physical constitution was. The powerful constitution revealed by the tests was no empty thing. Powerful recovery was one of its primary manifestations.

One hand resting against the carriage window, Anglie watched the slowly receding prairie out of the corner of his eye while silently checking some information with the Chip. He had continually examined the sudden energy eruption from that day, seeking its cause. Today, he had more or less figured out what had happened. After all, the ring had originally come from Dis. Why had Dis not used a ring with such tremendous power? Why had he kept it in his chest until death? If Dis had used that move from that day, Anglie would certainly have been killed in an instant.

Over these past days, by extracting, comparing, and analyzing the data from his body at the time against data from his previous uses of radiation energy, he had roughly understood why Dis had not used the ring.

"Radiation energy can only be activated through sound when the user's body contains a certain amount of homologous energy." This was the Chip's conclusion. "At the beginning, voice activation can only produce light-and-shadow effects and a tiny increase in agility, which can be completely ignored. Preliminary conjecture: the ring itself should possess some form of limiting structure, allowing only a very small amount of energy to be released at one time."

Anglie also understood the reason. As his body was continuously strengthened by energy radiation, it had also met the requirements for perfectly using the ring—containing homologous energy within. Since the Chip had extracted all the ring's energy, it had naturally bypassed the limiting structure on the ring itself. When Anglie had previously attempted to use radiation energy, he had not spoken the sound-wave activation characters. Until that day, when a flash of inspiration struck and he recited the activation characters, he had also begun releasing energy. That radiation energy immediately erupted without restraint. It had likely consumed in one go all the energy that could have been used multiple times, resulting in that extremely powerful effect.

"Dis must have only recently acquired the ring. Otherwise, he would have shouted the activation characters before dying. Clearly, perhaps he himself could not activate that thing normally. He could only keep it on his person, perhaps intending for the ring's energy to radiate into his body until he met the conditions for using it." Anglie guessed.

The carriage rolled slowly onward. Anglie gradually sank into thought.

"Dis's matter can barely be considered resolved. Then that terrifying effect from that day—later, every muscle in my body was strained at once. Clearly, that effect where all things stopped and froze should have been an illusion caused by my brain and body accelerating to their limit. That is roughly correct. But why did everything turn black and white? Perhaps the energy radiation altered the spectrum."

"Chip, bring up the spectral analysis from that state." Anglie spoke silently.

"The colors in sunlight were forcibly stripped away by radiation energy, leaving behind white light, ultimately producing the black-and-white visual effect." Zero returned the result. At the same time, a colored spectral analysis chart automatically appeared in Anglie's vision. Changing bar graphs continuously appeared across it, displaying the fluctuations in the spectrum at the time.

"Then why did the green light come from my body?"

"The host itself became a light source." The Chip answered instantly. As Anglie's auxiliary Chip, it could draw out the task subject from his questions, rapidly analyze and judge it, reach a conclusion, and swiftly return it to him.

Anglie slowly nodded. He had more or less analyzed the situation clearly. But regrettably, all the stored radiation energy had also been completely depleted. "Without the Chip extracting the energy, I probably would not have been able to use that ring either," Anglie mused. "The user actually has to possess homologous energy. In other words, the user must possess this kind of energy too. And someone who has such power is very likely a Wizard from the legends."

Anglie pulled out the emerald ring hanging from his chest and held it in his hand, examining it carefully.

"This ring is most likely something only Wizards can use. I remember those two knights calling it a Magical Item. It seems that is the name for this type of treasure." His index finger gently stroked the surface of the ring's gemstone.