It was not that Lin Yuan had never considered the possibility of monsters here, but after thinking it over, he had decided it was unlikely.
In terms of combat difficulty, the Undead Tree had been more than worthy of being the dungeon boss.
By all rights, this laboratory should have been a reward room.
Besides, he had previously concluded that the parchment's owner was dead. Otherwise, the owner should have come to retrieve the parchment from the Undead Tree.
As it turned out, the parchment's owner was indeed dead, but his obsession seemed to have brought him back to the laboratory, making him its guardian.
This dungeon is way too hard! Is this really a beginner dungeon?
Lin Yuan could not help grumbling inwardly.
In fact, the Undead Tree had already been far beyond the norm. Lin Yuan had ten times an ordinary player's strength, a hundred times their health, skills, and extraordinary equipment, and only then had he managed to take it down in a desperate fight.
For ordinary players, even a hundred attacking together might not have been able to deal with that enormous tree.
Yet that tree had not even been the final boss, just an elite monster blocking the way.
This was a solo dungeon! How were ordinary players supposed to clear it?!
Still, Lin Yuan's inward complaints could not change the situation. After that piercing voice rang out, an icy wind swept through the passage, and the green Soulfire on the torches along both sides suddenly flared.
Then the Soulfire from countless torches gathered in the center of the passage, forming a gigantic human face.
The face was gaunt and withered, its eyes filled with madness, without a trace of reason.
"Intruders, die!"
The gigantic, wraithlike face let out a shrill cry, then lunged at them!
"Captain Boss, get out here and fight!"
One look at its imposing presence told Lilia she was no match for it, and she hurriedly shouted.
She had a very clear understanding of her role: she stepped in to clear the mobs, and when a boss appeared, she called the captain out to fight.
Fuck it, I'm going all in. Let's see what this thing can do!
Although he had already used the high explosives and the shell pump, he still had plenty of wood in his storage. Using Emergency Repair would let him hold out for a long time.
He had come this far. He could not just run away without a fight!
Steeling himself, Lin Yuan threw open the coffin lid and jumped out.
The wraith was fast and had already lunged onto Lilia.
Its face turned into blazing flames, completely engulfing the puppet girl!
"Descend into utter madness! Become my servant!"
"Waaah! I'm going to burn to ashes! I'm going to... huh? I'm fine?"
After yelling for a while, Lilia suddenly discovered that nothing had happened to her.
The green Soulfire clung to her, seemingly without affecting her at all.
They were like special effects.
The sight made Lin Yuan pause despite having just jumped out.
But the wraith, lacking a will of its own, felt no surprise. Seeing Lin Yuan jump out of the coffin, it immediately split off half its flames and shot them toward him.
Lin Yuan reacted quickly too. With a shift of his feet, he dodged aside, letting the fireball formed from Soulfire skim past him.
Suddenly, as though it had no inertia, the green fireball made an acute turn in midair and lunged at Lin Yuan again without losing any speed.
This time, Lin Yuan failed to dodge and took the fireball head-on!
"Become my slave!"
The wraith's voice grew even shriller.
Lin Yuan had no time to pay attention to its words. He immediately opened his storage panel, preparing to draw on his wood supply and activate Emergency Repair.
He was a wooden ship, after all. If flames hit him, his durability would surely drop...
Incredibly slowly?
Huh?
Lin Yuan rubbed his eyes and carefully examined his panel's stats.
It was indeed dropping, but much more slowly than he had imagined, by about three points per second.
Wait!
Lin Yuan suddenly realized that this was the rate at which his durability dropped from "Ship Aground," wasn't it?
He was still aground, and that was why his durability was dropping!
Which meant... this wraith's Soulfire looked frightening, but it did not actually reduce health?
Was this boss all show and no substance?
Lin Yuan looked up and happened to see Lilia standing amid the Soulfire, idly reaching out to poke the green flames beside her.
She was completely fine.
"Descend into utter madness!"
The wraith was still shrieking.
Madness? Slaves? I've got it!
Something clicked in Lin Yuan's mind, and he suddenly understood this boss's ability.
It was a monster specialized in attacking sanity!
The more Lin Yuan thought about it, the more convinced he became.
The green Soulfire was not ordinary fire and could not burn wood, so the wraith could not inflict actual physical damage.
Its Soulfire probably burned an enemy's Sanity, making it a form of soul-based attack!
Once an enemy's Sanity fell below a certain level, they would become the wraith's slave!
For players at this stage, a monster that attacked sanity like this was harder to deal with than one that attacked physically.
However, Lin Yuan had no sanity.
Because he had merged with the ship panel, his sanity field displayed an asterisk.
You could not attack something that did not exist.
So he was completely unharmed.
As for the puppet girl, that strange thing was already a bizarre existence in her own right, so it was perfectly normal for her to have no sanity stat.
The fact that Lilia had lost not only her sanity but her intelligence as well was another matter.
In short, against ordinary players, this wraith really was more troublesome than the enormous Undead Tree. It was a genuine final boss.
But standing here now were two oddballs who naturally countered it completely.
"Buddy, looks like you've never had much luck!"
Lin Yuan sighed as he watched the wraith continue its impotent rage.
Then he called to Lilia and continued forward.
Since he was already out, he was in no hurry to return to the coffin. If anything unexpected happened, he would be better able to react.
Hearing her captain call, Lilia could not be bothered to figure out what was going on with the wraith either. She followed Lin Yuan into the room at the very end of the passage.
A man, a girl, a coffin, and a wraith that kept trying in vain to stop them entered the laboratory one after another.
The laboratory was not large. Some benches and unidentified tools stood around its edges, but they were all thoroughly corroded and ruined.
In the center of the room was a stone platform.
The platform was bare, with nothing on it.
"No, you can't take my treasure! It's mine, mine!"
After entering the room, the wraith abandoned its previous frenzied attacks and instead lunged at the raised platform, tightly enveloping it in Soulfire, seemingly guarding a treasure that did not exist upon it.
But a moment later, it released the platform in terror and hid in the farthest corner of the room:
"No, that isn't mine! It's a disaster!"
"Mine!"
"A disaster!"
The wraith had gone completely mad, darting back and forth between the platform and the corner.
"There's nothing on this platform. Has someone already taken it?"
Lin Yuan voiced his confusion as he looked at the empty stone platform.
"Blind Captain, there is something on that platform. But it feels strange, like it isn't entirely in this world."
Lilia stared at the stone platform for a while before suddenly speaking.
"I remember something like this... you need some special power to bring it over to this world. Captain Boss, why don't you try?"
"Where would I get a power like that?"
Lin Yuan could not help pressing a hand to his forehead. He had only just begun learning about Transcendent Power.
Still, since he was already here, Lin Yuan reached toward the stone platform anyway.
Suddenly, within the Mysterious Treasure Collection Room in his mind, the box that had remained inactive for so long opened a crack.
A streak of light escaped through the gap and merged into Lin Yuan's arm.
The next moment, Lin Yuan felt himself grasp something round.
Before you continue