Chapter 398: Reflection
Ace agreed to Betty’s request. Leon was indeed a good candidate; he was a political veteran, and it was suitable for him to assist in establishing a new department.
As for the taste of working under his daughter’s jurisdiction, that was not something Ace considered.
After dealing with these matters, Ace immersed his mind into the mental imagery world. The vitality of the entire mental imagery dream world was extremely active; trees, flowers, grass, birds, beasts, and mortals were all like they were in spring.
At the bottom layer of rules in the mental imagery world, inside the rune pyramid, the Six-Element Ring spell model was already covered by pale golden light, except for the black-gray rune group at the very bottom—that was the interwoven musical notes of death and shadow.
Corresponding to this black-gray rune group was the reflection dream world of Ace’s mental imagery dream world. The reflection dream world was desolate and even somewhat precarious; massive amounts of vitality power had invaded here, breaking the balance.
“I must upgrade the Death Element series of runes; otherwise, the dynamic balance of the entire mental imagery world cannot be maintained, and grass has even started growing in the ruins of the ancient battlefield.”
Ace opened his eyes and murmured.
He then activated the Eye of Truth. His pupils turned golden-red. The Portal spell model was also activated, and massive spatial coordinate runes flashed in his eyes, seemingly looking for something.
Ace’s figure faded bit by bit, finally shattering like foam and vanishing without a trace. Only faint spatial fluctuations seemed to hint at where he had gone.
…
The reflection world. It was forever shrouded in a layer of gray mist here. The dark moon and dark sun appeared alternately, but there was no alternation of day and night because of it.
Things here were reflections of the real world: dilapidated cities, decaying castles, dried-up rivers. It was like the graveyard of the real world, buried ruins.
Ace, brimming with vitality, appeared here, startling flocks of shadow crows. Shadow creatures like tigers, leopards, wolves, and pigs appeared one after another. Their figures swayed and twisted, their eyes glowing with red light, extremely hostile towards Ace.
Ace looked at these shadow creatures and sneered softly. He took a step forward, and a morning sun rose behind him. Vitality and brilliance turned this gloomy world as bright as day.
That brilliance, full of vitality, easily melted the numerous shadow creatures. After the blazing sun passed, everything was cleansed, and no shadows remained.
Looking at the empty silence around him, Ace whispered:
“The light of vitality is good medicine for ordinary life, but for shadow creatures and the undead, it might be the greatest poison.
“However, I came here not to cleanse the shadows, but to find the path for the Death Element series of runes to advance to golden runes.”
His figure slowly faded and turned pitch-black. Within a few seconds, he turned into a shadow humanoid, but this shadow humanoid was very unstable. It seemed that the excessively massive vitality power affected Ace’s shadow transformation effect.
Ace slowly adjusted and stabilized his state. About half an hour later, he suddenly expanded into a shadow giant, his hollow mouth cracking open in a smile.
“Since I can’t control it well, I might as well make it bigger. This feels not bad.”
Thinking this, the shadow giant walked with earth-shaking steps. His hollow eye sockets were gradually covered by golden-red pupils, with layers of dazzling rune structures bobbing within them.
At this moment, the gray reflection world took on different colors in Ace’s eyes. The lingering gray gas was ignored. In the purely black and white perspective, only the traces of rules—runes—were colorful.
The Golden Spell Eye of Truth could already capture the fleeting runes in the surrounding environment to a certain extent. These were traces of natural rules; without the 4-ring spell Eye of Truth, it would be almost impossible to pry into them.
For Ace, this task was not simple. The 4-ring spell Eye of Truth could at most observe golden runes. The level 1 and level 2 runes existing in the reflection world were useless to him, and he could not observe runes of level 3 and above.
Only traces that were exactly what Ace needed were what he was looking for.
The reason for adopting observation and collection instead of deduction was that deduction required a large amount of data accumulation and modeling. Bottom-up deduction was a difficult trial-and-error process. Neither Life nor Death were common observation subjects for wizards. Without accumulating rich lower-level data, direct deduction was too difficult.
The shadow giant Ace had transformed into wandered rapidly in the reflection world. His eyes burst with golden-red light, prying into the mysteries of the shadow world.
Because his own vitality power was too strong, Ace could not comprehend nature and understand nature as he did when realizing vitality. He was like an alien, a beast breaking into another world, out of place with everything here.
The progress of observation was therefore extremely slow. Two weeks later, Ace gave up on direct observation of nature and turned to “purifying” the reflection world. By fighting shadow creatures and the undead, he sought the golden runes of death, shadow, and undeath.
This strategy was quite effective. The only problem was that there were too few shadow creatures and undead with strength equivalent to level 2 life, and as for Golden-level existences, none were seen.
Ace did not slaughter those low-level existences because that would be pure killing, which would not help in finding and collecting golden runes.
“Golden life is too rare. They are all level 1 and level 2 lives. Even if forced to the limit, the golden runes discovered are too few.
“If this goes on, my vitality power will completely break the balance.”
The shadow giant Ace suddenly expanded and spat out a light cannon full of vitality and brilliance from his mouth. Twisting his body, he plowed the surroundings with the vitality light cannon.
After releasing vitality power and barely restoring his body’s balance, Ace continued to wander, looking for suitable prey.
Thud! Thud!
Heavy footsteps. A heart-palpitating pressure suddenly shrouded the place. Ace looked up at the sky and found a giant white-bone creature blotting out the sky falling from above.
Bone wings, long tail, lizard skull, powerful bone claws—all of this connected Ace to a creature in the legends of his past life: a Giant Dragon!
Roar!
The momentum deterred the wilds. Rich death aura, undead resentment fire, and gray shadows wrapped around it. Even Ace, transformed into a shadow giant over ten meters tall, was like a child compared to this Bone Dragon.
This Bone Dragon was too tall. Ace pried with the Eye of Truth; its body was as high as three hundred meters, truly like a mountain. Its pressure made Ace tremble all over. This was a natural oppression from a higher-ranking being, a feeling Ace was very familiar with.
The effect was very similar to his Eye of Fear: supremacy, fear, deterrence.
In the vision of the Eye of Truth, the Bone Dragon was wrapped in black-gray aura. The soul fire burning blazingly within its skull emitted pure pale golden light!
This was a true Level 3 existence. Even though it had died, its corpse had resurrected, becoming a terrifying Legendary Undead Bone Dragon!
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