Chapter 699: The Fourth Level of the Tower
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
There were more than 3,000 completed runes in the first level of the secret rune skill. The completed runes were available to the public back in those days, so every sorcerer knew about the first-level runes and had to figure out the rest on their own. In less than a couple of hours, Bloody had come up with more than 50,000 highly useful completed runes. Although they were simplified, one would need a very long time to be able to learn and to come up with completed runes.
Because Lin Huang had limited time in the ruins, he planned to memorize all the completed runes as it would be much easier than learning them from scratch. After Bloody categorized the 50,000-odd completed runes, it then shared that part of its memory with Lin Huang.
"Elemental rune, amplification rune, sealing rune, spirit rune…" Lin Huang memorized the runes by their category. He finally memorized all of them within three days on the fourth level of the tower.
Meanwhile, Bloody came up with more runes within the few days including the combination of advanced and high-level runes. It then shared all of them with Lin Huang. After memorizing the completed runes, he figured out that he did not have much time left, so he did not pay attention to the more complicated runes that Bloody came up with again.
On the afternoon of the fourth day, Lin Huang finally stood up and walked to the stone tablet. He smirked when he saw the sealing rune on it. It was one of the runes that Bloody had discovered, so he knew which unsealing rune to perform to unlock it. He used a finger to draw on the sealing rune. A brand new completed rune made of 30 rune lines was formed on the stone tablet.
As soon as the rune was formed, the 30 golden lines lit up and covered the top of the original rune. Even the original sealing rune was lit up now. Soon, the golden lines started to fade away as the color became dull. Within seconds, the sealing and unsealing runes disappeared together. The stone tablet became blank again.
Just when Lin Huang wanted to ask the face what he should do, his consciousness was sent somewhere different from the maze that he had been in. It was a vast space with gray rocks that were a meter in diameter and were floating in the sky like floating islands. Lin Huang stood on the first rock that was around 20 centimeters away from the second rock. The third and fourth rocks formed into a straight line behind them whereby each of them was about 20 centimeters away from each other.
"The rules are as below:
There're 101 rocks on this level. Besides the first one, the other 100 of them behind have completed runes on each of them. The maximum rune lines are 36. You have three minutes to come up with a rune to decode the rune on each rock. If you don't manage to decipher them within three minutes, the rock will break, and that would mean that you've failed.
"Once that happens, you'll be sent back to the first rock, and you'll have to start over again. The runes on rocks that you've decoded will also change.
"You're not allowed to repeat the same decoded runes. That's the only restriction. You're allowed to use advanced runes and even high-level runes, as well as completed runes that have more than 36 rune lines."
After the rules were announced, the timer in the sky started counting down to 10. A Witchcraft rune was appearing on the second rock in front of Lin Huang. As soon as the countdown ended, the rune was displayed clearly. It was a rune with 36 primary lines. Lin Huang observed it carefully and found a completed rune that could be used to decode it.
"A fire attribute rune. Is it a warning to me not to step on it directly?" Lin Huang mumbled to himself and soon thought of the strategy.
"It'll be the easiest to use an elementary rune for this. Since this is a fire attribute rune, using a water attribute rune on the same level should do, but this is tricky as it's not a regular fire attribute rune. It has the tendency to explode, so I should be using a frost rune."
After figuring it out, Lin Huang squatted down immediately and started drawing a frost rune on the rock. Around two minutes later, he had drawn the frost rune that was made up of 36 rune lines accurately. As soon as the rune was formed, the two completed runes disappeared, and the rock became blank. Lin Huang then took a step onto the rock.
As he stepped on the third rock, a rune appeared slowly. This time, Lin Huang could tell that it was an illusion rune right away and knew that he needed to use an illusion-breaking rune. As soon as he found a suitable rune in his head, he then drew the rune and decoded it immediately. When he stepped on the third rock, the rune on the fourth rock was a dimensional rune. Lin Huang then used a dimensional-freeze rune to decode it.
As he got further, more and more variety of runes came up on the rocks. Fortunately, he had memorized enough runes before this, so none of them were out of Bloody's knowledge base. All he had to do was to think about which type of rune it belonged to, what kind of effect it had, and which was the decoding rune.
He was given three minutes to go through one level. At first, he needed around two minutes to decode the runes, but as he got the hang out it, he managed to finish each level in around a minute as he became faster in searching for the suitable decoding ruins. Lin Huang spent less than two hours decoding all 100 runes on the rocks. As he stepped on the last floating rock, a golden glow came out of nowhere and flew into his head.
Lin Huang was sent back to the castle on the fourth level in the tower before he realized it. As he looked into his body, he soon found what the golden glow was. It was more than 10,000 completed runes. He took a quick look and found that they were not useful to him anymore as they all had been covered by the runes that Bloody had mastered.
"Let's see if the completed runes that will be given in the next level are in Bloody's collection." Lin Huang was excited.