After five years of improvement — especially after Leilin fed in the vast amount of soul data he had purchased through exchanges and missions — the Chip's analysis of the soul had now reached an entirely new level.
While it still couldn't digitize soul power, it was no longer far from that goal. It could even make numerous incredible deductions and adjustments.
This ability to alter one's outward soul fluctuations was merely one aspect of the change.
"Hmm! The fire elemental concentration here is the highest. If I modify the spell templates from the World of Wizards, I might achieve astonishing power amplification!"
Leilin stroked his chin, gazing at the elemental spectrum as countless flickers of light flashed through his eyes.
At the same time, his aura began to shift. A layer of dim luminescence flickered into existence, quickly enveloping his entire body. The whole space seemed to warp for an instant — yet as if nothing had happened at all.
Yet Leilin suddenly let out a breath of relief, his entire being seeming to grow perfectly attuned to his surroundings.
"Finally gotten rid of that feeling of being watched! The world will..." He exhaled a long breath, his tone carrying an unmistakable sense of relief. "Fortunately, this world's guardian will is the Gaia-type general consciousness, rather than a specific living being. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been so easy to deceive..."
After crossing into an alien world, how to deal with the world's hostility was another difficult problem entirely.
The fluctuations of a Morning Star
If one were to truly enrage the world consciousness, it would be like having death itself shadowing your every step. Calamity after calamity would strike — even a Morning Star could be toyed to death. Let alone attempting a rescue.
Now, with his aura transformed, Leilin was indistinguishable from a native of this world. There was nothing conspicuous about him whatsoever.
"With this, I've finally truly descended into this world. It's just that I don't know where Master
Leilin furrowed his brows. A vast and terrifying surge of soul power erupted forth, sweeping across the surrounding area.
Though soul power was formless and intangible, the eruption of Morning Star-level power still seemed to freeze the entire space in place, silencing even the roaring magma.
Red as fire! Red as fire!
As soul power spread outward, vast rivers of magma came into Leilin's view. This place was like the vicinity of a volcanic crater — devoid of all life, with virtually no trace of living energy.
The reason he said "virtually" was that Leilin had in fact discovered a single type of plant.
It was a plant resembling a small tree of black iron, its roots firmly anchored in the ground and plunging even into the molten lava. Its entire body emanated a dark, lustrous sheen, and not even the searing heat of the lava could wither it in the slightest.
"At least there are still signs of life, otherwise I would have thought that only elemental beings could survive in this world…"
Leilin nodded. Suddenly, his expression shifted as he looked off in a particular direction.
Over there, he had keenly detected some kind of life fluctuation — and it was from a large creature!
"Locals?" Leilin smiled. His entire body melted into the void as he moved swiftly toward the target he had detected.
Before long, he arrived at his destination and witnessed a fierce battle.
On one side of the battlefield was a group of humanoid creatures standing two to three meters tall, their bodies covered in skin that gave off a dark, lustrous sheen. Even scorching magma that splashed onto them caused little reaction — their tolerance for heat was remarkably high. Each of them also had a small horn on their head.
There were roughly a dozen of these horned folk, wielding dark-black spears and other weapons as they besieged an enormous monster.
The monster was entirely red, its exterior encased in a thick shell of cragged rock, with veins of magma trickling down its surface like tiny streams.
It was over a dozen meters long, its body resembling that of an enormous worm. Its lower half was completely submerged in the magma, as though it were a creature specially adapted to living within molten rock.
Crack! It swept its body violently, flinging several of the horned folk away. From its maw it spat out large quantities of golden goo — this goo radiated unimaginable heat, and the moment it hit the ground it erupted into roaring flames. Even the horned folk, who feared no magma, suffered greatly. Anyone splashed by the golden goo suffered severe burns.
Several of the leading horned folk immediately began shouting, using a very strange language that seemed to bypass the vocal cords entirely, the sounds emanating directly from the lower abdomen — somewhat like ventriloquism from Leilin's previous life.
"Can't understand it, as expected…" Leilin was somewhat speechless. Fortunately, the language problem was no longer something that could stump him. While he could have used the Chip to secretly follow these people for a period of time and eventually compile a complete linguistic database, Leilin had a better method.
Whoosh! A wisp of dark soul power swiftly plunged into the head of a critically wounded horned folk lying on the ground.
"Mm—" The horned folk convulsed violently, but could only produce futile whimpering sounds. The companions around him assumed he was crying out in agony from his wounds and paid no attention whatsoever.
Meanwhile, before Leilin's eyes, a series of images began flashing forward like a film on fast-forward.
Before long, this horned folk's entire life played out before Leilin — from birth, through growth, to death — everything was clearly recorded by the Chip.
"Ding! Unidentified language collected! Stored in database!"
"Ding! Generating nearby terrain map and overview of races in the magma world…"
From the vast trove of memories, the Chip extracted a great deal of useful information, began systematically organizing it, and assembled it into corresponding fields of knowledge.
"Excellent! Designate the unidentified language as 'Magma Tongue' and transfer it to my memory region!" Leilin was the first to make use of this function.
In less than a second, Leilin mastered this foreign language. Though his body was different, with the assistance of arcane arts he could still simulate the sounds well enough to speak it.
Only then did the cries of the single-horned tribe members below become clearly intelligible in Leilin's mind.
"Uma! Run!" One individual, clearly larger than the rest of the single-horned tribe, threw itself in front of the lava worm and shoved a smaller tribe member aside.
"Chirrrrr..." The massive lava worm roared, gaping wide its enormous maw, and swallowed the single-horned tribe member whole in an instant.
Meanwhile, the one called Uma sat stunned on the ground as if struck dumb, her eyes completely unfocused.
"Damn it! Ula is gone! The ritual has failed! How could we be this unlucky — running into an adult lava worm!"
The surrounding single-horned tribe members were full of anguish on their faces, and one of them cursed bitterly: "It must be those bastards from the Klin clan who did this — I'll kill them when I get the chance..."
Hearing this, the other single-horned tribe members could only manage bitter smiles.
At a time like this, simply surviving would be an extravagant luxury. What good was saying anything else?
The lava worm's horrifying jaws were already right in front of Uma. No rescue could possibly arrive in time, and some of the tribesmen couldn't help closing their eyes.
Uma had only just come of age. She was normally a warm and cheerful child — who would have thought she would die here... A few of the younger tribe members roared and charged forward.
ROAR!
But the expected pain never came. Uma opened her eyes in surprise and saw a strange creature standing before her.
He looked truly bizarre. No horns on his head, no black skin, and his body was exceedingly small — about the size of a three- or four-year-old in her tribe.
Yet this small figure had effortlessly blocked the lava worm's attack. And listening closely to the worm's roar, she could detect a hint of... fear?
Yes, Uma was absolutely certain — this powerful lava worm was actually terrified of the tiny creature in front of it.
"Are you all right?" The strange being spoke, using her own tribe's language, which Uma understood perfectly.
"I... I'm fine! Are you from the Ant Tribe? You don't have their antennae, but your skin color and build look very similar!" Uma seemed to have completely forgotten the danger at hand and struck up a conversation with Leilin.
Leilin was somewhat speechless at this remarkably thick-nerved alien, but his hand suddenly surged with force.
Crack! Crack! A giant red hand, over a dozen meters long, materialized out of thin air. It scooped up the lava worm in a single grab, and the five fingers clenched in succession, wringing a pained shriek from the creature.
Layer after layer of rock fragments peeled away from the creature's body. Once this layer of lava armor had completely fallen off, its size had visibly shrunk by a good margin, and even the fluctuations of its aura had mysteriously weakened.
"Oh? Interesting?"
Leilin studied the shed lava shells. Their surfaces were covered in intricate channels — through those channels, the ordinary magma had been transmitted and amplified, transforming into the golden core magma from before.
"An amplification wizard array? But I don't see anything similar..." A look of keen interest flickered through Leilin's eyes. His giant hand clenched with renewed force, tearing even more lava away from the worm.
Yet another layer of lava fell away. By now, the worm had shrunk to only two or three meters in length, and its aura had plummeted drastically — it couldn't even compare to the most ordinary Unicorn Tribe member.
"Chip! Record these patterns!"
Leilin gave the mental command silently. In the other world, countless paths of research and abundant experimental materials could drive Wizards to the point of madness — and that was precisely one of the reasons they were willing to brave the danger of annihilation to explore the other world.
Crack!
The last layer of rocky casing slid off. The once incomprehensibly massive lava worm had been reduced to a fat little meaty creature barely over a meter long, its entire body plump and soft, completely stripped of any hint of danger.