Pillar of Yita

Fang Hong raised the silver coin, facing one side towards the moonlight, and a beam of silver light fell onto the parchment, illuminating small characters amid the twisted text.

Looking at these characters, he seemed to take it for granted. Although he didn’t understand them at all, the silver coin in his hand moved from left to right, revealing the hidden text on the parchment one by one.

Fang Hong involuntarily spoke, reciting a peculiar note.,

But the next moment, he finally snapped out of this mysterious state, and with a ’clink’, the silver coin dropped to the ground.

Fang Hong suddenly threw the parchment document onto the table, realizing only then what he had just done.

His forehead reflected moonlight, his complexion slightly pale, with a fine layer of sweat emerging.

He took a step back, couldn’t help getting up from his chair, and asked softly: ”Miss Tata, just now...?”

”I didn’t remind you just now, Mr. Knight,” Tata seemed very composed as she replied, ”because I thought it would be helpful for you.”

”Helpful...?” Fang Hong looked somewhat confused, the recent events felt like a brief dream to him.

Tata then continued:

”I sensed you were reading those texts and learning something from them.”

Fang Hong was taken aback, responding: ”I learned something—?”

He suddenly shut his mouth, and opened his Dragon Knight System. There, indeed, were a few sparse lines of prompts, mostly saying he gained some cognitive experience through reading.

The experience wasn’t much, a few hundred points, jumping five or six times in total. However, gaining cognitive experience through reading unknown documents wasn’t extraordinarily uncommon.

Just that the system’s prompts were very vague, quite unlike usual. And what Miss Tata mentioned about him learning something certainly wasn’t referring to this.

Fang Hong carefully checked again, only to widen his eyes, realizing that all his attributes under intellectual evaluation—calculation, logic, and memory—had each increased by three points.

He remembered clearly, especially his calculation attribute, which was the primary attribute of a Combat Artisan; since leaving Idus, its base value should have been 228 points, and should remain unchanged without leveling up.

But at this moment, it clearly was at 231 points.

Gaining attributes through reading, this was truly astonishing. Moreover, the increase wasn’t limited to calculative power but to all attributes under intellectual evaluation, which meant an increase in the main intellectual attribute.

At least in Eteliria, he had never heard of such a thing.

Fang Hong feared he had made a mistake, recalling he previously changed the Night Owl brooch, thus he re-wore the brooch, but the result remained unchanged.

He untrustingly removed the brooch, dazed for a while, then asked Tata:

”Miss Tata, have you ever heard of such a thing?”

Miss Fairy slowly shook her head.

Only Nini, unaware, looked up at the two.

But Fang Hong, at this moment, had no mind to care for the little girl; he just drew out those torn Abyssal Sea Scrolls one by one and read them. And when reading the second and third pages, he entered that mysterious state again.

After snapping back to reality, his intellectual attributes had different degrees of enhancement, but it wasn’t consistent. The second time increased by 2 points, the third time only by 1 point.

In other words, through three readings, he altogether increased 6 points of calculative power. Although it didn’t seem much, for an Alchemist, the growth of calculative power over a lifetime is almost fixed. Especially relative to the basic calculative power, even considering equipment and skills, it doesn’t exceed much. And the so-called secret tasks of the world were merely learning some rarely-seen special skills that ’increase calculative power or reduce construct calculative power requirement’.

Hence, if he could learn those skills, it would be like having 6 additional base calculative power out of thin air. And this was the result of only reading two pages of the Abyssal Sea Scrolls.

Fang Hong restrained the doubt and excitement in his heart and continued reading downward. But upon reading the fourth page of the document, a wave of exhaustion swept over him, causing his eyelids to droop uncontrollably.

He yawned broadly, then quickly shook his head to regain clarity.

Realizing what happened, he looked once more at the parchment document in hand, but this time, that marvelous sensation was no longer there.

Fang Hong froze for a moment, a flicker of doubt crossing his mind.

But he quickly realized: It seemed that reading these texts was not without its cost, requiring spiritual power consumption. Mortals use crystal and spiritual power to manipulate Ether, and as an Alchemist, he naturally understood this.

Fang Hong then quietly put down the hand scroll.

His heart was both uneasy and yet excited.

The excitement naturally stemmed from discovering a whole new world within the Abyssal Sea Scrolls.

But after the excitement, the feeling of unease inevitably rose again in his heart,

Firstly, the things in his hands were the Abyssal Sea Scrolls, things explicitly forbidden by the seventh ban for one to contact; holding these things was itself against the regulations.

Although the seventh ban was not the earliest clause stipulated on the ”Stargate Declaration,” it was a supplement clause jointly approved and signed by the Super Competitive League and Stargate Port after the Battle of Bain.

If discovered to be related to these things, most likely, it would not have a good outcome.

Furthermore, what puzzled him was, prior to himself—especially before the seventh ban signing—many Invokers must have read the Abyssal Sea Scrolls.

Yet why have they never experienced such an occurrence?

He couldn’t help but compare himself internally to find out what uniqueness he possessed. The only special aspect could be one part of having the Dark Giant Dragon’s power, the other part left with the possibility of being the Pale Glory.

Sadly, when he brought his hand close to the parchment document, the mark on it showed no response.

And on Nini’s side, the power of the Dragon’s Golden Eyes displayed no fluctuation either.

Fang Hong experimented for quite a while but didn’t learn anything substantial.

However, when picking up the last piece of paper, he couldn’t help but freeze. That last piece, which he had seen at the Grand Princess of the Royal House of Penelope, only depicted secret technique patterns without any text, a parchment pattern.

At that time, he felt that the pattern on this painting might be some kind of array, yet had no connection to the alchemy arrays in his impression.

And now, as he used the silver coin reflecting the moonlight to reveal the blank patterned portions on the paper and recorded it in his mind thereafter.

An idea emerged in his heart:

This is a formula.

As an Alchemist, he naturally also studied relevant knowledge from the Magic Potion School. The Magic Potion School, skilled by Pudra under the Elfendo Council, was only a branch of Alchemy, but initially, it and the currently popular Magic Guided School stemmed from two completely different forms of knowledge.

Magic Potion Studies was inherited from the Numelin Elves’ magical potion studies, and along with Elf Forging Technique and Enchantment Technique, collectively referred to as the three great Numelin Elven arts.

Of course, the Elves’ magic potion studies were vastly different from the present. Today’s magic potion studies are in service of alchemy, and its products are magic reagents.

Whereas in the Numelin Era, Elves primarily used this skill to concoct various mana potions, magic amplification elixirs, and even magical potions with all kinds of miraculous effects.

At this moment, Fang Hong faintly felt that the formula on the paper seemed related to the Numelin Elves’ magic potion studies, but perhaps it was even more ancient.

Yet what exactly is this formula?

Does it also relate to calculative power?

...