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177: Chapter 177 The Butterfly EffectFu Hao rode Xiao Jin and quickly fled the territory of the Kalis Empire.

It was rare to be in the Inner World he had created, yet he had actually spent two whole months in a prison of the Kalis Empire; this couldn’t even be considered a joke.

”Haa...”

Fu Hao looked in the direction of the Kalis Empire and let out a deep sigh.

Although he had escaped the empire’s territory, his troubles had not diminished in the slightest—how was he supposed to obtain the hidden items that could only be acquired within the Kalis Empire?

And where should he plant the World Tree? His previously smooth-sailing plan had suddenly hit a complete deadlock, so it was understandable that Fu Hao felt so bewildered and lost.

”Where exactly did things go wrong? Could it be that the Transfer Demon King hasn’t started impersonating the Crown Prince yet? That’s impossible.”

Recalling the various events that had occurred around the Crown Prince, the time when the Transfer Demon King began impersonating the Crown Prince must have been shortly after the end of the first God-Demon War.

The Crown Prince of the Kalis Empire had repeatedly created miracles that were difficult for human power to achieve. At the time, people just thought of them as incredible accomplishments, but ever since the truth that the Crown Prince was actually the Transfer Demon King was exposed, everyone speculated that those miracles were merely achieved by relying on the power of transfer and the overwhelming strength unique to the Demon King.

In other words, when the ”otherworld” opened, the Transfer Demon King should have already been impersonating the Crown Prince.

”Where there is a World Tree, there is no reason for there not to be a Demon King...”

The Inner World was created by imitating the past of the ”Primordial Domain” of The Original World. Although it might not have replicated every single existence, since even a super-tier existence like the World Tree was clearly included, there was no reason for the Demon King to be the only one left out.

Judging from the continued existence of the major sects and Holy Power, the Divine Realm and the Roto race must also have been replicated. In that case, there was no reason for the Demon King not to exist.

Then the only possibility is—

”Could it be that he hid the real Crown Prince and swapped him out later?”

Perhaps the Transfer Demon King had sensed a crisis, or had some other task, and temporarily abandoned the disguise of the Crown Prince?

”It’s not impossible that this triggered a butterfly effect...”

The butterfly effect, where a butterfly flapping its wings triggers a chain reaction, eventually forming a massive storm that seems completely unrelated.

This theory, common in time-travel themes, was equally applicable to the Inner World, which was built to imitate the past.

If the actions of Fu Hao and the other six players were just the flapping of a butterfly’s wings, the storm might still be far off, but in the process of their frantic collection of hidden items, they had already caused countless impacts on the human world.

In fact, the butterfly effect had already caused many hidden items that existed in The Original World to disappear, and had also caused hidden items never recorded in The Original World to suddenly emerge. Looking at it this way, it wasn’t strange that the Transfer Demon King had abandoned impersonating the Crown Prince due to the butterfly effect.

What Fu Hao hadn’t expected, however, was that the real Crown Prince was actually still alive.

He had always assumed that since the Transfer Demon King was impersonating the Crown Prince, the real Crown Prince must have been killed long ago. This naivety had ultimately cost him a painful price.

”Regardless, I need to pull myself together first.”

Fu Hao raised his hand and slapped his cheeks hard; the crisp sound helped him wake up a bit. Although he couldn’t feel pain in virtual reality, this refreshing action was enough.

”Let’s put the World Tree matter aside for now.”

Fu Hao decided to temporarily shelve the planting of the World Tree and deal with other matters first.

The Dragon Legion plan alone had a bunch of things left to do: obtaining the class change opportunity for Summoning Beast Master, determining the exact location of the Golden Dragon clan’s mausoleum... But now that whether the World Tree could grow normally had become an unknown, these things seemed to have lost their meaning—if he couldn’t form the Dragon Legion, what use were the Summoning Beast Master and the mausoleum location?

”Let’s test Subspace first.”

After moving the World Tree down in priority, Fu Hao decided to test the Subspace skill that had been enhanced to +10 and completely transformed into a new skill.

His expectation for the +10 Subspace was precisely the ”black hole” effect—according to the skill description, it could not only expand the size of the Subspace at will, but also increase suction, and even swallow enemies infinitely like a black hole, imprisoning them in the Subspace forever.

But he couldn’t jump to conclusions before testing it; he had to try it to know what the skill effect was really like.

Fu Hao headed to the great forest known as the ”Monster Treasury” to prepare for the official test of the Subspace skill. He had even conceived dozens of experimental scenarios in his mind; after all, the Subspace might be able to replace the Dragon Legion plan, so it had to be foolproof.

However, before he could finish testing all his ideas, the experiment ended hastily—

[Maintaining the ’Subspace’ skill requires the consumption of Magic Crystals; current Magic Crystals are insufficient.]

[Maintaining the ’Subspace’ skill requires the consumption of Magic Crystals; current Magic Crystals are insufficient.]

...

At first, everything went according to Fu Hao’s expectations: the Subspace portal kept expanding, and both mobs and Bosses were easily sucked in.

But the good times didn’t last long. After sucking in about a thousand monsters, the giant Magic Crystal taken from the Subspace ring vanished without a trace, and the Subspace skill came to a complete halt, with even basic functions unusable. Simply put, while the function was verified, the efficiency was ridiculously low.

”To think it would waste my only Magic Crystal like this...!”

The soul of Emperor Endel from the Inner World suddenly popped out, trembling with anger.

Without Magic Crystals, what would happen to the Ender Empire treasury inside the Subspace ring? Although he knew there was an identical treasury in the other Subspace ring, not being able to use his own empire’s treasury was ultimately hard for him to accept.

”I didn’t expect it to consume them so quickly either.”

The +10 Subspace was simply a Magic Crystal devouring beast; even the Absolute-grade Magic Crystal that he thought would last a long time was exhausted in an instant. If he had known this earlier, he might have been able to predict that the Transfer Demon King would abandon impersonating the Crown Prince and look elsewhere.

Fu Hao quickly brought up the positive aspects discovered during the experiment, trying to prove that the experiment was not meaningless: ”Fortunately, besides Absolute-grade Magic Crystals, Magic Crystals of other grades can also be used; that is a silver lining in this misfortune.”

He tried testing the Subspace skill with various grades of Magic Crystals he carried with him and found that while maintaining the Subspace required Absolute-grade Magic Crystals, the enhancement effects (expanding the portal size, increasing suction to swallow objects and life) could use Magic Crystals of any grade.

Absolute-grade Magic Crystals were currently nowhere to be found, but he could always find a way to collect Magic Crystals of other grades; this counted as a meaningful discovery.

But this was really hard to be optimistic about—if even an Absolute-grade Magic Crystal was exhausted in an instant, low-grade Magic Crystals probably couldn’t even suck in a single monster.

”Unless the proliferation artifact being developed by Loki succeeds, there’s no other way.”

Loki in The Original World should currently still be using the unfinished Mimic given by Fu Hao as experimental material to develop the proliferation artifact, but the problem was that development kept hitting walls, and the completion time was nowhere in sight—he couldn’t even make an estimate.

”Wait, if I gave him a real Mimic instead of an unfinished one, would development be faster?”

Fu Hao suddenly thought of a new possibility, but he had never encountered an original Mimic from the Demon World, even after turning the Demon World upside down when he was trying to recover the life cores of Philip and the members of the Five Great Guilds.

”If I had known, I should have recorded it when I had the Creation-grade monster detector.”

He didn’t know if Mimics were limited to specific areas like ordinary monsters or unfinished Mimics, but at least he hadn’t recorded the location of any Mimics.

If he had had a Creation-grade monster detector back then, it would have been easy to locate them, but he was busy recovering life cores at the time and only recorded the locations of materials for artifact crafting.

”...Let’s put the Subspace aside for now.”

Although he had a +10 monster detector, he still needed to know the general location to pinpoint an original Mimic. Fu Hao temporarily threw the stalled Subspace skill to the back of his mind and took out his next target: the Enhanced Item Synthesis skill.

”Are there currently only items like the sword of sealing that can be synthesized?”

The conditions for Enhanced Item Synthesis, besides the item name and attributes being identical, also required ”uniqueness”—it had to be an item that was one-of-a-kind in the world, such as the sword of sealing.

Items like the troll sword that could be farmed infinitely in dungeons or hunting grounds could not be used as synthesis objects.

Items that were one-of-a-kind in the world were almost all bound items, and Fu Hao had smashed all those items to enhance Margo’s blessing. Now, besides the sword of sealing, there was actually no opportunity to use the Enhanced Item Synthesis skill.

Although he could farm bound items in the Inner World and then return to The Original World to farm the same items for synthesis, he wanted to test this skill right now.

”It’s a pity to use Fates Luck to enhance the sword of sealing... but there’s no other way.”

The sword of sealing was a bound item; he couldn’t use the Fates Luck of an unfinished Mimic, so he had to use his own.

To safely enhance two Swords of Sealing to +10, at least four instances of Fates Luck were needed. Setting aside the features that it sealed the soul of Emperor Endel and could not be destroyed except through enhancement, the sword of sealing was actually nothing special. Spending four Fates Luck opportunities on it felt like a waste no matter how he thought about it.

But Fu Hao ultimately made up his mind to test the effect of the Enhanced Item Synthesis skill.

”Once the Fates Luck cooldown ends, I’ll start enhancing with the sword of sealing.”

He hoped that his choice could become the butterfly’s wing flap that triggered the storm, and he waited quietly for the Fates Luck cooldown to end.