Chapter 425 The Star Forger
The fifteenth cycle, the core laboratory of the wizard camp.
Outside, the roar of battle and energy fluctuations were isolated by a thick protective array, leaving only a low hum in the background.
Inside the laboratory, the light was constant and soft, the air was clean, and the only sounds were the subtle hiss of the running runes and the quiet flow of data across the light screen.
Unlike other wizards, Jemin did not focus on a specific experiment or data analysis in front of him.
He sat alone at a circular workbench in the corner of the laboratory. Before him lay not a research report, but a macro-level research timeline and an overview of the war's progress, compiled by him personally and spanning fifteen cycles.
When all wizards gained the ability of "time anchoring," and when the vast research system was able to sustain itself and no longer depended on him as the sole information hub, Jemin was finally freed from that firefighter-like state.
With the time and energy he had, he was able to truly calm down and, like a true observer, analyze everything in this long cycle of reincarnation.
The more he sorted things out, the clearer the feeling that something was wrong became.
I was never unique from the beginning.
After sorting through all the clues, the first thought that came to mind was like a cold needle piercing my brain.
All that he did—preserving information through his inner cave, using body tempering techniques to evolve resistance to memory reset, and pushing wizards to reverse engineer the Scythe Skull Clan's memory mechanism—in principle, could only he really do all of these things?
No.
Jemin knew very well that at least one person was capable of doing it.
And they can do it even better than him.
This person is the eighth-level wizard, Artorias the Starforger, who cast them into this battlefield of reincarnation and stationed them outside the plane.
Not to mention that the solidification of laws that an eighth-level wizard possesses makes him immune to the effects of time reversal.
Is it difficult for an eighth-level wizard to create an "information storage point" that is independent of the time flow of the plane, given his understanding and control of the laws?
With the unfathomable soul strength and knowledge reserves of an eighth-level wizard, is it difficult to directly analyze, replicate, and even improve the memory mechanism of the Scythe-Skull Clan?
I'm afraid none of them are difficult.
But Artorias did not do so.
He chose a completely different approach: to use Frost's vanguard legions in cycles of attrition, and then, every three cycles, to symbolically deploy a group of "elite support troops" like Jemin.
Why?
As his thoughts deepened, the macro charts before Jemin seemed to come alive, the interwoven data lines revealing a disheartening truth.
Their fifteen rounds of research thoroughly analyzed the physiological, social, and energy systems of the Scythe-Skull Clan; they figured out the triggering conditions, scope of effect, and some of the inherent rules of time reversal; and they even developed witchcraft to counter memory reset.
While the results appear remarkable, all of these studies are like painting an exquisite and complex shell.
Their research focuses on "how the Sickle-Skull Clan deals with reincarnation" and "what phenomena reincarnation manifests in the Sickle-Skull Clan."
They did not, and were unable to, truly grasp the core of "reincarnation itself".
The "mechanism" or "will" that drives everything, existing like the underlying code of a plane, remains hidden in the absolute depths of darkness.
The Scythe-Skull Clan and Time Reversal are like two concentric circles, seemingly closely adjacent, but in reality, there is an insurmountable gap between them.
No matter how many Scythe-Skull Clan members the wizards wiped out, or how thoroughly they studied their characteristics, it was all just cleaning up the large circle on the surface; the small circle at the core remained completely unaffected.
“So…” Jemin sighed deeply, leaned back in his chair, and stared at the energy runes simulating the starry sky on the laboratory ceiling, “the wizard Artorias probably saw through this long ago.”
“He had long understood that simply ‘studying the Scythe-Skull Clan’ and ‘accumulating experience in reincarnation’ were futile and failed to address the core of the problem. So he was too lazy to do things like I did, which seemed effective but were actually just scratching the surface.”
So, what is the purpose of all this arrangement by the Starforger?
Jemin recalled the process of the support operation.
Elite combat units like theirs are typically only dispatched by the Federation after the commander-in-chief of a particular plane battlefield assesses the situation and requests reinforcements from the Star Ring Federation headquarters.
They numbered 30,000 in total, and came at the request of the wizard Artorias.
However, 30,000 men... for such a grand war involving the entire plane, this amount of reinforcement is simply a drop in the ocean.
Even if they are all elites, how much can they change in the face of a trillion-level insect swarm and a bizarre time loop?
There's also that strange support method—divided into multiple teams, with one team deployed only every three rounds, at fixed intervals, like drip irrigation.
“This number of people…is pretty useless, isn’t it?” Jemin muttered to himself, his finger unconsciously tapping the sparse dots representing support forces on the chart. “And that support method…what exactly is that Starforger planning to do…”
"Of course, it's to increase the number of variables."
A gentle, calm male voice, seemingly resonating deep within the soul, unexpectedly picked up where Jemin left off.
Jemin froze, his heart skipping a beat.
He turned his head in a flash.
Less than a meter away from him, someone else had appeared out of nowhere.
He was a man who looked to be around thirty years old, with an ordinary face, and dressed in a simple, almost shabby, gray wizard's robe.
There was no trace of energy or law fluctuations on his body, just like an ordinary person who had accidentally wandered into a laboratory.
He was examining the macro charts unfolding in front of Jemin with great interest, a kind smile on his face.
Artorias the Starforger.
Jemin recognized the other person instantly, not just because of his appearance, but because of the aura that, even when completely concealed, still made one's soul instinctively feel "small" and "profound," which could only belong to that level eight being.
How did he end up here?
When did you come in?
Why did the other wizards not react at all?
Jemin’s gaze quickly swept across the laboratory.
Alison was adjusting a high-precision soul resonance device not far away, her brows slightly furrowed; Master Morias was arguing quietly with his assistant about an optimization scheme for a certain gene code.
The other wizards were also focused on their own work, and no one glanced in their direction, as if Artorias's presence was invisible to them.
No... it's not transparent.
Jemin quickly calmed down and observed carefully.
He discovered that the position of the dust on the ground where Artorias's body had stood had not changed at all.
This is not a physical entity.
A guess emerged.
“…Quality projection?” Jemin asked tentatively, feeling that his voice was more steady than he had expected.
Artorias turned his head and looked at Jemin, a clear look of surprise flashing in his eyes, which then turned into an appreciative smile.
"Oh? You actually know about 'quality projection'? It seems you have a solid foundation of knowledge." He didn't deny it.
Mass projection is a cutting-edge technology that projects a portion of one's own mass, energy, and even consciousness information to a distant location via action at a distance.
The projection possesses senses and a certain degree of interactivity that are almost identical to the original body, but it is not a real material entity and relies on a stable channel to maintain itself.
This explains why he could appear silently and why the other wizards were completely unaware—the "presence" of a projection can be precisely controlled, appearing only to specific targets.
(End of this chapter)
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