Chapter 788 - Transparent World
Chapter 788 Transparent World
The World Tree had re-rooted herself in the earth and changed back to her tree state.
But half of the tree was charred, while the other half, though still vibrant, was presumably the result of a delay in the plant nerve, and the branches and leaves should slowly wither before long.
In Roland’s mental perception, the spirit of the World Tree still existed, though it wasn’t very active.
At the same time, a faint purple film sealed off the entire Elf Forest.
It was a very strong boundary.
“Protecting your sons and daughters even in slumber?” Roland stood at the edge of the floating city and glanced at the World Tree below, before he looked up again, leveling his eyes at the Dragon God Bahamut in front of him. “Esteemed Dragon God, do you wish to continue the fight?”
The dragon god’s gaze was cold.
He had brought thousands of gigantic dragons this time, all adults.
But now with over half of them ending up casualties, there was no point in fighting any longer.
There was no telling what kind of freak this Mage in front of him was, to be able to throw so many terrifyingly disposable alchemical weapons at once that could seriously injure his massive body.
It just wasn’t that easy for him to leave now.
“What do you want before you let my people go?”
A large number of struggling and screaming dragons lay on the ground, and a large number of blue angels were blocking the entire sky.
From time to time, the dragons were knocked to the ground.
Without the help of the World Tree and with the heavy death toll of his people, the floating city had returned to full strength. That’s fucking outrageous… The floating city is outrageous, it regenerates faster than the power of faith-how in the world can something be so non-magical? Although the Dragon God was sullen on the inside, he had to hold back. He said, “Roland, what kind of conditions do you need before you will let my people go?” “Whatever you think is reasonable.” Roland grinned.
What kind of victor asked for the spoils of war? Didn’t the losers offer them up themselves?
After a long moment of hesitation, Bahamut opened his mouth slightly and spat out a ball of light, causing it to float in front of Roland’s floating city.
“This is my secondary Divine SparkEvolution,” Bahamut said lightly. “And, my clan will leave the main plane and never set foot in this place as long as you are alive.”
The Divine Spark of Evolution?
Roland reached out and this ball of light floated up to and on top of Roland’s head.
To the Dragon God, it was a small ball of light, but to someone of Roland’s size, it looked so big it was like a hot air balloon.
The pose of him holding up the ball with one hand was the classic famous pose of the statue “It’s useless”[1] that one would find in every college!
Information about the light sphere was identified by the system.
Dragonborn Evolution Divine Spark: You can evolve any creature with a dragon’s bloodline, no matter how diluted, and collect its power of faith for your use.
It didn’t look very useful, but a closer analysis would reveal that it was outrageously strong.
The dragons were so lustful that there were dragon sons and daughters everywhere in the main plane.
Not to mention that almost all kobolds had dragon blood.
If I were to take them under my forces… hehe!
Roland reached out and the ball of light landed in the center of the floating city. He left it there for now.
No one but Andonara could casually go up to his floating city now, so it was safe to put it there.
The main thing was that it was too big to put in the mansion’s space.
With the spoils in hand, Roland piloted the floating city away.
Bahamut sighed in relief and used the dragon race’s unique healing spell. The wounded dragons returned to health at a remarkable rate, and within half an hour, all the dragons had healed and they sadly took the carcasses of their people with them.
Bahamut sighed and glanced at the sleeping World Tree, looking a bit reluctant, but in the end, he opened a spatial portal and took the metallic dragons away.
The silver dragons were supposed to leave as well, but after asking Bahamut’s permission, they stayed. Because their relationship with Roland was quite good. After all, there was Futi as a middleman.
Roland then teleported the floating city away to the border between the main plane and the Astral Plane.
It was so high that players couldn’t get up here, and the average Evil God wouldn’t dare to just come down: after all, they would be suppressed by the main plane. Roland intended to upgrade the floating city here while fusing the Dragonborn Evolutionary Divine Spark with himself.
It was a neutral Divine Spark, so there was no problem with fusing it.
It was only the fusion of the Divine Spark that required a period of slumber, and he had brought Andonara with him for safety and security.
There are also a large number of blue angels on standby, hidden in the complex of the floating city.
Afterward, he first stuffed the Whirlwind Divine Spark he had gotten earlier into the core of the floating city.
Then he began to absorb the huge ball of light in the square.
This thing contained a lot of energy, and it took Roland half a day to absorb it.
Then with his eyes closed, he slumped backward and fell into Andonara’s soft embrace.
Placing Roland on her lap, Andonara gently stroked Roland’s eyebrow with tender affection in her eyes.
Roland was in a coma.
On the other hand, at this moment, Roland climbed up from the virtual cabin with a bewildered look on his face.
Just now, the system suddenly prompted: “You are evolving into a Demigod, you need five days to transform your body!”
Then it kicked him offline.
That was a bit baffling.
He tried to get back online, but the system prompted: “Unable to connect to ID, please wait a while.”
Then for the next five days, Roland had an uncomfortable time, and although it wasn’t boring-after all, on the base, a great deal of work was required of him—the problem was that he could not get used to sleeping in his bed.
He had slept in a virtual cabin every night and his body didn’t recognize the bed.
It had caused him to have insomnia for the past five days in a row. Fortunately, his body wasn’t quite the same as an ordinary person’s, so he wasn’t mentally weary.
After five days of suffering, he was finally able to lie down in the virtual cabin again… That feeling of a vampire sleeping in a coffin was great.
This time the virtual cabin didn’t stop him from logging in, and soon he was once again in the game world.
Unlike the colored passages that had appeared when he had logged in before, this time Roland closed and opened them, and he was in the game world himself.
It seemed to omit that feeling of traveling through the passage. Reopening his eyes, Roland looked around him and found himself sleeping in the middle of the floating city with a soft pillow and a thin clean blanket covering him. When he stood up, he saw Andonara tending to the plants in the flower belt with scissors, and when she heard a sound behind her, she turned back and smiled in surprise. “Roland, you’re awake?”
Roland was going to smile and say hello too, but he suddenly froze.
In front of him, Andonara’s entire being was translucent.
And behind Andonara’s head, there was a vaguely transparent thread that fluttered gently.
On this thread, a faint glow kept flowing, then disappeared from its end, as if passing some message into the void.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Startled, Roland immediately used Sobering and Focus on himself.
He also cast Dispel Illusion, Dispel Unholy, and other spells on Andonara.
And yet, still, nothing changed.
Andonara was still translucent.
“What’s wrong?” The translucent Andonara walked up to Roland and shook her hand. “I’m fine. I’ve been in the floating city for the past few days. Did you have a problem with the fusion?”
Something wrong with the fusion?
Roland hurriedly opened his system interface, and his expression became even stranger.
Because the data in the system interface had disappeared, and the character status bar was gone, with only the words, “Congratulations, you can understand the world.”
What’s going on here?
With a slight headache, Roland rubbed his forehead.
Seeing his distress, Andonara came over and gently grabbed his hand, and asked, “What’s wrong with you? In my senses, you’re already a Demigod. There’s no problem. Is there some conflict between the dragons’ Divine Spark and that of humans?”
Andonara’s hand felt warm and tangible before.
But now it felt like touching air aerogel.
It was completely distorted.
This was very wrong.
“No, you look translucent to me.” Roland opened up about his doubts. “But other things look normal.”
The two were so close that there was no need to cover up anything.
Translucent?
Andonara froze slightly, then pulled her bodice up in style. “Damn it, just say it if you want that. Don’t use some translucent excuse.”
“No, Anna, I’m serious,” Roland said seriously.
“Oh.” Andonara’s expression tensed up a little. “Did the fusion go wrong? Do you want to ask the Goddess of Magic what’s going on?”
Roland nodded. He agreed that he might have had some problems with fusing the Divine Spark.
The floating city teleported to the Divine Realm of Magic, and upon entering, Roland met the Goddess of Magic.
She was also translucent, much like Andonara.
And there was also that one transparent thread behind her head, with a sheen surging through it that was considerably stronger than Andonara’s.
The Goddess of Magic was full of doubts when Roland told her. “No, in my perception, you are quite normal. How about I probe your soul?”
After a moment of hesitation, Roland nodded.
It was that rapturous feeling that made him lose consciousness and awareness again, and it was about half an hour before Roland took his head off the forehead of the Goddess of Magic.
Mystra, the Goddess of Magic, licked her lips and said with a blush, “Nothing’s wrong. Maybe it’s because you’re not quite used to a Demigod’s power? Maybe it’ll be normal after a while.”
Is that so? Roland left the Divine Realm of Magic with some doubts.
Upon returning to the main plane, Roland went to meet many people, both natives of the game world and players… They were all translucent.
Roland also accepted the fact that he saw people as translucent, but then, gradually, he realized that something was a little bit off.
Both players and NPCs had that one transparent thread at the back of their heads, but he didn’t.
And it was not quite clear how strong he was now that he was a Demigod since there were no more stats to measure in the status bar, but his dynamic vision and reaction speed were indeed drastically enhanced.
He found that the players were moving in a natural, fluid manner.
But there was a slight sense of oddity in the NPCs’ movements, a slight stiffness between one move and the next.
There was also a bit of audio-visual desynchronization, where the mouth moved but the voice came a little late, roughly a millisecond or so of delay. He couldn’t feel it before, but he could feel it now.
However, strong NPCs, like Andonara and the Goddess of Magic, had little sense of delay.
Apart from that, it was a sense of emptiness that kept surrounding Roland.
Whoever he touched, the touch didn’t feel right.
Especially when getting intimate with Andonara, it felt like he was screwing air.
There was no tangibility… but when he watched Andonara, she looked to be feeling quite normal. What had gone wrong with him?
How would he fix it?
Roland felt distressed. Without touch, the immersion of playing this game would be greatly reduced.
As he agonized, he returned to his manor in Delpon. He was going to get a few barrels of his homemade wine to drink, but as soon as he got the wine barrels out of the cellar, he saw Nia carrying all sorts of bags as she giddily returned from somewhere. Roland winced at the sight of her, and his Hand of Magic fell apart. The barrel fell out of the air and smashed to the ground, shattering.
Red wine spilled all over the floor.
Nia also saw Roland. She saw Roland staring blankly at her and that there was wine spilled on the ground. She came over, put down the things in her hands first, then waved her right hand in front of Roland’s face. “What, haven’t seen me for a while, so you don’t recognize me anymore? What’s this look of having seen a ghost?”
Roland took a deep breath. “How are you not transparent?”
“What’s this about being transparent?” asked Nia, her expression more puzzled.
Roland reached out and touched Nia’s hair on the front of her forehead.
Nia subconsciously leaned back while asking, “What are you doing? A girl can’t casually let a man touch her hair.”
“Don’t move,” Roland barked softly.
Nia stood still, but she still looked at Roland in confusion, not understanding what he was trying to do!
Roland touched her hair gently with his hands.
At this time, she didn’t feel anything wrong. She reacted subconsciously earlier… In reality, they were so familiar that it didn’t mean much for him to touch her hair.
But after a moment, Roland’s hands began to caress her face.
She immediately blushed.
Roland was also thrilled… It was a real sensation; Nia’s face was smooth, warm, and supple.
“Why are you touching me randomly?” Nia’s eyes darted around. “There’s a lot of people watching here.”
There were indeed several guards on duty near the courtyard, but they all had the discretion to avert their eyes when they saw Roland and Nia almost pressed together. How could they dare look around at this point? Did they not want their jobs anymore?
Despite Nia’s words of discontent, in reality, she didn’t put up any resistance at all. Roland’s hand was still caressing her face, and eventually, it was going down, seemingly about to touch her neck.
A woman’s neck was quite a sensitive area.
Nia’s face reddened even more as her eyes darted from side to side, feeling even shyer when she saw the guards standing nearby before she grabbed Roland’s hand and dragged the latter toward the back of the house.
Coming to the unlit part of the backyard, it was dimly lit, and there were quite a few trees and grasses around for cover, making it a rather private place.
“Well, what’s wrong with you today! if you’re going to touch me, you can’t do it in a place with so many people,” she said sheepishly as she gently shook Roland’s hand away and then closed her eyes. “If you’re going to touch me, do it quickly. Only touching, nothing else, got it?”
Her head was tilted up slightly at this point, her tiny lips becoming even more glossy and flushed from blushing. With her long, slightly trembling eyelashes, she gave the impression that she was playing hard to get.
[1] a common statue in colleges in China of a person holding up a ball, which has now been popularized by students to mean that education is useless