Wizard: Start with Biological Transformation to Grind Experience - Chapter 558 - 17: The Stele
Chapter 558: Chapter 17: The Stele
“Desert of Decay?”
Lynch frowned slightly, his gaze sweeping around the surroundings. All he could see was endless yellow sand, not a single speck of green in sight. The air was still, devoid of any signs of life.
“It really is quite a fitting name…”
After glancing around, Lynch’s gaze returned to the map in his hand.
Just like when in the Spring Garden, the map displayed a marker indicating his current location, and a winding, undulating path leading into the distance, with the final destination still being the withered tree-like high mountain far off.
He could see that mountain here too, but just like in the Spring Garden, he could feel a clear space barrier between him and the mountain. It was obvious that if he followed the visible path, he’d never reach the destination.
“Where’s the password to pass through here?”
“Is it still about fighting monsters?”
Touching his chin, Lynch looked around again. Not a trace of life was visible, which didn’t seem like a place inhabited by monsters.
“Let’s explore first and see.”
Shaking his head, Lynch pushed down his suspicions and began exploring this desert.
…
In the blink of an eye, several hours had passed.
The hours of exploration felt particularly long in the dead silence of the gray-white sand sea.
Lynch moved like a solitary bird, gliding over solidified dunes, his spiritual power meticulously scanning every inch of the sand, trying to detect any abnormal energy fluctuations or life signs.
However, apart from the chaotic shifting dark red spots and twisted arrows on the map that symbolized the rampant decay energy pervading the entire space, he found nothing. Monotony, coldness, and deathly silence were the only melodies of this Desert of Decay.
“Could I have guessed wrong? Is combat not the condition for passing?” Lynch furrowed his brow slightly, halted, and looked around. The endless sea of sand glistened in the pale sky, as if the entire world had been drained of color and vitality.
“Hmm? What’s that?”
At that moment, at the edge of Lynch’s vision, something seemed to stand abruptly in the shaded side of a gigantic dune, disrupting its smooth curve.
He flashed over, quickly identifying the object.
It was not a life form but a stone tablet.
“A stone tablet…”
Touching his chin, Lynch thought about it. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen such stone tablets; during the last few hours of exploration, he’d encountered similar ones elsewhere.
At the time, he had dismissed them as merely remnants and ruins buried in the desert. But on further thought, wasn’t the appearance of these things a bit too frequent?
“Could there be some hidden clue within these things?”
Thinking this, Lynch flashed a few more times, quickly approaching the stone tablet.
The stone tablet was roughly three meters tall, with a darker hue than the surrounding sand, as if it had endured many years of harshness; it was an obscure dark gray. Its material was neither gold nor stone, its surface covered in fine cracks like a dried riverbed. Half-buried in the sand, the exposed part pointed like a withered finger toward the gray sky, emanating an ancient, heavy, and extremely discordant aura.
The most striking feature was that the entire surface of the stone tablet was densely engraved with runes!
These runes were unlike any of the magic scripts familiar to Lynch. The lines were twisted and complex, like withered vines tangled together, or the congealed vein patterns of some deceased creature. They were deeply embedded within the tablet, not simply carved but appearing as if formed by the natural condensation of some rule power.
Each rune emitted an exceptionally faint yet remarkably pure wave of decay. Combined, they formed a field so oppressively strange it seemed capable of dragging one’s soul into oblivion.
“Rune Language? Runes imbued with decay rules…” Lynch’s eyes narrowed. This stone tablet was clearly linked to the core secrets of this Desert of Decay, perhaps even the key to leaving!
He cautiously approached, his spiritual power highly focused, enveloping the surface of the stone tablet like the most precise scanner, attempting to decipher these strange rune structures and interpret the information they contained. His mental probes touched the twisted lines carefully.
However, at the instant when his spiritual power made contact with the tablet’s runes—
Buzz!
The stone tablet suddenly trembled! The dark gray cracks on its surface flared with a blinding gray-white light! The twisted runes seemed to come alive instantly, writhing and regrouping frantically like billions of hungry maggots on the tablet’s surface!
A force far more violent, direct, and targeted than the desert’s background radiation erupted thunderously from within the stone tablet, aiming straight at Lynch, who was attempting to decode it!
This force was not a physical assault but an erosion of rules!
Lynch felt an icy, bone-piercing chill, as if it could freeze his soul, piercing through his spiritual power defenses, following the mental link directly into his sea of consciousness!
At the same time, the space around him twisted eerily—countless tiny, nearly invisible gray-white sand grains appeared out of thin air, summoned like the dust of the Death God. They adhered directly to his skin, clothes, and even attempted to penetrate his pores, bypassing his body’s protective aura!
Decay commenced!
First was the decay of the flesh. Where the gray-white sand grains adhered, the skin immediately lost its luster, becoming dry and cracked like old bark, with a pain like being cut by knives! It felt as if his life force was forcibly drained, cells accelerating their death!
Then was the decay of energy. The magic power within him suddenly turned sluggish and turbid, like being infused with sticky sludge. Its flow rate plummeted, with signs of uncontrollable dissipation. The defensive layers constructed by space and time mystical levels let out “sizzling” laments in front of these gray-white sand grains, rapidly becoming dim and fragile!
And then was the decay of the spirit. The chill that invaded his sea of consciousness through his spiritual force transformed into countless tiny, cold needles carrying thoughts of demise, madly piercing his mental barriers, trying to taint his will and forcefully inject notions of despair, desolation, and the end of all things!
His thoughts seemed frozen, waves of fatigue and emptiness emanating from the depths of his consciousness, making even thinking itself feel unbearably heavy, as if he wanted to succumb and become part of this dead desert.
“Hmph!” Lynch grunted, a sharp light bursting from his eyes instantly. Careless! This stone tablet was a trap itself, or rather, a test! Interpreting it was actively triggering its most fundamental decay rule attack!
