Life Game In Other World
Chapter 712: Settlement of the 10th Main Quest (Vote for Monthly Pass)

Chapter 712: Chapter 712: Settlement of the 10th Main Quest (Vote for Monthly Pass)

[The "King of Nightfall" character card is cooling down (Cooldown remaining: 1 copy world)]

[The "Primeval Flame" character card is cooling down (Cooldown remaining: 1 copy world)]

He Ao stared at the cards in his field of view.

This time, he had exchanged a total of five Exchange Stars, the earliest of which was exchanged for one day’s use of the "King of Nightfall."

Then, with four Exchange Stars, he exchanged for Joey of the "Primeval Flame," and one day’s use of the "Primeval Flame."

After which, he used both character cards.

Using the "King of Nightfall" was normal, after all, it wasn’t Vian’s first time deceiving death.

But when using the "Primeval Flame," there was a slight accident; he hadn’t expected Roger to be watching by the side.

So when he rose from the coffin, both of them were startled at the same time, though Roger was the more terrified of the two.

A smile curling at the corners of his mouth, He Ao shifted his gaze away from the two character cards that had once again turned gray.

After using a character card, there would be a cooldown time; both these cards had a cooldown of one copy world, meaning He Ao couldn’t use them in the next copy world.

He slowly moved his gaze backward, looking at the other character cards remaining.

The order of the character card interface had always been the same, from left to right, with the first two being [Primeval Flame] and [King of Nightfall], both of which He Ao had already exchanged.

The third card was [Usurper], representing Nell, and to this day, it remained a gray, unexchangeable state.

The fourth card was [Saint], corresponding to ’Pete,’ which also could not be exchanged.

Both cards involved Divine Beings, with [Usurper] related to the dead War God and [Saint] to the still active and not-so-’tyrannical’ Life Goddess. Using either of these cards would more or less establish a connection with a Divine Being.

Especially with [Saint], which would almost certainly come under the watchful gaze of the Life Goddess.

Following on from [Usurper] and [Saint], the fifth card was one he obtained in the last copy world, corresponding to Jess, the [Sea-Deep Glimmer].

At this moment, he kept his gaze on "Sea-Deep Glimmer," and a pop-up naturally appeared.

[Do you want to pay 5 Exchange Stars to exchange for "Sea-Deep Glimmer"? (Your currently available Exchange Stars: 3)]

The [Sea-Deep Glimmer] card was exchangeable; it involved a deceased Higher Being, possibly related to mental manipulation.

A Higher Being that existed between Angels and Divine Beings.

In a sense, Jess was a ’follower’ of this Higher Being, and [Sea-Deep Glimmer] very likely involved a backup plan related to the resurrection left by this Higher Being.

So although this card could be exchanged, the trouble associated with it was no small matter either.

After his gaze swept past [Sea-Deep Glimmer], He Ao shifted his view to the very end, looking at that last card, a card facing away from him.

As his gaze settled on it, the card slowly flipped over, revealing its content.

First entering He Ao’s field of vision was a pale purple fog that filled the entire card.

Within this fog were wavy lines that moved like swimming in the fog, vaguely emerging from it to reveal their forms before returning to the mist.

These lines surged and undulated in the image, forming an ephemeral figure composed entirely of lines, hidden within the dense fog.

He Ao’s gaze gradually fell to the name of the card.

[Dream Phantom]

Dream...

He Ao pondered the name of this card.

The system’s character card names always possessed some metaphor related to the ability or identity.

For example, ’King of Nightfall,’ ’Primeval Flame,’ and ’The Presumptuous’ were metaphors for identity, ’Saint’ represented both ability and identity, and ’Sea-Deep Glimmer’ leaned more towards ability since the Higher Being related to this card was likely lurking in the depths of thought.

So what did "Dream Phantom" represent?

The phantom represents a person, but what does ’dream’ refer to?

Cito’s identity didn’t seem to have much to do with dreams, so did ’dream’ actually refer to some kind of ’ability’? A significant ’ability’ deeply connected to this card?

He Ao didn’t believe that Cito would have kept his entire body intact amidst the thunderous ocean unleashed by the Witch of Desire.

In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that Winding Hill posed a greater threat in the eyes of the Witch of Desire, requiring the Witch to prioritize destroying Winding Hill and needing to rely on He Ao as the ritual conductor to serve as an anchor point for continued power projection during this process,

She would have utterly destroyed He Ao at first sight.

Of course, the Witch of Desire’s willingness to pay a high price for her Advent was indeed touching.

One could only say that friends are indeed reliable.

He Ao brought his thoughts back to the [Dream Phantom] before him.

If it was theoretically impossible for Cito’s body to have been preserved under the advent of the thunder, then the only possibility was that some other force intervened in the final ’outcome.’

At that time, the only thing present capable of withstanding the projection of power from the Witch of Desire’s Advent was one thing—

’Winding Hill.’

In a way, He Ao was the one among all those present who had the highest affinity with Winding Hill and the highest level of integration with it.

Even Vellent’s level of integration wasn’t as high as his, and the reason was simple: had Vellent reached this step and accepted such a strong taint from Winding Hill, he likely would have lost his sanity and become a monster long ago.

And indeed, as He Ao left the copy world in an instant, he truly felt a surge of power from Winding Hill.

Therefore, this character card didn’t solely represent ’Cito,’ but also the ’residue’ of Winding Hill.

He Ao remembered those lines that made up the hills and eventually took on the appearance of hills.

From the ethereal to the material, could this be ’dream’?

In this light, ’dream’ could be the true power of Winding Hill or, rather, the true power of the deceased master of Winding Hill.

With this in mind, He Ao stared at the card before him.

Then why would the Witch of Desire leave behind a trace of Winding Hill’s residue?

This could be due to her limitations, but He Ao leaned more towards another speculation.

The Witch of Desire was ’fishing.’

And the reason He Ao could come up with this speculation was because of another matter, ’the truth of Winding Hill.’

The so-called core of the "Winding Hill", which supposedly concealed the remains of a Higher Being, had nothing in it except for the lightning left by the Witch of Desire.

The entire Winding Hill was, in fact, nothing but a deceptive "empty shell".

So, there arises a question: Was the Winding Hill always this empty shell, or did it become so due to some reason afterward?

This raises another issue: Is the Winding Hill truly the burial ground of that transcendent Angel?

He Ao leaned towards yes.

The hypothetical master of the Winding Hill, who was most likely originally interred—or rather, died—at the Winding Hill, was the source of the Angelic powers and the higher Talent Sequences that Vellent sought. Originally, they did exist.

And the reason He Ao made such a judgment was quite simple, which was the power of the Witch of Desire left in the Winding Hill.

The core of the Winding Hill was laden with the Witch of Desire’s lightning, which tirelessly destroyed everything at the heart of the Winding Hill.

This was also a major reason for He Ao’s conclusion that the master of the Winding Hill had died at the hands of the Witch of Desire.

After all, based on his past experiences, Divine Beings, as well as Higher Beings close to Divine Beings, are very hard to kill; the War God was so, and so was that secret existence lurking in the deep sea of thoughts.

The reason why the Witch of Desire left these bolts of lightning in the Winding Hill was probably to continuously "flog the corpse", suppressing the master of the Winding Hill’s innate "instinct" to resurrect.

And to suppress, there must be a corpse. It’s unlikely that the Witch of Desire would waste her strength in an empty grave, flogging the air.

This suggests one thing: at least at the beginning, when the master of the Winding Hill had just passed away, the body of that Higher Being was still there, which is why the Witch of Desire would have set up these methods of flogging the corpse.

But at some unknown point in time, the remains of the Higher Being buried in the Winding Hill "disappeared".

Not only did they disappear, but they were also disguised as if they hadn’t disappeared, continuing to attract sacrifices from the outside.

In fact, He Ao had a vague sense that something was wrong with the Winding Hill the moment he "entered" and first came into contact with its core.

Having explored the grave of the War God and communicated with a secret existence attempting to return from death, He Ao had a wealth of experience in dealing with Divine Beings. His first impression of the inner core of the Winding Hill was "emptiness", a sense of lacking some vital item.

Of course, he didn’t have the chance to sense it in detail as he was promptly kicked out before seeing anything significant after just entering the core of the Winding Hill.

But when he recalled the event afterward, he had an indistinct realization that something was off.

Although he easily obtained the information corresponding to the pathway of the Winding Hill, this information was not obtained by seeing the true form as with the War God, but rather by some special power directly being instilled into his mind.

To He Ao, it felt as though someone was trying to pretend there was a corpse of a Higher Being here.

This kind of ruse might be enough for those who had never come into contact with a Divine Being or seen a Divine Being’s true form, as they could only try to understand the existence of a Divine Being through some fragmented knowledge.

But to He Ao, who had extensive experience dealing with Divine Beings, such a disguise was somewhat clumsily executed.

Of course, the aura of the Witch of Desire was genuine, so the person who had set up this "disguise" had also borrowed some of the arrangements made by the Witch of Desire to achieve the effect of simulating the presence of a Divine Being.

He Ao was indeed originally fooled by the aura of the Witch of Desire, but when he realized that these auras came from the Witch of Desire and not a Higher Being from the same source as the Winding Hill, after lifting this veil of illusion, what presented itself to him was the utterly empty truth.

The aura of the Witch of Desire was actually similar to that of the Winding Hill; if He Ao hadn’t been on good terms with the Witch of Desire and had multiple encounters with her, he would not have been able to discern this so easily.

If someone not familiar with the Witch of Desire had come along, even someone who had encountered a Higher Being of a Divine kind, they might not be able to realize these truths immediately.

Compared to ordinary Transcendents below the level of Angels, this arrangement was actually quite meticulous.

And the main targets the Winding Hill intended to attract were precisely those "followers" akin to Vellent, who were below the level of Angels.

But He Ao, although also an ordinary Transcendent below the level of Angels, just happened to have some connections with the Witch of Desire, enabling him to detect the subtle inconsistencies here.

Of course, it was He Ao’s close encounter with Winding Hill that led to these feelings, but he did not believe that the Witch of Desire had left no other ’surveillance’ contingencies there.

If the Witch of Desire truly had left a ’contingency’, it seemed to have been obscured by special means, preventing Her from realizing the true situation of Winding Hill immediately.

To hide from a Divine Being’s perception, the one who laid these arrangements must be at least an Angel or an even Higher Being, likely with abilities inclined towards Deceive.

This ’person’ sneaked into Winding Hill one day after its owner had died, stole the remains, then faked the scene to look as if no one had been there and the remains were still present, simultaneously deluding the ordinary ’followers’ of Winding Hill and using this to lull the Witch of Desire into complacency.

This was the entire ’truth’ of Winding Hill.

And having clarified all this, taking another look at the [Dream Phantom] became quite interesting.

The ’person’ who arranged all this probably never considered that ordinary sacrifices at Winding Hill might invite the projection of the Witch of Desire.

After all, the cost of summoning an Evil God’s projection is tremendous, and those presiding over the sacrifices at Winding Hill could not be unaware of this.

Not to mention the probability of two such events coinciding is extremely low, the ’knowledge’ passed onto the followers by Winding Hill emphasized staying away from the Witch Church.

If Vellent had foreseen the possibility of the Witch Church appearing, he would not have conducted the ritual in the first place.

All sacrifices leave traces to be followed, especially operations like the Advent of a projection that require large-scale sacrifices, so any trace of sacrifice related to the Witch of Desire, once discovered, would render the sacrifices at Winding Hill utterly impossible to commence.

And the only possible way for an Advent to occur with absolutely no trace of sacrifice is if the Witch of Desire descended at Her own expense.

No sacrifices needed, hence no traces of them.

But according to the logic of mysticism, the likelihood of a Divine Being descending at their own expense is nearly zero.

And then it happened.

The appearance of the Witch of Desire sorted out Winding Hill and tore through the fog over it, making this Divine Being aware that She had been ’deceived’.

Therefore, She deliberately left some residues as ’bait’ to see if She could lure out the entity behind the scenes.

He Ao didn’t need to think twice to know that the area near the remains corresponding to the [Dream Phantom] card was probably full of ’eyes’ left by the Witch of Desire, and that the presence of another lurking Higher Being was probably eyeing the situation greedily.

And in the Witch of Desire’s eyes, ’Cito’ should have been completely killed off, the ’remains’ being nothing but an inactive mixture that had incorporated Cito’s body.

If He Ao used this card and brought ’Cito’ ’back to life’, he felt that the Witch of Desire was likely to temporarily abandon the idea of fishing, and instead hit him with a ’friendly care’ full of thunder.

If the [Saint] character cards come inherently with the attention of Divine Beings, then this [Dream Phantom] most likely comes with Divine Punishment.

Winding Hill came from a residue of a Transcendent existence through Super Memory, and [Dream Phantom] was a residue of Winding Hill; it might indeed hold clues to an Angel or even beings above Angels.

However, this artifact had already been caught up in the games between a Divine Being and another existence above Angels, and it came with inherent hatred; with so much lurking in the background, it was likely not so easy to deal with.

But that was a matter for when it was time to ascend to Angel.

He Ao glanced at the [Dream Phantom] card, which was grey and currently unexchangeable.

He wondered if it would change after ascending to B-rank, and he was actually quite curious about the system’s standards on exchange restrictions.

Shaking his head, he closed the character card interface and returned his gaze to the center of his field of vision.

Lines of text were materializing in his sight.

[Assessing main quest evaluation···]