“Why?” Asho was surprised. “Isn’t your mentor a Sorcerer of the Three-Winged Holy Domain? How could she not know about the Time Continent?”
“There are two reasons for that,” Sonia raised her index finger. “First, compared to the information in the Knowledge Sea, there is only one-tenth of the books introducing the Time Continent. This is not only because the number of Two-Winged Artificers is far fewer than that of One-Winged Artificers, but more importantly, compared to the Virtual Realm, Artificers value faction realms more and are more willing to create Silver Scriptures and Golden Secrets on how to improve faction realms.”
“For example, in the library, there are thirty shelves of books on swordsmanship, covering different areas such as summoning, combat, and production with different Artisan spirits. In contrast, there are only two shelves of books describing the Knowledge Sea, and even fewer books on the Time Continent.”
“Artificers like us, who can gain something in the Virtual Realm every night, are really too few, so few that they can be considered exceptional. For ordinary Artificers, the Virtual Realm is just a place for them to absorb Artificing and cultivate combat skills. They do not expect to gain anything extra in the Virtual Realm, but rather obtain more Artisan spirits through improving faction realms and trading platforms, thus building their own Artisan spirit system.”
“When their faction realms advance to a higher level, they will climb to a higher level of the Virtual Realm and repeat this process. If it weren’t for the fact that each level of the Virtual Realm forces Artificers to explore, many Artificers would be happy to stay still and absorb Artificing peacefully every night.”
“Second, my mentor is a genius,” Sonia raised her middle finger. “She left the Time Continent and reached the distant sky domain in just four years. She lived in the academy for four years and still occasionally forgets where her office is, let alone the Time Continent.”
Asho sighed, understanding the gap between academy Artificers and adventure Artificers.
Just as those who have enough to eat will not rebel, there are far more people who save regularly than those who speculate in funds. Artificers naturally vote with their feet to find their comfort zone.
It is also easy to understand that Artificers would rather invest in themselves than pin their hopes on the Virtual Realm. At least they can control themselves. For academy Artificers, although focusing on improving faction realms requires effort and talent, the advancement route is stable enough, and as long as the faction realm can be improved, there is no bottleneck, after all, fools and geniuses absorb Artificing at the same efficiency in the Virtual Realm.
In contrast, even if they do well in the Virtual Realm, if their faction realms do not break through, they will still be stuck in place.
If the Virtual Realm is the fulcrum and the faction realm is the lever, then the academy Artificers are constantly strengthening and extending their own levers, leveraging more power from the Virtual Realm. While adventure Artificers like Asho are looking for more suitable and easier fulcrums, emphasizing the mysterious and inexplicable.
In terms of individuals, organizations, and society, academy Artificers are superior to adventure Artificers in all aspects. The only downside to the prosperity of academy Artificers is that they may overlook the potential value of the Virtual Realm due to their excessive emphasis on the importance of faction realms.
After all, they are too busy just improving faction realms, and they simply do not have the energy to explore the secrets of the Virtual Realm, let alone organize relevant information.
Of course, this does not mean that the two schools of thought are incompatible. Sword Girl is now a combination of academy and adventure, progressing at a rapid pace. But for the developing Artificer civilization, they can only focus on the knowledge system of the academy, and it is difficult to light up the technological tree of adventure.
It is unlikely that the academy will be able to rely on Sword Girl. They can only rely on themselves to discover the treasures of the Time Continent.
“Speaking of which, I suddenly remembered…”
“Are you thinking of another fairy tale story more exciting than an adult story?”
“No,” Diya shook her head and recounted her discovery at the lumberyard—logically, the non-depleting wood should have filled the entire nest, but there was not much wood in the factory.
Asho thought for a moment. “Come to think of it, in the several resource points we searched before, if all the common materials have been piling up, they should have been full a long time ago…”
“Is it possible that the resource points that are full have been blocked, and we simply cannot discover them, only the ones that are not full can be found by us?” Sonia pointed out a blind spot.
“The survivor effect is indeed reasonable, but there is another possibility.”
Asho said, “That is, seemingly useless common materials are also taken away regularly.”
Sonia shook her head. “I haven’t heard of any other Artificers besides you who can use common materials.”
“That means, those who can use those common materials are not necessarily Artificers…”
As they spoke, Asho had already opened the Virtual Realm map, ready to drive to the next resource point. But at that moment, he noticed an unmarked red dot on the edge of the map.
“Deceiving the weak with the strong is the embodiment of wisdom (Unknown Existence)”
Unknown existence means it is not a knowledge creature, and the only beings that would be walking around in the Time Continent, apart from knowledge creatures, are Artificer projections!
“It seems like there’s an Artificer projection walking ahead.”
“Run him over!” “Let’s go!” Sword Girl and the Witch made very dangerous remarks.
Asho went along with it and drove over. Their favorite enemies now are the Artificer projections walking around, because their car’s “Evil Blade” can directly run over and kill the opponent without needing to fight, and they can easily gain the Artisan spirits and Sorcerer’s Manuals from the opponent, rather than just leeching, it’s more like robbery.
As the distance shortened, Asho saw more details from the Virtual Realm map.
Then he suddenly hit the brakes.
“Why did you stop?”
Asho rubbed his eyes, confirming that he did not misread the prompt on the map. “Behind the Artificer projection, there is a large group of snake-scorpion dragons… and some thousand-feathered bird dragons! They seem to be advancing towards us together!”
“Everyone feels the same way (some·thousand-feathered bird dragons)”
“The next sentence is right (a group·snake-scorpion dragons)”
“Deceiving the weak with the strong is the embodiment of wisdom (Unknown Existence)”
Artificer projections are acting together with group-dwelling creatures?
Sonia thought of a very frightening possibility. “Quick, let’s hide, don’t block them in front of us!”Asho quickly steered the vehicle to the side and asked, “How come there are Artificer projections mixed with knowledge creatures? Is this some kind of bundle sale?”
“Or maybe it’s just on the way?” Diya suggested.
“No!” Sonia shook her head emphatically. “It’s not like that… They are one entity!”
As they spoke, swift predators rolled over the land like bulldozers, the moans of bending grass and the low growls of bowing trees wove together into a symphony of natural disaster.
Even with the shelter of the reverse-flowing golden rain, Asho and the others could still clearly hear an army composed of knowledge creatures marching brazenly beside them.
The bodies of the Sorcerers were almost rigid, as if afraid that their own movements would disturb the passing monsters.
Asho’s fingers hovered over the directional keys, his eyes glued to the light spots on the map, ready to flee at any moment.
They all silently prayed that this unknown legion would stick to the plan and go elsewhere to party, and not notice them, a few pitiful creatures in the wild.
Despite Asho and his companions being able to clear three resource points, they still needed to seize advantageous terrain when facing hordes of monsters, and even create narrow terrains themselves to reduce the numerical advantage of the herd creatures. In local areas, it was often the three of them ganging up on two monsters.
In other words, they actually lacked the ability to fight as a group.
This was no nest or cave; the Sorcerers couldn’t find any advantageous terrain here. If this Virtual Realm legion attacked them, they could only pray that their four wheels were faster than the flying creatures.
As the wails of the trees gradually faded away, they finally breathed a sigh of relief. Although one doesn’t sweat in the Virtual Realm, everyone felt a coolness evaporating from the fear on their skin.
“What was that?” Asho asked.
“I’ve never seen it before either,” Diya murmured. “Thank goodness it’s the first time, otherwise little Red would have been doomed.”
Redeemed: “I knew it would take a battle of certain death to bring me fully into play.”
“That must be the second most dangerous entity on the ‘Continent of Time Danger Ranking.’”
Sonia whispered, “They are the wanderers who harvest life, the nightmare that no Artificer wants to encounter, the Virtual Realm’s most unreserved malice towards outsiders—”
“The Legion of Valiant Souls.”