Tower

Staring at the description in the final line, Chen Guan was rendered speechless.

He had originally only wanted to try keeping the Dreamweaver in his mental space, the way he had kept Baal.

He never would have imagined that, although he failed to keep the person, his supernatural ability would mutate instead.

According to the description in the final line, did this mean he could now directly exchange souls with other people?

If he could just take over Baal’s body, wouldn’t that make him invincible?

Of course, that beautiful dream was only something he could imagine. It went without saying that, to exchange souls, he would first have to determine the target’s mental strength.

Unless his mental strength completely overwhelmed the other person’s, there was no way he could exchange souls at will.

“Awooo…”

With the crisis resolved, Baobao at his feet began to feel sleepy again. After letting out a huge yawn, it flopped back down and prepared to continue digesting its feast.

Chen Guan bent down and picked it up again. It seemed a little heavier in his arms than before.

Looks like all those extra meals had paid off. It was getting fat.

“Let’s go.”

Li Yan’s voice came from ahead.

He had already reached the enormous base of the signal tower and was looking up at the hundred-meter-tall black spire.

Chen Guan answered, then hurried after him with Baobao in his arms.

One after the other, they stepped onto the pitch-black, polished plaza beneath the signal tower.

The ground beneath their feet was cold and hard, like a single slab of black obsidian. It reflected the eerie purple bands of light in the sky, as well as the silhouettes of the two figures—one large and one small.

“Are you ready?” Li Yan stopped. His voice sounded somewhat muffled in the empty plaza. “There’s a guardian at the top of this tower.”

Chen Guan set down Baobao, who was sleeping soundly in his arms. The little fellow smacked its lips, rolled over, and continued sleeping, the tip of its tail curling unconsciously.

He looked up at the hundred-meter-tall black spire. The twisted patterns covering its surface writhed slowly like living creatures, radiating a malice that seemed to seep into his bones.

The writhing black patterns on the tower’s surface seemed to have been summoned. Like venomous snakes, they converged from every direction. In the center of the plaza, the flowing crystals began to rise, twist, and reconstruct themselves.

A humanoid figure more than five meters tall slowly stood up. Its entire body was made of black crystal.

It had no facial features. Its head was a smooth, diamond-shaped crystal, and its limbs were thick and powerful. Those strange, flowing patterns still covered its body, while in its hands was a massive crystal battle-axe fused to its body.

“The Crystal Tower Guardian,” Li Yan said, naming it.

It made no sound. It merely turned its smooth head toward Chen Guan, locking onto the tiny human with an overwhelming will to crush every intruder.

“Awooo?”

Baobao seemed to sense the chill in the air. It shifted uneasily and let out a low, dreamlike growl from its throat, but its eyelids remained heavy. Its digestive system was working at full capacity, leaving it unable to spare even a shred of energy.

“Go back to sleep.”

Chen Guan patted its back, then straightened. The enormous scythe appeared out of thin air in his hand.

Before he had even finished speaking, his figure had already transformed into a black blur and charged straight at the Crystal Tower Guardian.

The guardian was no slow-moving brute. It raised its enormous crystal battle-axe, generating a powerful gust of wind pressure as it brought it crashing down toward the black blur.

Chen Guan shifted his footing. At the instant the battle-axe struck the ground, he slipped past the blade, his scythe tracing a black arc through the air as it struck the guardian precisely in the waist.

Clang!

Sparks flew, and a clear metallic ring echoed across the plaza.

A white mark appeared on the guardian’s waist. But in the next instant, the black crystal patterns around it began to flow, and the mark vanished without a trace.

The Crystal Tower Guardian’s attack had missed. It swung its arm sideways, sending the massive battle-axe sweeping across the plaza.

Chen Guan leaped backward to evade it, raising an eyebrow as he watched the black crystal return to its original state.

This thing’s recovery mechanism was even more ridiculous than the Crystal Turtle’s.

Meeting it head-on would be nothing more than a waste of strength.

Chen Guan put away his scythe. He watched the Crystal Tower Guardian approach once more, but this time, he didn’t move.

In his mind, the description of the Trickster’s ability appeared with perfect clarity. The description of the sub-skill known as [Void Weaving] read:

“Inflicts irreversible damage upon the target’s stable structure…”

Chen Guan murmured the words under his breath. With a thought, he activated his brand-new ability.

From a distance, Li Yan saw only Chen Guan raise a hand.

Then the imposing Crystal Tower Guardian stopped moving.

The next moment, a bizarre scene unfolded.

The guardian’s enormous body began flickering like an image suffering from a bad signal.

Its outline rapidly shifted between solidity and transparency. With each flicker, some part of its body would become minutely misaligned.

Crack.

A soft sound rang out.

The arm holding the battle-axe snapped off without warning. It fell to the ground and shattered into a pile of tiny black crystals.

Crack, crack.

A chain reaction began.

Dense cracks spread across the guardian’s chest, legs, and head. These cracks had not been caused by any external force. Its internal structure was collapsing from within.

The support holding its body together had been removed out of thin air.

Finally, with a soft pop, the smooth diamond-shaped head shattered as well. The entire Crystal Tower Guardian was reduced to a pile of meaningless black grit scattered across the ground.

From the moment Chen Guan raised his hand to the end of the battle, less than ten seconds had passed.

“What in the world is that…”

Li Yan heard himself ask the question in an extremely low voice—a question that was destined to receive no answer.

Were all Mythic-type abilities this unreasonable?

Apparently, they were!

After a moment, Li Yan came to terms with it.

Chen Guan slowly lowered his hand and felt a faint wave of dizziness in his head. The strain on his mental strength was far greater than he had expected.

But the effect was also far better than he had imagined.

He walked over to the pile of black grit. At its center, a fist-sized crystal hovered silently in the air.

Unlike the crystal cores he had seen before, this one was not solid. It was translucent and constantly flickered between reality and unreality in a strange, dreamlike state.

Chen Guan reached out and grabbed it with ease before storing it in his dimensional space.

“Awooo?”

Baobao had finally been jolted fully awake. It climbed to its feet and shook its head, staring blankly at the now-empty plaza and the pile of black sand. Its golden, vertical pupils were filled with confusion.

Where had the big guy gone? Where was the can?

It walked over to the black sand and sniffed it, but there wasn’t even a trace of scent. With no other choice, it trudged back to Chen Guan’s feet and rubbed its head against his trouser leg.

Chen Guan smiled and rubbed its head. Then, looking past the black sand on the ground, he turned his gaze toward the entrance of the black spire ahead.

At the entrance stood a slowly rotating door made of flowing crystal.

“The closer we get to the top of the tower, the stronger the monsters we’ll encounter will be.”

Li Yan spoke abruptly. “If you run into something you can’t handle, retreat immediately.”