novelraw Chapter 567: Excited Wizards
Chapter 567: Excited Wizards
Chapter 567: Excited Wizards
In less than a day, news of the Entropy Brain spread throughout the entire expeditionary force as if it had grown wings.
Jie Ming first noticed the situation when more than a dozen probing spiritual forces suddenly appeared outside his laboratory door.
Those spiritual forces approached cautiously, seemingly wanting to communicate with him, but they retracted the instant he sensed them, only to probe over again moments later.
He opened the door, but there was no one outside.
However, the wizards gathered in small groups in the distance, frequently glancing in this direction, gave everything away.
“What’s going on?”
Jie Ming frowned and casually stopped a passing fifth-ring wizard.
The moment the wizard saw him, his eyes lit up alarmingly.
“Wizard Jie Ming! You’re Wizard Jie Ming, right? The one who killed an information being and obtained Entropy Brains?” Jie Ming: “……Yes, that’s me.”
“Wonderful!” The wizard became so excited he could barely speak coherently. “That… that Entropy Brain – does it really work? Can it really help organize knowledge? Can it sort out all those messy knowledge fragments?”
Jie Ming was momentarily stunned, then quickly understood.
It seemed the relevant intelligence about Entropy Brains had already spread throughout the entire expeditionary force.
And the wizards’ reactions were even more exaggerated than he had imagined.
He waved his hand to dismiss the wizard, turned around, and opened his magic network terminal.
Sure enough, the public channels had exploded.
【Speculating on potentially effective uses based on the function of Entropy Brains.】
【Discussion on the combined usage effect of Entropy Brains and planar origin — In-depth analysis from an anonymous fifth-ring wizard】
【High-price purchase of Entropy Brains. Interested parties message privately. Price negotiable!】
【Forming a team to farm the Information Plane. Looking for experienced teammates. Spoils distributed according to contribution!】
【Analysis of the “Information Weaving” spell.】
Jie Ming watched the messages refreshing frantically and the corners of his mouth twitched slightly.
These people’s information network was far too efficient.
He closed the magic network terminal and walked out of the laboratory, intending to see the situation outside for himself.
What he saw next left him shocked.
The originally empty barren wilderness of the ship plane was now densely packed with people.
The wizards who usually buried themselves in their own research were now gathered in small groups of twos and threes, excitedly discussing something.
Some argued with flushed faces, some gestured wildly with their hands, and others simply unfolded spell models in public, pointing at certain nodes and speaking endlessly.
These wizards had completely shed their usual calm and rational demeanor.
Jie Ming even saw people conducting transactions.
A fifth-ring wizard was holding a pile of materials and haggling with another fifth-ring wizard.
And what the second wizard held in his hand was clearly a fingernail-sized Entropy Brain.
“Five hundred thousand high-level military merits? You might as well rob me!”
“If it’s too expensive, don’t buy it. Plenty of people want it!”
“Three hundred and fifty thousand, at most! I’ll throw in these materials too!”
“…Deal!”
Jie Ming: “……”
He silently withdrew his gaze and sighed inwardly.
The allure of the Entropy Brain was far greater than he had imagined.
But when he thought about it carefully, it wasn’t hard to understand.
The power distribution of wizard civilization was not the traditional pyramid shape, but more like a gourd.
The most numerous were naturally wizard apprentices and first- and second-ring wizards.
These people formed the bottom layer of the entire civilization and served as the population base for most factions.
But moving upward, the situation changed.
The second most numerous were not third-ring wizards, but fourth- and fifth-ring wizards.
The reason was simple: they lived long.
Fourth- and fifth-ring wizards already possessed enough combat strength to ensure their survival in conventional planar wars.
Combined with the naturally long lifespans of wizards, and the fact that even when approaching the end of their lifespan, they could use biochemical modifications or longevity potions to extend it, the lifespan of mid-to-high-ranking wizards was practically unlimited.
Wizard civilization had developed over an extremely long period. Generation after generation of accumulation meant the number of fourth- and fifth-ring wizards had long piled up to a terrifying degree.
In some established factions, the number of fourth- and fifth-ring wizards might even exceed that of first- and second-ring wizards.
Therefore, they were the true “backbone” of the entire wizard civilization.
But moving further up, the number of sixth-ring wizards dropped sharply.
Not because they didn’t live long, but because… advancing was simply too difficult.
Advancing from fourth-ring to fifth-ring required law comprehension to reach 10%.
Advancing from fifth-ring to sixth-ring required law comprehension to reach 100%.
It looked like only a tenfold increase, but in reality, the difficulty of going from 10% to 100% completely surpassed the combined difficulty of all previous rank advancements.
And laws were knowledge.
Studying knowledge in a certain field was easy at the beginning, but as mastery increased, every 0.1% advance required enormous effort. In the later stages, many people would find themselves stuck at a certain point, unable to progress no matter what.
After all, their wisdom had reached its limit.
When research depth reached its ceiling, they could only expand horizontally and study laws in other fields.
But those laws contributed little to advancing to sixth-ring.
Of course, there was a way to bypass this restriction.
That was planar origin.
This thing could directly infuse the user with massive amounts of fragmented knowledge. Whether you could understand it or not, it would be stuffed in first.
As long as enough was stuffed in, law comprehension would naturally rise.
It sounded wonderful, but there were two problems.
First, the price.
A single strand of planar origin could only increase law comprehension by 0.1%. To go from 10% to 100%, nine hundred strands were needed.
What did nine hundred strands of planar origin mean?
It could empty out an ordinary fifth-ring wizard’s entire fortune ten times over and still not be enough.
Second, the side effects.
The knowledge forcibly infused was fragmented, chaotic, and unsystematic.
You might “know” it, but you fundamentally did not understand it.
It was like forcing a person who had never studied physics to memorize a pile of formulas. They could recite them, but could only apply them rigidly. The slightest change and they would be lost.
Forcibly advancing to sixth-ring in such a state would result in almost no improvement in combat strength.
When encountering opponents of the same rank, they would basically be crushed.
Even worse, in wizard civilization, non-high-ranking wizards were forcibly conscripted to participate in planar wars at regular intervals.
If your rank was low, the tasks were simple. If your rank was high, the tasks were difficult.
A sixth-ring wizard who had forcibly advanced using planar origin would have inflated strength. If they participated in a planar expedition, they would face genuine sixth-ring level tasks. The mortality rate was terrifying to even think about.
Therefore, many fifth-ring wizards, even after saving up enough resources, did not dare to use planar origin to break through lightly.
They would rather stay stuck at fifth-ring, relying on their rich combat experience to get by—at least it was safe.
As for advancing to sixth-ring to gain the privileges of high-ranking wizards and no longer participate in battle conscriptions, instead staying within wizard civilization to live comfortably—that was possible, but for wizards who had already witnessed the endless chaotic void, it was no different from imprisoning themselves.
Generally, only old wizards who had lost their ambition would choose that path.
But now…
The Entropy Brain had appeared.
It could comb through knowledge.
Those fragmented, chaotic, unsystematic pieces of knowledge, once combed by an Entropy Brain, instantly became orderly.
Things that were previously only known but not understood could now link with existing knowledge during the combing process and gradually become comprehensible.
Things that were understood but not thoroughly could now be understood thoroughly.
For wizards who had used planar origin, this was simply a life-saving straw.
Even for those who had never used planar origin, the Entropy Brain could reorganize their existing knowledge, deepening understanding and perfecting the system.
What did this mean?
It meant the possibility of further advancing law comprehension.
It meant getting one step closer to a higher rank.
It meant that wizards stuck at bottlenecks for ten thousand years had finally seen hope of breaking through.
Jie Ming finally understood why those wizards’ eyes had all turned green.
If it were him, his eyes would have turned green too.
But the problem was…
Jie Ming looked up at the massive black fissure in the sky.
At the fissure, pure white light continued to surge.
Behind the planar barrier of the Information Plane, countless information beings gathered densely, staring vigilantly at the ship plane.
Any living being that dared to probe inside would be immediately locked onto by them and then swarmed.
The lockdown layer that Martin and the other high-ranking wizards had jointly set up earlier had indeed trapped the information beings inside.
But it had also trapped the wizards outside.
The current situation was that those inside could not come out, and those outside could not go in.
The two sides were simply staring at each other across the lockdown layer, neither able to do anything.
Jie Ming frowned in thought.
Those information beings had clearly learned their lesson.
They no longer charged blindly but stayed behind the planar barrier, waiting for the wizards to deliver themselves.
With their computing network, no intruder could escape their perception.
If they wanted to go in and harvest Entropy Brains, they would first have to break through this defensive line.
But without the support of the ship plane’s arrays, even the high-ranking wizards would not dare claim they could survive in such a situation.
In fact, due to their craving for Entropy Brains, over the past few days, many wizards had been constantly discussing how to break through the enemy’s defenses.
Just as Jie Ming was pondering, his magic network terminal stirred.