novelraw Chapter 361-2: Painbearer Kim, Firefly Radiance (2)
Chapter 361-2: Painbearer Kim, Firefly Radiance (2)
[…]
[Flanda finishes her prayer and stands up. She says something softly to Kim, then walks toward you…]
[Seeing you holding the Tattered Map of Sacred Nest Seventh Layer and examining it, she also notices the Angel Mother Nest recorded on it.]
[Flanda seems to know what you are thinking. She shakes her head and tells you that the Angel Mother Nest is a place for mass-producing angel warriors, but no matter what kind of angel they are, they can never reach Transcendent power.]
[Only the Wet Nurse’s offspring can ascend to Transcendent, or even undying god.]
[After you fused Complete Wet Nurse’s Umbilical Cord, you can briefly maintain beginner Transcendent power, but it is only temporary. There is still some distance to go before you can carry out your plan…]
[You are talking with Flanda when you suddenly hear a huge noise behind you. Painbearer Belatu, with the massive hole in its chest, stands up again!]
[The carapace all over its body gradually blackens, taking on the jet-black sheen of an aberrated being…]
[It should now be addressed as Aberrant Painbearer Kim.]
[Kim’s movements are somewhat stiff and sluggish. The chest wound has greatly affected it. It lowers its head and gazes at you pitifully, hoping you will heal its injuries…]“No heals left!”
Lin Xun let out a powerless complaint. The healer had exhausted all stamina just healing Flanda back up a small amount, and now there was another HP-hungry sink on the verge of death. Even if he split Saio Chisoku-hime in half, it still would not be enough.
He thought for a moment and then gifted Belatu’s Painful Soul, which he had just obtained, to Flanda.
[Flanda is stunned for a moment, then takes Belatu’s Painful Soul. Tears of joy well up in her eyes. So her big brother’s soul has not been annihilated and his consciousness still lingers in the world. Oath bearer, she is truly grateful to you…]
“No wonder killing the clone boss did not increase the Hive Consciousness. So the soul inside the item still contained Belatu’s consciousness.”
“In other words, only by destroying or rather devouring powerful consciousness entities can the Hive Consciousness continue to grow.”
[…]
[Once Flanda has calmed down, she continues speaking. Originally, for Belatu, whose soul was trapped in endless pain, death had been the only way to obtain release.]
[Now, though she does not know how you preserved her brother’s soul, he has gained another option besides death.]
[The great Primordial Firefly can purify the madness within her brother’s soul, allowing him to return to the web of consciousness and preserve his consciousness and soul there forever.]
[She and you have both been severed from the web of consciousness and cannot communicate with the Firefly through consciousness.]
[She suddenly turns to Kim and says that Kim is different. Kim is a pure aberrated being, sharing the same web of consciousness as the Firefly, and is also the Firefly’s eyes. As long as Kim prays with devotion, it can draw the Firefly’s attention.]
[Flanda asks Kim whether it can pray devoutly to the Firefly. If Belatu’s Painful Soul can be offered up to the Firefly, her brother will be able to remain on the web of consciousness forever.]
[Kim obeys Flanda in everything. Even if Flanda asked it to rush to the ninth layer in the very center of the Sacred Nest right now and go all out against the Wet Nurse, Kim would not even frown.]
[Painbearer Kim closes its eyes and prays silently…]
[…]
[After a long while, Kim opens its eyes again and rubs its forehead with its huge scorpion pincer in confusion, wondering why, even though it prayed with great sincerity, it still could not receive any response from the great Firefly.]
[As soon as it finishes speaking, Belatu’s Painful Soul scatters into countless motes of light and dissipates…]
[Flanda knows that because they are currently in the Sacred Nest and very close to the Wet Nurse, the Firefly did not respond directly. Instead, it secretly accepted the offering.]
[Relieved, she thanks you sincerely and says, Oath bearer, she is truly grateful. How should she repay your kindness?]
“I don’t ask for anything else. Just becoming a watcher would be enough…”
Lin Xun thought to himself that if Flanda could become a watcher like Valkyrie, that would be the greatest harvest of this chapter.
[Flanda ponders for a long time, then suddenly thinks of something and takes out a speck of flickering light to hand to you…]
[You obtained Firefly Radiance (Mythic item)!]
[Firefly Radiance (Mythic item): The radiance of the Primordial Firefly. Though it is only a tiny wisp of the Firefly’s own leaked light, it can still warm and illuminate all things in the world. Using this item will generate an exclusive item at random based on the Apostle’s soul talent.]
[Flanda tells you that this is the favor Firefly bestowed upon her when she fell into Firefly’s embrace. It is also the best reward she can give you.]
“Holy crap?!”
“An exclusive item? This is insanely profitable!”
Lin Xun’s two exclusive items, Visage of the Leader and Omniscient Visage, were both extremely powerful, to the point that they could be called game-breaking, bug-tier items.
Now he already knew that items of this type were not limited to just himself.
It was just that such items were far too rare. Everyone who obtained one was a major bigshot. Ordinary Apostles had never even heard of them, and even with advanced access unlocked on the official forum, you still could not look up any information on exclusive items.
After becoming a Councilor and Disciple, he had learned that exclusive items also had generation limits.
Items capable of generating exclusive items could be called generators.
The lowest-grade generator was still Legendary. After an Apostle used a Legendary generator to obtain an exclusive item, if they wanted to acquire another generator, they would have to find a higher-grade Legendary+ or Mythic generator.
Lower-grade generators would, like True Name items for Shells whose True Names had already been learned, no longer appear in subsequent explorations. Even if a chest originally contained a generator, it would vanish.
Even if you acquired a low-grade generator through trade, you still would not be able to use it, and already-generated exclusive items could not be traded, dropped, or discarded.
The Apostle’s own soul talent determined the upper limit of the effect of the randomly generated exclusive item.
An Apostle with garbage talent would only generate a very trashy exclusive item even if they had a generator.
Fortunately, Lin Xun’s talent was strong enough and his generation upper limit sufficiently high. The first two times, his luck with the random generation had not been bad, allowing him to obtain such broken exclusive items.
“Right now, the fate-changing artifact’s Luck Value has just been used up. I need to wait until it fully recovers before rolling the dice to generate anything, or I might get screwed…”
Exclusive items were far too rare. After this generation, the next time he would only be able to look for a Mythic+ generator, and the difficulty of that was obvious.
Although his own soul talent was already strong enough to be a cheat in the eyes of other Apostles, he still believed that caution never hurt. He absolutely had to add the blessing of the fate-changing artifact on top so he could stack cheats on cheats, ensuring that the effect of the exclusive item would be strong enough to punch through the heavens.
[Apostle, what is your next action?]
[1. Proceed to Sacred Nest Eighth Layer.]
[2. Follow the map and head for Angel Mother Nest.]
[3. Stay on Sacred Nest Seventh Layer and search for other locations.]
[Flanda tells you that Sacred Nest Eighth Layer is where some of the Wet Nurse’s offspring, her elder brothers and sisters, reside. With her and Kim in their current condition, going directly to the eighth layer will likely lead to accidents.]
[It would be better to go to Angel Mother Nest first. If there is any remaining Fungal Plant feed there, she and Kim will be able to recover their injuries.]
Flanda was in a heavily injured state, Kim was at a sliver of HP, and Purgatory Angel’s transformation skill and the healer’s Bounty of the Harvest Goddess were both on cooldown.
The optimal solution would be to find Resting Page and repeatedly refresh the healer’s weapon special trait, then simply drop a few Bounty of the Harvest Goddess on each of them to heal them to full HP.
But the last Resting Page was still back in Bush Cricket City, an absurdly long distance away. By the time he made a round trip, the grass over their graves would practically have grown tall already.
“I wonder if there are any Resting Pages in the Sacred Nest… Forget it. Even if there are, no one knows which layer they would be on. The Sacred Nest is enormous, and just flying from the first to the seventh layer took nearly half a day already. Blindly searching would be no different from looking for a needle in a haystack.”
Lin Xun selected the second option, heading for Angel Mother Nest.
According to what Flanda said, angel warriors had not reached demi-god strength and, like his Purgatory Angel, were only Legendary+ rank at most, with their levels being a bit higher at best.
With Flanda and Kim, who had transformed into a Painbearer, around, even at a sliver of HP they could easily crush Legendary+ monsters.
The three of them set out at once for Angel Mother Nest, following the directions on the map.