Unbound, ownerless magic cards remained sealed, making it easy to determine their effects through appraisal magic.
"Lanqi, before you use this card in the future, give me a look first..."
Hyperion felt that now that Lanqi had obtained a card capable of making everyone miserable, teaming up with him in the future was bound to be pure torment...
The only thing she could be thankful for was that she had already built up a resistance to melody magic.
"All right."
Lanqi nodded and gently reached out to take the orange-glowing magic card floating before him.
Yet as he stared at the card, his brow furrowed slightly, looking somewhat dissatisfied.
"What is it?" Hyperion asked, puzzled. "Is the effect bad?"
"No, I just feel the card's name creates a terrible impression. Once I get back, I need to find a master craftsman to help me rename it," Lanqi said with a solemn expression.
In his previous life, the country he lived in had enforced strict standards and intense censorship regarding bloody and violent video game text and character art.
Lanqi himself had always been exceptionally eager to embrace such initiatives.
"...What are you going to change it to?" Hyperion felt a faint sense of dread.
"Let's call it [Wonderful Notes]," Lanqi said with an easy smile.
Hyperion: "..."
The card hadn't seemed quite so sinister at first, but once Lanqi renamed it, the vibe felt utterly wicked.
Unable to find the words to respond, Hyperion could only turn her gaze alongside Lanqi toward the remaining two purple auras—one magic card for each of them.
The card before Lanqi appeared to be a spell card woven from human magic script:
[Polymorph: Demon]
[Category: Spell Card]
[Rarity: Purple Rare]
[Tier: 2]
[Effect: Changes the user's race to Demon upon use. Does not alter actual attributes or physical features. Cooldown: 24 hours.]
[Remarks: The ultimate disguise magic completed by the sole survivor of the imperial infiltration squad, modeled after the forbidden surgeries of the imperial testing grounds.]
Meanwhile, the card before Hyperion radiated a dense demonic aura:
[Polymorph: Human]
[Category: Spell Card]
[Rarity: Purple Rare]
[Tier: 2]
[Effect: Changes the user's race to Human upon use. Does not alter actual attributes or physical features. Cooldown: 24 hours.]
[Remarks: Reverse-disguise magic developed by the Purgatory Corridor Academy by reverse-engineering the principles behind the forbidden surgeries of the imperial testing grounds.]
"Hiss... is this Shadow World throwing shade at me?" Lanqi looked at [Polymorph: Demon] with a rather peculiar expression.
Hyperion, on the other hand, nervously stroked [Polymorph: Human], feeling more excited than ever before.
To her, this was a card that could truly transform her into a human.
It was nothing like the simple illusion magic she usually maintained in the real world.
Judging by the fact that [Polymorph: Demon] was potent enough to fool the Demon Academy's detection, the corresponding [Polymorph: Human] likely possessed the power to make her virtually identical to a genuine human in every aspect aside from her soul!
"All right, quite a harvest. Time to head back and catch up on sleep."
With the spoils collected, the thought of returning to Ikerite Academy caused the sleepiness that had plagued Lanqi in the classroom yesterday afternoon to surge back through his mind like a tidal wave.
All he wanted right now was to hurry back to his dormitory and sleep straight through until evening.
"Yeah, get some rest early, even though it's already not so early anymore," Hyperion said with a smile.
Sometimes a day might feel like any ordinary day, yet it could very well turn out to be the greatest day of one's life.
She felt truly happy now. The agonizing feeling of counting every passing second had vanished without a trace, and she was even beginning to look forward to tomorrow.
Just as the two prepared to step toward the Void Gate and depart the threshold space, new information suddenly materialized accompanied by blood-red lettering, disrupting what they had assumed was a finished tally:
[Series Shadow World—Blood Moon Cataclysm: Historical coordinates anchored. Current completion: 1/4.]
[Until the series Shadow World concludes, current challengers have a higher probability of entering Shadow Worlds set in the "Blood Moon Cataclysm" era.]
[Clearing with an SSS rating immediately unlocks the next node.]
[Mission Objective: Clear the final node with an SSS rating.]
"?"
"Blood Moon Cataclysm...?"
Both of them wore bewildered expressions as they looked at the new evaluation message that had appeared out of nowhere.
This vast world contained many ancient eras.
Hundreds of years ago, thousands of years ago, countless kingdoms rose and fell, and heroes returned to dust to form history.
With the severance of historical records several millennia ago, records of many earlier eras had vanished completely.
Only fragments could be retrieved through the historical projections of Shadow Worlds, allowing historians to piece together a glimpse of the past.
The earliest known human history dated back roughly twenty thousand years to an era known as the "Holy Kingdom Demon Realm"—a mythic age marked by the dawn of creation, several Holy Wars, and countless heroic epics, during which humanity rose to its greatest heights.
Although there were no relevant Shadow Worlds to prove how the late Holy Kingdom collapsed, throughout the nearly twenty thousand years between the "Holy Kingdom Demon Realm" and the present day, no Shadow World had ever corroborated the existence of a lost era known as the "Blood Moon Cataclysm."
"Speaking of which, Hyperion, have you ever seen a series Shadow World like this?"
Lanqi had never heard of series Shadow Worlds in the game's original content, nor had he ever come across any mention of them in books in this world.
"Ancient texts mention them... If you clear a Shadow World with the highest possible rating, there's a chance of triggering one. But hardly anyone meets that condition, and seeing a series Shadow World through to the final step is harder than ascending to heaven. For at least the past thousand years, no one has successfully completed a series Shadow World mission."
Hyperion had never expected that her very first Shadow World with Lanqi would unearth a hidden objective that had previously existed only in rumors.
"Still, compared to personal rewards, the historical intelligence value of this kind of Shadow World is what's truly terrifying. For example, it was humanity's discovery of Shadow Worlds from the 'Holy Kingdom Demon Realm' era that revealed so many ways to combat the demon race from the primeval Holy Wars..."
The demons' defeat and the fall of their nation decades ago were inextricably linked to the intelligence human scholars had analyzed from mid-era Shadow Worlds of the "Holy Kingdom Demon Realm."
"Once you get back, if you report the intelligence on this hidden mission to the Shadow World Management Association or the Magic Tower, they'll beg you on their knees to run Shadow Worlds. The academic value of a lost era's Shadow World is simply immeasurable. But correspondingly, the Blood Clan of today's world will stop at nothing to take your life," Hyperion warned.
The moment they arrived in this threshold space, they had deactivated the recording function of the [Shadow World Recording Program].
Most challengers preferred not to have the spoils and potential trump cards they were about to receive put on record.
Although the present-day Blood Clan kept a low profile and remained hidden in the south, every single one of them was an arch-enemy of humanity, posing a threat that far exceeded even that of the demon race.
As the strongest individual beings, the Blood Clan possessed unreasonable authorities and immortality. In a one-on-one match between equals, neither humans nor demons stood any chance against them; even if someone managed to gain the upper hand, they would ultimately be ground down and exhausted to death.
And an ancient Shadow World from the lost era of the "Blood Moon Cataclysm" in all likelihood harbored the means to deal with the Blood Clan.
"Say no more, say no more. I'm pretending I never saw this hidden mission," Lanqi said, waving his hands dismissively as he walked toward the exit of the threshold space. He wasn't crazy enough to go gamble his life against the Blood Clan.
"Indeed. The Blood Clan hasn't provoked us anyway."
Hyperion nodded in agreement, walking alongside Lanqi toward the Void Gate leading back to the real world.
Their opinions aligned perfectly: this hidden mission could never be reported.
Just as they were about to step into that shifting, mirror-like void, Hyperion suddenly stopped in her tracks and spoke with a hint of hesitation.
"Right, Lanqi... there's one thing I haven't been able to figure out."
"What is it?" Lanqi turned his head and asked.
"Back in the art classroom, exactly what magic did you use to tell which paintings were done by the professor and which were done by the students?"
Hyperion's eyes were filled with confusion as she looked at Lanqi, having spent the entire journey pondering the question without finding an answer.
"..."
Lanqi opened his mouth in slight surprise, then broke into a sly, brilliant smile.
"For something that simple, why would anyone need magic?"
Chapter 85