Chapter 44

Jie Ming, after going deeper for a distance, found a relatively spacious cave at will.

After having a heart-to-heart talk with the owner of the cave, he moved in smoothly, and by the way, set up a campfire to start roasting meat.

Looking at the hot owner of the cave, Jie Ming lowered his head and took out the Talisman Seal Wizarding Tool used earlier from the bag, and carefully checked it with alchemy.

"Hmm... sure enough, there are many damages on the rune circuit, the base didn't have much damage, it seems that even if the redundancy of the runes is increased, excessive release will still cause considerable pressure on the main body." Jie Ming shook his head regretfully.

Regarding the fact that excessive release of the Talisman Seal Wizarding Tool will cause damage, he thought of many ways, but there was no very good solution.

Regarding this kind of problem, it is also rare in the wizard civilization. After all, the number of releases per day for ordinary wizarding tools is limited, and the overheating and damage caused by excessive release generally exist in some floating cities or large-scale stability facility frameworks.

But because these types of items have enough range to carve runes, they don't need much technical content at all, and they can completely use super-redundancy to solve the problem.

Or even more simply, the magic array can be designed modularly, and if something breaks, it can be replaced.

But this problem is not easy to solve on the Talisman Seal Wizarding Tool.

"Make the Talisman Seal Wizarding Tool bigger? Then there is no point in designing the Talisman Seal Wizarding Tool..."

As for saying carve the runes more finely...

Wanting to carve more finely requires stronger spiritual power, but for wizards, stronger spiritual power means stronger strength, and the spell intensity required at that time will also rise.

And stronger spells require more complex runes, and the carving precision also needs to be higher...

"Pure dead loop!"

After worrying for a while, Jie Ming, who had no good solution for the time being, simply stopped thinking about this matter and turned to consider the problems discovered during the battle just now.

"Although that fire-element magic beast's strength is good, it actually carried so many of my bombings, it seems that that thing has a considerable damage reduction for attacks of the same attribute. It seems that I can manufacture more attacks of other attributes next time... No!"

Jie Ming had a flash of inspiration and suddenly reacted.

Why must I be obsessed with attribute attacks?

The biggest advantage of this Talisman Seal Wizarding Tool of his is that it can be released quickly and continuously, and it does not consume too much of the user's spiritual power.

Since it wins by quantity in the first place, he doesn't have to stare at the lethality brought by restraint.

"Almost entered a dead end... I can completely choose pure energy bombs as the main attack method!"

The wizard civilization has no special attributes similar to "arcane," but there are plenty of energy-type spells that do not carry any attributes and are purely energy-based.

Jie Ming noted this idea: "Second... for enemies who can mobilize elemental power to fight, the environmental elemental vacuum caused by the Talisman Seal Wizarding Tool's rapid spellcasting is not just a negative effect, to some extent it can even become my advantage."

Just like that fire-element magic beast, because Jie Ming moved too fast, when it was preparing to counterattack, most of the fire-element power around it had been sucked away, so the destructiveness of the counterattack dropped significantly.

"In a sense, this can also be counted as a kind of artificial magic prohibition, although I don't know what use this move has for the time being."

After the repair, Jie Ming continued to go deeper toward the place where the elemental power of this plane was enriched.

The previous combat test was sufficient, and now he intends to focus on finding higher-level material samples.

Since entering this wilderness composed of red mineral rocks, along the way, the frequency of him encountering magic beasts has become higher and higher.

Thorn lizards that can spray poisonous mist, ice crystal wolves that can release ice-type impacts, or rock giants that hide in rocks and have powerful physical defense.

Every encounter, Jie Ming's collection would increase, so much so that he had to discard some materials of ordinary beasts collected earlier.

Jie Ming also noticed that as he went deeper, although the magic beasts he encountered were not necessarily stronger, they would become more cunning.

They are no longer as reckless as the magic beasts encountered earliest, but will weigh the strength of both sides and evacuate in advance, and even know how to use tactics to ambush.

But these did not pose any threat to Jie Ming, at most it just made him spend a little more time on the road to find materials.

However, in these dealings with magic beasts, Jie Ming began to find some unusual traces.

At first, it was just some subtle places.

He found several boulders with scratched surfaces, and the traces of wear seemed to be more regular than those formed naturally.

In a forest of rocks that seemed natural, strange grooves would occasionally appear on the ground, not like those stepped on by wild beasts, but more like the trajectory of some tool moving.

"Traces of humans?"

Jie Ming stopped, squatted beside a groove, and touched it with his finger.

The edge of the groove was worn flat by time, but the energy fluctuations remaining in it were subtly different from the surrounding elemental power.

He activated Analysis and probed his spiritual power into these grooves.

A mixed information flow poured into his mind; that was a more organized, more introverted power fluctuation, clearly not belonging to magic beasts that use power freely.

Confirming this point, Jie Ming's footsteps became cautious, and he began to consciously look for such traces.

Soon, he had more discoveries.

At the entrance of a hidden cave, he found piled beast bones, but these bones were neatly piled together, and some were even roughly polished.

A trace of faint, burnt-out flame breath came from the depths of the cave, but it was not the natural fire-element afterwave, but the trace left after some artificial flame extinguished.

However, judging from the surrounding traces, this cave has been abandoned.

Moving forward, he saw a piece of cleared forest land; the traces of trees being cut down were very fresh, and the cuts were neat, clearly done by some sharp tool.

He even found a trap that was cleverly disguised—not aimed at large wild beasts, but at smaller creatures, or... humans?

Jie Ming carefully studied that trap.

It was simple but effective in structure, composed of twisted vines and sharp stone thorns; once triggered, it would make a sharp sound.

"There are natives here." Jie Ming made a practical judgment in his heart.

Jie Ming was not surprised by this; after all, the environment of this plane is quite suitable for biological survival, and it is not incomprehensible to derive intelligent creatures or even civilizations.

However...

"Wizards should have cleaned up the local civilization once when they received this plane... is it a deliberately left remnant?"

Compared to the natives of this world having special power to hide and avoid the wizard's inspection, this possibility is higher.