Chapter 83: Inscription? Nether-script Magic!

The two continued to grind on the second layer of the labyrinth for a while, until Brother Hu Wan's experience points were full, and then they found a corner that wasn't easily discovered to lie down and log off.

The vast majority of monsters aren't interested in crunchy skeletons, which can be considered one of the advantages of skeleton soldiers and undead rats.

Unlike zombie units, although they are also undead creatures, there is still a risk of being gnawed on by carrion-eating creatures when logging off in the wild.

And skeleton soldiers only need to be careful of slimes and some plant-type monsters that can digest bones.

The time to log back on was set for an hour later.

One awesome thing about this game is that after putting on the VR glasses, the body is basically in a dormant state, just like a vegetable, and won't accumulate fatigue.

It's just a pity that the body in reality is too weak, not only needing to eat, drink, poop, pee, and bathe, but occasionally needing to get up and move around, otherwise he could really stay online for twenty-four hours without coming down.

Taking off the VR glasses and throwing them on the computer desk, Ye Zhiqiu got up to cook a bowl of wontons in the kitchen.

It's autumn in the game, and it's the same in reality; the north wind outside the window is howling, just looking at it makes one's bones feel cold.

Eating something hot at this time is the most comfortable thing.

Looking at the flames burning on the stove and the bubbles popping in the pot, he couldn't help but recall what Lord Demon King had said before.

"... Magic originates from the imagination of objective things."

"So-called magic is the technique of materializing human spirit."

Looking at his right hand, he unconsciously began to imagine the shape of fire in his heart... just like in the labyrinth.

"Fireball spell..."

Although he knew it was stupid to say it out loud, he couldn't help but whisper it; anyway, there was no one else around.

And the final result was just as he had expected in the game; nothing happened in reality, only his spirit was slightly exhausted for a while.

Of course.

Maybe even the exhaustion was an illusion.

Just as he was carefully recalling the feeling in the labyrinth, a shrill alarm sound suddenly woke him from his trance.

"Woo—!"

That was clearly not the sound effect of a Fireball spell—

It was the foam rolling out of the pot that extinguished the fire on the stove, and the white smoke rising into the air triggered the kitchen's smoke alarm! Ye Zhiqiu scrambled to turn off the gas, then opened the window for ventilation, and didn't calm his pounding heart until the shrill alarm stopped.

Looking at the wontons boiled into a paste, he couldn't help but smile bitterly and scratch the back of his head, complaining to himself.

"I must be crazy."

Actually wanting to use magic in reality...

Thinking about it, he laughed himself.

Not to mention that the operating system and the underlying code aren't the same set, even the most basic "ABCD" aren't the same thing, right?...

"Lord Demon King! Oke, Oke has a major discovery!"

In the graveyard, in Oke's magic workshop, Oke, standing under the wooden sign at the cave entrance, was shouting excitedly.

Maybe it was because he was too full, he was exceptionally energetic, and after dinner, he actually started working in the laboratory again, able to stay up later than his boss.

Luo Yan had originally been sitting on the bed meditating, but heard Hearing You You say that this guy kept chanting his name, fearing there was some urgent news to report, so he put his clothes back on and rushed over.

"What major discovery?"

"Those fragments really are the mechanical-type spells of the God of Machines—ouch!"

Before Oke could finish his words, he was hit on the forehead with a magic staff, his withered hands covering his smooth head, looking at the Demon King with teary eyes.

Sure enough.

People are animals that look at faces.

Feeling the hardness in his heart, Luo Yan became even more convinced of this point. If it were a succubus, maybe what he felt hard would be somewhere else.

"Oke, is this your so-called urgent news?"

"No—of course it's not just these!"

Looking at the Demon King with an unkind expression, Oke was so frightened that he trembled, and quickly said.

"Oke copied down the inscriptions on the wreckage, and also compared them with the inscriptions Oke learned before in the Academy, and found that many of them are the same! I remember the complete runes, and can translate them into the common language!"

The so-called common language is the language of the Aus Empire.

At least that's the case on the territory of surface humans.

A look of interest appeared on Luo Yan's face, and he put away his magic staff.

"Oh? You mean, you completed the runes on the fragments?"

"That's right!" Oke nodded tremblingly and stepped aside, "Respected Lord Demon King, please follow me!"

Luo Yan naturally wouldn't be polite, followed behind Oke, and went straight to the latter's magic workshop.

Parts and fragments of all sizes were laid out on the ground by Oke, while those so-called inscriptions were copied and completed by him on the parchment on the side.

Seeing those crooked symbols, Luo Yan's eyebrows twitched slightly, and a feeling of inexplicable familiarity suddenly welled up in his heart.

Although he didn't recognize most of them, there were a few characters that were exceptionally familiar...

At the same time, Oke hurriedly picked up the parchment on the ground, stacked it into a pile, handed it to Lord Demon King with both hands, and explained diligently.

"The runes on this page are applied to the joint parts of the magic puppet! They represent rotation, as well as orientation and calibration... mainly related to movement!"

"And then this page, mainly written on the inside of the magic puppet's breastplate! Mainly representing enhanced defense, and—"

Luo Yan: "And making the armor lighter?"

"That's right... eh?!" A look of shock appeared on Oke's face, and he looked at the Demon King, dumbfounded. "My, my lord, have you studied rune magic?"

Luo Yan shook his head with a subtle expression.

"No, but I recognize this character."

As he spoke, he pointed his index finger at the parchment, pointing to the crooked "light" character at the end of a line of inscriptions.

"This is read as 'qing'?"

Oke was shocked and said with joy.

"Incredible! You actually know how to read it!"

Luo Yan smiled, his index finger moved down again, pointing to the "explode" character at the end of the next line.

"This is read as 'bao'?"

"Sim, simply too correct! You are simply a genius!!!"

Oke clenched his fists excitedly, the worshipful expression making it impossible to tell if this was flattery or from the heart.

But for a goblin, there was no difference in the first place anyway.

"Alright, you know that's not what I want to hear," putting away the smile on his face, Luo Yan looked at Oke and continued, "So do you have anything else to report to me?"

Oke nodded excitedly and fearfully, and continued tremblingly. "Of course, my lord... if it were just this little thing, Oke naturally wouldn't dare to disturb your rest, but, but the amazing thing is not just these!"

As he spoke, he quickly turned the parchment in Luo Yan's hand to the next page, only to see lines of inscriptions listed by category, and the same characters written at the end of the sentences.

Among them, there are 10 combinations containing "move," 7 combinations containing "light," and 5 containing "explode"...

This is naturally not all of them.

But even these existing inscriptions are enough to explain many things.

A look of interest appeared on Luo Yan's face.

To use a vivid but inappropriate metaphor, this feeling is like, an "instruction set" in a programming language? He flipped through the parchment in his hand, and sure enough, on the next few pages, he saw the "judge" that looked like a conditional statement, and the "loop" that looked like a loop statement! A look of intoxication appeared on Oke's face, and he said like a sleepwalker.

"You... discovered it? These chaotic inscriptions actually have rules! This is simply incredible!"

This is indeed incredible.

Inscription magic has no rules to follow, which can be said to be the direct reason why the entire inscription magic cannot form a system, and even the decline of the ancient language.

Luo Yan remembered learning in magic history class before that it was said that in the barbaric era before the First Epoch, there were mainly two types of extraordinary power active on this land.

One was elemental magic, whose origin was the nature worship of primitive tribes.

Another was inscription magic, whose root of faith came from the pictographs of the "oldest civilization"—the "ancient language" composed of a total of 172 pictographs.

Nowadays, the complex and diverse, faction-ridden extraordinary power systems are all evolved from these two sets of systems in the final analysis.

For example, Dragon Language magic is the most typical example.

In Dragon Language magic, one can see both the shadow of early elemental magic and the inheritance derived from inscription magic—

That is, the rule power contained in language!

However, the ancient language linked to inscription magic is clearly much more violent than Dragon Language.

So much so that it is said that in the distant primitive tribal era, the creatures of the oldest civilization active on this land could not lie.

Because as long as words were spoken in the ancient language, they possessed the contractual meaning endowed by extraordinary power, and anyone who violated the contract would be punished by extraordinary power... for example, someone who swore by lightning would really be struck by lightning if they violated the oath.

In order to avoid being struck by lightning, and also to avoid having unintentional words used by others, more and more creatures began to use homophones, only using the correct pronunciation when necessary.

After all, whether or not an oath has been violated itself has a strong subjective color.

And the clever chiefs and priests used people's conservatism and fear of the unknown to quickly take this power for themselves, actively completing the concentration of extraordinary power, and thereby becoming the earliest privileged class, leading their tribes to begin annexing other primitive tribes.

For a considerable period of time, inscription magic had an overwhelming advantage over elemental magic, and could even be said to dominate the direction of the battlefield.

After all, early tribal people hadn't truly mastered the method of condensing faith, and the chattering calls couldn't beg for a torrential rain, at most begging for a few raindrops.

However, as time passed and civilization continued to evolve, the situation soon changed.

One of the most important inventions in the history of civilization—the concept of religion was born.

From some day on, the worship of nature by humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, and all other creatures gradually turned into the worship of gods, and in this process, gradually condensed into divinity, evolved a clear-veined pantheon, and created the Mythological Epoch!

Compared to the increasingly conservative and even clumsy ancient language, this vast power not only crossed the barriers of species, but also transcended the concepts of tribes and even the later born nations.

It was like a tank appearing in the primitive era, sweeping across the entire land with a crushing momentum, condensing thousands of raindrops into a torrential rain! And looking back at inscription magic, although it was once popular in the tribal era, because it was controlled by a few people from beginning to end, no matter how much extraordinary power it condensed, it couldn't change the status quo that it was moving toward the niche, so it eventually lost to the era itself and was buried in the dust of history.

What is sigh-worthy is that although inscription magic is essentially the power of rules, until its peak era passed, it didn't evolve the power to constrain itself like elemental magic, eventually becoming the largest pile of shit in the underlying code of this world.

To this day, only elves and dwarves are still chattering about the origin of the ancient language and inscription magic.

And whether it is the elves who cling to the past or the dwarves, the knowledge they possess about inscription magic is only the tip of the iceberg of its glorious era, a few words in the dictionary library.

Whether it is elves or dwarves, even if their knowledge bases are added together, they can't put together the complete 172 ancient language pictographs.

And the phrases composed of these pictographs, as well as the grammar connecting the phrases, go without saying; even the dwarves most skilled in inscription craftsmanship have never built a magic puppet driven entirely by inscriptions, at most attaching some entries reinforced by inscriptions to equipment or elemental magic puppets, driving the entries to play a role when injecting "spirit power."

Looking at the entries listed by Oke on the draft paper, Luo Yan immediately understood the work done by Lin Te Isaac in the field of inscription magic.

This guy actually used the programming thinking from Earth to re-edit some of the existing inscriptions!

Specifically, it was picking out usable entries from that pile of shit-like code, classifying them, and annotating them with his "original" pictographs (Chinese)! This is like borrowing characters from foreign cultures, combining them with existing phrases, and forming new sentence patterns with new "grammar"! And this so-called grammar is actually the "programming language" redefined by the God of Machines, Lin Te Isaac.

He maximized the retention of the original code, allowing that pile of shit-like old code to glow with new life! Compared to reinventing a language containing extraordinary power to build a new extraordinary system, improving on the existing extraordinary system can undoubtedly save a lot of costs!

Whether it's time cost or faith cost!

And this is probably the real reason why that guy was able to form a mudslide in a short period of time and almost swept the entire world.

If that guy had succeeded, the Mechanical Sect would be the new Saint Xisi, the new master ruling the empire and even the entire planet! It's just a pity that this guy didn't catch a good time, and didn't stay low-key. Not long after he started his business, he was crippled by the empire that was at its "historical peak."

"Awesome, this guy... could it be that he graduated from Blue X?"

Luo Yan originally thought this guy just did an abstract version of the Industrial Revolution, didn't expect the work this guy actually did was far more than he imagined?

Looking at this parchment in his hand, Luo Yan became more excited the more he looked, so much so that even the bit of sleepiness originally accumulated in his heart vanished.

By the way, what should this thing be called? Isaac Inscription? Lin Inscription?

How about just calling it "Nether-script"! Anyway, the Isaac followers who made such a pile of rotten self-destructing robots probably don't understand this set of "Lin language" themselves, they only know how to copy homework, just like those new-era chiefs in the ancient era who abandoned the ancient language... otherwise they could clearly use these inscriptions to make more flexible and versatile robots! Luo Yan has reason to believe that Lin Te Isaac had long ago abandoned this bunch of losers, otherwise this Catastrophe system wouldn't have fallen into his hands.

Calculating this way, the orthodoxy of the God of Machines is clearly in his hands! Calling it "Nether-script" is no problem!

At worst, he'll steal some more from the Demon God later and inject some new things into it!

Although these languages are relatively difficult for people from another world with worrying logical thinking to understand, they aren't very difficult for Luo Yan.

No need to have studied programming.

Anyone who has modified game save files can figure it out!

Luo Yan believes that let alone himself, he can grab a bunch of "experts" among his players! "My former master spent a lot of time trying to penetrate the mystery of mechanical spells, but unfortunately, all he found were incomplete fragments! Now this monument is in front of Oke... Saint! Pfft! Demon God above! Didn't expect this treasure to be hidden in the labyrinth!"

Oke had an obsessed expression on his face, clearly still immersed in this great archaeological discovery.

Luo Yan laughed, and said softly.

"There are no such things in the labyrinth, it's undoubtedly the work of heretics who mixed into the labyrinth, the lack of order gave them an opportunity... but this bunch of guys clearly didn't realize that there are real experts here, their clumsy attempt instead helped us."

As he spoke, he picked up a metal plate from the parts.

That was the head component of the "robot."

In order to match the characteristics of "Nether-script," this component clearly used different materials... and material seems to be one of the elements that allows "Nether-script" to exert its maximum effect.

Comparing the entries summarized by Oke, he quickly restored the content written on the metal plate.

Although he couldn't read the entire Nether-script, he recognized the two characters "heat" and "judge."

As for the "move" character written on the leg joint component, it wasn't very difficult either... simply put, "a motion instruction set with conditional judgment"? "Heat value judgment, right? Distance between 100 and 5 activates the action component, distance less than 5 triggers the explosive component, simultaneously extracting all magic power from the energy module and activating the explosion instruction set... So that's it, after all that, it's 'heat source seeking'! No wonder Shadow of Dust and Blindness don't work on them, these little robots don't have eyes at all!"

There are too many ways to lower body temperature to ambient temperature, he can think of at least three incantations alone, and there are even more magic items.

Thinking of this, the corners of Luo Yan's mouth couldn't help but curl up with a smile.

Didn't expect the third layer of the labyrinth to be taken down by himself just like that!

Not only that—

He also opened up a brand new growth path for his little players, as well as gameplay with the unique characteristics of the graveyard! Being able to be a coder in a fantasy world, I think they will definitely be very happy! (End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 84 =====