The fisherman druid is in another world

Chapter 780

Perhaps because his exploration was misguided, or perhaps due to bad luck, Black Rob, controlling the mountain dwarf Barto, failed to find any more interesting clues in the Blacklight Swamp, at least not until he found the herbalist.

The herbalist was named Silda, a half-dark elf and half-wild elf. She had pale hair and a grayish-black skin that wasn't quite black. Her features were the gentle beauty that most female wild elves possessed, but her scarlet eyes ruined the overall look, making her appear eerie.

Black Robb knew very well that mixed-race children born from one party's impulsive act, crime of passion, and rape, even with a charitable mother, would suffer many times more hardships than non-mixed-race children, experiencing loneliness and rejection much earlier in life.

So, Black Rob understood her stubborn attempt to save the cave lizard.

After all, this pack animal that pulls the flat-bottomed mud boat is likely one of her only companions.

Silda also has a big dog named Ugly Girl, which gives Black Robo the feeling that he is so smart that he is almost a genius.

If it weren't for the big dog's bark, Black Rob might not have noticed Silda in time. After all, the area where she was located was severely affected by radiation interference, which greatly reduced the range of Black Rob's perception. Unless it was a thorough search, it was normal to miss clues.

The ugly girl's extraordinary intelligence lies not only in the perfect timing of her calls, but also in the way she chooses to call. It's as if she can distinguish between kindness and malice through scent.

After all, if it were to speak carelessly in this Blacklight Swamp, it would definitely bring deadly trouble to itself and Silda.

Silda isn't very good at expressing herself and is wary of outsiders. However, she trusts Ugly Girl's intuition, so she doesn't show much fear or hostility towards Black Rob.

Her trust in animals made Black Rob feel that she was a rare kind of creature who, despite being immersed in bitterness, still retained her kindness.

Black Rob's understanding of the concept of 'kindness,' or rather, kindness in the dark world, is somewhat distorted; he examines it through his utilitarian lens.

He believes that kindness is equivalent to presenting a harmless persona, which is a means of self-protection for the weak. It may not be done consciously, but rather it is like an infant smiling at a stranger, out of instinct. However, in general, its motivation is not pure. It is not kindness for the sake of kindness, but kindness because of need.

This is undoubtedly tragic in the eyes of some people living in a society filled with love and peace. After all, the world reflects the kind of person you are. Having such a perception indicates that darkness, coldness, and cruelty have significantly corrupted their minds and distorted their understanding without their knowledge.

But for Black Rob, it didn't matter; he felt he knew.

It wasn't just because he was knowledgeable, but also because he had no shortage of points of reference for comparison.

He can distinguish between good and bad in universal concepts, but he feels that being able to do so has little impact on how to make decisions in reality.

After all, he wasn't the kind of person who, while in prison, tried to influence every prisoner with love.

Even though he knew that human nature was complex and that no prisoner could be simply categorized as evil, and that some prisoners were even innocent, he still abandoned the path of being kind to others and using the power of love to reform them. Instead, he chose the supremacy of power.

This is not only because he has gone further and climbed higher on the path of pursuing power, and has a promising short-term and long-term future.

Even if reality doesn't show him a trend that gives him enough motivation to forge ahead on the path of pursuing power, he will still firmly choose this path.

This is actually the Black Robo lineage, the biggest difference between it and the original Robo.

Influenced by his experiences in the first half of his life, Rob himself still had an almost unrealistic expectation of truth, goodness and beauty, even after being beaten down by darkness.

The Black Robb lineage lacks this; their underlying perception is cold and cruel. On the contrary, the truth, goodness, and beauty they embody are rather superficial and cheap, merely occasional expressions of passion.

Just like his attitude towards Silda, if it were any other time, Black Robb's attitude would be: evil? No matter, I've seen it all before. And good? What does it matter? He doesn't care.

However, under certain circumstances, he may also proactively show goodwill in response to stress.

For example, he told Silda directly that he would kidnap her even if it meant being tied up. But after completing the deal with Igor, if Silda felt it was no longer appropriate to stay with Igor, she could use the magic circle in Echoing Water Town as a transfer point to escape Igor's control.

Of course, this is on the premise that Silda is willing to believe him.

After all, he needs to perform two pre-set operations in order to fulfill this promise.

To be more specific, they are two rune badges.

One of them is called the Light of Faith. To put it simply, it uses the Twilight God's authority to temporarily corrupt Silda's soul. In essence, Silda's soul doesn't belong to her, so even if the contract Ego offers is powerful, it can't truly bind Silda.

Going deeper, this requires sacrificing another's soul to complete the replacement at a crucial moment; otherwise, the advanced contract would immediately discover that Silda's soul no longer belongs to her.

The other one is called the Spacetime Beacon.

The purpose of this badge is to locate Silda and any creatures within a three-meter radius whose energy is intertwined with hers. For example, Ugly Girl and Cave Lizard, who live together for a long time, are typical examples of beings whose energy is intertwined.

After locating it, the magic circle in Xiangshui Town activated, opening a passage, projecting energy, enveloping it, and pulling it back into the magic circle.

Therefore, this spacetime beacon has a range, roughly covering this underground region, and the farther away it is, the longer it takes to complete the response.

Without a doubt, these two rune badges are far beyond the scope of Barto's character design and even the external setting of Soundwater Town; they are the kind of things that cannot be explained no matter what.

Even though Black Robo disguised the two badges, one as a shield against mental attacks and the other as a compass, anchoring them to a point (Xiangshui Town) so that he never lost his sense of direction.

But believing that Silda could keep the secret is itself a flaw. Even with a low probability, it's better not to test human nature at all.

Despite having this understanding, he still chose to do it; this is the kind of goodwill that Black Robb can only express under harsh conditions.

Silda chose to believe Black Rob's promise and accepted this awkward act of kindness.

The rest was simple; Black Rob successfully delivered Silda to Igor.

As for the many secrets within the Blacklight Swamp, Black Robo felt they were no longer of great importance.

The most important part has been accomplished through his idea that 'doubt is enough'.

The result is suspicion that the Night God Society, or Parus, has its own old track plan and seems to be on the right track with a high probability of success. Therefore, they readjust their own action plan and prioritize targeting the Night God Society.

With this result, everything else is just icing on the cake.

As for adding the finishing touches, those tasks can be delegated to subordinates.

For example, a fresh batch of parasitic puppets.

Parasitic puppets are essentially natural souls with matching bodies, bound by harsh employment contracts. Back then, the Dark Hell accepted demon souls indiscriminately, and as the one with the advantage of proximity, he used the authority of the King of Fear to select the best of the best demon souls for future use.

The Demon Soul of Xingmo, who once clashed with Alchemy Circle S Company, was formed in this way.

Among the various kinds of demonic souls in the inventory, there are naturally some from the underground world.

However, for a considerable period of time, the underground races did not prosper, so much so that he had less than a dozen underground demon souls at his disposal.

After deciding to extend their influence into the underground world, these demonic souls were naturally activated, and they were basically able to stand on their own.

However, if we broaden our perspective to the underground world of the entire material plane, this number of demonic souls is clearly a drop in the ocean.

Otherwise, Black Rob might not have personally piloted his Series 3 alt to experience life in the Underworld.

Although the number of demon souls is severely insufficient, each one is extremely powerful. After more than a year of hard work, they have all achieved good results in their respective areas of responsibility.

If Black Robo hadn't been afraid of alerting the enemy and had kept these demonic souls in check, preventing them from showing too much, the performance could have increased by at least seventy percentage points.

The reason why Black Robo's Old Days Divine Kingdom warship was able to collect the genetic blueprints of all the underground races, and to clone any branch of any race, was mainly due to the contribution of the Demon Soul.

As for the further development of the work on the Demon Soul, Black Robo to some extent repeated the work experience of the Nightmare Death Society on the surface, specifically the work on totem god worship.

It's very simple: just tell us the image of the totem god, the sacred symbol, and how to make a simple image or emblem of the god. That's it.

When making the idol or emblem, the person only needs to complete the process, which mainly involves simple prayers and reciting the name of the deity during the making process. Once the ritual is completed, the idol or emblem will subtly manifest its divine power, meaning that the idol or emblem made is effective.

After that, without needing to pray, the totem god will protect the soul from falling into evil hands and suffering torment after death.

To put it bluntly, this operation is to select qualified human souls to create soul-possessed puppets.

These tool souls, unlike demon souls, are not high-end, but their overall level is decent. They are also familiar with the underground world and can play the role of clones of their former races.

This is a soul-possessed puppet suitable for the underground world.

Each demon soul now commands a group of soul-possessed puppets and soul-mimicking puppets.

In places like Xiangshui Town, the so-called compatriots of the Gray Orc Lota are actually soul-possessed puppets and soul-mimicking puppets drawn from other regions of the Underworld.

The Nightmare Death Society, which was active before the outbreak of the plague, was this very group.

Black Robb's use of him to fill middle and lower-level positions within the organization can be seen as making full use of his successful experience.

As it turns out, while it may not be ideal to let such a combination of people work independently to achieve a comprehensive goal, they rarely disappoint when it comes to simply doing specific tasks in a store-keeping manner.

Searching for Blacklight Swamp is undoubtedly a specific task with clear objectives.

Even if no more valuable clues are found, Black Rob can at least confirm that he really did a thorough search.

Igor was quite satisfied with Barto's performance. Not only was he efficient, but the herbalist Silda was also willing to join his team without incurring any additional costs.

It should be noted that Silda was the best solution he could find in the entire region, and when he first contacted her, Silda didn't even give him a chance to negotiate.

After hearing Barto's brief account of the search for Siluda, Igor felt that Siluda had returned the favor Barto had done to her.

So Igor decided to trust Barto a little more, and he said frankly, "The next task is a bit sensitive. I was originally hesitant about whether to entrust it to someone else, but your excellent performance has made me decide to give you more trust."

Black Robb, speaking through Barto, said, "Let me first give a general overview of the mission type and its difficulties. It may be beyond my capabilities, or it may be the kind of mission I don't want to touch."

"Okay, in general, the mission is not complicated, but it is indeed troublesome and dangerous. We need to go to a terrible place and eliminate a powerful monster. The difficulty lies in two aspects: clearing out the mobs is very laborious, and the information about the monster is incomplete, only about 60%, of which at least 20% is ambiguous."

"What types of monsters and grunts?"

"The Undead."

Black Rob said, "Let me guess, it wouldn't be the immortal lich Kamuri, would it?"

Igor snorted like a bull: "You guessed right. What I'd like to add is that the current Kamuri doesn't have the Scepter of the Dead that made him famous."

Black Rob nodded, choosing to believe Igor's account.

The Scepter of the Dead is not Kamuri's most powerful weapon, but it is the most troublesome. It can endlessly pull up corpses and create corpse puppets, which is very effective at depleting the enemy's strength.

While Black Robb has ways to specifically address this issue, it's best not to say too much about it to maintain Barto's character. A suitable explanation can only be made after they've actually faced each other.

So now Ego hasn't said he's solved the problem of Kamuri's extremely high combat power ceiling. Instead, he's only indicated that his most prized combat ability has been severely weakened. This makes Black Rob feel more credible, and doesn't seem like he's just making empty promises to coax him into fighting a powerful monster.

"I agree in principle. What exactly do you want from Kamuri?"

"Its crown of the soul."

“Okay.” Black Rob agreed immediately, and then set a bottom line.

Igor generously stated that as long as the soul crown remains intact, the reward will be increased by 30%.

So, the new round of negotiations was basically finalized. The rest is up to Barto to get the Soul Crown.

For example, other items in Kamuri, such as Soul Boxes and ornaments, are quite famous, but Black Rob has never used foreign magical artifacts as core equipment. Not to mention that the magical artifacts in Kamuri themselves have complicated origins, some of which were stolen and some of which were dug up from tombs.

Black Rob will definitely be sold to Igor as a package deal, provided the price is right.

It is worth mentioning that Kamuri itself is a major destabilizing factor in the region.

In Black Rob's mind, such behavior, which is difficult to guess and judge, yet ambitious, can be regarded as a 'variable' blocking his way, so it's good to get rid of it!
(End of this chapter)