The Monster is Coming

Chapter 423 The Elysian Faction, the Blueprint of Rules

The void world.

Amidst the boundless purple mist, a magnificent palace floats above.

In the center of the hall, a demonic purple figure sat cross-legged on the teleportation altar.

It has no distinct face, only its eyes remain constant, while the other facial features constantly switch between blurred and blurred expressions, such as ecstasy, pain, and sorrow.

At this moment, its eyes were tightly closed.

Countless purple ribbons of energy danced behind it, spreading out from the depths of the hall, like living nerves piercing into the void, connecting to the Elysium branch hall that was connected to the monster world.

This is the energy network inside the Blissful Palace, which transmits massive amounts of Blissful Energy to the palace every minute and every second.

Then the Lord of Bliss decides whether to invest the Blissful Energy in research and development, in the construction of branch temples, or in storage for future use.

Above his head was a vortex transfer station used to recruit players of Elysium.

The interior of the main hall now has two more pillars compared to before.

They represent the Elysium players in Dead Space and the Elysium Legion in the Phantom Wasteland, respectively.

At this moment, under the control of the Lord of Bliss's consciousness, the two pillars slowly came into contact, but then suddenly separated again.

After a long period of silent cultivation, the Lord of Bliss slowly opened his eyes.

"Failed!"

The Lord of Bliss couldn't help but sigh as he tried to link the rules again, but failed once more.

After glancing at the evil words hidden beside it, its consciousness immediately sank into the sensory network.

Following the purple, silk-like connection, they instantly arrived at the Illusionary Wasteland.

Instantly, a massive flow of data flooded into its perception.

Over the years, through continuous war training, the two Bliss Legions, Purple Tide and Insect Tide, have undergone a complete transformation.

They no longer require cumbersome instructions.

The killing is transformed into a combat instinct, deeply ingrained in the subconscious of every combat unit.

In the visuals, on the battlefield of the Phantom Wasteland, two legions transformed into two surging tides, rushing towards the player army and engaging in fierce collisions and slaughter.

Purple Tide's units differentiated and coalesced like liquid metal, while the Zerg tore through the defenses with pure brute force.

The commander remained largely in an observational state throughout the process, allowing the Purple Tide and the Insect Swarm to learn and evolve autonomously through combat.

The Lord of Bliss then issued a simple command through a signal tower on the battlefield.

In an instant, all units on the entire battlefield, regardless of distance, suddenly unified their actions, transforming into a destructive torrent that swept forward.

This pleased the Lord of Bliss greatly.

These two replica legions have already proven their value in large-scale, systematic warfare.

The only drawback is that it becomes somewhat rigid when dealing with extremely complex individual micro-management.

But for it, as long as there is progress, it is considered a success.

To date, the Elysium War Legion has been updated to its fifth generation.

The first generation's model was very rudimentary, with warriors of their own race serving as commanders and conducting remote mind control.

During this phase, the commanders are mentally exhausted, and even with their full-time high-intensity efforts, they are still unable to control the ever-growing number of the Elysian War Legion.

Mental energy is consumed rapidly during command and will soon be depleted.

It can be seen as a control mode where brute force leads to miracles; it's all about brute force and there are no skills involved.

The second-generation model is an upgrade based on this, enhancing the commander's abilities.

Firstly, referencing the Black Tide system, it provides commanders with a portable charging purple eye to enhance mental strength and mental endurance.

However, the problem remains unresolved, as commanders can only operate a limited number of war units for short periods of time.

The third generation improved the signal transmission mechanism, changing from individual control to parallel control.

This allowed the warriors of the Elysium Legion to move in perfect unison, greatly reducing the commander's operational burden.

But new problems have emerged.

While the pressure of control has indeed been reduced, the combat units have become increasingly clumsy. Parallel control ensures that every combat unit performs the same actions.

This means that even if there are no enemies in front, or if a change in position results in friendly units being in front, the unit will still launch an attack forward due to the parallel command.

Fighting the enemy, fighting the air, fighting one's own side... the parallel operation mode simply cannot form an effective war force.

On the battlefield, they would be sitting ducks.

The failure of the third-generation parallel control system has brought its research and development back to the core of the problem: how to reduce the pressure on commanders while enabling war units to have basic "autonomous response" capabilities.

Thus, the fourth option was developed.

This approach shifts towards greater autonomy for different branches of the armed forces in warfare.

The specific plan is to build a rune database for the Elysian Legion.

When the Elysian Tide and the Elysian Insect Tide receive macro-level instructions from the commander during battle, they will autonomously retrieve the most suitable preset battle mode from the database and execute it based on the type of enemy they are currently encountering and the environment they are in.

This model was a successful start, finally giving the Elysium Legion basic tactical adaptability on the battlefield.

They evolved from a bunch of rigid marionettes into automated soldiers capable of executing simple tactical commands.

However, this system still has bottlenecks.

The database is pre-set, and once the legion encounters new tactics or enemies outside the database, it will fall into chaos and not know how to deal with them.

Thus, the fifth generation was born from this optimization: the autonomous evolution system.

Compared to the fourth generation, the fifth generation completed the transformation from a static database to a dynamic database.

It modified the unit generation template, adding a signal rune to each unit template.

This rune allows every war unit to perceive external information during battle.

They transform real-time combat data, including every successful kill and every injury or death, into an information stream and continuously feed it back to the rune database.

As a result, the rune database is no longer stagnant; massive amounts of real-world combat data serve as its optimization fuel.

It begins to autonomously compare, analyze, and summarize, extracting more effective countermeasures from each successful kill, generating new reaction logic, and updating it in real time to all frontline combat units.

The Elysium War Legion was thus officially freed from the problem of command difficulties.

The reaction patterns of all war units are no longer fixed, and they have become increasingly complex through combat experience.

Effective combat feedback accumulates like a snowball.

This self-evolving system has truly made the Elysium War Legion a war machine capable of continuous self-improvement.

The inspiration for this war mode comes from the Zerg's adaptive evolutionary characteristics.

Learning and growing during wartime.

Recently, he decided to launch the sixth generation version update.

This generation adds a new feature to the fifth generation: the cellular network.

The drawback of the fifth generation is that each combat unit only interacts with the central rune database on a "point-to-point" basis.

It can independently perceive and learn, and independently retrieve tactics from the database to provide feedback on the current combat mode.

Isolated from each other, they are unable to conduct real-time tactical cooperation on the ever-changing battlefield.

The "fight alone" model is clearly not suitable for the battlefield.

The sixth-generation cellular network was conceived to address this problem.

While retaining the fifth-generation rune database for combat learning records, a real-time tactical interaction rune has been added to every Elysium Legion unit on the battlefield.

Nearby combat units can be connected into a unified whole through this rune, forming a shared feedback mechanism.

The rune database will issue collaboration instructions based on this group and provide feedback to each unit in the group.

Secondly, the cellular network is alive.

On flat terrain, they can form a surging purple tide or insect swarm and advance in unison.

When the terrain is complex, the honeycomb network will naturally split into smaller parts, forming countless closely cooperating small honeycombs.

Each team operates independently, yet together they form a large honeycomb network, ensuring that teams do not interfere with each other.

During this period, the war feedback from the Hive Group will also be fed into the rune database in real time, making the entire Elysian Legion stronger and stronger in battle.

It has already invested a huge amount of energy resources to build this massive rune database.

The daily war costs with the player race were already a considerable sum.

Especially as the player base grows larger, so does their spending.

Fortunately, with the implementation of the mapping rules, the issue of resource expenditure has been resolved.

It can insert ads in real time during battles, and player factions will cooperate tacitly.

When the advertising time is up, it will be stopped decisively, so as to generate energy that reflects the rules.

With this in mind, the Lord of Bliss pulled up the latest war expenditure information.

When it saw the changes in the expenditure data, the expression on its face changed briefly and then froze.

The information shows that recent expenditures have suddenly surged.

The reason is that the scale of player participation has increased significantly and is still growing rapidly, likely to multiply several times in a short period of time.

This is undoubtedly a good thing for the upcoming upgrade of the sixth-generation "Honeycomb Network" training.

The larger the scale of the war, the better the training effect.

However, this also means that expenses will increase significantly.

After much deliberation, it sent a mental message to the Blissful God who was responsible for projecting the image:
"The broadcast time will be extended by 30% from now on, and an additional advertisement will be broadcast every hour (7 hours, 37 minutes and 23 seconds)."

The next second, the respectful response from his subordinate echoed in the Lord of Bliss's mind:

"My lord, I understand."

After giving the orders, the Lord of Bliss scanned the battlefield with his senses and then returned to the Palace of Bliss.

Next, it projected its consciousness into the death space.

This is the breeding pool for Elysium players.

This system was inspired by the fearless player race, especially after witnessing the player race's war against the Black Tide and the Zerg horde in the Emperor's Tomb Mountains region. It felt that the player race's model had great potential for imitation.

The collected player data proves that players possess a variety of rule-based abilities that can be combined.

It clearly didn't have enough rules to use, so it studied the abilities of the "fallen ones" in the Elysium branch and created a skill library for players to combine and use.

Every skill is essentially a rune generated by the power of the Elysian Rules.

It can be integrated into the life structure of a Blissful player.

However, how to use this ability specifically requires players to independently comprehend, learn, and refine it.

It has also invested heavily in creating a paradise for players.

The Dead Space, used to select elites, recruits a large number of reserves every day.

However, most of them will be eliminated in the trials of the Death Space, and only the true elites are qualified to step into the Monster World.

This brutal selection mechanism may extinguish some promising talents who, due to momentary negligence, are unexpectedly lost.

But it doesn't feel regret about it.

Over the long years of observing the development of the monster world, it has long since come to understand a truth.

Fortune is real; it is not a vague and illusory coincidence, but rather it permeates everything from beginning to end.

Low-dimensional operations are subject to interference from high-dimensional operations.

It's as if it casually tossed some crumbs to the ants, which the ant colony regarded as a divine gift, a great fortune that could change the fate of the colony.

But in the eyes of higher-dimensional beings, this is neither a blessing nor a coincidence.

They just casually threw away the crumbs.

In the monster world, a cruel stage where countless higher-dimensional wills intertwine and collide, those who manage to barely gain a foothold and secure a place are all destined heroes, favored by fate and celebrated throughout the epic history of civilization.

Each of them was once the most dazzling star in the long history of the small world.

He is also the first person to bear the destiny of the entire world, and those who follow him are basically the most powerful "first race" in the history of the small world.

Even so, after descending upon the monster world, they died silently, one generation after another, like the lowest of weeds.

This world has buried countless legends, and what it has in abundance is the strong.

Therefore, in its eyes, if a recruited Elysium player cannot even cross the Death Space, they are not worthy of entering the Monster World.

The cruelty of the monster world is something that even the god behind the scenes who created this deathly space trembles with fear.

The potential seed that perished in the trial due to bad luck only proved that the other party's potential was superficial.

Looking across the vast and boundless battlefield of the monster world, which force has been able to rise in a short period of time amidst the myriad races of countless races, is not backed by an incredible stroke of luck?

For any power, it is never certain whether the next moment will bring an opportunity or be casually wiped out by a passing higher-dimensional being.

Strength can only determine how steadily one can progress.

Luck determines whether you survive.

No matter how brilliant or talented someone is, there will always be an even more powerful being looming above them.

Often, survival does not depend on how hard one tries.

It depends on whether a more powerful being happens to fail to notice you, this slightly stronger insect, at some point.

Its understanding of luck and skill is:
Luck is like the wind.

Without wind, even the most abundant seeds will be trapped in hardship, and even the most magnificent sailboat will be confined to stagnant water.

It determines whether your seed can be carried away from the dead, whether your ship can sail into the channel, and provides the possibility of growth.

Strength and effort are the life force of a seed itself, and also the structural strength of a ship.

When the wind comes, only plump seeds can seize the opportunity to take root and sprout, and only sturdy ships can brave the wind and waves and not disintegrate and sink in the face of opportunity.

Only when the wind (luck) blows and lifts the veil of fate can the true value of seeds and boats (strength and effort) be revealed, propelling the community forward with difficulty in this cruel world.

The Death Space, on the other hand, filters out seeds that possess both luck and ability.

To build this space, it continuously invested a huge amount of blissful energy, and was in a state of loss in the early stages.

There was even some unknown vulnerability that could not be identified, and small amounts of unknown energy would always be lost.

Fortunately, at this stage, the Elysium Player system has also begun to generate energy benefits.

Income is sufficient to cover expenses, with a surplus.

This revenue comes from the Elysium player team that successfully passed the trials and entered the monster world.

They were given the rules of ecstasy and became mobile sources of depravity.

They are scattered throughout the monster world, their main task being to find living beings and lure them into a blissful illusion.

As long as the target is immersed in the illusion and cannot extricate themselves, their spirit, will, and life will be burned and transformed in the ultimate pleasure, becoming the purest ecstatic energy derived from the rules of bliss.

At this stage, the benefits of hunting and exploration are secondary.

The primary source of profit for these ecstasy player teams lies in corrupting living beings into depravity.

Occasionally, these teams will return to the inner city of Deadspace to settle accounts and then use "Elysium Points" for upgrades.

Several rapidly growing player teams have become increasingly adept at weaving illusions, and their ability to manipulate others has grown daily.

Each time they return, the amount of energy they contribute becomes increasingly enormous.

The only problem is that the casualty rate is too high.

However, as long as the profits can cover the expenses, the Lord of Bliss does not care about this loss of combat power.

By choosing to send these Elysian players who had successfully advanced through the trials into the monster world, it had already prepared for them not to return.

Because they were the pioneers of the Elysium Player system.

It was originally intended as a stepping stone to explore future feasibility, and it is also a consumable for subsequent updates and optimizations.

Each of their successes adds new content to the future updates of the "Paradise Player System".

Each failure and demise of these templates becomes material for optimizing the next batch of "Elysium Player Templates".

Life, transformed into the sowing of seeds of depravity, yields its own rewards.

Death becomes the cornerstone that paves the way for those who follow, providing data.

Therefore, the life and death of the ecstasy players are both beneficial to it.

During this period, it deliberately incorporated rules that encouraged team competition into the Elysium player system.

For example, killing Elysium players from other teams will drop Elysium Chests.

Randomly select ten items from the opponent; these could be skill runes, weapons and equipment, or resources.

This may seem to cause internal friction and result in the loss of some existing gains.

But in its calculations, this loss is entirely worthwhile.

First, a kill is essentially a form of Elysium energy recovery, and only a portion of it is granted to the Elysium player who completes the kill.

It is able to recover most of the losses.

Secondly, competition is also a form of tempering.

Although the monster world is the most brutal killing field, the external tempering intensity is extremely high.

But that's precisely why it should introduce internal competition.

External pressure filters out the ability to survive, while internal competition refines the upper limit of growth.

External enemies present a life-or-death survival challenge that is beyond our control.

Internal competition exists within a relatively controllable range.

Being able to recycle resources is only one aspect.

It values ​​the vitality brought about by internal competition, prevents the entire Elysium player system from becoming stagnant, and ensures that the system is always on the path of evolution.

It can also accelerate the elimination of teams that seem powerful but actually have fatal flaws.

Some problems have not yet been exposed.

However, it is very clear to other players who share the same roots and know each other well.

The strategy involves having players in the "Paradise" faction exploit the weaknesses of other teams, forcing them to eliminate their own vulnerabilities.

If not, it can only become nourishment for the growth of another team of players in Blissful Paradise.

Rather than letting these unstable factors collapse at some critical moment in the future when facing external enemies, causing irreparable resource losses, it is better to expose them in advance in internal competition, and then eliminate and reclaim them internally.

This is essentially a form of internal optimization.

In its eyes, the current Elysium player team is just a consumable for optimizing the future system.

When they have honed their strengths to the extreme, the one that will ultimately survive will be the perfect warrior prototype with no obvious weaknesses, capable of dealing with any internal challenges and external threats.

At that time, this final template paved with the corpses of countless victims will be what it truly desires.

Only such an elite team can be the perfect creation to support its ambitions.

All the sacrifices we've made so far are simply to cover the research and development costs that need to be paid before the final product is released.

When it reopened its eyes, its senses focused on the two purple divine pillars behind it.

It now possesses two power of rules.

These are the rules of bliss and the rules of reflection.

Next, it has an even grander goal: to create a system of interconnected rules.

In the monster world, having rules is merely the starting point for climbing the endless ladder to the top.

Without rules, even getting started is difficult; one can only be considered a lowly ant.

The true sign of becoming powerful is learning how to create synergy between rules, or learning how to allow the main rule to draw strength from other rules to grow.

This is something that can be clearly seen from those top powers.

The Black Tide's devouring and transformation, the Evil Moon's amplification, the auxiliary eye, the shaping and generation... a vast network of interconnected rules means that wherever the Black Tide passes, everything is devoured and transformed into part of itself, its offensive snowballing endlessly.

The Zerg's evolutionary rules are linked to multiple adaptive rules, allowing the evolution of an individual to be instantly shared across the entire swarm, propelling the entire race forward at a terrifying speed. With the brain's rule-level gestation capabilities, it can easily generate an endless horde of death.

The growth rules of the player race, which are linked with various other rules, allow each player to progress rapidly through killing and to unleash power beyond the limits of life strength through exquisite teamwork.

The Blue Lantern Clan's rule linkage involves one main rule linking 68 rule-level components, creating a powerful scene distortion effect.

These top powers do not rely on a single rule to dominate the world.

If you're going to learn it, you should learn the essence.

It has begun to conceive its own interconnected system.

The initial idea is to imitate the relatively easy Blue Lantern Clan, using the Elysium Rules as the core, and combining them with other rule-level components.

The first component is: mapping rules.

It often thinks that the characteristic effect of reflection is that it can project and collect scenes.

Is it possible to use the rules of reflection to project the illusion generated by the rules of bliss?

Regardless of where it is projected, the ability to project across space signifies a disruptive change in resource production models.

Ideally, the seductive properties of the Ecstasy Rule should be projected directly into the target's mind.

Even when separated by mountains, rivers, and spatial barriers, it generates blissful derivative energy for the other party.

This collaboration is exciting just thinking about it.

It seemed as if it were sitting in the Great Palace of Bliss, and with just a thought, it could project the illusion of bliss into the minds of some distant race through the rule of "reflection".

This group was suddenly ignited by a sensory feast that appeared out of nowhere.

Ultimately, one sinks into bliss, burning oneself to produce blissful energy.

If this can be achieved, the operating model of the Paradise Branch Hall will be reformed or even abolished.

The role of the Elysium Players will also change, becoming an "exploration force" under its control, responsible for investigating the environment of unknown external areas.

After all, the monster world is fraught with danger and filled with powerful races.

It has no way of knowing whether a powerful race exists in the area it is projecting into.

If it encounters a higher-dimensional powerful race, the paradise it projects is a precise spatial coordinate and a declaration of war.

Instead of receiving feedback from the energy derived from bliss, what awaits is more likely a devastating attack from the other side, following the traces of the rules and crossing space to descend.

Therefore, it needs a group of elites to help it explore various regions of the monster world and search for races that can be bewitched.

Or perhaps they used a small world as a test in the early stages, burning away all the life in that small world in a short period of time.

The blissful energy produced after burning can be directly transported back to the Blissful Palace through the rules of reflection, using an invisible bridge similar to the collection of "advertisements".

If successful, its resource output efficiency will increase many times over, and the risk will be reduced to an extremely low level.

This is precisely the power of interconnected rules.

It is also a technical hurdle that a group must overcome on its path to the top.

The idea is great, but how to make the rules work together is a problem that has not yet been solved, and a lot of resources need to be invested in research and testing.

The road ahead is still long, but the future direction is already clear.

After briefly reviewing the development of the two systems, the Lord of Bliss refocused his attention on the research of rule linkage.

But what it didn't know was...

While it was focused on creating its own things, a higher-dimensional will was watching it from the shadows.

The higher-dimensional will, which it could not perceive, swept over the development of the Lord of Bliss and the Bliss Clan, and then jumped to the Death Space scene representing the Bliss Player System.

　Here are 6800 words~
　　
　
(End of this chapter)