I, a cultivator, have ended up in the wizarding world.

Chapter 44 Different Traces
After venturing further in, Jieming randomly found a relatively spacious cave.

After having a heart-to-heart talk with the cave owner, he was able to move in smoothly and started roasting meat over a fire.

Looking at the fiery cave owner, Jemin lowered his head and took out the previously used talismanic artifact from his bag, carefully examining it using alchemy.

"Hmm... Sure enough, there are quite a few breaks in the rune lines, but the base itself isn't too damaged. It seems that even with increased rune redundancy, excessive release still puts considerable pressure on the main body." Jemin shook his head regretfully.

He had tried many methods to address the issue of talisman artifacts being damaged when overused, but none of them offered a good solution.

Such problems are rare even in wizarding civilizations. After all, ordinary wizarding artifacts have a limited number of releases per day, and overheating and damage caused by excessive releases usually occur on the magic arrays of certain floating cities or large, stable facilities.

However, because these items can have a wide range of runes that can be inscribed, they don't require much technical skill and can be solved by using excessive redundancy.

Even more straightforwardly, the magic circle can be modularly designed, so that only the broken part can be replaced.

However, this problem is difficult to solve with talismanic artifacts.

"Making the talisman artifacts even bigger? Then there's no point in designing them..."

As for engraving the runes more finely...

To carve more finely, one needs stronger mental power, but for a wizard, stronger mental power means greater strength, and at that point, the required intensity of magic will have to increase.

More powerful magic requires more complex runes, and the precision of their inscription also needs to be higher...

"It's a complete vicious cycle!"

After agonizing for a while and finding no good solution for the time being, Jemin simply stopped thinking about it and instead considered the problems he had discovered during the battle.

"Although that fire elemental beast was quite strong, it actually withstood so many of my bombardments. It seems that thing has a significant damage reduction against attacks of the same element. Looks like I should create more attacks of other elements next time... Wait, no!"

Jemin had a sudden flash of inspiration and realized what was going on.

Why insist on attacking with elemental attributes?
The greatest advantage of his talismanic artifact is that it can be released continuously and rapidly without consuming too much of the user's mental energy.

Since the goal is to win by sheer numbers, there's no need for him to fixate on the destructive power of that restraint.

"We almost hit a dead end... We could have chosen pure energy blasts as our primary attack method!"

The wizard civilization does not have special attributes like "arcane," but it does have plenty of pure energy-based magic that is devoid of any attributes.

Jemin noted down the idea: "Secondly... for enemies who can manipulate elemental power in battle, the elemental vacuum created by the rapid casting of rune artifacts is not only a negative effect, but can even become an advantage for me to some extent."

Just like that fire elemental monster, because Jemin acted too quickly, by the time he was about to counterattack, most of the surrounding fire elemental power had already been absorbed, which greatly reduced the destructive power of the counterattack.

"In a sense, this can be considered a form of artificial magic suppression, although we don't know what it's for yet."

……

……

After resting, Jemin continued to venture deeper into this area rich in elemental power.

The previous combat tests were sufficient, and now he intends to focus on finding more advanced material samples.

Since entering this wasteland composed of red ore, he has encountered magical beasts more and more frequently along the way.

The Thorn Lizard that can spew poisonous mist, the Ice Crystal Wolf that can unleash ice-type attacks, or the Rock Giant that hides in the rocks and possesses powerful physical defense. With each encounter, Jemin's collection grows, to the point that he has to discard some of the materials he previously collected from ordinary beasts.

Jemin also noticed that as they went deeper, the monsters they encountered, while not necessarily stronger, became more cunning.

They are no longer as reckless as the first monsters we encountered. Instead, they weigh the strength of both sides and retreat in advance, and even know how to use tactics to ambush.

However, none of this posed any threat to Jemin; at most, it just made him spend a little more time on his way to find materials.

However, in his dealings with the monsters, Jemin began to notice some unusual signs.

At first, it was just some minor issues.

He discovered several boulders with scratched surfaces, the wear marks appearing more regular than those formed naturally.

In what appears to be a natural rocky forest, strange grooves occasionally appear on the ground, not like those trodden by wild beasts, but more like the tracks left by some kind of tool.

"Traces of human intervention?"

Jemin stopped, squatted down next to a groove, and reached out to touch it.

The edges of the groove have been worn smooth by time, but the residual energy fluctuations within them are subtly different from the elemental forces surrounding them.

He activated his analytical technique, probing his mental energy into these grooves.

A stream of complex information flooded into my mind; it was a more organized and restrained fluctuation of power, clearly not belonging to a magical beast that used its power freely.

Having confirmed this, Jemin moved more cautiously, consciously searching for such traces.

Soon, he made more discoveries.

At the entrance to a hidden cave, he found a pile of animal bones, but the bones were neatly stacked together, and some were even roughly polished.

A faint, lingering scent of burnt-out flames emanated from the depths of the cave, but it was not the aftershock of natural fire elements; rather, it was the trace left behind after some artificial flame had been extinguished.

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

Further on, he saw a cleared woodland. The trees were freshly felled with clean cuts, clearly the work of some kind of sharp tool.

He even discovered a cleverly disguised trap—not for large beasts, but for smaller creatures, or...humans?
Jemin studied the trap carefully.

Its structure is simple yet effective, consisting of twisted vines and sharp stone spikes, which produce a sharp sound when touched.

“There are indigenous people here,” Jemin made a firm judgment in his mind.

This time, Jemin wasn't surprised at all. After all, the environment of this plane is quite suitable for life, so it's not incomprehensible that intelligent beings or even civilizations could emerge from it.

but……

"When the wizards took over this plane, they must have already cleaned up the local civilization... were these remnants deliberately left behind?"

Compared to the natives of this world who possess special abilities to hide and evade the wizards' detection, this possibility is higher.

(End of this chapter)