Otherworld Bone Dragon Operation Guide

Chapter 4 Awakening
"Miss White Bone, do you understand mathematics?" Su Ming suddenly asked, the details of his previous conversation with the female voice flashing through his mind.

"of course."

What is the result of subtracting 1 from 2 cubed, multiplying by 3, and then dividing by 7?

“One-third. I’m a scholar, and I’m quite good at math,” the female voice said. “But you can’t stump me like this; telepathic synchronization will transmit the answer to the problem as well.”

"That's good." Su Ming continued, "Prove that for any positive real numbers x and y, the sum of x raised to the power of y and y raised to the power of x is greater than 1."

"Eh--"

The mental link was severed, and so too did the bone spear floating in the air scatter.

Su Ming had attended university and had struggled countless times with advanced mathematics. However, he was unsure whether the concepts of Taylor series and calculus could be accurately conveyed, so he chose exponential equations.

It looks like it's working well!

The skeleton had deliberately dawdled for quite some time, and soon the paralysis on Su Ming's body dissipated. He quickly lit the rag with a lighter and threw it out amidst Galio's obvious cursing and yelling.

Orange flames rose up, illuminating everything in the hall.

Su Ming turned off his flashlight, sat down wearily, and watched Galio be cremated. The White Bone Sect had given him a massive amount of water and countless hints and suggestions before they reached this point; he didn't want to fail again.

It's quite cold here, roughly equivalent to late autumn on Earth, and Su Ming was only wearing a jacket. He stretched out his hand towards the fire, his fingertips slightly chilled despite the warmth.

Then he saw his hand being grabbed.

It was a dark ghost, and those familiar eyes reminded him of Galio!

As expected, in this other world, there isn't a single thing that's easy to handle!
Su Ming dodged backward, only to find that the ghost had disappeared and his palm was now wrapped in a black halo.

"A curse, poison?" Su Ming was confused. Suddenly, his mind went blank, and he knelt down. Countless pieces of information flooded into his mind—not too much, but not too little either, just enough for him to handle without fainting.

"Awakening Technique?" As the information flooded in, he began to understand what was happening, or rather, he became even more confused!
The Dark Archmage Galio sacrificed all his magical knowledge and power, awakening Su Ming! He inexplicably became a novice necromancer and even gained some basic knowledge.

The Muggle from Earth was completely bewildered. This old man was a strangely nice person.
Through his newly acquired psychic perception, Su Ming saw Galio's soul gradually disintegrating, filled with endless resentment. This only deepened his confusion; was this some peculiar culture or peculiarity of another world?
Galio's soul dissipated, and a six-pointed star emitting a soft, dark light broke free from it, floating in the air and emitting an obscure glow.

Based on the knowledge he had just received, this was a materialized dark rune of a very high rank, but he didn't know exactly what it was.

"Don't touch it!" The skeleton's anxious thoughts were projected onto me, and my mind recovered simultaneously. "That's a skeleton mark, stay away!"

Su Ming could clearly sense that the synchronization on the other end was very unstable this time, with faint static. "Welcome back, Miss White Bone! You're not feeling well?"

"Thanks to you, I've only just barely recovered." The skeleton was still shaken. "Please, please don't let that person come again. Are all the people in your world mathematical monsters?" Mental synchronization is a dangerous thing; the two are bound together to a certain extent.

"It's just that our cultures have developed in different directions. If you were to deduce magic formulas, you could easily confuse me too."

"But yours, well," the skeleton paused, "well done, it was a pleasure working with you!"

Su Ming had been paying attention to Bai Gu's hints all along. Even though she openly betrayed him, he understood the flaws she was deliberately creating.

So I used Advanced Algebra to knock her unconscious and log her off, thus stalling for the remaining time of the Dark Edict.

"I really would love to have more opportunities to exchange ideas. The advanced mathematics you demonstrated has been quite enlightening for my research on techniques," said White Bone. "Guest from another world, it's a pity there's no time left. I will die in a few days. Whether you continue to live in this world or try to return to this world is up to you."

Although he could understand every word, Su Ming was trying very hard to digest the message conveyed by the skeleton.

“Let me briefly explain the current situation to you first.” Without waiting for his response, the skeleton continued, “The mage Galio and I are actually trapped. Our enemies are surrounding us with the entire temple army, and they could crush us at any moment.”

She opened the window in the bone wall, and in the darkness, she could see a large patch of twinkling lights surrounding the distant horizon. "Those are them."

"..." Su Ming felt like he had just escaped a wolf's den, only to find that there were tigers all around him.

"Our previous resistance failed, and Galio was severely wounded, along with almost all of his men. So Galio decided to use the remaining magical materials to construct the legendary dimensional teleportation array as a last-ditch effort. Unexpectedly, we actually succeeded!"

“We?” Su Ming noticed the wording. “Haven’t you always been hostile to him and wanted to break free from his control?”

"This is a legendary magic array! Why would we miss a free research opportunity?" the Bone Scholar said matter-of-factly. "Besides, no one in history has ever successfully activated this array. We're missing most of the materials, and we've used all sorts of miscellaneous omissions and substitutions. I'm completely baffled that it can suddenly be activated." The female voice sighed regretfully again, "I really hope we have time to study it properly!"

"You must be a very accomplished scholar," Su Ming suggested. "Why don't you just surrender to the enemy?"

“That’s impossible. You know what a heretic is, right?” the skeleton replied. “Well, no, that’s not right either. To the Temple of Light, I should be considered an evil heretic.”

While heretics can be persuaded, true heretics are truly helpless. Throughout Earth's history, conflicts between heretics have always been the most brutal.

"And Galio deserved it, and I... I guess I'm about the same." Several orbs of light materialized from the skeleton and floated beside Su Ming. "Now go to the center of the hall. I'll explain the structure of the plane transfer array to you, and I also have a bunch of related materials to hand over to you. Most of the array's materials are destroyed, but you can take the remaining ones. If you want to recreate it and return it to your own world, you'll have to find a way to gather them yourself later."

Su Ming swallowed hard. He had a feeling that what the other party was teaching was no less than "The Lithography Machine Making Tutorial," and it was the kind that started from scratch.

"We need to hurry. Learn as much as you can in the next few days," White Bone urged. "We still need to leave you time to escape."

"Aren't you going to escape with us?" Su Ming asked, puzzled.

(End of this chapter)