What's wrong with me, a mage, loving to farm?

Chapter 332. The Blue Chapter: We Are All Stardust

With the mycelium daemons of Wond as analytical material, the Hive quickly developed a 2.0 version of the swarm capable of precisely dealing with the fungal beasts—each daemon had tentacle-like straws on its body, which could suck the souls of the fungal beasts it caught.

For these insect swarms, which are born to be weapons of war, as long as there are enough nutrients, they can quickly develop into large armies. Coincidentally, the fungal city of the mushroom people has no shortage of nutrients.

Later, one after another, towering mother nests sprang up from the ground, and more and more swarms of insects were already overpowering the fungal beasts. Along the way, they also seized many strange creations belonging to fungi.

The swarms of insects are indeed very good at killing, but they are not mindless creatures who only know how to kill. On the contrary, they are incredibly efficient at organizing and planning resources.

Whatever they collected, they categorized it and transported it to the mother hive and to Lina.

Thus, the apprentices' job became... to harvest treasures.

Among them were many fungi that did not exist in the outside world, some magical creations that resembled fungus people, and even mushrooms of the four elements other than the Time-Space Illusion were discovered.

There are simply too many things here, even they can hardly distinguish them. They can only put them together according to the similarity of their magical energy fluctuations, and then have Teacher Tower Spirit distinguish them after they return.

However, there are some things that can be analyzed—

"Is this a nutrient solution?"

An apprentice, holding a seemingly unremarkable, dark bucket of liquid, exclaimed in shock, "Its nutritional readings are outrageous! They're far more nutritious than the juice of a pure white sea coconut!"

Lina glanced at it upon hearing this and was indeed surprised. According to the comparison chart displayed by the instrument, the known nutrients contained in this were indeed twice as much as those in the coconut juice of the pure white sea coconut.

What does doubling mean...?

I reckon if we found a dragon egg now, cracked it open, and ate it raw, we could probably manage it.

The apprentice, beaming, hugged the dusty bucket: "Sister Lina, is this considered our spoils?"

Lina nodded: "Anything you can take."

This is actually a clearly defined benefit. Kroya has always firmly believed that if you want people to work hard, you must give them sufficient benefits and treatment. Therefore, when expanding outwards, he will not be stingy with anything he can get.

Hearing this, the young apprentice became even happier: "I'm going to take these back to the Earth Academy to sell! Sister Lina, do you know anyone there? Could you introduce me to a few?"

"Okay." Lina nodded, then looked in a certain direction and asked, "Has communication with the outside world been restored? The swarm has now cleared away all the mycelium in the sky."

In the image on the crystal panel, on an island made of floating dandelions in the sky, an apprentice is quickly building a crystal tower with the help of vine tentacles on his body.

The crystal towers vaguely formed the patterns of a magic circle, surrounding the sunflower in the center. The sunflower stretched out its flower heads, raising its head high towards a certain part of the sky.

This is its characteristic, an imprint etched into the astral body—it can quickly find the source of the sun it worships and then establish a connection with it.

"Almost there!" The apprentice in charge of communications was slightly disappointed, and also felt a little uneasy.

It's important to know that sunflowers have a very close connection with the outside world, and with the help of dandelions and crystal towers, they should have already established that connection long ago.

Even the barriers of the divine realm cannot separate them.

This means that something is interfering with the connection to the outside world, and he doesn't know why, but he feels very uneasy.

This feeling, which came out of nowhere, lingered in his mind, leaving him no time to continue communicating with Lina before plunging into his busy work.

"Then good luck." Lina didn't seem to care too much. In her opinion, as long as things were moving in a positive direction, that was enough.

Anyway, there's always enough time.

Just then, the latest news came through her headset.

She immediately turned her attention to the front lines—where, for the first time, non-mycelial buildings had appeared.

The view over there was completely reflected through the huge crystal slab.

It was a building made entirely of starlight, elliptical in shape, radiating a pristine glow under the protection of mycelium, yet it always gave people an indescribable sense of dread.

As soon as some of the insect swarms approached the building, they were immediately broken down by the light emitted from inside, turning into stardust particles that were indistinguishable to the naked eye.

The apprentices at the front also tried to get the army of magical beasts and plants to attack, but no matter what kind of attack it was, it would be absorbed immediately upon contact with the starlight, regardless of the element.

Normally, one would avoid something completely unknown and continue with the operation, and Lina and the two apprentices at the front line thought the same way.

But just as they were about to go around it...

The pure starlight suddenly contracted violently, like a human heart, and in the next second it spewed out countless streams of light like flowing water.

"Sizzle!"

Everything along the way, whether it was mycelium, swarms of insects, armies of magical beasts and magical plants, or even the apprentices, was turned into stardust.

Stardust danced in the gentle breeze, reflecting boundless starlight that seemed to obscure the entire world. Everything was shrouded in starlight, a breathtakingly beautiful yet utterly cold scene.

The last scene Lina saw was the apprentice holding the crystal tablet being impacted and turning into stardust. Her eyes widened, and for a moment she couldn't even think straight.

Those were carefully selected magical beasts and plants, plus a swarm of insects cultivated by devouring countless fungi!

After the initial shock, she felt a sharp dizziness. She took several deep breaths to barely suppress the urge to faint.

"..."

She held onto a nearby table, managing to stand with difficulty.

This was perhaps the biggest failure and the most devastating loss ever suffered by the entire Hanjiao Island. She couldn't imagine how she would go back to face Kroya and her family who had lost their companions.

The young apprentice next to him stared blankly at the now-dull crystal plate, not even noticing that the large bucket containing the nutrient solution had fallen in.

The mother nest spoke up at the opportune moment: "Please calm down."

It opened its gaping maw and extended a tentacle containing a tiny spore, transmitting a mental signal: "Captain Lina! That's a Titan Protoss particle machine!"

The apprentice, Wante, who had finally regained full consciousness after some unknown process, said in a serious tone: "Those are machines created by the Titans to serve them, said to be a gift from the Star God."

It can transform all life into basic stardust particles and then recombine them—we, and indeed all life on Earth, contain stardust particles within our bodies, and they will all be assimilated by it!

Lina's eyes cleared instantly as she stared at the tiny spore: "Is there any way to stop it?"

Instead of answering, Want asked, "Have you contacted Lord Chloe?"

—This means they can't handle it; they should contact Lord Kroya immediately!

"..." Lina opened her mouth as if to speak, but only felt a sense of dejection and a strange palpitation.

The mother hive remained utterly calm: "The starlight is contracting and expanding, and is expected to reach our location in one minute."

Faced with such terrifying power that could instantly disintegrate them, the mother nest remained remarkably calm: "I can encas you in the strongest egg and bury you deep underground, hoping it has its limits."

Immediately, solid insect eggs appeared nearby, containing nutrient solution that allowed them to breathe and sustain life, waiting for Lina and another apprentice to enter.

But Lina refused: "Thank you for your kindness...Want, why is this thing here?"

She sat down, even pouring herself a glass of chilled mead, swirling the glass, and enjoying the sweet honey aroma and the cool alcohol scent on her cheeks. She quickly calmed down completely.

Normally she would never drink like this outside, but now that she's about to die, she doesn't care anymore and might as well indulge herself.

"Because the fungi here are endless." Wonte sighed softly, "Our actions have reduced too many fungi to suppress them, so they have been activated."

"I don't know if I can escape it, but now I'm going to withdraw my consciousness and fall into a deep sleep."

The shimmering light on the spores gradually dimmed, signifying the withdrawal of consciousness within.

Lina watched him leave, muttering to herself:

"So that's how it is."

"So it's because of the war we started. Looks like we're really reaping what we sowed, hahaha."

Lina downed her glass of iced mead in one gulp, laughing heartily. She strode to the window and saw the clear, stardust-filled mist that was already approaching outside.

To be honest, it is truly beautiful. It is the kind of starlight that is extremely pure and unpolluted, much like the sky she looked up at in the cold wind of the gray desert, an eternal and unchanging beauty.

She gazed at the scenery for a while, then strode over to the young apprentice, grabbed him, and threw him into the insect eggs, ignoring his frantic attempts to swat them.

"You must stay. You must tell Lord Chloe what foolish things we've done. I hope you can survive..."

After she finished speaking, she nodded to the mother hive, and the insect egg was immediately sent by a tremendous force to the deep underground, where countless fungi and insect slime intertwined.

Then she calmly awaited death, clutching the small bottle containing the sun's "spark" that she had received from Kroa.

— "Death" came silently, like a gentle breeze, breaking her and the mother nest into tiny particles of stardust.

Only the iridescent light pulsating within the small bottle she held remained unassimilated, like a lone boat adrift in a sea of ​​stars.

……

Outside, inside the Mage Tower.

"Hmm?" Chloe looked at the white-gold mushroom surrounded by magic runes and seemed to sense some familiar fluctuations from it.

His eyes reflected the bright, pure starlight, and with the power of the sunflower, he barely managed to penetrate the mycelium's shield, finally extending his consciousness into the city of fungi.

He stared at that place for a very long time, and finally determined that what was drifting in the city of fungi was a derivative of... "The Poem of the Rainbow".

The handwriting on the long-dormant chapters had subtly changed, transforming into text that Kroya could understand and read.

It is a small section of the blue chapter—

"Let's go back to the distant starry sky, to the distant universe."

"Cells come from the sun's furnace."

"Everything, even all life, has stardust."

Even this short segment, which wasn't even a complete spell but only a part of it, emitted a terrifying magic that Kroya found incomprehensible.

Tracing back to the source, or rather, dissociating.

It can expand the stardust-like energy within living beings, then assimilate them into stardust, transforming them into something...

"Material?"

The amount of information presented so far is far too little, and Kroya can only guess that it is related to a kind of "material".

This was indeed a pleasant surprise—we never expected to find information related to the Blue Chapter here, but the cost was the annihilation of almost all the apprentices and the loss of a seed from a Mother Nest.

Even though there were only five apprentices, he felt sad.

They can't even get into Valhalla!

The treasures he obtained in this way always made him feel as if they were sacrificed to his apprentices, not to mention that these five were the people he had high hopes for.

Is there any way to restore it?

As he was pondering, a platinum-gold light suddenly shone from the side, and Miya slowly rode out riding a golden ram, clearly in a pretty good mood.

Just in time!

Kroya's eyes lit up, and she grabbed Mia's arm, telling her everything. The latter was increasingly shocked as she listened: "How come I didn't know?"

He came to the platinum mushroom, bent down to examine it closely, and a very obvious look of surprise flashed in his eyes.

"I didn't know there were things like this here."

"I told you a long time ago that even the Ark couldn't collect those chapters... They themselves represent some kind of gift from fate."

"Just like when I met you, just like your path was so smooth—all of this is actually good luck brought by the golden light of the sun."

Miya pointed to the platinum mushroom: "So, do you believe your good luck is still intact?"

Kroya understood what He meant, but shook his head: "Mentor, normally I would be happy to try my luck and see how it goes, but I want them to live well."

"I'm not comfortable relying on luck to put these things on my head."

Miya wasn't surprised. "Then we'll have to think of a solution. After all, these things are special beings that even I don't know about. The only thing I can confirm for you is... they're still alive."

"That's enough." Kroya expressed her gratitude. "As long as I know they're alive, I feel my efforts were worthwhile, and it means there's a way to save them."

His only worry was that these people no longer existed. If they really did not exist, everything he did would be in vain. Even the most powerful resurrection spell could not revive the dead, whose souls were no longer even fragments.

Hui Zhihuan blinked and smiled, "I will help you this time; this is a field that even I have never ventured into before."

He came before Kroya, and just when Kroya thought that this guy was going to use "contact" to bestow a blessing again, Mia's body suddenly became ethereal, and the platinum light was compressed and compressed again, as if the body of the World Tree fruit had formed a summoning magic.

—On the back mountain of Hanjiao Island, the platinum mushroom trembled slightly and then suddenly disappeared.

Before Kroya's eyes, Miya's body transformed into an ancient, white-gold ring imprinted with countless strange runes.

It emitted a soft but reassuring light, floated up, and landed behind Kroya's head.

In that instant, Kroya felt as if his consciousness was ascending, enveloped by countless platinum particles. Everything around him held no secrets; the magic that constituted them, the nature of that magic… all flowed through his eyes as data.

He could even wish, right now, for the Ring of Radiance to belong to him forever, if he so desired.

That was a wish that the Ring of Radiance could not refuse, and it was the fundamental reason why it had to stay inside that mushroom forever—it originally existed to fulfill the needs of the Ark City, and all wishes should be fulfilled within that eternal ark.

Even if it means making the Ring of Radiance her "servant".

"You really trust me?" Kroya shook his head helplessly. "Anyone else would probably find it hard to resist the temptation of such readily available power."

The Ring of Radiance did not answer, but instead "bestowed" upon Kroa its ability to analyze and understand things, allowing him to see the starlight within the platinum mushroom-shaped Paradise as clearly as possible.

He knew that Kroa did not need extra power, nor did He want His power to affect Kroa, so He was very careful.

After gaining this ability, the shadow of the Radiant Ring appeared on the outer edge of the pupil of his eye. He lowered his head and stared at the mushroom—through the power of the Radiant Ring and the power of the Celestial Imprint Technique.

Now, both the "shell" that makes up the mushroom and the magic patterns inside it are within his sight. In addition, he can feel his own torch floating in the starlight, so he quickly discovers some clues.

He frowned slightly and reached out with great effort to pull it out—

Starlight burst forth directly from the mushroom, instantly filling his laboratory, which was made of solar iron and reinforced with countless magical runes.

With the power of the Ring of Radiance, he finally understood the true meaning of the few words in the blue chapter. It turned out that this was not the origin and dissociation he had understood.

Rather, it is a kind of stimulation, stimulating the stardust power that is already present in the life form, giving them powerful strength, a terrifying ability that can make life form constellations.

So the apprentices, magical beasts, magical plants, and even the insect swarms didn't actually die; they were just undergoing "evolution."

"..."

He was finally relieved.

Suddenly I felt a bit stuck, like I'd finally used the power of the Ring of Light and it was all over?

(End of this chapter)