Chapter 1 After Leaving the Summit

Since leaving the mountaintop, Vanna and Morris had been fighting the "forgeries" that kept emerging in this fog—they had lost count of how many element-formed monsters they had eliminated along the way, but one thing was clear: no matter how many they destroyed, these monsters were always quickly replenished from the mist.

Simply eliminating these replicas was useless.

Morris gazed at the thick fog, a faint silver light occasionally flowing in his eyes as he tracked the flashes of thought that appeared sporadically within the mist, attempting to pinpoint the location of the controller behind these monsters.

After a while, he suddenly looked up in a certain direction. "This way."

Vanna immediately reached out and grasped the air, condensing a new greatsword from the ubiquitous mist, and stepped ahead of Morris.

They traveled through the fog, through streets that were already empty and deserted, relying on the dim yellow streetlights to barely make out the locations of nearby buildings. From time to time, distant sounds reached their ears—sometimes the sounds of city guard and monster combat, sometimes eerie howls and roars, and sometimes even cries for help that seemed to be right next to them.

But those locations from which cries for help came always contained only surging black mud.

The fog was flowing, and the outlines of the buildings in the fog seemed to be flowing along with it. Those hazy, blurred outlines seemed to come alive; the tall tower in the fog turned into a giant of flesh and blood, huge tentacles and eye stalks spread out from the roof, and even the streetlights on both sides gradually began to sway, the dark lamp posts bending down like soft plants, the lights turning into balls of murky yellow eyes.

Just then, a low, soft prayer suddenly came from ahead, interrupting Morris's thoughts and quickly restoring the scene before him to its original state.

Vanna was praying softly, layers upon layers of radiance like ripples of water spreading outward from her, disturbing the thick fog.

"Be careful, something in the fog can interfere with people's sanity," Vanna said without turning her head after finishing a section of prayer. "We've been in this fog for too long."

"It doesn't really affect me much," Morris said casually. "Occasionally encountering some hallucinations is normal for me. I'm used to it."

"······I should talk to Heidi about your attitude towards health next time I write to her."

Morris's mouth twitched, and he was about to say something, but at that moment, a stream of fog suddenly floated over from the side. He only felt a daze in his vision, and then Vanna disappeared from sight.

The old scholar immediately stopped, calling out while vigilantly surveying his surroundings, "Vanna?"

The fog flowed silently. No one responded to his call.

Morris's nerves tightened bit by bit as he quickly scanned the surroundings.

Without him realizing it, all that remained around him was a boundless expanse of pale fog. The buildings that could barely be seen in the mist had disappeared without a trace, and even the dim yellow streetlights had all vanished from sight. And in the depths of this pale chaos, he suddenly saw some things.

They were huge shadows, like incredibly large towers, but upon closer inspection, he could see that they were swaying and wriggling slightly. It seemed to be the tentacles of some enormous sea monster, reaching down from the sky to the earth, licking the things on the earth—Morris was unconsciously drawn to the vague outline of that huge tentacle. He stared at it, feeling as if he could draw truth and secrets from its vast and terrifying shadow.

The next second, Morris frowned and shook his head.

There was no truth in this thing. It was just some kind of bewitching illusion.

"Hmm?"

A voice suddenly came from the mist, as if someone was surprised. Morris instantly looked in the direction of the sound, and he saw that the huge illusion in the distance had disappeared, and a tall, thin figure was walking out of the fog.

"You weren't affected—that's really surprising." The tall, thin figure became solid, revealing a middle-aged man in a dark blue coat, holding a black leather book in his hand. Behind this middle-aged man, a jet-black chain extended from the back of his neck into the air, and at the end of the chain floated a jellyfish-like creature that swelled and contracted like smoke.

Morris didn't say anything, just watched the Annihilator cultist symbiotically linked to the "smoky jellyfish," focusing all his attention on being wary of the other party's movements.

"Don't be so nervous, old man. I don't mind chatting with you, anyway, the final Day of Arrival has already come, and I have plenty of time now," the middle-aged man laughed, his tone surprisingly peaceful. "I'm really curious, why weren't you affected after witnessing the Lord's form—you can see those illusions, which means your psychic vision is indeed sufficient, but you... you didn't go crazy?"

"Sorry, my mind has always been healthy, and I wouldn't fall into chaos because of some bewitching illusions," Morris said calmly, silently reciting the name of the God of Wisdom, Lahm, in his heart. "Where did you take my companion?"

"Let's not worry about others first, old man. Right now..."

The cultist was only halfway through his sentence when Morris's eyes suddenly sharpened, and he raised his hand and pointed at the opposite side. "Romonosov Inequality Theorem!"

Vast knowledge was compressed into words, and a massive amount of information suddenly flooded into the target's thought process. The cultist's figure swayed for a moment, and he lowered his head as if in great pain.

But just as Morris was preparing to release a second mental bombardment, a strong sense of vigilance suddenly rose in his heart. He abruptly closed his mouth and used all his strength to restrain his thoughts—and almost at the same time, he saw the cultist suddenly raise his head, a hint of mockery in his eyes.

The mental bombardment backfired, and Morris instantly felt a wave of dizziness—fortunately, he reacted in time, and the dizziness was not serious.

"Too bad," the cultist spread his hands, mockingly looking at the swaying old scholar. "I don't seem to be afraid of this..."

"Boom!"

Before the cultist could finish speaking, the smoky jellyfish floating behind him had already begun to contract violently. The next second, accompanied by the jellyfish's sudden expansion, a huge black fireball appeared in front of the cultist—the fireball howled and exploded in the air, and the next second it slammed into the spot where Morris was standing!

Black smoke filled the air, and even the surrounding fog trembled violently. The Annihilator cultist looked at the still dissipating smoke, shaking his head in regret. "So many 'shells' were destroyed by mental shocks. Did you think I would show up unprepared? Too bad, knowledge is not equal to wisdom."

"Clang—clatter!"

The sound of something falling to the ground suddenly came, interrupting the cultist's monologue. He instantly widened his eyes and used a spell to summon the power of the wind to blow away the black smoke—a shattered triangular prism appeared before his eyes.

The fractured surface of the triangular prism still faintly retained a phantom image of Morris.

"Triangular prism? *Optical Deceptions*?!"

The cultist suddenly realized, and the next second, he looked in a certain direction nearby. Almost at the same time, Morris's figure had emerged in the previously empty space.

That figure raised his right hand at him, speaking slowly and clearly, word by word: "The Mycielski Conjecture and Proof."

However, this time, the cultist symbiotically linked to the smoky jellyfish didn't even sway. He no longer concealed anything, directly reaching out and grabbing the chain floating behind his neck, drawing power from the abyssal demon while staring intently at the old scholar not far away. "I'm really sorry, but I actually graduated from the Department of Mathematics at Moke City Central University..."

*Click*.

The crisp sound of a gun's action moving suddenly entered his ears. Another figure of Morris appeared directly behind the cultist, a revolver pressed directly against the back of the latter's head.

"Bang!"

After the gunshot, the corpse with a hole in its head fell to the ground, and the abyssal demon symbiotically linked to it howled and quickly dissipated.

"You didn't say you graduated from university earlier."

The old scholar blew on the muzzle of the gun, shaking his head as he put away the pistol. Across from him, the other "Morris" figure dissipated like morning dew. Where the phantom disappeared, a small crystal triangular prism fell to the ground, shattering into pieces.

Morris looked at the shattered triangular prism with some heartache, then looked down and poked the cultist's corpse with his cane in disgust.

"You wasted two of my prisms—and your university degree."

As he spoke, the surrounding fog suddenly began to flow again, and the scenery in the fog changed rapidly. The outlines of buildings and lights that had once disappeared reappeared in Morris's field of vision. Then, he saw Vanna running over quickly from the side.

"Are you alright?!" Vanna asked anxiously before she got close. "You suddenly disappeared..."

"I thought you had disappeared," Morris waved his hand. "Looks like it was just some kind of temporary illusion...wait."

He suddenly remembered something, and as he spoke, Vanna also suddenly stopped a few meters away.

"Confirm if it's real first," the two said in unison.

Then they looked at each other and said in unison, "Homeward-Bound!" (a term referring to their ship/organization)

"Looks like it's real," Morris nodded after confirming that there were no abnormalities on either of them. "It doesn't hurt to be cautious."

Vanna immediately noticed the cultist's corpse lying on the ground, and her eyes changed slightly. "Did you take care of this?"

"Met someone with a high level of education," Morris nodded. "Had an academic exchange. Fortunately, I had a better problem-solving approach."

Vanna: "……?"