Wizard: Starting from the Skill Tree

After advancing some distance, Panshi came to a halt.

Within its perception, an area of anomalous Energy density appeared ahead.

It was not an ordinary Earth Element convergence point, but a small clearing.

In the middle of the clearing lay a gigantic broken tree trunk at a slant; the trunk was hollow, its internal cavity already scooped out, with extremely faint traces of Spirit and some dried residue of a certain mucus remaining.

The fracture surface of the trunk was not the result of weathering, nor did it look like it had been snapped by external force; there were signs of erosion at the break, the woody fibers corroded into sponge-like pores, as if something had begun dissolving the tree from the inside and then crawled out through the break.

Through the Soul Link, Duke saw this scene and silently noted down the location.

If Nightmare Dust would attach to the surface of vegetation, then the plant species and Energy environment of this area needed to be marked separately for later comparison.

Continuing deeper into the forest, the terrain began to show gentle undulations.

The ground was no longer flat; faintly rising gentle slopes and shallow gullies appeared.

At this distance, Panshi’s perception range began to capture more details; beneath the layer of black-gray dead leaves, it occasionally detected some small Energy signals slowly moving about.

The intensity of those signals was very weak, not even reaching about Level 1; their movement speed was also very slow, burrowing back and forth through the soil, seemingly gnawing on humus.

They should be some kind of native low-level creatures, posing no threat at all to a Level 2 Earth Element Life like Panshi.

Panshi ignored them and continued forward in the direction Duke had specified.

The forest gradually grew sparse; the spacing between those twisted black trunks became larger and larger, and the layer of dead leaves on the ground began to thin, exposing the black mineral soil beneath.

In Panshi’s perception, a distinct Energy boundary line appeared ahead.

That was the edge of the forest; beyond lay an open hilly zone, where the proportion of rock on the ground rose sharply, the flow of Earth Elemental Energy became more active, and several Dark Rivers converged in the shallower strata, forming a sizable Energy-enriched area.

At the edge where this hilly region met the forest, Panshi’s perception captured a new kind of plant signal.

The Energy structure of those plants was very low and close to the ground; they grew hugging the surface, with a height of no more than half a meter, but there was a layer of extremely fine substance on the surface of their branches that presented a flickering effect in Energy perception.

It was a powdery coating that fluctuated slowly in the Energy dimension at an extremely low frequency, like the residual of some Rule Power in an inert state.

This matched exactly the description of Nightmare Dust he had read in the Six-Ring Tower literature.

It was just that the lunar phase had not yet reached its peak, so the amount attached was too little, so thin as to be almost invisible, still far from a saturated collection state.

Duke located those attachment points in his mind one by one; along the edge where forest and hills met, the low plants formed a belt-like distribution, with a width of roughly a few dozen meters and a length visually of at least several hundred meters.

The most densely distributed areas were on several gentle slopes where the forest boundary bulged toward the hills; there, Earth Elemental Energy was relatively poor, and the gray-white skylight was also more plentiful.

In contrast, within the Energy-enriched area formed by the confluence of several Earth Element Dark Rivers, there was not a single plant with attachments, confirming that note in the literature.

Nightmare Dust does not condense in environments where Energy concentration is too high; it prefers Energy-poor, rule-thin edge zones, just as dew will not condense on hot stone.

Duke committed these patterns to memory one by one, marking on the map in his mind the precise relative position of each attachment point and his current assessment of attachment density.

He began expanding the search range along both directions of the forest’s edge.

In the more northerly area, the distribution density of low plants gradually dropped, and the amount of Nightmare Dust attached decreased accordingly; by the time he reached the northeastern corner of the forest edge, almost no flickering signals could be found.

Conversely, conditions were better along the stretch extending southward.

The hills on the southern side had gentler slopes; the ground rock consisted mainly of shattered shale; the Earth Elemental Energy Flow was steady but not enriched, the low plants grew more densely here, and the attachment density of Nightmare Dust was noticeably higher.

At several points one could even vaguely see the nascent form of a saturated state, just waiting for the lunar-phase window to open to allow direct collection.

Duke memorized these points, had Panshi scout a bit further south, and only after confirming that beyond the southern boundary lay an even deeper, denser Twisted Forest with no sign of hill extension did he mark the southern extremity on the map as well.

By now, the terrain of the entire reconnaissance area was roughly clear.

The manor sat in the central zone of a ring-shaped Twisted Forest; after extending northward, the forest gradually thinned, eventually transitioning into open rocky hills; the hills continued northward, with the terrain gradually rising, ultimately connecting to the foot of that distant gray-blue mountain range.

The attachment points of Nightmare Dust were concentrated on the belt of low vegetation at the junction of forest and hills, with the highest density in the gentle-slope area on the southern side.

From the manor, following the route Panshi had taken through the forest, then walking south along the vegetation belt at the forest–hill junction, one could find the optimal collection sites.

The total time exposed outside the safe house could thus be compressed to a minimum.

At the forest’s edge, Panshi turned around, its massive dark-golden body once again submerging into the twisted black trunks.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!