Chapter 56: Quagmire Technique

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Clicking into the post, the player’s forum ID was “Lover of American Coffee.”
The reason it attracted so much attention was largely because this player’s situation was truly miserable.
By now, it was already the tenth day, and his level was still stuck at one...
The root cause? Shortly after entering the game, he hadn’t taken more than a few steps before running into a gang of bandits.
After being knocked unconscious by them, he woke up only to find himself thrown into a mine shaft, forced to work as a miner slave.
The daily quotas were harsh; if he didn’t reach the required amount, he wouldn’t even get a piece of black bread.
And so, this player...
Had been digging in this seemingly bottomless mine ever since...
The strange situation arose primarily because the player had clicked too fast when first logging in, missing the option on the main interface labeled “Enter Forum.”
As a result, he didn’t even realize that the reason he had entered the Spirit Realm was because of that very software.
After all, once the program was accessed, a countdown panel would directly appear, and the software’s subsequent role was limited to browsing the forums or shopping at the pumpkin store.
Moreover, because related content online was constantly deleted in seconds, it was impossible to see any information through the browser.
This led him to believe, mistakenly, that he was the only person who had crossed into the other world...
He fervently self-deluded, convinced he was the legendary protagonist template from online novels...
Due to this lack of information, he remained unaware of many crucial details widely known among players.
For example, that each person had two chances to resurrect.
One coincidence after another made him feel like an isolated island, cut off from the player community.
He only finally woke up to the truth because the same bandits happened to capture another player. After the two talked, he realized his entire approach had been... completely wrong!
In the end, the two players agreed that staying in the mine was no solution and decided to commit mutual suicide.
That way, they could resurrect during the next game session.
Before leaving, they filled their player inventories with a material called refined iron ore.
However, Qin Yuan had checked the Whispering Codex and learned this stuff wasn’t valuable. After refining, it yielded little and was mainly used to craft warrior equipment.
“To all here, past setbacks shall not hinder my progress. I hereby swear that I will work hard to level up and return swiftly to annihilate the bandit stronghold, hanging every one of those who bullied me!”
“Let this post serve as proof!”
At the end of the thread, the player looked back on the past and gazed toward the future, posting these ambitious words.
“As far as I know, those who make such flags rarely end well...”
Qin Yuan muttered, sighing,
“This guy is quite the character...”
“But... this actually reveals a lot of information.”
Qin Yuan suddenly began to ponder deeply.
He realized that so far, both worlds had many inexplicable anomalies.
For instance, from recent conversations with Zhang Wenbin, he learned that the Player Alliance still operated as initially stated: as long as players didn’t cause trouble or expose themselves to ordinary people, they could do almost anything.
Moreover, this player’s reckless online searching for related content hadn’t drawn any attention.
This was highly unusual and counterintuitive.

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Furthermore, in the Spirit Realm, the actual gameplay time had already reached the morning of the eleventh day.
With such a large number of players present, Qin Yuan found it hard to believe that none had revealed their identities.
In theory, some of the world’s top-tier entities—like the Mage Association and the Warrior Guild—should be aware of this.
Yet, at least at this stage, Qin Yuan had never seen any related content on the player forums.
Players hadn’t been treated differently; everything went on as usual.
He felt there must be a big secret involved.
Whether in this world or the Spirit Realm, the major powers’ reactions were surprisingly calm.
As if...
They had long known certain events would unfold.
Qin Yuan had many speculations on this.
But at least for now, he thought this was for the best.
Without heavy surveillance, he could enjoy freedom—what was better than that?
So why bother worrying? It was best to grow stronger; enhancing his power was the most important thing right now.
Closing that post, he turned to browse other content.
He first looked through information on magical rune papers.
As he expected, there was more content this time.
He found three rare magical rune papers in total.
[Magical Rune Paper (Quagmire Spell★Rare): A mysterious paper dropped by monsters. Using it immediately activates the corresponding magical rune.]
[Quagmire Spell★: An active skill that releases a sticky swamp beneath the enemy’s feet for a short duration, greatly restricting their movement.]
[Price: 3 gold 84 silver]
...
[Magical Rune Paper (Malicious Wave★Rare): A mysterious paper dropped by monsters. Using it immediately activates the corresponding magical rune.]
[Malicious Wave★: An active skill that releases a wave of light causing massive damage, with moderate mana consumption.]
[Price: 4 gold 80 silver]
...
[Magical Rune Paper (Frost Mist★Rare): A mysterious paper dropped by monsters. Using it immediately activates the corresponding magical rune.]
[Frost Mist★: An active skill that releases a cloud of frost mist that continuously deals damage, consuming a high amount of mana.]
[Price: 5 gold 20 silver]
Staring at these magical rune papers, Qin Yuan pondered which to buy.
He first checked how much money he had left.
Recently, his two main sources of income were a one-time reward of six mana crystals from the Sky Island, worth about thirty gold,
and earnings from selling the Sealed Box and Mana Springs, totaling over ten gold.
However, he had spent more than twenty gold on crafting a staff, buying purification powder, and purchasing magical rune papers and other miscellaneous items.
Additionally, one mana crystal had been used on the alchemy bench, so it couldn’t be sold, and another had been used on a teleportation crystal, also unsellable.
After checking, he had eight gold coins in cash remaining.

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Theoretically, with some selling, he could gather enough to purchase all three magical rune papers.
But after some thought, Qin Yuan chose to buy only the Quagmire Spell for now.
Although offensive skills were very important—an offensive-less mage posed no threat—
it wasn’t necessarily more powerful to cram five offensive skills into the spell slots.
On the contrary, too many offensive spells led to significant overlap in effects.
Besides, he already had the Fire Butterfly, which he used very smoothly.
Even if he learned a new offensive skill, he couldn’t cast two spells simultaneously with full concentration.
Another thing to consider was that higher skill tiers caused a huge increase in mana consumption.
Casting Fire Butterfly once consumed almost enough mana for three Fireball casts.
For areas like the Twisted Dream, filled with weaker monsters, using Fire Butterfly on every small foe would quickly drain his mana.
Actually, his current skill set was quite good—a balance of high and low damage output to handle various scenarios.
Support-type skills like Frost Wall, Blink, and Vine Entangle each had their own uses.
Comparatively, the Quagmire Spell could be regarded as an upgraded replacement for Vine Entangle to some extent.
That was the key reason Qin Yuan decided to purchase it.
A system prompt rang out.
[Ding! Transaction successful.]
[Magical Rune Paper (Quagmire Spell★Rare) has been added to your inventory.]
Qin Yuan drank a bottle of Forgetting Potion, erasing the Vine Entangle skill.
Then he used the newly acquired rune paper.
Afterward, he browsed other content.
He came across an item that caught his interest.
...
[Ice Crystal Silk★: A magical material born in the “Extreme Cold Ice Repository,” its texture is icy cold and is the primary material for crafting mage robes.]
[Price: 1 gold 8 silver]
Qin Yuan’s eyes brightened, and he bought it immediately.
This was one of the main materials he had been searching for lately.
Though the importance of mage robes was less than staffs, they still enhanced combat ability to some degree.
They also provided some magical defense.
Against monsters relying mainly on magic damage, or when dueling other mage players,
robes could improve survivability somewhat.
With the main material in hand, all he needed next was to commission the Mirror Spirit to craft it.
Having finished that, Qin Yuan picked up a recently popular novel and began reading with great interest.