Chapter 74: Chapter 71: Lina’s Secret Observation Diary
The camp was dead silent.
Two twisted corpses lay in the middle of the camp.
"It’s over... it’s all over..."
Bruno’s lips trembled, his face ashen.
"They’re all dead... We... we’re going to die here too..."
Baston said nothing, only shifting his massive Tower Shield half a step forward to protect Bruno and Lina behind him.
His simple, honest face was now etched with gravity. Beneath his bronze skin, his muscles were as tense as rock.
Allen paid no mind to the commotion behind him.
He crouched down, his long fingers brushing over the cold ashes on the ground before picking up a pinch of soil and rubbing it between his fingertips.
As if solving a complex math problem, his focused gaze swept over every trace of battle, every piece of twisted tal wreckage.
"Captain..."
Baston began in a low, rumbling voice, wanting to remind him to be careful.
Allen just glanced at him without responding.
In Lina’s [Emotional Spectrum Vision], the entire camp was covered in a thick, congealed layer of dark red and gray—the emotional traces left behind by "fear" and "despair."
Thoughts of terror and fear also swirled in the minds of Baston and Bruno.
Only Allen remained an exception. The deep blue ocean of emotion around him was still stable, without a single ripple.
No, that wasn’t quite right.
Lina looked more closely.
She discovered that deep within that blue ocean, countless silver threads representing logic and calculation were weaving together at an astonishing speed, analyzing everything at the scene.
What was even stranger was that a small, separate area had been partitioned off, and the silver threads within were performing entirely different calculations.
Her curiosity was piqued, and she focused her mind to interpret that separate area.
[Emotional State: Calm (70%), Analytical Desire (25%)...]
The corners of Lina’s mouth curled up involuntarily. She had caught the final 5%: a faint, fleeting wisp of gray. It was [Disdain], with the implied aning that his teammates were being too loud.
’This captain is really interesting,’ she thought.
Just then, within Allen’s mind, the primary thread submitted an analysis report to his main consciousness, compiled with DSeek’s help.
[Detected increase in team mbers’ negative emotion threshold. Probability of decreased operational capacity and errors in judgnt.]
[Recomndation: Initiate ’Teammate Emotional Pacification Model’...]
[Plan A: Verbal comfort. Estimated success rate: 34%. Drawback: Hollow, may be perceived as perfunctory.]
[Plan B: Distribute supplies. Estimated success rate: 60%. Drawback: High cost, treats the symptom but not the root cause.]
[Plan C: Analyze the source of the incident to demonstrate controllability. Estimated success rate: 70%. Advantage: Rebuilds confidence from the source, enhances team cohesion.]
[Decision: Execute Plan C, with Plan B as a backup.]
Allen stood up. Without looking at his teammates’ faces, he walked over to one of the bodies to observe it closely.
"They weren’t killed by the burrowing insects on purpose."
His voice was flat, betraying no emotion, yet it was like a stone dropped into still water, instantly capturing everyone’s attention.
Bruno and Baston both drew closer.
"Look here."
Allen pointed to so fine powder clinging to the corpse’s tattered Wizard Robe. "And here, in the folds of the skin."
It was a very inconspicuous, pale yellow powder. Without a close look, it could easily be mistaken for ordinary dust.
"Bruno, analyze the composition," Allen commanded.
"Ah? Oh, right!"
As if pulled from a nightmare by the sound of his na, Bruno quickly took out a magnifying glass and several glass tubes filled with different reagents.
This was his area of expertise. The mont he started working, most of the fear drained from his face.
He carefully picked up a bit of the powder with tweezers and dropped a reagent onto it.
Upon contact with the reagent, the pale yellow powder instantly turned a vivid pink and emitted a strange, sweet fragrance.
"This... This is the pollen of so kind of magical plant!"
Bruno’s voice cracked.
"Gods, when this pollen is inhaled, it can trigger an extrely strong possessiveness and... and a reproductive urge! For low-intelligence creatures, its effect is equivalent to the most potent rage potion!"
In Allen’s mind, countless streams of data flashed by at high speed.
’Frenzied state, supplies left untouched, strange pollen, reproductive urge...’
With DSeek’s assistance, all the clues instantly linked together into a complete logical chain.
"It wasn’t for the sake of killing,"
Allen concluded, his tone carrying a cold certainty. "It was for... reproduction."
’Reproduction?’
Baston and Bruno were stunned. They couldn’t connect that word with the grueso scene before them.
Bruno subconsciously leaned toward Lina and asked in a hushed whisper, "Is... is he not scared at all?"
Lina didn’t answer. Her gaze never left Allen.
In her emotional spectrum, the depths of Allen’s deep blue ocean were not truly calm.
She could "see" that there were indeed extrely fine black data streams representing "tension" and "fear."
But the mont these black data streams appeared, they were tightly ensnared, suppressed, and crushed by more nurous, thicker, and more powerful silver threads representing "calculation," "analysis," and "contingency planning."
’It’s not that he’s incapable of fear.’
’He just uses absolute rationality to treat an "inefficient" emotion like fear as a "variable" to be processed, using imnse calculations to reduce its very presence to a minimum.’
Lina’s breath caught in her throat. She finally understood.
She responded to Bruno in a soft voice, so quiet that she could barely hear it herself:
"No, he’s terrified. That’s why he has to calculate everything."
Allen was unaware of his teammates’ hushed conversation. His deductions had already moved on to the next phase.
"It must be a special magical plant. It can’t move on its own, so it uses its pollen to control the Crystal Shell Burrowing Insects, turning these subterranean creatures into tools and guardians to spread its seeds."
Allen looked toward the bottomless pits in the distance.
"These apprentices likely t with catastrophe because they inadvertently stumbled into this ’reproductive ritual.’"
His deduction was logical and reasonable, allowing Baston and Bruno to instantly understand the whole story.
The fear of the unknown was replaced by clear logic, and the tension in both of them eased considerably.
"So... are we still continuing?" Baston asked.
Allen didn’t answer directly.
He turned and, with a loud clatter, dumped a pile of Alchemy Grenades from his Space Ring. The crisp sound of their tal casings colliding was surprisingly pleasant at this mont.
"Take another five each," he said concisely.
He distributed the grenades to the three of them.
Cradling the heavy grenades, Baston felt less like he was on a mission and more like he was on a demolition crew.
’There’s no fear that one Alchemy Grenade can’t solve. And if it can’t, then you use five more.’
Just then, Lina, who had been silent, suddenly spoke up. "Allen, I feel it."
"Feel what?"
"Right at the entrance of the largest burrow,"
Lina wrinkled her nose, her azure eyes fixed on the largest hole. "There’s a scent, very sweet, yet cloying. It’s like... the aura of ’ecstasy’ and ’reproduction’ intertwined."
Her perception confird Allen’s deduction from another angle.
Allen nodded, glanced at the two pitiful corpses, then turned back, his gaze piercing into the depths of the burrow.
"It seems our workload has just increased."
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