Durin's Diary

Durin stood obediently beside his grandfather.

"An hour before you woke up, Anta had just gone home with her mother. That woman was here yesterday afternoon, but unfortunately, she couldn't beat me and was driven away weakly. I didn't expect her to dare come again today. I may have underestimated her. Considering her courage, I let her take Anta away, after all, Anta is not yet the mistress of this house." Old Yishu paused here, then looked at his beloved grandson: "Come, let's go for a walk outside."

The latter rose and walked Durin out to the courtyard.

And Durin came to understand everything that had happened while he was still unconscious yesterday—it wasn't that no one from Anta's family had come, but that they had, and still couldn't beat his old Yishu.

As he stepped outside, Durin saw a large table in the center of the courtyard, with the body of the creature cut into pieces and neatly arranged on it. In Lublin's chilly late autumn, there was no worry about the body decaying.

"Do you know what this is called?" asked old Yishu with a smile to Durin.

Durin narrowed his eyes.

A curtain dropped down in front of him, showing the data of this creature.

Kyle 'Night Walker' Kelan.

Control lost.

Night Watchman Path (Distorted)

Living Corpse Path, Sequence Seven: Revived Corpse (Mutant)

Origin Force extracted.

Attributes:

Strength: 17

Agility: 16

Constitution: 13

Intelligence: 6

Perception: 17

Charisma: 5

·What appears before you is a corpse that once lived a pitiable and tragic life. He came here to head east into the Dark Zone to face his demise, but he failed, and so in Lublin, he changed from a human into an out-of-control creature. Such is the misery of life, mostly filled with disappointments.

With Big Orange's introduction, Durin now knew that this was a mutant of the Living Corpse Path, Sequence Seven: Revived Corpse, whose name in life was Kyle Kelan, with the nickname Night Walker.

But Durin had to pretend not to know, so he shook his head: "I don't know. My mentors didn't teach me that, but Anta said it should be a Mutant."

The mentors Durin referred to were the Magician mentors of Mage Tower, including Zanta. Although Magicians rely on their well-off ancestors, having a good teacher makes learning how to use Spell Formulas easier than studying alone.

And clearly, Zanta was that good teacher.

"Of course, your mentors wouldn't know. One is ninety and the other is only sixty-seven, while this thing appeared in Lublin once, ninety-three years ago. However, it surprises me that Anta knows. She must have read it in some book. Indeed, it is a Mutant, and it was once human," said old Yishu, sighing: "We don't know his name now, but we do know he was the owner of Sequence Seven: Revived Corpse of the Living Corpse Path. He came here, presumably preparing to cross the Elven Territory to head towards the Dark Zone. That is the destination for Mutants, where they will become a Mutant, either growing stronger or dying there..."

At this point, old Yishu looked at Durin: "But it's also good that you ended him, preventing him from traversing that arduous path any longer. Life is full of suffering, so a shorter path of hardship is somewhat of a relief." Saying thus, the kind elder affectionately patted Durin's head with a touch of indulgence.

"Living Corpse Path, I read about it in history class. Humans were dissatisfied with the difficult and obscure Old Profession System and so created the entirely new Path System," Durin feigned realization.

"It's good that you've read history books and know the basics. Actually, this is just humans trying to be lazy, and the Path progression system is just more straightforward. Speaking of which, when we rescued you, we didn't find the Origin Force that had been extracted from this creature, which is very strange. But considering the human system is only a century old, some errors are only to be expected," Old Yishu mused to himself, leading Durin towards the sleek pod.

Oh, so killing this kind of guy explodes with Origin Force, thought Durin as he noted this information, then observed the pod before him. Come to think of it, Durin's attention had been on it since the beginning; this pod showed no sign of rivets and utterly outshone all manufacturing processes Durin knew of, looking like a creation from a past life.

"Durin, did your history class teacher ever tell you about the past of this land?" Old Yishu asked Durin, standing in front of the pod.

This question rendered Durin silent for a moment, and eventually, he nodded. "He said it, he said that this land had predecessors, with ancient technologies and knowledge beyond our comprehension."

These were all stories passed down from generation to generation, in which the ancient era was filled with predecessors who created a dreamlike age. At that time, life had conquered the land beneath their feet, the oceans and the skies, they were the true masters.

But now, the predecessors are gone, their cities have turned into ruins, and the land is filled with suffering—in the east of the Eastern Territory, the monsters within the Black Zone and Red Zone are all extremely dangerous beings, these death-filled areas separating the human habitats of the Western and Eastern Lands so that trade between the two can only be conducted by fleets.

In the vast desert to the southeast, the green-skinned orcs have always sought to invade.

In the south, the Sea of Death used to bring near-certain doom to those who ventured out to sea until the arrival of the Prime Creator, who unleashed divine wrath, killing those sea horrors and allowing humans to establish new colonies on those islands.

To be honest, Durin was quite devastated the first time he heard this story. This land is both sci-fi and fantasy, and magical; and when he heard that there were people in the Eastern Land called the Changtangians, Durin felt numb—Chang Tang people with black hair and dark pupils, he just felt that this definitely wasn't the Earth he came from.

"This is the predecessors' coffin," Durin's grandfather said, as he stepped onto a small chair and patted the all-metal cylindrical pod. "When we came down and found you, we also noticed this thing. We never thought it would be found in Lublin, as historians have always believed that the predecessors' footsteps never reached here. Now, the history books should be rewritten by you, child, for you are the first discoverer. The remains inside have been handed over to the Explorers' Guild, and the pod will also be sold to them. They will pay you and Anta a sum of money, which you two can divide amongst yourselves."

In saying this, old Yishu patted the pod again. "This land still holds too many secrets unknown to us, the dark ages shattered people's records of history, and to this day we cannot know what the predecessors actually were like."

To be honest, Durin was very curious too.

But what good was curiosity? The predecessors' past was too distant for Durin, and what mattered most was to live well in the present.

"Child, you don't seem curious," old Yishu observed as he escorted Durin back to his room, looking at him.

"Instead of speculating about the predecessors' past, searching for their traces in fragments, trying to confirm their demise with a corpse and a coffin, isn't it better for us to live well today, to stand firm in the present, to look forward to the future, and not to repeat their mistakes?" Durin asked, looking back at his grandfather.

Durin's response made old Yishu laugh, and he nodded in satisfaction. "Indeed, the stories of the predecessors have merged into history, becoming part of the myths. Just like that coffin, we know it contained them, and it could even preserve flesh from decay, but what's the use? The being inside the coffin can be said to be a container without a soul."

After taking Durin back to the living room, old Yishu sat down again on the sofa. "It's getting late today, so there's no need to disturb your mentor. However, tomorrow you can go find him; I think you can complete your advancement. Congratulations, child, reaching Fourth Ring Magician at twelve years old means you're indeed a talented child. Don't be discouraged; you're already ahead of ninety percent of your peers."

Durin smiled and nodded, thinking to himself that the House of Ailish blending with four Silver Dragons over the last three or four hundred years also confirmed their Talent just as much as birth did.

At that moment, the butler came to announce that Master Yishu's guest had arrived.

Since it was old Yishu's guest, it was not proper for Durin to stay in the living room.

So, he left the living room, just as the visitor arrived, and Durin paid his respects.

"You must be Durin, I've heard you had an accident, but it seems like it wasn't a big deal," the old man said with a chuckle as he patted Durin's shoulder and then walked into the living room.

Durin smiled and turned to the cylindrical pod; after all, there was nothing interesting to see about a monster's corpse.

It was called a pod, but in fact, it was a long, life-support pod, which to Durin, seemed like an emergency device to be used when disaster struck; one could lie inside and be safe from extreme conditions for a while.

Of course, this was not a fridge with an eternal power source; after some time, when the power ran out and the outer conditions were unsuitable for human life, the pod wouldn't open its doors.

So to call it a coffin wasn't wrong; it's just that the predecessors were obviously a bit more luxurious about it.

Thinking this, Durin noticed the letters and numbers on the pod's door frame.

NDALIAN-N1GF-10745041514350288.

He didn't know what it meant, but such a discovery still left him sighing.

You see, even history has gaps, yet the predecessors' creations remain so reliable.

It's just unfortunate; the more sturdily built, the more evident the frailty of flesh and blood.

The better the construction, the more it proves that civilization is nothing in the face of time—life takes ten thousand years to build a palace called civilization, and time? It can use a million, even tens of millions of years, to witness how civilization becomes riddled with holes.

Just like those group photos on the second-floor hallway, they're well-preserved, without a hint of yellowing, and Durin can recognize his grandfather in them, but what of those young lives who were once as young as him?

Flesh and blood are weak, races differ, and those young lives have probably long since become history beyond those photos.