Chapter 2504 Eye Demon

With a self-deprecating smile, the young mage dismissed the absurd thoughts in his mind, and cast a constant third-level spell "Emerald Remains" for his clone.

This body has no soul, and is essentially closer to a "vegetative person" in frozen dormancy, but "corruption" can also take effect on it normally.

Joan resealed the coffin, blessed it with a variety of protective and early warning spells, cast a spell to shrink it, brought it back to Jinli Castle, and entrusted the ancient book daddy to keep it on his behalf.

Dad always stays on the top floor of the castle, never leaving his pile of precious ancient books. Joan puts the ice coffin that houses the clones here, so he can go out with confidence.

After saying goodbye to the old man of the ancient book and the sisters and brothers with the activation spell, Qiao An cast "Transportation from another world", and his figure quickly disappeared into a beam of light that soared into the sky.

...

May 22, 1626, a quarter past seven in the evening surface time.

In the dark area "Fifth District", a beam of light suddenly rose from the underground vault near the death knell beetle's lair.

The mage in black walked out of the teleportation array, waved his hand to create a cloud of magical cold light, dispelled the surrounding darkness, and illuminated his fair and delicate face.

Illuminated by the magic light source, Joan turned to look at the fork in the road leading deep underground.

Last fall, he and Elder Gumoduo visited this place to explore, and he still remembers that the forked road on the left leads to the lair of the death knell beetle, while the tunnel on the right, covered by many huge eye-shaped fungi, is said to lead to a "giant-eyed tyrant" "'s lair.

Perhaps because he was born with a strange bloodline and a deformed eyeball on the back of his neck, Joan has always been interested in the mysterious and powerful monster called "beholder". He has collected and read a lot of researches on the physiology and psychology of beholders. literature on its properties, and as knowledge of this organism has grown, so has interest.

According to the literature records, the beholder family was born in the outer planes. Their ancestors had no names, and their descendants did not think it was necessary to give her a name. "Great Mistress" was her only title.

The entire race of beholders, and their various subspecies, are unquestionably descended from the "Matriarch" bloodline.

Beholders are dangerous and powerful, but there is one overwhelming factor that prevents them from raising vast empires to rule the world.

Judging by human standards, beholders are more or less congenitally mentally ill.

Beholders are withdrawn and surly, moody, brutal and aggressive. They often tease or even kill innocent people at will based on their temporary likes and dislikes, so that in the Underdark, the word "tyrant" has become a synonym for beholders.

Most beholders are born with severe "persecuted paranoia". They have no idea about their appearance among living species. Instead, they think that they are too perfect, so they are envied by other lower creatures. There were no other creatures living nearby, and they couldn't help being suspicious, always feeling that someone was hiding in a hidden corner and plotting against them.

Beholders are also hopelessly egomaniac, contemptuous of all other creatures, even their own kind.

Many beholders assert for no reason that they are the only model in the group, born beautiful, while those compatriots whose appearance is quite different from themselves are ugly monsters that shame the entire beholder group.

Precisely because the beholder clan generally harbors such a pretentious and self-important mentality, it is difficult for compatriots to maintain an equal and stable emotional bond.

A group of so-called "good sisters" will often tear their faces and break out conflicts because of trivial matters, and when the situation deteriorates to the point where they insult each other face-to-face as "ugly ×", it is inevitable to turn against each other.

As for those beholders with unusual looks, out-of-the-ordinary costumes, or physical disabilities, they will be collectively rejected by their compatriots. The two virtues of "respect for individuality" and "sympathy for the weak" have never been possessed by the beholders.

The knowledge obtained from books may not be completely true. If you want to study the habits and ecology of beholders in depth, you still have to observe it yourself and collect first-hand information.

It's a pity that Joan hasn't seen a living beholder so far.

Not to mention the real "giant-eyed tyrant", even those lower-level "subspecies of beholders", such as "eye of insight", "eye of Gauss", "eye of dead kiss", etc., he has never been close Contacted - of course, the "eye of insight" that he casts himself does not count.

In fact, Joan knew five years ago that there was a beholder city named "Udinos" in the depths of the Underdark. It is said that there are no less than a hundred beholders living there, and there are countless subspecies of beholders. , and the mind flayer city "Edes" are known as the two most dangerous forbidden areas in the underground world.

Mind flayers are happy to share their thoughts and emotions with their compatriots, they advocate collective life, and living in groups is the norm. On the contrary, most beholders are withdrawn and suspicious by nature, preferring to live alone, and only live in groups under rare special circumstances—— In An's view, these two diametrically opposed forms of communities both have high research value.

At first, Joan learned about Udinos from Medea.

At that time, they were cooperating on a research on the petrification effect. The beholder, who was born with the ability to cast petrification rays, was once included in their research category. Later, because the risk of capturing a living beholder was too high, they had to give up this sample.

Last year, when he accompanied Elder Quack to capture the death knell beetle, Joan accidentally discovered this tunnel. It is said that at the end of the tunnel, apart from a solitary beholder, there is also a navel leading to Udinos.

This rumor once again aroused his strong interest in beholders. At that time, due to the dissuasion of Elder Gu, it was inconvenient to go deep into the tunnel, so he only recorded the coordinates on the "navigation compass".

Now Joan revisited his old place, alone with no worries, even if there was an accident, his soul would return to Cloud City, merge with the clone that was cultivated in advance, and bring him back to life, so he could boldly explore the beholder's lair with confidence.

If you want to ask him, there are countless strange species in the world, why is he particularly fascinated by the beholders, who are so ugly that they have no friends and have extremely unpleasant personalities?

Joan can only admit that he saw his own shadow from the beholder, such as being born with deformities, withdrawn and out of gregarious, possessing powerful magic power, but mentally on the verge of losing control, as if there is a devil living in his heart, and he can't restrain himself from abusing it. violent urges.

At the same time, he also saw the characteristics that he longed for but didn't have in the beholder:

Almost paranoid self-confidence, will never be influenced by others to doubt themselves, do not know what is inferiority, what is depression, even if the facts prove that they are not as perfect as they thought, they still believe that they are right, and the world is wrong!

Having grown into that kind of virtue, with such a bad personality, he can still maintain his self-confidence, how did he do it?

Joan couldn't help feeling envious of the beholder's mentality.

If he wasn't born human, he'd rather be a solitary beholder who feels good about himself.