Artificer Adventure Guide

‘Strange ceiling…’

After waking up from a chaotic dream, the first thing Carl Iris saw was a chitinous ceiling that looked like an insect shell.

Then, his eyes gradually moved down and saw the hibernation chambers and the bud-shaped pool in the center of this circular room.

Other people were sleeping in the hibernation chambers, and they were distributed on the walls of this room at the same distance.

‘Where is this? Shouldn’t I be on my way back to the academy? ’

The last memory Carl had before he fainted was that he had just negotiated an order for magic props in the Kingdom of Breland and was about to set off to return to the magic academy.

But his memory stopped here, and when he opened his eyes again, he was already lying here.

He tried to struggle for a while, and the hibernation chamber, which was also made of chitin material, was unexpectedly strong.

Even if Carl used all his strength, he couldn't lift it up.

And just as Carl tried to break free, a burly female orc opened his eyes in a hibernation chamber directly opposite the door.

"Don't waste your energy. This is a transformation chamber made by the mind flayers. I, a level 3 warrior, can't get out of it, let alone you, a spellcaster."

"Mind flayer?"

Subconsciously repeating the word, Carl's mind began to emerge with records about the mind flayers in the textbooks of the magic academy.

Mind flayers, also known as mind suckers, have heads similar to octopuses and are good at using psychic powers.

This race mostly acts in the form of tribes, but occasionally some mind flayers break away from the mother nest consciousness and set up their own.

They are hermaphrodites and can only expand the size of the tribe by using some kind of parasite to transform other intelligent life into mind flayers.

Inexplicably, Carl felt that the scene in front of him was strangely familiar.

But just as he was searching for the memories in his mind, the door of the room suddenly opened, and a mind flayer that used psychic power to float in the air floated in from outside.

"Very good! You are the best in this batch!"

The voice was mixed with the strange sound of mucus stirring. The Mind Flayer first praised Carl and the Orcs' physique, and then floated to the pool in the middle of the room.

As he approached, the cover above the pool opened little by little like a petal.

Dozens of tadpole-like things were wandering in the pool with golden light. The Mind Flayer reached out and directly fished one out of the pool.

It was a strange-looking worm with tentacles similar to those of the Mind Flayer.

When it opened its mouth, the mouthparts with three circles of sharp teeth growing around its mouth made people shudder.

"I really look forward to what you will look like after your transformation..."

Holding the worm, the Mind Flayer floated towards the Orc female warrior who had just spoken.

The other party seemed to know what was going to happen next, and the whole person suddenly struggled violently.

At this moment, a psychic wave emanated from around the Mind Flayer's head, and the struggling Orc female warrior froze immediately.

With another meaningless laugh, the Mind Flayer picked up the worm and placed it on the Orc's face.

This ferocious little thing seemed to be familiar with the place. As soon as it stood firm, it crawled towards the Orc's wide-open eyes.

It used its mouthparts to make a sharp cry towards the Orc, and it pushed open the Orc's eyelids and drilled directly into the eyelids.

"Ah--!"

With the Orc's miserable roar, Carl felt the hair on his back stand up.

Obviously, everyone in this room had to go through a similar thing.

Carl swallowed his saliva with some difficulty, trying to reduce his presence as much as possible, hoping that the Mind Flayer would not notice him.

But at this moment, the Mind Flayer turned around and looked at Carl with a half-smile.

Another worm was fished out of the pool, and the Mind Flayer used psychic power to freeze Carl again.

In this way, Carl watched the worm crawl into his eyes.

'Pain! It hurts so much! ’

At this moment, only this thought emerged in Carl's mind.

It is said that the larvae of the mind flayer will parasitize near the brain stem and gradually absorb the host's brain and replace it with itself.

When all this is over, the life form parasitized by it will become a new mind flayer.

Although the memory of the original host will have a certain impact on the new mind flayer, the existence of psychic energy greatly weakens the influence of the original body, so few people can maintain their past personality after becoming a mind flayer.

Looking at the orcs and Carl with satisfaction, the mind flayer purred for a while, then turned and left the transformation room.

From the eyes to the brain stem, the distance between them is not long.

But for Carl and the other orc, the short few centimeters of the mind flayer larva crawling made them feel like they had experienced a century of torture.

The severe pain stimulated the memory in Carl's brain to the greatest extent, and he suddenly recalled where his previous sense of familiarity came from.

Before he was reincarnated, he had followed the trend to play a game with a DND background, "Baldur's Gate 3".

The game's preview animation is at least 80% similar to his current experience.

'That's not right! The world I traveled to is not Faerun, and there is no Sword Coast or Baldur's Gate. Although the profession and race are almost the same, there is no Artificer in the game where I work...'

Just as this thought came up, Carl's brain was forced into a coma for self-protection because of the pain.

Although Carl was in a coma, the mind-flayer worm in his brain was still working.

Even because Carl fell into a coma, it automatically crawled towards the most active direction of Carl's brain at this time.

However, when it began to attach to that area and began to suck and read Carl's memory, the body of the mind-flayer worm suddenly stiffened.

The mind-flayer is an alien life from the country of madness. In the world where they originally lived, cities made of fleshy tumors, oceans of protoplasm, purple shadows, and chitinous coasts were "normal".

And the memories of Carl's past life in his mind came from an alien world without magic and whose basic rules were very different from the current reality.

These memories are like garbled codes with incompatible formats for them, and they need to consume a lot of energy to interpret them.

In this way, the memories from the information age of the alien world bombarded the poor mind-flayer larva with a round of information, and it suddenly entered a dormant state because it could not handle too much alien information.

…

At the same time, outside the canyon where the Mind Flayer base is located, an Ogre Warlord leaned over and asked a human:

"Is this where the traitor is hiding?"

This is a canyon in the Black Hat Mountains in the Kingdom of Breland, but due to geographical reasons, it is also the first choice for desperate criminals and criminals from all over the continent to hide.

It is said that there was once a crack leading to the abyss under the ground here, but more than ten years ago, various countries funded to seal it.

"Yes, Lord Warlord, the Mind Flayer who attempted to overthrow the Grey Wall City is hiding deeper underground. A few days ago, he captured a group of people from outside. It seems that he wants to convert them and increase his manpower!"

With a flattering smile on his face, the local desperado with yellow teeth looked at the Ogre Warlord expectantly.

The Ogre glanced at his side, and a Mind Flayer whose clothing style was almost the same as the Ogre nodded, proving that this guy was not lying.

"Give him the money!"

Waving his hand towards the gnolls and troll mercenaries behind him, the ogre stood up and pointed the mace in his hand forward.

"The traitor of Greywall City is at his weakest right now, guys! Follow me! Kill him! The city lord will reward you handsomely!"

As the ogre commander promised, the soldiers behind him immediately raised their heads and roared.