Chapter 224-1: Ninth-Generation Precognition, Ferocious Newbie (1) |
Primordial Altar.
Qi Sheng’s consciousness followed Guide and descended into the Boundless Forest Domain region of the Pale Continent.
From perception mode overlooking the land, what unfolded in his mind was a world composed of plants.
To the north of the region, colossal vines coiled across the ground like azure dragons, branches and leaves interweaving into an endless green canopy that blotted out the sky and sun.
To the south, towering giant trees pierced the clouds like natural towers standing upon the earth, their trunks covered in glowing patterns with life energy flowing within.
To the east, bioluminescent flowers swayed in the breeze, the crystalline motes breathed from their cores drifting in the air and lighting the forest’s gloom.
Sky-Rending Flowers with leaves sharp as blades, bramble thickets bristling with purple poison spines, deadly mushrooms, iron-eating tree demons… this was a kingdom built of plant-type life.
Under exuberant vitality, countless green plants grew wantonly, the crystalline motes diffusing from their surfaces adorning the nighted earth with a dreamlike glow.
The air here was saturated with dense life particles. It was one of the rare AFK grinding paradises among the regions Qi Sheng had found.
Finding this place was thanks to the intelligence provided by the Lord of Welfare.
The average hunt level of the plant-type monsters here was not high, especially in this eastern stretch.
Secondly, while exploring this region, he found a Primordial Monster here.
His view shifted to the far western edge of the Boundless Forest Domain, where a multicolored giant mushroom towered on the horizon like a lofty mountain.
[Precognition (Ninth-Generation Primordial)]
Hunt Level: Divine Realm.
Primordial Monster Introduction: A Primordial Monster that commands the trait of precognition. Through deduction, it can learn information about the future. The process of deduction simultaneously consumes mental power and vitality.
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When he first saw the mountain-like Primordial Monster, Qi Sheng was stunned.
This was his first time seeing a Ninth-Generation Primordial, and one at the Divine Realm hunt level at that.
The rule power it commanded was even more formidable.
Guide’s explanation of the ‘Precognition’ trait was that it analyzes existing information, then precisely foresees future events.
Such precognitive deduction is like a weather forecast.
Both are future trends composed from existing information rather than directly seeing the future’s content, and both require a process of deduction.
Guide noted that even Starnet possesses a similar ability for future deduction.
For example, Starnet can grasp future trends through its powerful data processing capability.
But there are still many latent pieces of information that Starnet cannot obtain, and the quantity of information determines the accuracy of deducing the future.
The performance of Ninth-Generation Precognition is completely different.
When using this rule ability, information related to the deduction target, namely the event, is automatically collected. Then, combining the future trends of this information, it composes the future outcome.
Take reality for example.
Let Starnet and the Precognition rule both deduce a fighting tournament hosted by the Night Demon race and the Giant Brute race.
Before starting the deduction, Starnet can collect all currently available data, such as the historical records of the fighters, their physical states, the venue conditions, and so on.
Then based on these data, Starnet builds a deduction model and uses an algorithm combining the information to predict the match result.
It ultimately outputs probability numbers.
The reason it is a probability rather than an exact result is that there are too many latent variables, and events that are unexpected may still occur.
These latent pieces of information might be that a participating fighter suffered insomnia the night before, leading to poor mental state the next day.
Or the participant might change their fighting approach on the spot.
It could even be that the participant stumbled on the street that evening and injured a knee, and so on.
These are merely variables in reality. A bigger variable would be sudden alien invasion tomorrow causing the tournament to be canceled.
The existence of unknown factors will inevitably affect the next day’s result. Even with big data, Starnet cannot obtain all information.
The advantage of the Ninth-Generation Primordial’s Precognition lies in its collection of current information.
Using the same tournament example, once the ability locks onto the event, all information related to this match will be automatically collected.
This includes known information such as both fighters’ records and states, as well as latent information that is hard to notice, like the participants’ psychological states, on-the-spot performance, and unexpected incidents. All of it is included in the information aggregation phase for deduction.
However, during this process, the ability user will not see the contents of the information being collected.
While the deduction computation runs, the player’s vitality and mental power function like electricity when a computer operates, continuously supplying energy consumption for the deduction of the future, then directly obtaining the answer.
At this point, Guide gave an example using ants.
It said that spending 100 points of energy to foresee an ant’s future could reveal its trajectory for the next 20 days.
But spending 100 points to foresee the future of an entire ant colony, influenced by far more information, would intensify the deduction’s consumption so that one could only see the colony’s future for the next half hour.
An ant colony is a complex dynamic system. Each ant is a variable, and the interactions among variables increase the information volume exponentially, thereby raising the deduction cost.
So the smaller the target, the simpler the information the Precognition rule has to process.
The larger the target, the more complex the information.
Next is time.
To foresee farther into the future, the amount of information entangled by the target of deduction grows, and so does the consumption.
For example, foreseeing the future of a single ant 20 days from now.
Although the information volume is small, the time span is large, so more energy is consumed on the time span.
Whereas foreseeing the ant colony’s future half an hour from now involves massive information volume, but the time span is short, so energy consumption is focused on information collection rather than on the increase in information brought by a lengthy time span.
Next, the strength of the individual life form also affects energy consumption.
Raising the target from an ant to an intelligent life form will significantly increase the complexity of information.
An ant’s behavior pattern is relatively simple, mainly driven by instinct, with a limited range of activity and low information complexity.
Intelligent life possesses complex logical thinking. Their behavior is influenced by personal experience, social environment, cognitive level, emotional changes, and other factors. The information complexity rises markedly.
If that intelligent life also has the ability to soar through the sky and burrow into the earth, traversing a hundred and eight thousand li in a second, then the information volume becomes even more immense.
Because the next second would need to account for a series of events that could occur a hundred and eight thousand li away.
Therefore target strength, time span, event scope, and target group all influence the energy consumption required by Precognition to obtain future information.
In Guide’s view, Ninth-Generation Precognition is an extremely dominant Primordial ability.
It might even be the strongest Primordial Monster in the Pale Continent, and the player legion at this stage simply has no ability to contain it.
As for other forces on the Pale Continent, even if they had the strength, they would be unwilling to challenge this Primordial.
West of the Boundless Forest Domain lies the Soul Return race’s territory.
Yet from start to finish, the Soul Return race has never expanded eastward to challenge this road-blocking Ninth-Generation Primordial.
Besides the heavy price required to annihilate it, the most important point is that the Soul Return race simply cannot gain any benefit from killing a Primordial, only negative losses.
The soul beasts created by the Soul Return race can seize a target by possession and obtain everything from that target, memories included.
But when facing the rule concretization of Monster World, namely a ‘Primordial,’ even killing it does not let them seize the slightest rule trait.
This is also the core reason why Precognition can stand upon the land unchallenged by any force. Even the Anti-Tide Legion has never taken any action against this Primordial Monster.
Another reason is the Primordial Monster’s temperament.
Different Primordials have different temperaments. This Precognition appears very laid-back.