Warlock Apprentice

Chapter 2110: Chapter 2111: Colored Bubbles

”Merely explaining won’t likely reveal all its mysteries. I happen to have the first-generation Mother Tree Interlinker with me; why not experience it yourselves?” Jon opened the crimson wooden drawer and took out a small box.

When the box was opened, a thin black disk appeared before their eyes.

”This is the first-generation Mother Tree Interlinker.” Jon took out the disk and introduced it: ”This was polished from stone, so the shape is rather crude. I intended to revisit its form for an upgrade or the first official version, introducing it to you more thoroughly. But things are unpredictable; since it got leaked prematurely, I have no choice but to let you see it as it is for now.”

”Anyway, it will definitely be more portable in the future, and the material will change from stone to something else, like colored glaze or ceramics.”

While Jon spoke, he quickly clicked on the disk, seemingly manipulating something, but in the eyes of Angel and Sanders, there was nothing on the stone disk, just pitch black.

”Entering the Mother Tree network requires the power of self-consciousness, so to you, it appears empty. But to me, the content is already displayed on it.” Jon explained while continuing to click on the disk, then finally handed it to Sanders after a while.

”Give it a try.”

Sanders took the disk, initially stunned, then hesitated for a moment before mimicking Jon’s clicks. As Sanders’ fingertips touched the disk, a subtle change appeared in his previously puzzled eyes.

For the next ten minutes, Sanders was silent, occasionally pressing the disk.

Angel watched with a head full of questions but felt inappropriate to ask, so he could only wait.

After another five minutes, Sanders put down the disk without immediately giving an evaluation; instead, he handed the disk to Angel.

As soon as Angel touched the disk, he immediately sensed its general structure. Just as Jon described, the disk was cut and polished from black stone, though not entirely crude, with some hollow engraving inside, simply not visible from the outside.

Inside the engraved areas of the black stone, Angel could feel it was filled with some fine powder.

This powder carried a familiar aura. Upon sensing it slightly, Angel understood its origin—the powder ground from the Mother Tree’s branches.

Angel had previously experienced that as long as one touched the powder with the brow, one could enter the mystical Mother Tree network.

But this time was unique; he did not touch it with the brow, just felt the strange sensation from finger contact with the disk.

He did not enter the deep layers of the Mother Tree network, but witnessed its surface.

Displayed in the form of pages on the black stone disk.

Somewhat resembles... a holographic tablet not having activated its projection module, purely for flat operations. This reminded Angel of a technological product from Earth: a mobile phone.

The page displayed on the black stone disk had clear instruction buttons, seemingly hinting Angel to press them.

However, Angel did not immediately click the buttons because he was already quite familiar with this; it almost matched the holographic tablet’s interface.

What intrigued him most now was how it appeared?

Angel raised his head and voiced his confusion.

Sanders also turned his gaze toward Jon; he previously explored the Mother Tree network but with a completely different experience this time, so he too was curious about how Jon achieved it.

Jon smiled and said, ”You should know, to enter the Mother Tree network, you must let a branch approach your consciousness core — which is the brow.”

Angel and Sanders both understood this, as they indeed did it this way before.

Moreover, Angel knew more. The reason for approaching the brow was purely due to the strongest consciousness resonance with the Mother Tree network, meaning minimal delay and the fastest entry.

If approached from other body parts, entry was possible but not as quick as the brow.

As Angel pondered this, Jon voiced what he was thinking: ”However, through our observations, touching other parts of the body is also likely to access the Mother Tree network, purely varying by speed.”

”But this isn’t the main point. The key is, through consciousness, you enter the Mother Tree network, an interlinked world of consciousness.”

”You previously entered the Mother Tree network, walked through the Path of Light, so you should not be unfamiliar with this interconnected consciousness world.”

”In this interconnected consciousness world, you can do many things, such as thought communication, and utilizing the Path of Light to visit various regions of the Mother Tree network and interact face-to-face with Dream Plant Fairies located at other nodes...”

Angel and Sanders had both experienced the feeling of entering this interlinked consciousness world; indeed, as Jon described.

”I call this interconnected consciousness world an immersive network, or deep network.”

Jon paused: ”The immersive network is like a virtual world, good as it is, but actually many features don’t require it; it’s somewhat overly complex.”

”So, after discussion with others, combining some virtual magic power producing extraordinary forces, resulted in this form still centered on the Mother Tree network but actually merely attached to the immersive world perimeter, the page-type surface network.”

”When fingers touch the surface of the disk, you don’t enter the immersive network but appear within the surface network, which is the interface you see now.”

Simply put, when fingers contact the disk, the consciousness fluctuation produced isn’t as significant as when the brow is involved. In other words, the delay produced connecting to the Mother Tree network is maximal, akin to a turtle’s pace, essentially impeding deep network access.

Nonetheless, the user’s consciousness still connects with the disk, creating some link with the Mother Tree network. Although deep network access fails, with this thin connection and Jon’s team’s research, the surface network, as Jon explained, emerged.

Jon: ”However, if you bring the disk closer to the brow, you’ll still enter the immersive network. If Mother Tree network permissions could be modified, I’d definitely remove this function. After all, the deep network is central; to genuinely enter it, at least a new set of wearable equipment is necessary.”

Jon glanced at Angel, with an evident meaning.

”I will modify the Mother Tree network’s permissions; the surface network will be unrestricted, while the deep network will require specific permissions. At that time, even if a disk makes brow contact, deep network entry will be impossible.”

After Angel spoke, he looked at Jon with an appreciative gaze.

One has to admit, Jon was remarkably knowledgeable about networks. Even without substantial permissions, shortly he completed a rough analysis of the Mother Tree network, even devised this surface network method.

Could a personnel equipped with Mother Tree network permissions speed up the transformation for Jon?

Unfortunately, at present, Flafiel has the highest authority compatibility with ”Tree Civilization,” but she’s not suitable to obtain the authority.

As for previously mentioned Babaya and Kudodo, although their compatibility hasn’t been tested, they still lack experience and training.

Is there another person? A figure emerged in Angel’s mind... is he suitable?

Angel shook his head and refrained from delving further.

Upon realizing the disk displayed an awareness-activated surface network, Angel refocused his attention on the disk.

Having gone through the holographic tablet’s immersion, he wasn’t too surprised by the disk, but Sanders was unaware; Sanders still assumed Angel, like him, was first encountering the disk.

Thus, despite it being a performance, Angel still had to reenact the operation process, best accompanied by the appropriate unexpected expressions.

Angel thought to himself as he used his finger to tap the button on the page.

Upon tapping the button, a budding sprout appeared in front of him.

The sprout had two new green leaves with tiny hairs, each leaf corresponding to a button.

The button on the left leaf read in common script: Tree Group Early Development Edition.

The button on the right read: Mother Tree Forum.

”Quite rudimentary,” Angel muttered to himself, noticing that compared to the splendid holographic tablet desktop, this was indeed too simplistic.

Angel pressed the ”Tree Group Early Development Edition” button, and the page immediately switched.

The switched-out scene was still very basic, displaying a dialogue box without visible lines.

Angel was pondering how to appear surprised with such a simple dialogue box when the next second, he was stunned.

It wasn’t that the dialogue box had any special function, but he was simply drawn in by the constantly emerging content on the chat interface.

On the interface, a tan bubble emerged: Baruba didn’t expect that sir has his unique insights. By the way, secretly asking, who is the black bubble above?

Unique insights? What’s that about?

Angel kept pulling the chat interface upward, finally piecing together some truth.

Initially, a sky-blue bubble spoke: Is the little savage here?

Tan bubble: Not here, I believe he left the Wilderness of Dreams. Does sir have something to discuss with him?

Sky-blue bubble: That guy revealed the tree group matter to Angel...

Sky-blue bubble: I reminded repeatedly not to leak the development edition matter!

Pink-green bubble: So not even Lord Pat can be informed?

Sky-blue bubble: I was going to surprise him, sigh, now it’s ruined. What’s more important is that this is still such a rudimentary version!

Tan bubble: Mr. Jon, I actually think it’s already quite exquisite.

Sky-blue bubble: ...Your aesthetics have reached the level of Tullas, I have nothing to say.

Most of the following chat content involved the tan bubble talking to itself, with occasional interaction from the pink-green bubble.

From the chat record, Angel understood that the sky-blue bubble was Jon, the tan bubble was Kudodo, and the pink-green bubble was Babaya.

Apparently, when Jon had been clicking the disc earlier, he was likely complaining to Kudodo and Babaya.

Notably, a black bubble appeared during this short chat, very conspicuous with white text on a black background, but inside the bubble was simply a symbol representing a question.

Judging by the time the black bubble appeared, Angel estimated it was likely from Sanders.

”The tree group hasn’t yet solved the registration issue and can’t display identifiers, so we can only distinguish by color bubbles. The specific color presented is decided by the mother tree network itself... Although I haven’t sensed any awareness in the mother tree network, it seems to possess some kind of logic, which was keenly captured by the two Kulakuka Tribespeople, leading to the current basic presentation of the tree group and forum functions,” Jon explained as Angel kept scrolling up, roughly discerning that he was reading the chat log, so he shared some information.

He also identified which people each bubble color represented.

Angel tentatively sent a character using his mind.

The chat interface immediately displayed a golden bubble, with content representing an exclamation symbol.

Unlike the previous bubbles of other colors, the golden bubble shone brightly, as if it came with special glitter effects.

Tan bubble: Who’s this... Just from the color, I can feel an extraordinary aura, shaking with fear.

Pink-green bubble: I feel like it might be...

Tan bubble: I also think it might be... Lord Pat...

Angel didn’t say more but closed the tree group chat and clicked on the other leaf of the budding sprout: Mother Tree Forum.

The forum was as simple as the chat interface, with bubbles floating up. However, these bubbles were larger and accommodated more characters.

But in the entire forum, currently, there was only one color of large bubbles: sky-blue.

Sky-blue large bubbles indicated that only Jon had posted anything on the forum.

Angel clicked on a post titled ”Overview and Detailed Rules of New City Planning” and found it to be a long article, all of Jon’s visions for the new city, along with detailed descriptions.

There were comments below the article, the topmost comment being Jon’s own lament: Unable to display images, too frustrating.

The second comment, however, was a thank you from a dark blue bubble. According to Jon’s previous description, the dark blue bubble represented Baruba.

Evidently, this bubble post was written by Jon specifically for Baruba.

Angel looked at other bubbles, which were mostly Jon’s ideas for the surface network and some topics he was researching. Among them, under one mathematical topic, there was even a comment from a black bubble expressing admiration.

This admiration was likely left by Sanders when he was browsing earlier.

After reviewing the tree group and the Mother Tree Forum, Angel roughly understood the situation and was about to share his thoughts when two light spots suddenly drifted onto the budding sprout interface.

One of the light spots drilled into the tree group, and the other into the forum.

Angel wasn’t sure what these light spots were, so he opened the tree group and found that there was an additional pale green bubble in the chat bar.

The content written inside the bubble was not in a common language but rather a strange pattern.

Although he didn’t recognize the pattern, when he focused his mind on it, he could understand its meaning:

Pale green bubble: Huh, where is this place?

After a while, the tan bubble and pink-green bubble silently typed a row of: ...