I’m Trapped in a Cube - Chapter 101

As his life ebbed away, the Ancient Mineral Tribe realized he too had become extreme.

Descendants with perfect personalities?

He watched these descendants, singing and dancing, extremely optimistic about the future, and couldn’t help but feel pity.

He found the Purple Gauze Creature again and told it everything he’d done.

The Purple Gauze Creature didn’t think his random changes to the emotional ratio were so unacceptable.

“I’ve done that too,” the Purple Gauze Creature said with a smile. “You should have asked me sooner.”

“That ratio I learned from humans, those emotions influence each other, restrain each other, and create different personalities. Changing them at random only brings unknown consequences.”

But now, the batch of descendants that had once pleased the Ancient Mineral Tribe had become his shame.

He could only humbly ask again-how could he create descendants that met his requirements?

To his surprise, the Purple Gauze Creature shook its head and said it didn’t know. “You have to try for yourself. Whether they meet your requirements is just your own subjective judgment.”

But after hearing the Ancient Mineral Tribe’s story, the Purple Gauze Creature did give him some advice.

“If you need to quickly create extremely powerful descendants, you need to let them master power quickly and give them a shortcut to understanding the Abyss.”

The Ancient Mineral Tribe was suddenly enlightened.

He went back and quickly destroyed the batch of descendants who were still singing and dancing.

Then he created the fifth batch, strictly following the emotional ratio the Purple Gauze Creature had taught him, without any modifications.

Then he created the incentive signal , so that fighting inside it would let all mineral tribes master their powers quickly.

And because of the fighting spirit granted by the battlefield, this batch of descendants became ever braver and more warlike.

At first, the incentive signal released by the Ancient Mineral Tribe was very strong-even without a mineral,concentrated environment, it could easily cover the whole Needle Stone Forest.

He taught these descendants how to enter and leave the battlefield at will,whenever they wanted to train, they could enter at any time.

The descendants fought in the virtual battlefield, experienced the surge of power, and could adjust their abilities in the real world based on their experience.

The Ancient Mineral Tribe used a clever way to let his descendants grow rapidly, saving a lot of time.

He even personally tested those who survived to the end of the battlefield,but none managed to defeat his virtual form.

His image, with countless arms, was worshipped as a god by this batch, becoming the faith of their civilization.

This time, the appearance of faith actually helped civilization develop; these descendants knew their power came from the god, so they kept fighting to please the god.

Whether in the battlefield or reality, this batch showed unparalleled fighting ability.

Though none ever killed his virtual form, he was satisfied.

As long as things continued, surely a descendant who could defeat him would appear.

At this, the Ancient Mineral Tribe’s face was full of relief-he clearly loved this batch of descendants.

But then, at this critical moment-

He fell ill.

“Alzheimer’s,” the Ancient Mineral Tribe said with a self-mocking laugh. “Funny, isn’t it? A being like me, getting Alzheimer’s.”

At first, it was just memory loss and forgetting things, then memory damage, unable to recognize familiar things.

Eventually, he would sometimes regress to memories of his youth, and in his confusion, he’d mistake his descendants for his former companions.

Without the Ancient Mineral Tribe’s maintenance, the incentive signal quickly malfunctioned. The descendants couldn’t enter the battlefield, and even forgot what happened inside.

As time passed, they even forgot about the battlefield; if they happened to enter, they’d just feel a surge of fighting spirit, with no memory of what they’d experienced.

Once, realizing he might have a long spell of confusion, the Ancient Mineral Tribe handed most of his relics  to his descendants, telling them to go hide.

At this, the Ancient Mineral Tribe lowered his head in silence.

“And then?” Mo Ling asked, puzzled. “What happened?”

The Ancient Mineral Tribe looked at his hand, dazed, as if suddenly entering a strange state.

Seeing this odd behavior, Mo Ling didn’t press, just watched and waited for him to recover.

But the Ancient Mineral Tribe’s condition seemed to worsen.

He suddenly stood up, pacing back and forth, sometimes freezing in place.

After a while, he suddenly pointed at Mo Ling, wanting to say something, but got stuck, unable to speak.

After pacing for a while, the Ancient Mineral Tribe slowly walked back to Mo Ling and sat down again.

This time, he sat very close, as if very familiar with Mo Ling.

Suddenly, his tone changed, as if he’d become a different person. “How do you have this material?”

Mo Ling was stunned. “What material?”

The Ancient Mineral Tribe pointed at his cube head. “This! I’ve been looking for this material for a long time. I want to make something with it, but it’s only found at the bottom of the Abyss. I have to set out soon.”

After saying this, he patted Mo Ling’s shoulder, stood up, and walked off into the distance.

Mo Ling was left utterly confused by the Ancient Mineral Tribe’s strange behavior.

“Is this an episode?” Mo Ling hurried to catch up, trying to stop him.

But the Ancient Mineral Tribe didn’t go far before turning back, the confusion in his eyes fading.

He brought Mo Ling back to the stone, apologizing, “I just got muddled for a bit. Let’s continue.”

“Next is the sixth batch of descendants…” the Ancient Mineral Tribe said slowly.

“What about the previous batch? The one you were most satisfied with?” Mo Ling noticed he’d skipped a period and asked.

“Forgotten.”

With just that offhand answer, the Ancient Mineral Tribe continued his story.

After a long period of memory confusion, he found that the fifth batch of descendants had suddenly ceased to exist.

He didn’t have much time left, and his mind was in chaos, so driven by obsession, he began creating the sixth batch.

But in his confusion, he made a mistake.

In a daze, he injected only one emotion into his descendants, fear.

And so, the current mineral tribes of the Needle Stone Forest, who know only fear, were born. After fulfilling his obsession to create descendants, he fell back into memory confusion.

The incentive signal, without his maintenance, grew weaker and weaker. Descendants who entered the battlefield by chance would forget their combat experience when they left.

And this batch of descendants, knowing only fear, never developed fighting spirit. The incentive signal would only make them suddenly feel inexplicable fear toward their companions.

In his muddled state, he found that because of the incentive signal’s influence, these fear,only descendants began to divide into factions and started meaningless battles.

“Do you know why they divide into factions like that? Rare minerals and common minerals,it’s hard to understand, right?” the Ancient Mineral Tribe asked Mo Ling helplessly.

“I don’t understand,” Mo Ling answered honestly.

Seeing Mo Ling shake his head, the Ancient Mineral Tribe waved his hand and summoned the battlefield map.

“Look at the distribution of veins in the battlefield, and you’ll understand.”