I’m Trapped in a Cube - Chapter 273

Completely kill the fish swarm?

Jeff’s words left Mo Ling stunned on the spot.

“What do you mean?”

“Literal meaning. Kill the fish swarm.”

“Why?”

“Because only complete highest authority can kill the fish swarm,” Jeff explained. “In the process of the fish swarm conquering the character world, we’ve already become part of the merman language.”

He pointed to a character in the merman ancient text and said, “These accounts with authorities—’Swarm’ cannot be deleted, because wanting to delete these accounts is equivalent to deleting the entire character.”

“But now it’s different. All the authorities are already on you, including ‘Swarm,’ so you can delete any account.”

Hearing Jeff’s words, Mo Ling suddenly understood.

Previously, he had always thought that deleting accounts was a function that came with the highest authority, but he hadn’t expected it required such prerequisites.

“So, as long as all the accounts are deleted, it’s equivalent to killing the fish swarm?”

“Yes,” Jeff affirmed.

“This is a skill formula? This is how you record skills?”

Indeed, it was very simple.

Jeff’s fingertip slid across the merman ancient text.

“Sun, high temperature, destruction.”

“Sand, drought.”

“Fog, evaporation, dissipation.”

He pointed to many characters in succession, reading them out one by one.

“Combining the authorities of characters into arrangements is our skills. We can only understand this world this way,” Jeff said with some nostalgia.

“Meaning is their authority. The fish swarm used these authorities to accomplish many things that were difficult to achieve.”

Hearing this, Mo Ling instantly understood something.

“Merman language is a wonderful language, isn’t it?” he suddenly asked Mo Ling a strange question.

Although very confused in his heart, Mo Ling still nodded.

“Moon simultaneously represents the meaning of time. Tree also has the meaning of soul. One character, multiple meanings. Different characters combined together also have different significance.”

Like seeing through Mo Ling’s suspicion, Jeff pushed the merman ancient text in front of Mo Ling.

“This is a formula,” Jeff said seriously. “A formula for drying clothes.”

“Cube Tribe, do you know how to dry clothes?” he suddenly asked.

Mo Ling was stunned for a moment, “Yes, why?”

“This is what it means?”

“…”

Had he slept too long and his brain gone abnormal?

Mo Ling still didn’t understand what Jeff’s purpose was. He always felt there was some conspiracy hidden behind this.

But why did Jeff want to do this?

He slowly told Mo Ling about when they first came to this world.

At that time, they had no bodies and couldn’t move.

After the giant dragon charged into reality, it landed on a massive stone.

The merman language characters at that time were just meaningless patterns on the boulder.

But the appearance of the fish swarm gave those patterns meaning.

Unlike other races, the first skill the fish swarm learned was ore refining.

Because it was simple—just use “Sun” to burn and destroy impurities, and what remained was pure minerals.

Just like that, the fish swarm obtained various strange metals.

Gradually, they controlled the metals and flew up, exploring this world from a special perspective.

To communicate with the creatures of this world, they created “flesh”—this was also a skill.

In the continuous process of exploring the real world, the fish swarm’s formulas became more and more numerous. They used this method to forcibly understand this world that was completely different for them.

Originally, this world was just combinations of various scenes for them, so using characters to combine into skills was very much in line with their worldview.

The fish swarm had invaded so many races and had long been clear about their own uniqueness, but the species in the Abyss were already bizarre and varied. Having a somewhat alternative logic for understanding the world wasn’t anything particularly special.

So they continued using this method until the racial lock appeared.

Only at this point did they realize something was wrong.

“Our underlying logic, or rather, our underlying ‘programming method’ had problems,” Jeff explained. “Because the arrangements and combinations of characters have limits.”

“Isn’t language infinite?” Mo Ling asked back. “You can keep talking forever.”

“But formulas can’t be infinite, and they can’t even be too long. Lengthy formulas make skill usage extremely slow,” Jeff said seriously.

“This isn’t even the main issue.”

Jeff’s fingertip slid across the merman ancient text again.

“Our formulas conflict. Some skills have exactly the same formulas, so we have to add other defining authorities to these formulas to distinguish them, which makes the formulas even more lengthy.”

“That’s why I said our underlying logic has problems. Our way of understanding the world was problematic from the beginning.”

“And we can’t start over from scratch—that would make the entire fish swarm revert to a primitive state.”

Hearing this, Mo Ling also clearly realized the fish swarm’s predicament.

“So the racial lock is actually caused by this underlying logic of yours?”

“Yes. Too many formulas, insufficient capacity, so we can only use previous formulas to represent new skills, and the original skills get forgotten…”

Jeff helplessly shook his head, “The current fish swarm is like an old machine, too broken to be renovated. The fish swarm has been invading other races precisely to find a way to break through this limitation.”

That’s why they found the method of immortality.

Mo Ling didn’t understand why soul immortality would allow the fish swarm to escape this limitation.

But the current fish swarm seemed to have lost interest in immortality.

“What does this have to do with killing the fish swarm?” Mo Ling still didn’t understand.

Hearing Mo Ling’s question, Jeff again grew a scale-like piece of armor on his fingertip and touched Mo Ling’s arm.

It was still screen sharing.

However, this time it wasn’t anyone’s experience, but the current scene outside the library.

Those menacing armor suits were all locked in place by Mo Ling.

The newly born mermen were trying every possible way to dismantle the armor and rescue their tribesmen inside.

They used water flow tentacles to pry off the components piece by piece until they opened a gap, then carefully moved the bodies inside.

“I’ve carefully investigated. These souls should have been naturally generated by the bodies when we separated from them, not some body-seizing race,” Jeff said calmly.

“Such naturally generated souls are more suited to these bodies than we are.”

Mo Ling actually heard praise in Jeff’s words.

What did he want to do to this group of newly born mermen again?

The fish swarm had too much of a criminal record—Mo Ling couldn’t help but start suspecting.

However, Jeff seemed to truly have no hostility toward these newly born mermen.

He seemed completely unconcerned about his body being occupied by others, even directing the screen toward the newly born “Jeff” who was working hard to rescue his companions.

“How wonderful…”