Chapter 172: Chapter 172
But this time, the darkness looked a little different from when space had been torn open earlier.
It seemed more like a solidified black hole!
That patch of pitch-black eventually condensed into the exact shape of the Entropy Scythe.
At a glance, Jiang Ye almost thought—
That darkness was the Entropy Scythe!
In that instant, he was even more shocked, unable to help but wonder…
Was the Trader really so powerful…
That he could create a Concept-Level Weapon like the Entropy Scythe from thin air?!
This! What the hll?! This is way too game-breaking, too busted!!
This is just… absurd?!!
Still, despite the shock, Jiang Ye suddenly thought of something else—
How did this Apartment Trader get this strong, to such an outrageous degree?
Based on what he said, the most direct way to obtain the Reincarnation Key was to become the 4444 Administrator.
But the Trader refused to give up his Trader privilege identity, so he couldn’t become the 4444 Administrator.
Which meant it was likely the Trader identity itself had privileges he couldn’t afford to lose.
Then most likely, the reason this guy got so insanely overpowered… was precisely because of the Trader identity!
Earlier, in the Administrator group chat, they said the Trader identity was unique…
And “unique” already implied this identity wasn’t ordinary.
Jiang Ye couldn’t help but wonder—could the Trader identity come with direct access to a system mall?
Whatever he wanted, he could just exchange for it through the system mall?
Like a full-version Replica Reflection Mirror, a complete Mercy of the Reaper, or even a complete Chaos Furnace—
The Trader could just get all of it from the system mall, easy?
If that were true—then holy sht, this is way too busted!!
Isn’t there anyone to manage this trash game?
I’m reporting a cheater!!
Jiang Ye cursed in his heart, bitterly.
Then he thought of something else—
The Observer Replica he obtained from the Dice of Fate…
Could this “Observer” also be a kind of privilege identity?
The Observer’s trait of transcending life and death felt pretty powerful.
If Jiang Ye had any trump card that might stand a chance against the Trader—
It had to be the Observer.
But unfortunately, the current Observer couldn’t even manage to write out a White Decree properly…
Thinking back, sending the Observer into the Personal Instance really was the right move.
It definitely needed more time to grow…
As these thoughts swirled in his mind, Jiang Ye followed the Trader’s instructions and placed his Entropy Scythe into the black rift-like void the Trader had created.
It looked like two Entropy Scythes were fusing together.
Then the Trader waved a hand toward Jiang Ye’s 4444 Administrator Replica.
In that moment, the Administrator Replica felt a terrifying force, as though his very soul were being yanked.
His whole body felt like it was going to be ripped apart the next second—overcome with a strange emptiness and dread!
But that sensation vanished almost immediately.
And then, a jaw-dropping scene—
From the 4444 Administrator Replica’s body, a golden-glowing Glyph Pattern shot out!
The shape formed by the pattern vaguely resembled a beast—it looked like the legendary Glutton.
Clearly, what the Trader had extracted was the Replica’s Glyph Pattern Ability—Gluttonous Body!
Dmn! This scene—once again shocked Jiang Ye to his core!
If he had remained ignorant, maybe the shock wouldn’t have been so intense…
But with Wu Ying’s memories, he now had some basic understanding.
This kind of event—extracting a Glyph Pattern Ability—
Forget the Beginner Apartment, it was unheard of in the entire Doomsday Apartment!
Even the Apartment Bosses would probably scream “Holy sht, that’s insane!” if they saw this!
And based on fragments from the Administrator’s memory—
Jiang Ye vaguely knew that when the Gluttonous Body devoured the Giant Axe, or a large amount of flesh, or the Red Lotus Hellfire, it had suffered extreme pain and danger.
The entire Glyph Pattern was simply extracted by the Trader!
Then, as if it was nothing, the Trader controlled that Glyph Pattern, guided it to the Entropy Scythe, and let it devour the weapon…
Afterward, the Trader calmly returned the Glyph Pattern back into the Administrator Replica’s body…
The whole process flowed smoothly, like it was no big deal.
The Administrator Replica only felt some pain when the Glyph Pattern was pulled out.
Everything else—like the Gluttonous Body’s risk of devouring items—seemed totally irrelevant!
This! This is just too absurd!
Even though Jiang Ye was the one benefiting from this insane ability…
He couldn’t help but grumble inside—
If the Trader could do this kind of thing, didn’t it mean…
He could not only yank someone right to his face anytime he wanted—
He could also extract a player’s Glyph Pattern Ability directly?!
Extracting a Glyph Pattern Ability—do you realize what that means?!
Was it because the Administrator Replica’s ability was too weak, so it could be pulled out casually?
Or… could the Trader extract any player’s Glyph Pattern Ability effortlessly?!
Jiang Ye still remembered that mysterious Same Kind in the Tombstone Zone.
That guy had raved like a lunatic, bragging about being Light and Dark in One Body, having tons of SSS-tier Abilities and Ninth-Tier Glyph Pattern Abilities…
Back then, Jiang Ye had thought—Holy sht, that guy’s insane!
But now, compared to the Trader, he suddenly felt—
A bunch of SSS-tier Abilities and Ninth-Tier Glyph Patterns? That’s nothing!
The Trader could yank out your Glyph Pattern with his bare hands!
Holy sht, the more Jiang Ye thought about it, the more convinced he became—
The reason the Trader could so casually offer a full-version Replica Reflection Mirror in exchange for the Reincarnation Key…
Might just be because…
To him, the complete Replica Reflection Mirror was basically nothing!
And the reason he seemed so “easy to deal with”…
Might simply be because, to him, everything he said really was just a “small case”!
whole process of devouring the Entropy Scythe…
Something Jiang Ye racked his brains to figure out and still couldn’t do.
To the Apartment Trader, it really was just a small case—simple, effortless, done in minutes...
Even something that no player, not even the Reincarnated Eeries, dared to imagine—like killing an Apartment Boss—
might also be something the Trader could do in just a few easy minutes!
Jiang Ye had to come to terms with one fact—
He and the Apartment Trader might not even be on the same “tier”! ᴛʜɪs ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɪs ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ʙʏ novel★fire.net
Maybe with his current imagination, the Trader was like one of those players farming with a golden hoe…
The gap in understanding between them would take immense growth to bridge!
Still, even if he couldn’t yet grasp the Trader’s level, what he’d seen and heard so far made Jiang Ye faintly realize—
Perhaps everything in this Doomsday Apartment… was indeed split into “tiers.”
Things like Attributes, Skills, Abilities, and Glyph Pattern Abilities—
These all belonged to one “tier.”
But above that, there was a higher tier.
For example, the concept of Privilege Identity might be something from that higher tier.
In fact, just the Administrator privilege identity was already pretty wild.
Sure, it came with a lot of restrictions.
But it also granted the power to erase players!
Yes, that power could be resisted using the Madman Mask for three minutes.
But getting a Madman Mask wasn’t exactly easy either.
And that was just the Administrator.
What about the Apartment Bosses—what kind of privileges did they have?
And then there were the VIP players…
Before, Jiang Ye had thought that after getting Wu Ying’s memories, he’d opened the doors to a new world, drastically expanding his worldview.
But now, he suddenly realized—
Wu Ying was just a regular veteran player.
His understanding of VIP players might not even be accurate.
He might’ve just been another “farmer with a golden hoe” thinking he understood the VIPs!
For the first time, Jiang Ye reexamined those two words with absolute seriousness.
At the same time, he realized again—
His X-tier Ability Infinite Replication…
Its truly broken potential might not be what he’d originally thought—that it let him possess infinite Abilities…
But that it might allow him to hold infinite privilege identities!
Of course, that was the theory.
But in practice, the truly powerful privilege identities had probably long been taken.
Like the 26 Apartment Bosses;
Like the Duoe of the Duoe Organization—who likely held a special identity as well.
And with that thought, Jiang Ye suddenly remembered—
He’d once seen a theory called regression to the mean in society.
He had used that theory to understand the rise and fall of dynasties.
Basically, it boiled down to this:
When social classes become too rigid,
some form of upheaval occurs to break that rigidity.
So, no dynasty could ever last ten thousand generations as Emperor Qin Shi Huang had imagined.
If viewed from that angle—what about the Doomsday Apartment?
Could it be understood —
Once all the privilege identities in the Doomsday Apartment are entirely held by irreplaceable individuals—
That is, once all privilege identities become fixed and can no longer be passed on…
Then the fully-rigid class system of the Doomsday Apartment will self-destruct, triggering a new cycle of reincarnation?
And if all those privilege identities… were taken by Jiang Ye himself through his Replicas—
What would happen then?