"Heh!"
Ethan let out a cold laugh and completely ignored the Scam-God Statue.
If the stupid thing had a power switch, he would've turned it off already, 'What a damn scam!'
'If only... I could fuse the Scam-God Statue together with the Charlie Brand Radio.'
"!"
The Scam-God Statue seemed able to read minds.
The moment Ethan had that thought, it immediately shouted, ["Don't even think about it! Absolutely impossible! How could some lousy black magic item ever be worthy of my noble statue? If anything gets merged, it'll be the one that gets devoured. Stop dreaming about devouring me."]
"I don't remember saying anything."
Ethan stared coldly at the Scam-God Statue.
'For some reason... this thing always gives me a strange feeling.'
Especially... the Scam-God Statue seemed to have an unusual need for spirit stones.
Every single time, it tried to trick Ethan out of spirit stones. At first it wanted them one at a time, then ten at a time, and now that it had seen Ethan collect a whole chest of spirit stones.
It was already trying every possible way to scam those chests of spirit stones out of him.
'Could it be...'
'That once the Scam-God Statue reaches a certain level of charge, something will happen?'
'When I get back, I'll ask the two Archmages and see if either of them knows.'
Click!
Before Ethan had time to think any further, the smelting furnace door opened once again.
"Ah!"
"AHHH!"
"I'm burning to death!"
The instant the furnace door opened, Ethan heard Charlie screaming from inside.
As he walked in, he said, "Enough. Stop yelling!"
"I... I'm not dead?"
Charlie froze for a moment before suddenly realizing what had happened. He immediately cried out in delight, "I'm really not dead! Hahaha... I actually survived the alchemy furnace! Am I about to become the Monkey King? I can see the future and the past! I've awakened Fiery Eyes and Golden Vision!"
"You're overthinking it. I just mounted the crystal ball for you."
Ethan glanced over.
The huge crystal ball had now shrunk into a marble-sized ornament embedded directly into the radio.
The whole radio looked much more refined now.
"Huh? The crystal ball?"
Only then did Charlie realize that Ethan had brought him the crystal ball.
No wonder he could see the future.
He'd thought... he had turned into the Monkey King with Fiery Eyes and Golden Vision.
"I don't have time to chat," Ethan hurriedly said, "If you don't want to spend the rest of your life buried in this underground labyrinth, hurry up and predict how we can get out of here."
"O-Okay!"
Charlie nodded repeatedly.
After all, one of the conditions for turning back into a human was making one hundred successful predictions.
Besides, even without Ethan saying anything, he wanted to test whether the crystal ball would still work now that it had become part of the radio.
While Charlie was making his prediction, Ethan quickly took out the compressor.
He tried to store the giant smelting furnace inside the capsule compressor.
[Warning: Loading failed. Please use a Large Capsule.]
[P.S.: One hundred Small Capsules can be combined into one Large Capsule.]
"..."
'What a rip-off!'
But Ethan wasn't in any position to bargain right now. As long as he could move this massive thing, he'd already be thankful enough.
Each capsule compressor required one enchanted ore and one spirit stone.
Fortunately, he had just acquired plenty of enchanted ore, so a mere hundred pieces was still affordable.
Even so, it still hurt.
The materials were disappearing like water.
After quickly crafting one hundred capsule compressors, Ethan placed them all onto the Fair Scale. Then, following the prompt showing a price of ten spirit stones, he tossed in twenty spirit stones instead.
It wasn't that he couldn't bear to part with the hundred capsule compressors, he simply didn't have the time.
So... rather than risk failure just to save ten spirit stones, he'd rather spend ten more and buy himself some insurance.
After placing the capsule compressors in, Ethan grabbed the Charlie Brand Radio, which was still crackling with static, and hurried outside the smelting furnace.
"Lord Ethan, I've got the prediction."
About a minute later, Charlie finally spoke, "There are two ways to escape this place!"
"Two?"
Ethan was surprised by Charlie's prediction.
After all, the Scam-God Statue had confidently declared earlier that there was only one way out.
'Was it lying to me?'
'Or...'
'Are the Scam-God Statue's predictions actually less accurate than Charlie's?'
'That can't be, can it?'
'As much of a scam as that thing is, it is still a divine statue. It can't be that unreliable, right?'
Bzz!
At that moment, the Scam-God Statue suddenly began flashing rapidly.
["Impossible!"]
["You're nothing more than a mere prophet. How could your ability to predict possibly compare with mine, which is backed by divine power? You're obviously just trying to steal the credit, so you deliberately claimed there are two paths."]
["Pah!"]
["If you can really find two ways out, I'll cut off my own head!"]