Chapter 132: Amazing Discovery
2015-11-28
Author: Floating Tower (诸生浮屠)
Meanwhile.
In the third level of the Wizard Tower in the Shadow Plane, a battle against the clock had just ended.
Soren’s chest was heaving violently; in front of him lay a pile of dismantled metal parts, and there was still a partially intact Arcane Power Device in front of him. The alarms around had been deactivated, but residual arcane energy flared around, forming sparks. Behind him stood Gloria and the Fallen Witch, Vivian, who had just stopped casting spells. Vivian was slightly injured, with a charred mark on her upper chest.
“Are you okay?”
Soren rushed over and raised his hand to cast a Restoration spell. Vivian wasn’t seriously hurt, but she was his precious little girl, so he didn’t mind wasting the spell. The recent battle had been quite thrilling; the strength of this Arcane Power Armor was indeed greater than Soren had imagined, likely reaching a construct level of around 30. Constructs of such levels could only be created by Archmages and were formidable enough to challenge an ancient red dragon.
Soren had actually taken a shortcut to deal with it.
Before the battle erupted, he had Vivian cast Time Stop. As a weak deity, Soren himself was immune to that spell.
This meant he had an extremely powerful opportunity in advance.
The time this opportunity provided wasn’t enough for Soren to take down a powerful Arcane Power Armor made entirely of exceptionally tough steel, but with his strength, he could destroy the energy transmission devices surrounding the Wizard Tower before it activated.
Any puppet golem needed energy to operate.
The more powerful the golem, the more energy it required; cutting off the energy supply system in advance significantly reduced the enemy’s strength, and ultimately, it wasn’t Soren who defeated it but rather, after a battle lasting about three minutes, this immensely powerful puppet golem ceased to function due to lack of energy.
This was excellent news!
Although Soren could not obtain the powerful energy contained within its soul core, it meant that it had become his spoils of war.
As long as energy is not supplied, it wouldn’t restart.
The exterior of the Arcane Power Armor was already pockmarked, but Soren knew that its wear was probably only around 20%; the true internal core remained entirely intact.
If someone could alter its internal program settings, then this Arcane Power Device could be controlled by them.
A puppet golem of level 30 and above!
Its combat power was simply terrifying, and its armor level was extremely high, likely withstood over 1000 points of damage from Soren.
Crack!
As the Arcane Power Armor on the third level was defeated, the door connecting to the fourth level opened. The energy supply system was damaged, leaving behind hundreds of puppet golems. Most of them were stone golems and iron golems, with only two intact diamond golems and one slightly damaged diamond golem.
“These puppet golems cannot be activated yet!”
Gloria approached one of the diamond golems and checked it, murmuring, “The original creator has already injected action programs into them; they must all be modified before they can be activated, or they will treat us as intruders.”
Golems have internal settings.
Just like the puppet golems made by Gloria. Without her authorization, no one else could control them.
Moreover, if the order was to guard a specific place, the puppet golems would automatically attack anyone who came close, even though they possessed decent intelligence. However, they were still not true sentient beings. Most golems operated according to their original command programs unless encountering a high-level construct like that metallic girl from the Bottomless Abyss.
“Alarm!”
“Alarm!”
A strange alarm sounded, lasting about a minute before stopping.
Afterward, no abnormal incidents occurred. However, suddenly, in the sky to the south of Modo, a phantom of a tall tower appeared, seemingly like a mirage.
The phantom lasted for a very short time; it faded away in about a few minutes.
“Brother!?”
Vivian’s expression looked eager, as if she was very interested in the secrets inside that tower. Excitedly she said, “Should we continue? I can cast another Time Stop; shall we go up and explore further?”
Metal. Machinery. Arcane Energy.
Everything here felt out of place compared to what one would see in the Material Plane, as if people from the 21st century had suddenly stepped into a secret base from some interstellar age.
Anyone couldn’t help but feel curious about everything here.
“I’ll go up and take a look first.”
This battle was relatively easy; Soren gestured to the others and then became invisible as he entered the fourth level of the Wizard Tower.
No enemies!
Surprisingly, the fourth level of the Wizard Tower had no enemies and contained many supplies, including the mysterious silver-white metal that Gloria had always wanted to understand, piled up in several tons.
The fourth level of the Wizard Tower had six rooms.
Each room had extremely dangerous spell-triggered traps, which would immediately activate if someone other than the trap setter entered. The level of these spell traps was quite alarming; if some other wanderer came in, they might d*e without knowing how.
But this was nothing for Soren!
Because he was the God of Half-Elves and Wanderers, if he couldn’t even disarm mere spell traps, he might as well find a place to d*e directly.
“No danger! You can come up!”
Soren quickly disarmed several spell traps and called down, “The fourth level is a storage area; it seems there are no guards.”
Six large rooms.
They likely also utilized half-dimensional spatial abilities, as the internal space appeared much larger than the diameter of the Wizard Tower.
“Wow!”
After Vivian came up, she gasped in surprise, then approached one of the tables. After rummaging through, she murmured, “So much dragon bl**d? But it seems to be expired!”
A bunch of bottles and jars.
There were many labels on them, ranging from black dragons, red dragons, blue dragons, silver dragons, and so on, all the way to hydras, hell dogs, and deep sea behemoths.
Unfortunately, due to the passage of time, both the potions and bl**d had become ineffective.
“Is this the Frost Giant potion?”
Gloria picked up a bottle and glanced at it, then opened the nearby drawer, quite excitedly saying, “The formula is here too! Huh? Some of the materials listed here I’ve never heard of before?”
Different eras surely had differences in formulas. Thousands of years had already changed too much.
There were many things in the fourth level.
Although many had been preserved by spells, time still rendered them into waste; over half of the items had been damaged or expired.
The only reassuring thing was that all the metals here were intact.
“Is this Astral Sand?”
Gloria’s pale fingers pinched some strange silver-white powder, and suddenly, as if she had thought of something, she dashed toward that pile of silver-white metal, the core material for making floating rings. Most high-level Arcane Power Devices also contained this silver-white metal. Comparing the two materials, she seemed a bit uncertain and immediately called to the nearby Fallen Witch, “Mother!”
“Could you bring over the alchemy device? I need to analyze the structure of these two substances.”
The silver-white powder was not entirely Astral Sand.
Because Astral Sand emits a peculiar faint glow, but the two looked extremely similar and might have undergone certain special refining processes.
The Fallen Witch moved quickly, directly teleporting back and then returning with an alchemy device.
Gloria quickly placed the silver-white metal powder on it. Then she took a small piece of silver-white metal ingot for analysis. Accompanied by a faint spell light, she derived an answer in just a few minutes, excitedly stating, “Although I’m not quite sure how it’s made!”
“But I can confirm that this is indeed Astral Sand; it’s just that the composition is slightly different.”
Astral Sand?
Could it be that these materials used during the Arcane Empire era all came from the astral realm?
“Great!”
Gloria’s expression was extremely excited. She murmured, “If we can understand how these metals are made, we can create a huge floating ring!”
“And!”
“I believe the Witch Council would be very willing to purchase them at an extremely high price.”
Gloria needed a Wizard Tower.
The Fallen Witch also needed a Wizard Tower.
Though they hadn’t told Soren directly, it was merely an understanding of Soren’s difficulties; the massive expenses of Modo City couldn’t be reduced. The consumption of a Wizard Tower could easily reach millions of Gind, and even the Witch Council couldn’t afford it, so they could only make do with a laboratory. Now with these materials, Gloria’s first thought was to use them to exchange for the vast materials needed to build a Wizard Tower with the Witch Council.
The Floating City is the dream of all wizards.
Before this dream was realized, stepping back, a Floating Tower was also what they longed for immensely.
“There must be a method to create it!”
Gloria excitedly rummaged around, while Soren hurriedly disarmed all the spell traps he discovered to prevent his woman from falling into a trap.
But unfortunately!
They didn’t find anything. This level was just a storage area, and most of it was still materials.
“Could it be above?”
Vivian stood at the stairway, curiously looking up, though she didn’t rashly go up, because it was evident that it was quite dangerous here.
Above?
Gloria’s eyes brightened, casting a hopeful gaze at Soren nearby.
Such matters would definitely require Soren to make the decision.
Soren pondered for a moment and slowly said, “I’ll go up and take a look; you all get ready for battle. We are getting close to the higher levels of the Wizard Tower, and we might encounter the Tower Spirit responsible for guarding it.”
Fifth level of the Wizard Tower.
This Wizard Tower was about nine stories high; the internal space must be more extensive than this, but the danger would undoubtedly increase as they went higher.
Soren advanced carefully and, as expected, found another spell trap.
There were too many spell traps!
In total, he had disarmed two or three dozen high-level spell traps.
The light on the fifth level seemed quite good. When Soren reached the fifth level of the Wizard Tower, he couldn’t help but feel slightly excited when he saw rows of bookshelves.
Many, many bookshelves!
It was hard to say how many books were in this level, but just what he saw at that moment was close to ten thousand volumes.
………………(To Be Continued ~^~)
