Chapter 498 The Path of Inscription

Seeing Leah raise her hand and stare at him with murderous eyes, the consultant suddenly glanced at Grape beside him, and an idea suddenly came to his mind.

"I have one last question," he said quickly, "Am I the only one you want to kill?"

Leah did not answer, but silence itself was an answer.

...Sure enough, there was nothing wrong with Grape.

Did I trigger some fatal condition?

The consultant's mind raced with thoughts. Although he didn't know what he had done to cause her to kill him... in the end, he decisively gave up hope of living.

——He had witnessed the power of this phantom demon before, and knew that if the other party wanted to kill him, he would have absolutely no hope of survival.

If his real body were here, he might still have a chance to escape.

However, Sherlock was only a third-level mage, without even a weapon. Facing this demigod with divine power, there was no hope of victory.

In this case, there is no point in struggling any further, and the grapes might even be implicated.

The consultant had made such a plan in an instant.

"Listen carefully!"

He moved sideways away from Mycroft and shouted quickly, "Don't make an enemy of Aiwass. He is the blessed one of the Twin Mirror—"

He tried his best to convey the final information to Grape in words that did not reveal their identities as promoted persons.

After saying this most crucial sentence, the consultant breathed a sigh of relief.

He didn't know if he would die in real life this time, but even if he survived, he would probably lose all his memories.

The advisor fought so hard not because he was too loyal to Valentine VII. He didn't care that much about Xingti.

All the extraordinary people on the twilight path are like this. There are very few things that they care about from the bottom of their hearts.

——But at the same time, he hated "meaningless death" even more.

Because that means nothingness, means the burial of value, means forgetting.

And dusk is the way of engraving and eternity.

If he had to die, dying during the ascension ceremony was the best choice. Not because of meaningless grudges, not because of political struggles, not because of assassinations or frame-ups... but to die for the pursuit of truth, for the desire to rise higher.

That is the most meaningful thing. When I die, I won't leave behind a chain of hatred.

Especially during the full moon ceremony, there is no one worthy of hatred; even during the new moon ceremony, it is a fair competition witnessed by the pillar gods.

The only thing I can blame is myself for not being strong enough and not being cautious enough... All I will leave behind before I die will be information and secrets to pass on to others.

...My only regret is that I did not die in the ceremony from the fifth to the sixth stage of the Twilight Path.

That is the "final promotion ceremony" that only exists in legends. Anyone who passes it can be called the strongest in the material world.

The mortality rate for that ritual was extremely high; even if one survived, there was no guarantee of successful advancement. In the past thousand years, only a handful of people had succeeded. Reaching the peak of the fifth energy level was rare, and he himself hadn't yet fully developed the power of the fifth energy level.

…If only I could witness that wonder, the consultant thought.

Competing with the strongest people in the world, if you succeed, you will become the strongest in the world, and even failure means a glorious death - becoming the fuel for miracles, and your existence will be engraved in the memory.

Over the past thousands of years, there have been so many people at the Fifth Energy Level, and not many people can remember their names. But if one can become the nourishment for the Sixth Energy Level, I'm afraid future generations will remember their names...

...However, his death was not meaningless.

He has handed over the most important information to Grape.

Grape was a very smart girl and the advisor's favorite student. Otherwise, he wouldn't have come all the way to accompany Grape for her promotion.

I hope she can analyze what she really wants to express from this sentence and realize her intentions.

——Aivas can use the blessing of the Twin Mirror to copy the opponent's path and abilities!

The consultant stared at Grape, as if hoping she could understand his thoughts.

As he spoke those words, he continued to move his feet, trying to stay away from Grape, so as to prevent the Flame-Butterfly's attack from killing him from affecting her. And the words he left behind, on the surface, were merely a gesture of goodwill towards Aiwass, so the Flame-Butterfly had no reason to kill "Mycroft".

As the consultant uttered his last words, he had already taken three steps sideways.

Before the fourth step was taken, a stream of scorching flames roared out!

"Sherlock's" body was completely engulfed in flames in an instant.

On the other hand, before that.

Stranger woke up slowly to the sound of fierce fighting.

He covered his forehead with his hands, his expression complicated.

...Today, he finally understood why his mission included the requirement of "not being brought back to Xinganti".

It turns out that if I don't do anything, I will be taken away by the Star Antimony people...

That’s true.

After all, he was born into the Star Antimony nobility, and Mo Ke was very familiar with the Star Antimony Kingdom's style of doing things.

If this world line were to hold true, given the Star People's desire for R&D talent, they would definitely snatch the Nobel Master back. For the Star People, robbing talent is far more important than robbing resources and treasures.

A country that can accommodate moon children, necromancers, demonologists, witches, alchemists, mages, priests, astrologers, hunters, and assassins at the same time stands out for its openness to all.

They even have a small number of local extraordinary people from the path of authority and the path of beauty... As long as they are talented, Xingti will definitely want them.

It doesn't matter if your heart is here or not, as long as you are here, it's fine. As long as you have the money, resources, status and respect, you have to work.

Even if you really don't cooperate—if they kill you, can they still extract your soul and make it into a ghost scholar? At least that's better than staying in other countries and inventing things for them.

Because Xingti has always considered itself the "successor of the Herasil Empire," and the empire was once known for its tolerance of all paths and its willingness to allow a hundred flowers to bloom. Based on this tradition, Xingti cannot openly express opposition to any transcendent from any path.

Since we want everything, let's get something good. It's better to give the same resources to talented people than to useless people.

——When he was a teenager, Mo Ke was proud of the strong inclusiveness of Xingti's "talent-only theory".

Regardless of the path, as long as one can become a strong person or a well-known scholar, one will gain people's respect and trust, and will be able to obtain wealth, status, and social recognition.

For the young Stranger, his talent was something he was proud of.

He didn't see anything wrong with necromancy. In this world, when a person died, their soul returned to the dream world... If left alone, the corpse would naturally become a ghost. Rather, a corpse buried by a priest and then laid to rest was "unnatural."

In this case, studying corpses is no different from studying monsters. After death, humans transform into undead spirits, just as flies lay eggs in rotting flesh—studying undead spirits is like studying these flies.

At a young age, he became a powerful Transcendent and a brilliant scholar. Even in his teens, he'd already been chatting and dining with Transcendents at the fourth and even fifth energy levels... He always seemed incredibly humble and gentle, a result of his interactions with the nation's top experts, each of whom was far more formidable than he was.

In this environment, he has no reason to be proud.

Likewise, he also longed for it... longed to be in that position.

To be able to truly associate with them as peers, relying on one's own inventions and talents - rather than knowing them because of one's own background and talents.

One cannot choose one's birth, nor can one fully realize one's talents. How much of what is one's own is left?

In this situation, the stranger is extremely eager for recognition.

If he has an advantage, it's that he's young enough. He's been exposed to a lot of new things, and his perspective differs from that of established experts and scholars. Based on this difference in cognition, he can come up with some "ideas."

But if he just gives his ideas to others to study, all he will get is a thank you.

——You have to complete a complete research independently.

Stranger thought.

Therefore, when he heard that "the Army Department was worried that the Gargoyle troops would become incapacitated when entering the Bishop's sanctuary", he immediately became interested.

In one of his previous experiments, due to an accidental error, he created unconscious flesh and blood. This flesh and blood could only be used as the flesh and blood skin of the spliced ​​corpse, which was not of much value... But what if it could be used as the skin of a gargoyle?

——Thus, before he graduated from Mo Ke University, the papers he published were published in the highest-level academic journals and even attracted the attention of several generals.

He immediately became interested.

Although the original request has been fulfilled, the Gargoyle as an aerial scout has the ability to sneak into the Sanctuary without being immediately paralyzed...but can he do better?

The flesh and blood skin is easily broken and may fall off during high-speed flight, so a metal shell is used to fix and protect it.

However, this would make the nimble gargoyles unwieldy, losing their usefulness as silent scouts, yet lacking offensive power as close-range combat units.

——Then why not just throw explosives.

Previously, gargoyles couldn't do this because explosives would change their center of gravity, making them unstable and difficult to throw to the designated area. Now, after the gargoyles' weight has been greatly increased, they can actually be thrown.

So Stranger was praised by the Minister of War again, and was awarded the Lieutenant Medal even though he had never been on the battlefield or received a day of training.

It was "an advance recognition for his current inventions and future military achievements."

The stranger, praised and celebrated, became a celebrity, even being spoken of at banquets attended by prominent figures. He was finally no longer a "highly anticipated future star" or "the future fifth level," but a genuine "genius necromancer."

He is no longer someone's son or someone's student, but "Albert Lore", the strongest genius of the younger generation!

So he devoted himself to the research and optimization of "Armed Gargoyle".

The gargoyles were just useless soldiers, their previous purpose being to land silently on buildings at night, providing long-range vision for ritualists.

The unconscious rotting flesh he had developed was completely meaningless. Even a common dagger could cut through it, and the assembled corpse made from it would be extremely fragile.

This is even more true for armor - Star Antimony is rich in metal but rarely uses it. The core materials of the Colossus are stone and gemstones, and only the physical professions in the Black Eagle Territory need to use large amounts of metal.

They also developed a large number of advanced firearms and bullets, but they could basically only be sold to goblins - because the inventions of alchemists were much more useful than these, and these machine guns could only be used by hunters who could move freely even wearing heavy armor.

In Stranger's eyes, he was practically turning trash into treasure. He combined worthless items, unwanted items, and useless military units, transforming them into the backbone of the army. He even made the army base its tactics around his research—even the powerful figures at the fifth level had to change their habits to accommodate him.

He kept writing various papers, and later on he didn't even have to do experiments himself, he just had to make prototypes by hand.

The Army's labs were filled with researchers far more professional than he was. He only needed to write down his theoretical possibilities and provide a prototype, and they would complete the various tests with greater efficiency than he could, with the test data returned to him the moment he woke up.

The extremely comfortable research environment made Mo Ke feel extremely satisfied.

Like drinking fine wine, my brain swells and tingles. My whole body is euphoric, and I can study day and night without feeling tired. I don't have to do all the hard work, just imagine it! I just have to imagine it!

He truly used his talents—not only did he arm the gargoyles, he even wrote down every idea he came up with and provided it to the laboratory for further verification.

Even though Xingti was still at war, it was still pouring a lot of resources into him.

Stranger believed that in just two months... the Armored Gargoyle would be completely complete. During this time, he had also refurbished and optimized many of the older weapons. He hadn't done his normal job of splicing corpses for three months, as his workload had grown. His research alone was already scheduled for two months from now.

Now, Stranger could finally accept all the praise people gave him. He no longer worried about his background and talents. People no longer expected him to be in the future, but had begun to admire the present "Albert Lore".

His teacher had taught him that the twilight path was the path of inscription and eternity.

In his view, the dusk path means "the present moment".

——Now is eternity!

But when the old woman who saved him was blown into a pool of minced meat in front of him.

Blood, like droplets, yet with a slightly grainy texture, splattered out, evenly covering his face. His face had turned a dark red, and his skin was covered with dense, star-like bloodstains, like a glass window on a rainy day.

It’s no longer praise, no longer flattery, no longer the approval of elders, no longer the recognition of predecessors.

He had come into contact with a lot of blood and many corpses, but he had never gotten himself this dirty before. To prevent infection and contamination of the materials, he would always wear gloves and protective gear according to the procedures whenever he handled a corpse.

He had indeed seen people being executed. But on Star Antimony, death row prisoners were extremely valuable materials... Besides necromancers, Moon Children and demonologists also used them. To ensure the integrity of the bodies, electrocution, injection, and even hanging were rare.

At the moment the bomb fell, he seemed to be awakened by the explosion.

The past few months have been like a dream...

And in an instant, he seemed to wake up from a dream.

Stranger even had a vague illusion - as if he had accidentally pushed his child down the stairs after being drunk. In an instant, his brain became clear again, and the whole noisy world became silent.

Now when he thought back on his research... he just felt sick.

“…What a genius.”

Mo Ke looked at his hands with self-mockery: "A genius at killing people..."

After he fell unconscious, the blood on his hands had long been wiped clean, but now he could repeatedly hallucinate a trace of scarlet from them.

At this time, the sounds of fighting outside gradually subsided.

——Maybe Xingti won the battle.

Stranger thought calmly.

He was now being held captive... nominally escorted, but in reality arrested. He was completely unable to complete his mission, and it was likely difficult for him to successfully advance.

This advancement has failed.

He couldn't imagine how he could escape with an army of colossi and gargoyles "escorting" him.

…There are still several days left, and I don’t know how to get through it.

Just then, the curtain of the carriage he was in was lifted.

But the person who lifted the curtain made Mo Ke stunned.

Because he knew this person.

"The...Grand Guardian of Avalon?"

"Nobel Master."

The middle-aged blond man, his brows full of fatigue, asked calmly, "Are you... going back to Xingtan?"

The first chapter has nearly 5,000 words. Happy New Year everyone~~

There will be a second chapter in the afternoon. I plan to write about 8,000 words today as a New Year's gift!

Thanks to Zeze for feeding the Silver Alliance, Happy New Year!

(End of this chapter)