Chapter 430: Assembly
Translator: AnubisTL
Time slipped away unnoticed during his research.
With less than a day until the assembly, Jieming finally looked up from his workbench.
Three staves floated before him, slowly rotating. Their shafts gleamed with a dark golden metallic luster. Within the diamond-shaped crystal cores embedded at their tips, a single point of light—compressed to its absolute limit—could be faintly seen. This was the sealed state of the Sunfire Extinction Ray.
“This should do it.”
Jieming reached out and grasped one of the staves; it felt slightly warm to the touch.
The energy circuits within the staff were stable and surging, ready to unleash that destructive beam of light at a moment’s notice.
The crafting process had gone more smoothly than he had anticipated.
As a wizard from the alchemy department who had personally created the rune-imbued magical artifact system, he faced no fundamental obstacles in encapsulating a mature spell model into a traditional spell artifact framework.
He was extremely satisfied with the final product.
Each staff could store and release one full-power Sunfire Extinction Ray. Relying on the fifth-tier large elemental pool within his internal grotto-heaven, the recharge interval was only three minutes.
Although the number of releases per round was limited, they were more than sufficient as an “emergency trump card” or for a “tactical surprise attack.”
After all, he could cast the spell himself; the staves were primarily for those moments when he “didn’t have time to charge up.”
“A pity… still not enough time.”
Jieming put away his staff with a trace of regret.
If he could have converted another defensive spell—something like the Qianyuan Protective Divine Astral-Qi or the Xuanming True Water Barrier recorded in the Great Dao Library Pavilion—he would have possessed a cross-system trump card for both offense and defense.
But this was his first time converting a spell model, and he had started with a high-level spell from the Divine Transformation Realm. A hundred years was only enough to fully master the Sunfire Extinction Ray.
Defensive spell models were even more complex. He would have to leave them for the future.
He turned and walked out of the laboratory.
For this campaign, he decided to bring only a skeleton crew.
The reason was simple: the intelligence was unclear, and caution was paramount.
The time-reversal mechanism of the Reincarnation Plane affected “all existences within the plane.”
Would his internal grotto-heaven—a small world dependent on him yet existing as its own space—be affected?
If it remained unaffected, what would happen to the items he withdrew from the grotto-heaven before the reversal?
Would they retain the fact of having been “withdrawn,” or would they be forcibly “stuffed back” into the grotto-heaven?
No one could give him the answer.
“I can’t take the risk,” Jieming decided.
Besides, from the battlefield intelligence, the individual combat power of the Scythe-Skull Race was not particularly outstanding.
The Wizard Army held an absolute advantage on the main battlefield. The real problem wasn’t that they couldn’t win, but that the world would be reset after the battle.
Therefore, Jieming ultimately brought only the Black Giant leader, Magmus, and five thousand fifth-tier elite Black Giants. These were the cream of the crop, having evolved through rounds of natural selection after centuries of continuously devouring energy. Their liquid metal surface layers were denser, their time manipulation reached microsecond precision, and their physical resistance was enough to withstand the direct impact of conventional fifth-tier wizardry.
As for the “Black Giant Priests”—those highly intelligent beings born with a one-in-ten-million probability—Jieming brought none. After all, they were research-type units. While they were powerful in combat, sending a researcher to the battlefield was a considerable waste.
After confirming all preparations were complete, Jieming stepped into the teleportation formation.
The coordinates had already been entered into the magic net terminal—the rendezvous point provided by the Military Department, located on a modified transit plane.
The dizziness of teleportation lasted only a moment.
When his vision cleared, Jieming found himself standing on a dark gray wasteland. The sky was a suffocating leaden gray, without clouds, sun, moon, or stars—only a uniformly diffused cold light source, clearly artificial illumination.
The ground beneath his feet was hard alloy, its surface etched with regular heat-dissipation patterns.
The air was dry, carrying the faint scent of ozone and the smell of cooled metal.
“A ship plane,” Jieming recognized the environment at a glance.
It looked like a wasteland, but it was actually the internal deck of a planar-level warship.
This was a standard operation for wizard factions within the Star Ring Federation—converting an entire small-scale plane into a mobile war fortress, its internal space expanded through multiple folds to accommodate a massive military force.
The surface was camouflaged as natural terrain, serving as a means of concealment while also allowing it to be deployed as a combat platform if necessary.
However, judging by the state of this ship plane, the Reincarnation Plane’s combat power was indeed as unremarkable as the intelligence suggested. The entire ship plane served only as a transport vessel.
Teleportation lights continuously flashed in the vicinity.
Wizards emerged from them one after another, most wearing standardized or semi-standardized combat robes, their chests adorned with emblems from different academies or factions.
Jieming scanned them briefly. Judging by their auras, the wizards in this batch were generally between the first and second tiers; third-tier wizards were rare.
Occasionally, a third-tier wizard would appear, and the first and second-tier wizards around them would instinctively make way, their attitudes respectful.
When Jieming fully revealed himself, his aura pulsing with the unmistakable power of a fourth-tier wizard, a sudden silence fell over the surrounding hundred meters.
More than a dozen young wizards nearby instinctively took a half-step back and bowed their heads in a gesture of respect.
A few with sharper eyes seemed to recognize the Noren Academy Alchemy Department emblem on his chest and the low-profile yet specially crafted black robe he wore. Their gazes flickered with surprise and curiosity.
Jieming ignored their stares, simply standing still as he observed the entire assembly area.
It seems the Federation has judged the “conventional danger” of this plane to be low, he analyzed. Most of the personnel sent are either newcomers or young wizards who have recently advanced and need to accumulate military merits.
This made sense.
The true horror of a Reincarnation Plane lay in its “mechanics,” not in its raw combat power.
As long as the conditions for time reversal weren’t met, a wizard army could virtually steamroll through without taking a scratch.
For newcomers, this was an ideal training ground—plenty of low-level enemies to practice on, with high-rank wizards acting as a safety net.
As for why I received an invitation… Jieming rubbed his chin.
He considered himself no rookie to the battlefield, but his experience participating in planar wars as an “elite combat unit” was indeed limited.
All in all, the only time he had truly served in such a capacity was during the war against the Justice Plane.
And it was during that very war that he surrendered his first “death.”
Perhaps the Military Department values my experience in unconventional battlefields, Jieming thought.
After all, wizards who could survive the twisted laws of a foreign plane and return with complete data were rare even in the Star Ring Federation.
Time slipped away as they waited.
More and more wizards gathered on the wasteland, eventually stabilizing at around thirty thousand.
The crowd was a low hum of noise.
Newcomers who had only experienced one or two planar wars—or were even participating in their first official one—whispered rumors about the battlefield and speculated on the mission’s objectives.
The veterans, however, remained mostly silent, either checking their equipment or resting with their eyes closed.
Jieming noticed that among this batch of wizards, there were no more than ten who had truly reached the fourth tier, including himself.
So it really is a “low-risk” configuration, he confirmed.
Just then, the ground in the center of the wasteland suddenly split open.
A circular platform over a hundred meters in diameter slowly rose, with three wizards standing upon it.
In the center stood an old man wearing a deep blue stellar robe, eight silver star medals encircling his chest—the mark of an eighth-tier great wizard.
To his left and right stood two seventh-tier wizards, a man and a woman, their auras as solid and imposing as mountains.
All the noise vanished instantly.
The gazes of thirty thousand wizards focused simultaneously on the platform.
(End of the Chapter)