The morning dew of Pinchen greeted a night of torrential rain. Finally, the rain seemed to relent a bit. The gutters of the Marquis of Elizabeth's estate were clogged with debris brought by the storm, and two servants were poking the underground passages with an iron rod to clear them.
Everyone felt a sense of unease and gloom. Including today, the storm had lasted a full day! Flooded rivers submerged the roads, and in this thunderous weather, not even the griffin knights dared to fly. This meant that the central imperial city had been cut off from the outside world for a full five days!
Marquis of Elizabeth's estate, study room.
Lady Elizabeth's desk was piled with thick stacks of documents. Wearing deep purple crystal glasses, she was immersed in reviewing these files, her intellectual beauty pervading the room.
Ever since Emperor Jupiter had decentralized power to the parliament, Lady Elizabeth, as the Chief Court Financial Advisor, had seen her authority greatly expanded. Almost half of the imperial city's financial movements required her approval, but this also meant she had to tackle mountains of documents.
The door creaked softly open. Catherine, clad in a raincoat, entered the study, bearing the brunt of the storm. Lady Elizabeth, roused from her thoughts, removed her glasses and set down her quill, gazing quietly at Catherine as she removed her raincoat. “How are things?” she asked calmly.
“The villages near the river have been inundated by the Gold Division. The rain is too heavy, and the lightning above the clouds is unusually active. Even griffin knights carrying a mage can only manage low-altitude flights, as the magic elements attract lightning, posing a high risk,” Catherine reported, wringing her fiery red hair and drying off with a towel.
“And the refugees?” Lady Elizabeth frowned slightly, rubbing her forehead in slight annoyance. “Have they found the mages who are intensifying the storm?”
“Some refugees have started to evacuate to Atlantiye, while others have moved inland. Cities like Modiya and Hurricane have gathered a large number of refugees. The nobles there have ordered the city gates shut. Riots have broken out among the refugees gathered outside,” Catherine said, her face showing a hint of anger. “Those nobles refuse to provide food to the refugees without compensation!”
“They're willing to toss only a few black loaves over the city walls each day, then watch the refugees fight over them for their amusement!” Catherine's beautiful face showed a hint of murderous intent. “The situation couldn't be worse. Many refugees are falling ill. With numerous bodies exposed in the wilderness, the gathering of deathly aura is bound to lead to an epidemic!”
Now deep into autumn, the refugees' greatest enemies were not hunger, but the torrential rain, cold wind, and dampness. Even strong men huddled at the base of the city walls couldn't bear it, let alone the starved and chilled refugees.
It was foreseeable that with a hidden force's guidance, this could turn into a storm sweeping across the entire Titans Empire!
After a pause, Catherine continued, “The mages summoning water elements only do so for about ten minutes each time. They move locations after each summoning. The storm and lightning severely hinder the detection of magical elements. Unless a legendary powerhouse creates an element tracker, it's impossible to pinpoint their locations.”
Lady Elizabeth frowned, quickly jotting down these details with her quill, then handed the document to Catherine, saying sternly, “Take this to the palace immediately. We need the nobles to use their money to accommodate the refugees. Only the Titans royal family can manage this!”
“Yes!”
"By the way," Lady Elizabeth said, her expression suddenly becoming hesitant. She put down her quill, her demeanor somewhat unnatural, and asked, "How has he been doing lately?"
Catherine's expression turned odd for a moment before she finally spoke, her voice tinged with a bitter tone, "He's doing well. Just yesterday, he bought a mother and daughter at Bloody Mary."
Lady Elizabeth's hands clenched tightly, her quill snapping in her grasp. Tossing the broken quill into the wastebasket, she narrowed her eyes, a hint of jealousy flickering in them, and then said bitterly, "A released rabbit always tends to run wild."
The knight sister nodded in deep agreement upon hearing this.
No matter how intense the storm sweeping through the imperial city was, it had no connection whatsoever with Felix at the moment. His current focus was solely on enhancing his magical rune engraving skills and strengthening his control over rune imprints!
For this, mere talent was not enough. It required a plethora of materials and a great deal of experimentation!
Felix had once again made a simple assessment of his own strength.
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Close combat was his weakness, requiring extensive experience in life-and-death struggles. The robust physique from his death knight heritage, combined with the innate agility of a half-elf, could serve as an unexpected trump card, but it would never become the main force in future battles.
His advantage lay in his immense, almost abnormal, mental strength, his understanding of, and insight into, magic and elemental energies. However, his weakness was the insufficient accumulation of magical power, necessitating the use of artifacts to support the burst of magical energy. Thus, improving his alchemy to create magical potions was essential.
The energies within his body were incredibly complex. The most potent was the icy power left in his body by the first death knight, Reinhardt, which could grow slowly even without training - a voracious, elemental type of energy.
The power of ice, when used with close combat skills, could unleash formidable combat strength, as its bone-chilling freeze significantly impacted an opponent's explosive power in melee. The "Frozen Might" posed a great threat to any living being.
However, as close combat was Felix's weakness, leveraging the explosive power of ice was not mainstream. As a skilled Gamma practitioner, Felix naturally had alternative methods. Since he wasn't proficient in melee combat, he used the power of ice as an enhanced version of ice magic, reducing its lethality but eliminating the need for chanting spells.
The second source of power was holy energy, stored in his heart, the full potential of which Felix was yet unaware.
The third power was the shadow energy he had merged through Gamma Magic, the most domineering but also the most dangerous, as shadow energy in the primary material plane was scarce.
The most peculiar power was his innate control over blood, acquired after becoming a death knight. This power was what Felix strove to master, the only regret being its slow progress. Control over blood meant control over any living being.
These diverse energies granted Felix variability in combat but also prevented him from specializing in a single area to achieve sustained combat effectiveness.
Thus, his current thought was to use alchemy to create a certain number of puppet lives, useful either in conjunction with explosive power or as cannon fodder. The main goal was to train his rune engraving skills in preparation for advancing to the Golden Domain.
Gamma practitioners were like soul smugglers, always seeking power through unconventional means.
In the branch of "Soul Transference" within Gamma Magic, there was a secret technique: using runes to forcibly seal elemental powers within one's body, replacing the need for long-term accumulation of magical power.
This method was risky but the fastest way to increase power. The only drawback was that it required a master-level standard of rune engraving.
Felix couldn't predict when the sky would change, so he prepared for the worst.
The warhammer ogre shaman, injected with a heavy dose of anesthetic by Felix, lay on the ground like a dead pig.
Felix had encountered some trouble while transporting the warhammer ogre, as the experimental tables in Felendia seemed a bit too small to accommodate this giant, standing three and a half meters tall.
It was evident that the mysterious Gamma practitioner used small and delicate subjects for live experiments. For this, Felix had to specially craft an oversized experimental table, as he needed to stand on it to conduct the forthcoming live experiments!
The ogre's body odor was strong, reeking of foulness and fishiness, driving away Felix's assistant, the stunning succubus.
Even Felix found the stench unbearable, so he had to scrub the experimental subject with an iron brush first. After spraying some perfume in the laboratory to ensure no odd smells would interfere with his work, Felix began the next phase of his experiment.
Donning gloves made from alchemically refined gel and switching to the largest scalpel, Felix slowly cut open the skin of the ogre shaman, then used a pure silver dagger to remove a piece of muscle tissue from its arm.
He placed a large enameled crystal bottle over the wound, and after it filled with dark red blood, Felix corked it and set it aside!
Before starting the rune engraving, Felix needed to perform some data-based attribute tests on this experimental subject, like measuring the physical strength and magical resistance to negative and corrosive elemental energies.
"Frostbind!"
A layer of frost covered the ogre shaman's wound, slowly turning it to ice. This was a handy technique Felix had recently discovered. Previously, he had to stop bleeding and treat wounds during sample collection.
Five minutes later, the muscle tissue finally transformed under the immersion of corrosive liquid. Felix nodded in satisfaction and began the next data test! The ogre shaman's resistance to corrosive elements was extremely high, more than triple that of humans and second only to some beast species with dragon blood.
Taking out the previously prepared ogre blood from the artery, highly active, Felix dropped a synthesized alchemical potion into the enameled crystal bottle and watched the blood's reaction.
The ogre blood began to boil upon mixing with the alchemical compound, bubbling like boiling water as the elemental reaction intensified. Bubbles formed and burst, releasing a pungent odor throughout the lab.
"Cleanse!"
Felix cast an air purification spell, dispelling the smell before commencing the next part of the active experiment.
After about thirty seconds of elemental reaction, the ogre's blood changed color from red to purple, then to a thick, ink-black. Felix poured out a tablespoon of the black blood into a test tube to measure its elemental activity level.
In this era, there were no precise numerical statistics. Measurements of elemental activity and physical strength were recorded based on human baseline values.
The ink-black blood reacted again with the alchemical potion, causing the mercury column in the testing device to rise, stabilizing at a certain value. After about twenty seconds, the mercury column gradually lowered, finally returning to its original position.
"Indeed, worthy of an ogre battle mage!" Felix thought, feeling a surge of excitement. High physical strength, high magical resistance, and high elemental activity meant a significantly increased success rate for the experiment!
As long as he avoided severe technical errors during rune engraving, a powerful ogre battle servant was about to be born from his hands!
Such an excellent live experimental subject, such high-quality data – Felix felt a surge of joy, suddenly finding the ugly ogre shaman before him much more appealing.
"Alright!"
Felix opened the drawer of the experimental table and took out a thick stack of sixteen pure silver scalpels. Calming his mind, he began the most crucial process of rune engraving.