“This spatial fluctuation…” The elven loli noticed the gate suddenly appearing at their side, “Cosmagus! Help me, Mordred is being unreasonable!”
Unfortunately for the elven alchemist, Mordred isn’t someone who would give up once he had set his mind. “I’m not interested in your guild’s membership. My guild has not sold anything of substance since last year. I’m in so much debt that I’m forced to eat regrown chimera flesh for sustenance! I’ve gotten so bored of red meat that the mere sight makes me puke!”
A flexible appendage extended from Mordred’s shadowy robe, acting as a hand. It carried a paper, a contract that could be signed immediately with blood.
“Hey Lyriel, it’s been a while…” Thorun, a bearded dwarf, offered a light greeting to the elven alchemist, disturbing Mordred’s advancement. The shadowy figure turned his face towards Thorun. Pausing as if he had made a decision, he simply changed his target. The extended appendage carrying the contract with Lyriel’s name retracted into its body, before reappearing with a contract with Thorun’s name.
“No-” Thorun denied after skimming the contract’s clauses. “I can’t pay that much, and I don’t need your guild’s protection anyway.” The dwarf glanced at Demiurge who barely crossed the gate. “Cosmagus!”
“Mordred, please stop.” Demiurge’s voice can be heard as he passes through the spatial gate and collapses it with a wave of his hand.
Unlike the time when the elf and dwarf pleaded to no avail, Mordred immediately ceases all attempts. His unnaturally lengthy body was shortened to match Demiurge’s height, and his appendages retracted back to his robed body. He then stood still behind Demiurge, like a shadow.
Seeing the surprised faces of Thorun and Lyriel, Demiurge chuckled. “Orichalcum-grade membership to his guild, Death Covenant.”
“Holy shit, that’s the highest possible membership tier…” Thorun muttered, “No wonder you’re not afraid of the dark guilds aiming for your life, you’ve bought the most notorious dark guild in the seven kingdoms!”
“Hey, is it really as advertised?” Lyriel asked, “Did Death Covenant’s highest-tier membership offer protection only allowing you to die of natural causes?”
“I have once dived a rank 4 Dungeon and fought against the 2nd-level Floor Boss…” He pointed at the point where Mordred’s head should be. “His head got crushed to save me, so I have to compensate the Death Covenant guild with a 10-year equivalent of Oricahlcum-grade membership. So, to answer your question, yes, but I don’t want to squander my wealth for that ever again.”
“Anyway,” he continued, “Grand Transmuter, I’m sure you’re already aware of why I’m here from Mordred. I need you to refine an army of homunculus. Otherwise, our dive wouldn’t be possible.”
Lyriel directed her gaze to Mordred, “Shouldn’t this Lich’s Undead Legion be enough?”
“We’ve made the calculation. Unless we recycle one of the seven kingdom’s entire population into undead, my goal can’t be achieved.”
“Greedy, aren't cha…” Lyriel shook her head, before taking some papers and a quill. She quickly scribbles around, performing calculations. “How much time do I have, how many homunculus and what kind of specification do you need?”
Demiurge traded glances with Mordred before replying, “The date of our dive is in 24 months. I need all the homunculus you can give me, but for now, the target should be around an army of 1,000 peak-stage rank 3s.”
“Impossible.” Lyriel denied, “Including myself, the Forest Kingdom ‘Sylvarion’ only had around 40 registered peak-stage rank 3s. If you want something weaker, we have around five thousand rank 3 late-stage, and even more for mid-stage and early-stage. If you have an elite force of a thousand peak-stage rank 3s, you could’ve united the seven kingdoms. The moment any kingdom gets a sniff of this news, they’ll fabricate Casus Belli to kill you. Besides, even if I am capable of refining a thousand rank 3 homunculus in two years, where do you think I can get the raw materials from? Do you want me to murder three kingdoms worth of people just to get the biomass of that quality? Don’t be crazy.”
“Fine, we can sacrifice their quality, we’ll compensate for their lack of combat ability with equipment, which means Thorun will have to work hard. However, we still need around 5,000 early-stage rank 3 homunculus.”
“Five thousand early-stage rank 3…” The Grand Transmuter made some more calculations that took some time. “Why do you need so many homunculus in the first place? If you wanted pure war potential, wouldn’t a dozen or so peak-stage rank 3 chimeras be enough? Most rank 3 dungeons can be subjugated by a party of six peak-stage rank 3 Adventurers like us. Even if it's on the brink of advancement, as long as the dungeon’s designation is still rank 3, I don’t think twelve of my chimera would lose.”
Demiurge revealed a trace of hesitation in his eyes, he wanted to elaborate, but unless they decided to go all in and trust him unconditionally, he didn't want to risk leaking such precious intel.
As someone who has spent four centuries with the Cosmagus, Lyriel, and Thorun noticed his reluctance.
“What is it?” Thorun shared Lyriel's sentiments and directly asked. “I thought we agreed that there would be no secrets among us?”
“Yeah… but this concerns my lifelong pursuit of Dungeon Core. Unless you are committed and sign a non-disclosure agreement contract, I wouldn't be able to tell you.”
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Following Demiurge’s words, two appendages extended from Mordred’s robed body. Each of his dark tentacle-like flexible limbs carried a non-disclosure contract with strict clauses that the mere utterance of Demiurge’s secret would cause them to die. They can’t even write or transmit their secrets through any methods.
“What are you trying to pull here?” Lyriel asked. “What’s your end game?”
“The absolute, universal truth.” Demiurge inquired back. “Aren’t you curious why nobody in the Seven Kingdoms couldn’t advance to rank 4? There seems to be a hard cultivation limit, but we are fully aware that there are existences of rank 4s, so it shouldn’t be a racial thing. Aren’t you interested in what lies behind the frontiers, the area beyond the horizon of the seven kingdoms, beyond the barrier known as rank 4 dungeons… don’t you have any interest in exploring the wonders of the world?”
He didn’t stop. “Records recovered from ancient ruins indicate that there's something called the ‘Sea’ beyond the frontier of the Water Kingdom ‘Meros’. The 'Sea' is a large body of salty water that can supply the seven kingdoms with an infinite amount of salt. Then, there’s also an icefield, a desert of pure ice that spans across the horizon. With the knowledge of sea and icefield, how can you stop yourself from going out of the civilized regions and wandering to the wild regions?”
As they age, their curiosity wanes, replaced with the desire for stability. After they departed from the Universal Truth guild, they managed to build their own guilds, thinking that they could achieve their goal. Unfortunately, they cannot even achieve a fraction of their original objective, only wasting time. Yes, they are good at research and somewhat capable of combat, but they aren’t business people. Their vision has been veiled by failure, but Demiurge’s words were seemingly able to clear their murky eyes.
“If the seven kingdoms were to be aware of your goals… they would hunt you down. Rampant expansionism is outlawed! Are you sure you’re going down this path?” Thorun inquired.
As one of the best blacksmiths in the world, he had an inkling of Demiurge’s feelings. Similarly, as the Grand Transmuter whose intellect and academic accomplishments were at the top of her field, Lyriel also somewhat understood his sentiments. Every time they want to acquire unique resources that allow them to fundamentally advance their research exponentially, something, without fail, will occur that denies them of their resources. This causes their research results to bring forth advancement in small increments at best, while mostly ending up in failure.
“Now that I think about it, it’s no wonder I can’t refine any early-stage rank 4 homunculus despite my best effort…” Lyriel muttered in realization. It was as if their cloudy minds were now cleared. “Are each of our research-focused guild’s decline caused by the seven kingdom’s influence? Wait…” She realized that they had overlooked something crucial.
“Cosmagus…” She fears the answer that is brewing in her mind, but she’s also curious about the answer. “With your space-attribute Arts, your mobility is the highest in all seven kingdoms. Does this mean you’ve visited this ‘sea’...?”
“Yes,” Demiurge answered. “I have traveled beyond the frontier and see what’s on the other side of the horizon. It’s a dangerous world out there, with powerful beasts in every corner, but that’s also what makes the world beautiful and worth exploring. Without intellectual races exploiting those resources, they are just lying around, accumulating endlessly.” Demiurge pulled up a thick and long scroll from his dimensional storage and laid it out on the desk.
“This is the complete map of the Seven Kingdom. The surface area of the known civilized world is around 700 million km²,” he pointed to the core of the map that took barely half of the scroll. The ‘civilized world’ is roughly in the shape of a hexagon, with six kingdoms at each point serving as bulwarks. At the core, the seventh kingdom served not only as a mediator but also leader in times of crisis.
“While these grayed areas are the ones that I’ve visited.” Demiurge gestured to the rest of the map outside the civilized world. Seeing their infatuation with this new information, he smirked, as he knew that this bait was enough to entice the two former members of the Universal Truth party to follow his cause.
“This is…” Thorun pointed at the spot beyond the frontier of the Metal Kingdom ‘Galvandor’, a mountain range not too far from where Thorun’s homeland had sent an expedition a few decades ago, only to return in defeat. “You’ve visited Mount Kerran?”
“Yes.” Demiurge’s smirk turned into a smug while taking out a piece of ore the size of a baby’s fist from his dimensional storage and passing it to Thorun. “This is the [Mithril Quicksilver] your homeland has been painstakingly searching for in Mount Kerran, right?”
The dwarf snatched the dull gray ore before sniffing, biting, licking, and using any method of identification to examine the piece of metal on his hand. As if he had a realization, he immediately bit his thumb and smeared his blood on one of the contracts being held by Mordred.
“Thorun, you…” Lyriel was lost for words.
As far as her understanding of the Cosmagus goes, the enigmatic guild master of the Universal Truth guild is renowned for his elusive nature. With his proficiency in space-attribute Arts, encountering him is considered a rare occurrence. Even in his home city, his sightings are extremely rare.
Lyriel had assumed that Cosmagus’s time, energy, and resources were consumed solely by an unending research with no clear end. After all, the ‘universal truth’ is a vague concept with no defining metrics. However, she just discovered the true extent of his activities. In addition to refining his space-attribute Arts to the absolute pinnacle of the Seven Kingdoms, he undertakes extensive journeys, venturing beyond the frontiers to amass invaluable knowledge, information, and resources that cannot be found in civilized regions. This realization sheds light on why he seldom appears in public, reserving his presence for special occasions, such as the recent announcement of selling necromantic Arts to the public.
“Fine, I’ll sign.” She wipes her thumb on the paper, a bloody trail traced through the contract.
“Very good.” Demiurge began to draw in runes on the air, it was the activation sequence of another [Gate]. “As much as I want to quickly elaborate on my end goal, there are two other people that we need to meet first.”
“Selene and Ulfrik? You want to invite them too?” Lyriel asked in a low tone, surprised at the Cosmagus’ information expansive network. After all, a [Gate] can only be activated if Demiurge knows the destination. “You know where they are?”
“Well… I need all the high-end manpower that I can get.” Demiurge’s words trailed off as he continued drawing the runes. Unlike the previous time, the runes required to construct the gate are far more complex and numerous, as it requires the Cosmagus to cover more distance. Eventually, the spatial gate was successfully activated, garnering the amazement of the Grand Transmuter.
The scene reflected behind the spatial gate is a woman taking a bath in seven-colored elemental waters. The butterfly-like wings on her back, long knife-like ear, and moth-like antennae on her forehead implied that she was not a human, but a fairy.
Sensing the spatial fluctuation, the woman lazily turned her head. “Cosmagus? I’ve been waiting for you…” The woman stood up, the elemental waters acting like hydrophilic molecules, hugging her body and turning into a seven-colored dress that highlighted her voluptuous and curvy body.