Chapter 1255: Mageweath
It only took both the teams half a day to reach the massive bottomless crypt in the center of the ice island. Just like the other time they were there, the mages in Lin Li’s team took out their magic wings. However, Lin Li did not ignore the Illuminati’s team this time, and even gave Saint Edmund a batch of magic wings.
With this batch of magic wings, the Illuminati was no longer as disheveled as they had been when they landed in the crypt previously. However, even so, the two teams took a few days to reach the bottom from the top. After all, the crypt had a huge depth, and even if they were free-falling, it would take some time to reach the bottom. Besides, they had to deliberately control the speed of descent.
The first thing that the teams saw was the gilded palace in the middle which resembled the sun, but this time, it was no longer blocked by the light-winged angels. The rays of light were just a little dazzling. After entering the palace, groups of Abyssal Demons began to appear one after another. Perhaps, they hadn’t wiped out all of the demons the previous time, or there was something in the palace that could summon demons from the Endless Abyss.
However, regardless of what kind of Abyssal Demons they were, they wouldn’t pose a threat to the two teams. The teams simply bulldozed through, leaving behind the flesh of demons all over the ground. However, they entered the palace quietly. As for the magic gears and magic traps in the palace, Angelano had already cracked them and opened up a path for them, so they wouldn’t hamper the team’s progress.
It was almost a smooth way, and the two teams arrived at the crypt that was deep in the palace. They once again looked for the rift that had once been guarded by a Titan before passing through the ruins of the ancient city, and finally entered the well lit desert.
Upon arriving, the teams finally slowed down. Under Lin Li and Saint Edmund’s orders, they got on standby and continued advancing towards the desert. They were well aware that even if they came to explore once more, they wouldn’t be able to get rid of all the magical beasts here. There were even Abyssal Demons that seemed infinite in number in the palace.
Sure enough, as the two teams delved deeper, the poisonous scorpions of the large desert began to appear continuously. They would usually hide in the sand and conceal their magical waves. When there was prey passing by, they would emerge and attack their prey.
Perhaps because the incarnation of the Serpent of Light, which used to occupy the desert, was no longer around, the number of desert scorpions alone was more than 10 times greater than the last time the two factions had been there. If they let their guard down just because they had explored it once, they would really have to pay a huge price for it.
However, the good thing was that the poisonous desert scorpions were the only ones there, and terrifying existences like the incarnation of the Serpent of Light no longer appeared. Saint Edmund and Zumar only knew that the Radiant-winged Giant Python was a Sanctuary-level magical beast of the desert, so they were secretly thankful for their good luck.
Lin Li naturally knew that the incarnations of the Twin Serpents of Light and Darkness were used by the true deities to stabilize their Divine Kingdoms, and were much rarer in this world than any ancient magical beast or prehistoric mutant magical beasts. Previously, the incarnation of the Serpent of Light had managed to survive in the power of the light radiated from the Ancient God of Light only by chance. It was impossible for a second one to appear.
Along the way, the teams killed lots of desert magical beasts, and finally arrived at the seven spiked monuments. Under the suppression of the monuments, the Ancient God of Light seemed to have detected their presence, and once again began moving. However, this time, Edmund and his team had already made their preparations, and High Priest Poer didn’t tag along this time.
When Lin Li saw that the Ancient God of Light wanted to create trouble again, he immediately secretly made several magical gestures, after which dazzling rays of light emerged from the monuments. Immediately afterwards, whips made of condensed light were flung hard towards the mass of light in the middle of the monuments. Although they couldn’t hear anything, the people outside could guess the immense pain and misery of being lashed by the light whips.
The members of the Illuminati who had followed Edmund over were the core members of the Chaos Sanctuary, and seemed to have been alerted previously. Hence, when they saw the Ancient God of Light that the Illuminati believed in being suppressed and abused, they did not say anything, even though they were clearly astonished.
This time, their purpose was not to attack the Ancient God of Light, so they didn’t stay there for long. After leaving the seven monuments, the teams continued to proceed deeper into the desert, soon finding their way to the temple where the founding saint, Lord Aquilo, was at.
The mage legion of the Tower of Dusk and the Illuminati’s team were made to stay on guard outside the temple. The experience they had when they had arrived allowed them to learn that even though it was their second time here, this place was still full of uncertainty and danger. Saint Edmund didn’t want to see the mageweath that Lin Li created slip up at such a critical moment.
Lin Li walked alone into the crumbling temple, and arrived at the center where Aquilo was. At this moment, Aquilo looked largely similar to the way he did before they left previously. After all, only a few days had passed. The Illuminati’s holy artifact, the Eye of Light, which was on Aquilo’s body was now emitting a faint glow that was engulfing Aquilo’s body.
It could be seen that although the power of the Eye of Light was constantly repairing Aquilo’s body, it was doing so at an extremely slow speed. At such a slow rate of recovery, Aquilo’s body would at least take 100-odd years to be healed completely, and even longer for resurrection and his mobility to be restored.
Lin Li observed the surroundings, and then waved his hand forward, after which several human-sized tornadoes appeared in space. The small tornadoes revolved around Aquilo’s body, and cleared away the surrounding debris on the ground in the blink of an eye.
Not only did the small tornadoes clean up the mess on the ground, they even polished the ground. Apart from where Aquilo was seated, the surrounding ground simply seemed to be as smooth and flat as a mirror.
After all, the mageweath that Lin Li created this time would be near the Divine-Smith-level. Even with his current attainments in the field of inscription, it was impossible for him to draw a mageweath of such a high level as easily as he would an elementary mageweath. Therefore, first of all, he needed a flat plane that would not affect the mageweath in any way.
After the small tornadoes dissipated, Lin Li took out the inscription materials prepared by the Illuminati. Although the materials had already been processed, he had to mix them further in order for them to be used for creating the mageweath. As with the mixing of colors for paintings, the creation of mageweaths required the consideration of every single magic circuit, mageweath symbol, and their corresponding effects on the mageweath in order to deduce the type of materials that were required to be matched with them.
Of course, after the research Lin Li had done on the Divine-Smith-level mageweath, he now had a good idea of how to mix and match the materials without having to spend too much time on calculations. After putting all the arranged materials in place, he immediately started to prepare the special ink for the drawing of the mageweath.
The basis of this special ink was naturally the Sanctuary-level octopus ink, which was probably second to none in the entire Anril. Lin Li divided the two bottles of ink into 24 portions, each of which had to be mixed with a special combination of materials. If Lin Li was a Divine Smith inscriber, he naturally wouldn’t have to go through such trouble, as he would be able to turn even the most common ink into the right ink as he wished. However, Lin Li had to adopt such a somewhat tedious approach in order to draw a mageweath that was close to the Divine-Smith-level.
After dividing the ink, Lin Li immediately began to quickly prepare the ink. He added various materials to the Octopus Clan’s ink in various doses. As he moved, the ink, too, gradually began to emit unique magical waves and various colorful magical lights.
It took more than an hour for Lin Li to finally finish concocting 24 different types of ink. Of course, to ordinary inscribers, his speed could be considered incredible and godly. The preparation of inscription ink was similar to the concoction of potions as both processes involved the mixing of a variety of properties belonging to the materials and a careful control of the timing and technique. However, when Lin Li was preparing them, he seemed to have done it without taking a second look at what he was mixing. He seemed to be doing it with greater ease than a bartender mixing a cocktail.
After preparing the ink, Lin Li began to officially draw the mageweath. He gently dipped the crystal pen in one of the portions of ink, and the bright red liquid was immediately sucked into the cavity of the pen. Lin Li then continuously flashed past Aquilo and around him like a phantom, while various mageweath patterns and magic symbols appeared on the flat and smooth ground.
The mageweath that Lin Li was now going to create was, strictly speaking, already considered a demigod-level mageweath as it seemed to be a little beyond the Guru-level, but below the Divine-Smith-level. However, simply in terms of complexity alone, this mageweath was of a much higher level than the Divine-Smith-level mageweath.
After all, Lin Li had yet to become a Divine Smith, so even if he was trying to use his Guru-level knowledge of mageweaths to explain Divine-Smith-level laws, he would need to have a large amount of information. That was the difference between the Guru-level and Divine-Smith-level, which was tantamount to using a huge quantitative change to explain a qualitative change.
What Lin Li drew was not just a simple mageweath, but one that was created by using a large amount of inscription knowledge to analyze the laws of the Divine-Smith-level. If a highly competent Guru of Inscription were to come over, he would definitely be able to comprehend plenty of rare inscription knowledge from the mageweaths.
As Lin Li drew, a huge and complex mageweath began to gradually take shape on the ground. It was actually a mageweath array made up of 24 mageweaths, but unlike the All-Kill Array of the Tower of Dusk, the 24 mageweaths were completely different from each other.
Drawing a mageweath array was not as simple as drawing more than 10 mageweaths and putting them together. Such a simple method would not form an array. Drawing a mageweath array required the consideration of the influence that one mageweath would have on the other mageweaths that it was put together with and vice versa, as well as the connection between mageweaths.
Hence, in Anril, inscribers were rare, and Masters of Inscription were even rarer, while Masters of Inscription who could draw Mageweath arrays were few and far between. When the Tower of Dusk had been established, the inscriber of the Supreme Council, Moke, who had drawn the mageweaths for the Tower of Dusk, had been greatly frightened by Lin Li’s All-Kill Array, which was actually just a simple mageweath array.
Mageweath arrays were rare because of the high difficulty of drawing. The first mageweath to be drawn was naturally just an ordinary mageweath that could be drawn easily, but when drawing the second, one would have to consider its influence on the first mageweath. Likewise, when drawing the third, one would have to consider its influence on the first and second mageweaths, and so on. Thus, it could be said that every time a mageweath was added to the mageweath array, the difficulty of drawing another mageweath and expanding the array further would rise exponentially compared to drawing the one preceding it.
The All-Kill Array of the Tower of Dusk was just a mageweath array composed of 10 mageweaths, but it was already enough to shock Moke, the inscriber of the Supreme Council, to the point of being speechless. What Lin Li was going to draw now, however, was a mageweath array composed of 24 mageweaths, whose difficulty level could be considered to be beyond the level of mortals.
Even with his peak-Guru-level attainments in inscription, Lin Li couldn’t help but start slowing down after drawing 10 mageweaths. Compared to the All-Kill Array, the mageweath array he was drawing now not only had a much larger number of mageweaths, the level of each mageweath was also far higher than with those of the All-Kill Array. After all, what he was trying to do now was to surpass the level of mortals like himself, and try to touch the level of the Divine Smith. He also wanted to steal some of the power of the deities through the Divine-Smith-level.
At this critical moment, Edmund and Zumar, who were already Sanctuary powerhouses, couldn’t help but feel anxious and apprehensive as they stood outside the wrecked temple. If they hadn’t been worried about disturbing Lin Li, Edmund and Zumar would have really charged inside immediately and watched Lin Li complete the mageweath with their very own eyes.
Especially with the passage of time, some visions gradually appeared in the nearby space, and the magical elements began to fluctuate vigorously. A large amount of elements of light began surging towards the temple. In the beginning, the elements of light were surging rather slowly like a mild breeze, but they gradually seemed to become a light wind, which subsequently escalated to wind that surged from all directions and picked up speed.