novelraw Chapter 463: Pre-War Meeting
Chapter 463: Pre-War Meeting
After several hundred, nearly a thousand years of continuous development, the unique elemental hybrid lifeform known as the Black Giants had multiplied and grown in the Infernal Sulfur plane into a population of terrifying scale.
Their total numbers had long since reached the hundred billion that Jie Ming had once anticipated.
This enormous base population, combined with the “social attributes” and faint spirituality bestowed by the Incense Fire Divine Dao, had caused the mutation rate for “Black Giant Priests”—once only one in ten million—to now number over a thousand in total.
Every single priest possessed the starting point of a sixth-tier being along with outstanding intelligence. They formed the backbone for managing the tribe, operating the divine dao, and assisting in research.
However, the intensity and nature of war meant that more numbers were not always better.
Facing the impending Coordination War, which might gather the most elite forces of the three major powers, the survival rate of low-tier units was worrisome—they might even become a tactical burden.
Therefore, when mustering his forces, Jie Ming had made a clear selection: only Black Giant combat units of fifth-tier and above were summoned.
After leaving behind a sufficient number of Black Giant Priests and a large group of fourth-tier Black Giants to maintain the basic operations of the Incense Fire Divine Dao, daily management, and defense of the Infernal Sulfur plane, Jie Ming took away the most elite war potential of the entire tribe.
First were eight hundred Black Giant Priests.
Each one was equivalent to a sixth-tier spellcaster, proficient in group amplification, battlefield control, energy coordination, and incantation techniques. One million fifth-tier Black Giant warriors, exactly.
These were the cream of the crop, having undergone brutal selection and targeted training. Their physiques were extraordinarily powerful, their combat instincts ferocious—they were the main force for charging, breaking formations, and grinding down the enemy.
And the once-rare sixth-tier Black Giants had now grown to nearly ten thousand.
These were powerful individuals who had broken through to the sixth tier through devouring evolution and bloody battles. They formed the core assault strength of the legion.
Standing at the absolute pinnacle of all Black Giants were still the two original leaders—Melt Mountain and Rock Hammer.
Hundreds and thousands of years, combined with the devouring evolution ability granted by the Five Viscera Sacrifice God Technique, had already pushed their strength to the theoretical limit of the sixth tier.
Yet that invisible chasm barring elemental beings from ascending to the seventh tier remained as solid and unyielding as ever.
As hybrid lifeforms forcibly birthed from the fusion of lava giant and snow monster talents, they seemed to have touched upon some kind of “bloodline” or “essence” ceiling after reaching a certain height.
Nevertheless, though they remained at the sixth tier, their strength far surpassed those who came later.
Just their terrifying body sizes—each exceeding two hundred meters—were enough to make the other sixth-tier Black Giants, who barely surpassed a hundred meters, appear like children.
Vast and surging energy roiled within their pitch-black bodies, which gleamed like liquid metal. Even the unconscious force fields they emitted caused the surrounding space to subtly distort.
Jie Ming could sense that the energy reserves and life intensity of these two leaders had already been piled up to the absolute theoretical peak of the sixth tier.
Perhaps all they needed was one sufficiently intense stimulus—or a desperate, life-and-death bloody battle—to shatter that shackle, complete the leap in life level, and become seventh-tier elemental beings.
“This war… may very well be your turning point,” Jie Ming thought silently as he gazed at Melt Mountain and Rock Hammer, who resembled two moving small mountains.
Without further hesitation, he connected his mind to the cave-heaven within his body.
The million-strong army moved in perfect order, transforming into streams of black flood that were rapidly drawn inside, arrayed and settled in the specially designated “Legion Garrison Zone” within the cave-heaven.
After sending the last Black Giant Priest into the cave-heaven as well, Jie Ming turned around, gave a few brief instructions to the Black Giants and priests remaining behind, then stepped onto the fixed teleportation array leading to Noren Academy No. 147.
Light flashed. Space shifted.
The familiar atmosphere of the academy rushed toward him, yet the tension and murderous stillness permeating the air far surpassed anything from before.
The plaza was sparsely populated—mostly hurried low-tier apprentices or first- and second-ring formal wizards. Their gazes toward the high-tier wizards were filled with awe and worry.
Jie Ming did not pause. Following the highest-priority assembly order received on his terminal, he headed straight for the conference center in the academy’s core district.
The heavy alloy doors sensed his arrival and automatically slid open. A wave of noisy yet suppressed voices immediately flooded into his ears.
The conference hall was packed to capacity.
This was a gigantic annular stepped auditorium capable of holding several thousand people, and now not a single seat was empty.
The moment Jie Ming stepped inside, over a thousand gazes from every direction in the hall instantly focused on him.
Curiosity, scrutiny, awe, tension, anticipation… all sorts of emotions mingled within those stares.
After evaluation by the upper echelons of Noren Workshop, it had been determined that wizards below the third ring would struggle to provide meaningful combat power in the high-intensity confrontations of this level. Instead, they would easily become weak points deliberately targeted by the enemy and turn into tactical liabilities.
Therefore, this war had only forcibly conscripted formal wizards of third ring and above.
Noren Academy No. 147 had been established relatively late and lacked the deep foundation of older, more established academies.
The total number of wizards who had reached third ring or higher was only just over a thousand.
In other words, virtually the entire middle and high-end strength of the academy had now gathered here.
At the center of the annular conference room, rather than a flat floor, there was a raised platform resembling a small podium.
More than twenty chairs of varying styles were arranged there, and every single one was already occupied.
Those were more than twenty sixth-tier high-tier wizards!
They were the true anchors and supreme combat power of Noren Academy No. 147. Each one exuded an unfathomable, mountain-steady aura.
Merely the unconscious interweaving of their mental fluctuations made the air in the entire conference hall feel thick and oppressively heavy.
Senior Sister Viola was among them.
She sat in a seat near the edge, still maintaining her slightly languid posture, yet the faint furrow between her brows and the occasional sharp glint of cold light in her eyes revealed the unrest within her heart.
As a fifth-tier wizard, Jie Ming was qualified to sit in the front area.
His expression calm, he ignored the converging gazes and steadily descended along the stepped passage.
Passing a certain row in the middle, he saw several familiar faces—David, Seraphina, and a few other geniuses from the same cohort.
They had also advanced to the fourth ring and were included in this conscription.
Their eyes met.
The expressions in David and the others’ gazes were extremely complicated, there was an incredulous “are you insane?” kind of shock.
Because in just a few hundred years, Jie Ming had leaped from being their peer to a fifth-tier existence.
Jie Ming said nothing, merely giving them a slight nod in greeting.
They returned the nod.
He continued downward until he reached the very front row.
“Here.”
Viola called out softly to him. At the direction of her gaze, he took the empty seat closest to her.
“You’re here?” Viola turned her head slightly, keeping her voice very low.
“Mm.”
Jie Ming replied just as quietly, his gaze sweeping across the more than twenty sixth-tier wizards in the center, each one radiating overwhelming presence. He recognized several of their faces from previous occasions inside the workshop or from documents.
“Is everyone here?”
“Almost. We’re just waiting for the Dean.” Viola said, her eyes turning toward the tightly closed door on one side of the conference room—the entrance leading to an even deeper area.
Jie Ming understood and asked no more, likewise turning his gaze toward that door.
Just like the more than one thousand wizards filling the hall, he waited in a silence mixed with tension, anticipation, and solemnity for the meeting to begin.