novelraw Chapter 597: War Machines and the Meeting
Chapter 597: War Machines and the Meeting
Chapter 597: War Machines and the Meeting
There was no distinction between day and night in the banquet hall. The flowing star maps on the dome maintained the same brightness at all times, and the elves and mechanical creatures shuttled tirelessly among the crowd.
However, based on his internal biological clock, Jie Ming confirmed that three full days had passed since the banquet began.
During these three days, the wizards drank, chatted, and exchanged academic knowledge.
Some reunited with old friends they had not seen for years, some made new acquaintances from other factions, and others even closed several deals.
Everyone’s faces were filled with gentle smiles, and the atmosphere was as lively as a genuine gathering.
Jie Ming and Viola had also become much more well-behaved.
The bruises from Clark’s beating had not completely faded. With their faces still bearing purple and green marks, the two moved through the crowd, sampling the astonishingly effective delicacies.
At a certain moment three days later, four beams of light appeared simultaneously in the high air.
It was Felix and the other three major artificial intelligences. They appeared without any warning, abruptly materializing in the center of the banquet hall.
The music in the hall cut off abruptly. All the elves and mechanical creatures stopped moving at the same time and dissolved into dots of light that scattered away.
The long tables covering the square, the exquisite tableware, and the food emitting tempting aromas all vanished without a trace in the same instant. The magnificent golden dome faded, revealing the gray-white sky once more.
“The other side has been detected as ready,” Felix and the other three artificial intelligences spoke in the same calm tone, as if stating something trivial. “We are about to enter the battlefield.”
Thus, the atmosphere of the entire space changed abruptly.
The wizards who had been raising their glasses and drinking freely just moments ago now had all traces of relaxation and leisure wiped from their faces.
Some put away their wine glasses and brought out their staves. Some let their formal robes dissolve into light and revealed the combat robes they had already been wearing underneath. Others stretched their limbs, their joints cracking audibly.
The wizards began to act in silence according to their different ranks.
Sixth-ring wizards started assembling into the teams they had been assigned beforehand. Seventh-ring wizards rose into the air, their gazes as sharp as falcons.
Even the eighth-ring wizards descended from the heights one after another, dispersing into their respective teams to serve as the leaders of each combat squad.
From a lively and gentle banquet to a battlefield filled with killing intent, the wizards took no more than a few seconds.
The moment the banquet hall began to change, Jie Ming and Viola started searching for Clark’s figure together.
They had not been searching for long when a hand suddenly patted Jie Ming’s shoulder.
He turned his head. At some point, Kastilla had walked up beside him.
She had already changed out of that red formal robe. In its place was a set of dark red combat robes covered in dense rune patterns. Her aura had also changed. She was no longer the hearty, laughing woman from the banquet, but a seventh-ring wizard radiating a brutal, violent presence.
“Your mentor is over there,” she jerked her chin in a certain direction. “Stay close to him later and don’t wander off.”
Kastilla glanced at Clark again, the corners of her mouth lifting slightly. “Take care of yourself.”
Clark nodded expressionlessly. “You too.”
Jie Ming and Viola immediately straightened their bodies and smiled.
“Goodbye, Master’s Wife.”
“Master’s Wife, you’re too kind!”
The two still had bruised and swollen faces. When they smiled, the gaps from the missing teeth were even visible. Kastilla smiled at the two of them, then her expression turned calm once more as she turned and strode toward the Crimson Court’s area.
The teams over there had already assembled—uniform dark red robes emanating a thick bloody aura.
Kastilla walked to the front of the formation, exchanged a few low words with several seventh-ring wizards, and merged into that sea of red.
Clark walked over to Jie Ming and Viola.
He had already changed into his combat robes, and his expression had returned to its usual indifference.
The crude bracelet on his wrist remained firmly in place.
“Let’s go,” he said.
As he lifted his leg, he paused for a moment, glanced at the state of the two, and sighed. “Sorry to trouble you two this time. There’s no need to keep up that appearance anymore.”
Upon hearing this, Jie Ming and Viola immediately smiled.
Jie Ming wiped a hand across his face. The bruised and swollen state vanished instantly, and even the missing teeth regrew. Viola did the same beside him. Then the two quickly followed Mentor Clark and merged into the nearby formation.
As the wizards of the four major powers separated, the ground began to tremble.
The four ship-planes slowly pulled apart. The temporary connecting passages between them snapped and dissolved one after another.
But this separation was different from before. As each ship-plane moved apart, its form began to undergo drastic changes.
The metal platform beneath Jie Ming’s feet folded and restructured, rapidly expanding. Countless new structures rose from below the surface.
Rune towers, energy nodes, defensive barriers, attack arrays…
The entire ship-plane was like a giant beast awakening. Every “muscle” was swelling, every “bone” was being reinforced.
When the transformation stopped, Jie Ming looked at the colossal object beneath his feet and couldn’t help sucking in a sharp breath.
This was the signature war weapon of the Star Ring Federation, known as the “Quantum Entanglement Flagship.”
The entire ship-plane had transformed into a giant ring with a diameter exceeding ten million kilometers. The ring was densely covered with countless rune nodes, each emitting a faint blue glow.
Those lights flickered at a specific frequency, resonating with one another to form an energy network that covered the entire ring.
At the center of the ring, a swirling mass of distorted quantum clouds rotated slowly. That was the core of this flagship—the ultimate engine capable of instantly clearing entire regions measured in light-years.
In the other three directions, three other colossal entities had also bared their fangs.
The Crimson Court’s “Perfect Ecological Mother Nest” unfurled in an interwoven manner. It was a giant structure woven from flesh and metal, its surface covered with countless writhing organs and tissues.
It was breathing. With every breath, it exhaled large amounts of red mist. The mist condensed into various twisted forms in the air before being reabsorbed by the mother nest.
Inside the mother nest, countless cultivation pods were operating, filled with various modified combat creatures soaking within. They were dormant, ready to be awakened at any moment.
The Void Architecture Academy’s “Folded Palace” looked like an architectural marvel that defied all physical laws.
Its structure was constantly changing, presenting different geometric forms every second.
Cubes, spheres, polyhedrons, hypercubes… All forms existed simultaneously and disappeared simultaneously.
Its surface was covered with silvery-white runes, each flickering at the speed of light.
The Anti-Entropy Alliance’s “Flood Star Ring” looked like a river composed of countless silvery-white particles flowing slowly through the void. Those particles were nanoscale combat units, each possessing independent consciousness and combat capability.
They could form any shape, penetrate any defense, devour any matter, and self-replicate.
When they gathered together, they became a flood capable of submerging everything.
These four war machines were the ultimate creations of the four wizard factions.
Jie Ming stood at the edge of the Quantum Entanglement Flagship, looking at the three equally massive figures in the distance, and felt an indescribable emotion surge in his heart.
This… was the power of wizard civilization.
The space ahead of the flagship began to distort.
Countless runes lit up simultaneously. The quantum cloud spun madly, releasing energy powerful enough to tear apart plane barriers.
A massive rift slowly opened in the void. On the other side of the rift was an unfamiliar star domain within the endless chaotic void.
The moment the spatial rift opened, Jie Ming saw the scene on the other side.
Then, he couldn’t help but suck in a sharp breath of cold air.
Coming straight toward them were “warships” pieced together from fragments of broken planes.
The fragments varied in size and shape, as if they had been violently forced together.
In the gaps between the fragments, countless shriveled corpses and wailing souls could be seen—they were the fuel of these warships, slowly being burned.
The surfaces of the warships were covered with crude runes. Each rune emitted an ominous dark red glow.
The structure of those runes was extremely primitive, yet each one contained astonishing power.
They were the masterpieces of countless wizards, and also the graveyards of countless lives.
And on those warships stood countless wizards as well.
The moment Jie Ming clearly saw them, a strong sense of dissonance surged in his heart.
The wizards on their side were dressed in magnificent robes, their temperaments cold and rational, exuding the composure of a high civilization.
But the wizards on the other side… regardless of rank, their faces were withered as if all life force had been drained from them.
Their bodies were in various deformed states. Some had grown extra arms, some had faces covered in cracked-open eyes, and some had bodies twisted into irregular shapes.
Their robes were also varied in form. Quite a few even looked like living organisms.
But what caught Jie Ming’s attention most was the emotion in their eyes.
Those eyes held no rationality, no composure—only extreme madness and greed.
They looked at the wizards on this side like starving wolves seeing fresh meat, like drowning people grasping at driftwood.
That primitive gaze sent a chill down Jie Ming’s spine.
He suddenly felt that if the wizards on this side were more like the arcanists or mages he had seen in his previous life, then the wizards of the parallel world were the ones who truly fit the title of “wizard.”
Eerie, insane, and willing to use any means necessary.
After the initial shock, Jie Ming quickly began assessing the other side’s strength.
There were quite a few sixth-ring wizards on the other side, but each had been modified extremely aggressively. Some even had difficulty maintaining a human form under normal conditions.
Yet the threat they emanated was far lower than that of the sixth-ring wizards around him.
It was like a knife that looked frightening but actually had a blunt edge.
There were also some seventh-ring wizards, but their numbers were far fewer than on this side.
As for eighth-ring wizards…
Jie Ming narrowed his eyes and sensed carefully for a long time before finally confirming one fact: the number of eighth-ring wizards on the other side was extremely small.
It seemed exactly as Dean Avery Knight had said.
Without ninth-ring wizards to balance power and establish rules, the wizard civilization of the parallel world was far inferior to theirs in every aspect.