After passing the waterfall, there was a small canyon.
Scattered around the canyon was a variety of plantations and some historical structures.
The landmarks and road signs were covered in vines, with constant rays of light shining from above.
This was where the Nature’s Alliance headquarters resided.
Leylin looked around with curiosity at the whimsical constructions.
Although these buildings appeared slightly run-down, there were slight glints of magical glows which indicated the existence of a powerful spell that had been cast on the wooden walls.
Nature’s Alliance, albeit being a small guild, had accumulated their high-level meditation techniques over multiple generations in the past hundreds and thousands of years, proving their might.
Periodically, a few Magi acolytes, dressed in grey gowns, would come out of the building to greet Celine.
“Oh Celine, it has been so long since you last visited!”
At the same time, a grey mole jumped out from a human-sized mushroom and lifted its claw, greeting Celine.
The grey mole was the size of a boy and had sparkling bright eyes brimming with liveliness. It had a spotlessly white moustache that dropped down from the bottom of its mouth to the floor.
“Nice to meet you, Grandpa Cedric!”
Celine expressed with respect, “I brought your favourite berries!”
Celine carefully placed the two strange fruits that looked like green dates on the ground.
“En! Not bad! That’s my favourite!” The gigantic mole used its agile claws to pick up the fruits and threw them into its mouth, crunching noisily,
“This is my newly recruited famous professor, Leylin Farlier! He will be having the same level of authority as me!” Celine introduced, after the mole finished eating.
“Leylin what?” The mole took a good look at Leylin with beaming eyes. “En! Deep and immeasurable power! Looks like you have pinned all your hopes on him…:”
Leylin looked at the mole, “ A guard animal? It has the strength of a rank 1 Magus. Not bad.”
At this time, Celine introduced to Leylin, “ Grandpa Cedric was Nature’s Alliance’s guardian during my great great grandmother’s time. He is usually very gentle, just don’t disturb his sleep…”
After introducing the two to each other, Celine brought Leylin to a hall.
There were tens of acolytes waiting in there. Seated at the front were Obo and Ilya whom Leylin previously met.
“To think that a Magus guild will end up with only a rank 1 Magus, an animal as a gatekeeper and a few apprentices. What a failure!”
Leylin became speechless as he followed Celine in.
Celine went forward and introduced Leylin to the acolytes, “This is Professor Leylin whom I’ve invited over! From now, all of you need to respect him like how you respect me. No, you all should treat him with even more respect, do you all hear me?”
“Professor Leylin!” The acolyte greeted with their beaming eyes.
Leylin’s past achievements slowly spread around through Obo and Ilya. The apprentices felt extremely happy and elated knowing that they have a rank 1 Magus taking charge.
“Nice to meet all of you! A Magus is a follower of the truth. I hope to see all of you in the hall in the future!”
Leylin spoke a few words and indicated Celine to let the students leave.
All along, Leylin did not like such situations and furthermore, he was not interested in the group of acolytes.
The sole purpose of gathering the students was to introduce Leylin. The introduction ended within minutes, leaving Celine and Leylin in the hall after the students left.
“Can we talk now? Seems like something was wrong before I left the icy cave.”
Leylin took a glance at Celine as he asked with a smile.
“I can’t seem to hide anything from you!” Celine bit her lips and finally made up her mind.
Joint Conference
“Do you know about the joint conference of the eastern guilds?”
Celine asked.
“Joint conference?” Leylin repeated. In the Twilight Zone, there was a parliamentary system, but it was simply a compromise between all the large and small organisations.
One would be able to understand just by taking these words literally. Besides, Aaron had also information about this in his memories.
“My apologies! I’ve been wandering in the borders of the regions and I don’t know much about this. I’ve heard something, though. Isn’t it a conference where multiple guilds segregate their rankings and profits?”
Leylin answered.
“Exactly!” Celine’s wry smile became more prominent. “The joint alliance is a grand occasion for the Magi in the eastern capital. Every twenty years, all the guilds in the eastern capital will gather. Nine council members will, in their capacity as hosts, mediate all conflicts, conduct another election, and divide territories.”
“Even the rating of guilds will be decided during this joint conference! As long as they are not large-scale guilds, all can apply, and after some inspections, territories will be redistributed, with more benefits… The guilds that do not meet the requirements to hold their ratings will be demoted, and the territories they hold and most of their rewards are transferred to other new guilds.”
“So, what you wanted to ask me concerns this rating!” Leylin pondered while looking at Celine.
“Yes, my lord!” Celine bit her lips.
“Because of my mentor, Nature’s Alliance’s rating during the previous joint conference was that of a small-scale guild. My strength is inferior to my mentor’s, so my ranking will cause us to fall till we aren’t even rated. In this case, most of our benefits have to be given away, and since we can’t enroll many acolytes, Nature’s Alliance will eventually die out.”
Through Celine’s explanation, Leylin had a better understanding of the rating system.
Generally, there were four rankings. They were the unranked, small-scale, middle-scale and large-scale guilds!
From Leylin’s perspective, as long as there was one official Magus in the guild, they would be unranked. Most guilds in Twilight Zone had this rating.
Above that was the small-scaled guilds like Nature’s Alliance. They possessed specific areas where they made profits, such as the icy caves, and there were usually a few official Magi or even semi-converted Magi taking charge.
There were then the middle-scale guilds. Not considering other details, at the bare minimum, they needed to have a peak rank 1 Magus.
In large-scale guilds, they were the elite guilds with rank 2 Magi in charge. Since the establishment of the joint conference, there were only a handful of instances where guilds were rated to be large-scale. Every time this happened, there would be a huge revolution involving the deaths of countless Magi.
The evaluation was not necessary to be in tandem with a Magi’s rank, as battle power differs even within a rank itself.
Hence, the ratings relied entirely on battle power! They would usually exchange hands with others of the same rank, and the shedding of blood on the battlefield was not uncommon.
Of course, there was another method. As long as one submitted research material that the nine council members approved of, one could also be rated according to the merits of the research. However, this was an extremely difficult process, and few had passed through the rating review using this method.
Celine’s mentor was said to be astonishingly powerful. Though he had yet to become a semi-converted Magus, he had somehow drawn a tie with a semi-converted Magus and had thus been thought to have an equivalent level of strength. Nature’s Alliance had thus been acknowledged to be a small-scale guild and received permits to estates and mines.
If their rating went down this year, all of these would naturally be revoked, and without these resources, Celine alone would not be able to continue managing the Nature’s Alliance. Hence, she had no choice but to look for outside help.
; However, a semi-converted Magus was already considered an elite within the ranks of rank 1 Magi. At most, they would have been groomed by other organisations.
Though Celine had attracted the attention of a few official Magi, some of whom were inferior to her, with the allure of her body, what use was it? The rest were like Skrill who had some ulterior motives, and Celine didn’t dare to make use of them.
Leylin’s appearance gave Celine a sliver of hope.
“As long as my lord agrees to lead us in the joint conference, everything in Nature’s Alliance will belong to you, including myself!” Celine slowly took off her coat, revealing her delicate body.
Under the translucent light that shone on her pale, exquisite skin, she was even more alluring. Along with that expression of one preparing to die for her cause, it made one have the desire to ravage her.
“But why me? If these are the conditions, I believe there are many Magi, such as Skrill, who are willing.”
Leylin was expressionless. Women were merely for him to cope with stress. Sex was not anything special after he performed it one too many times.
“If I’m going to sell myself, I’m obviously going to sell it to someone more powerful. Skrill had been a candidate, but he was already responsible for another guild, and his appearance is a little too strange.”
Celine’s answer was direct and very practical.
*Pak! Pak! Pak!*
Leylin applauded. “Intelligent! Rational! Able to see the big picture! Fine. I’ll go to the joint conference with you!”
“In that case, I’m yours now, my lord!”
A blush appeared on Celine’s cheeks…
……
The next day, with Celine guiding, Leylin strolled around the headquarters of Nature’s Alliance. He then went straight to the library and did not emerge from it.
As for indulging in pleasures of the flesh? Leylin merely satisfied his needs every once in awhile. He could resist it during such crucial times.
Celine naturally understood this. After seeing Leylin in a hurry to pounce and start flipping through the books, she tactfully retreated.
Leylin watched her back and nodded. He was quite satisfied with this woman—she was rational, smart, and rather pretty.
“A.I. Chip, record!” He ordered silently, his eyes flashing with blue light.
After all, Nature’s Alliance was a Magus guild. There were thousands of books gathered in the library, including information about the culture, geography, and politics in the Twilight Zone, amongst other information. More importantly, there was an account of the Magus World.
These were all things that Leylin now lacked. As such, he did not restrain himself at all and ordered the A.I. Chip to record everything.
As time passed, the database in Leylin’s A.I. Chip was enriched. He now had a very profound understanding of the Twilight Zone.
Leylin proceeded further in, and even browsed in a few of the secret libraries within Nature’s Alliance.
Some of these areas were forbidden territories and acolytes were not allowed to enter. However, he was now a famed professor in Nature’s Alliance. After agreeing to Celine’s request, he basically had control of this area, and there was no issue at all.
The items in the secret rooms obviously held more precious things than what was displayed in the public areas.
Not only was there large amounts of research data, there was also information from Magi expeditions, regarding meditation techniques, reserves of high-grade content and even some conjectures by senior Magi.
To be honest, at Leylin’s level, general research materials and information were not much to him.
What he really cared about were the hypotheses and speculations of the senior Magi.
Though a lot of them were proven wrong by the A.I. Chip’s calculations, they could still provide some new ways of thinking for Leylin.
In addition, there were differences between the studies in the subterranean world and in the south coast. The essence of these differences was worthy enough for Leylin to use as a reference.
“Hm?”
At this moment, Leylin had unintentionally flipped to a page that held research material that he was interested in.
“The maintenance and mending of the sea of consciousness!”
This was a very old scroll. It was a volume formed of leaves strung together, with information recorded on it using images and words, and it had an aura of nature.
What was written down had left Leylin astonished.
His sea of consciousness had been injured while using the ancient teleportation spell formation, and even the edges had cracks.
The A.I. Chip could only give the suggestion of solidifying spiritual force and slowly mend it.
Hence, Leylin was now unable to use part of his spiritual force, and only had the strength of a peak rank 1 Magus.
Though this was effective, it was just too slow.
After two years of recuperation in the town, his injuries had recovered by just a small amount. Leylin was getting impatient and was seeking a way to accelerate this process.
“A.I. Chip, record this information and analyse the feasibility of this method for me.”
The sea of consciousness was linked to the roots of Magi and Warlocks. Leylin did not dare act without caution.
[Beep! Information has been recorded, setting up a simulation model.] [Beep! Effectiveness on Host body: 12.92%.] The A.I. Chip quickly arrived at a conclusion.
“So low?” Leylin was in disbelief, and could only force a laugh. One’s sea of consciousness differed from person to person, and it was only natural that the mending method had such an effect.
“But it’s a good thing that it works. I’ll gather more information on this topic and let the A.I. Chip design a treatment plan based on the state of my body. The rate of success will then increase!”
Leylin comforted himself.
The books in the secret rooms did not have information on just this topic.
A lot of the information here was useless or even harmful to acolytes but was extremely useful for Leylin.
He had even found a notebook with reflections concerning the use of rank 2 spells. It seemed to have been written by a great Magus.
Nature’s Alliance was merely a small guild, and there had never been a rank 2 Magus here. He wondered where they had obtained this from.
But Leylin accepted this with a smile. This notebook could supplement the rank 2 spell models that he had received from Celine.
Remodeling By Freezing
In the Nature’s Alliance’s laboratory.
Leylin stared at the large ice mountain, his expression revealing his regret.
Around the ice mountain were numerous crystals that were emitting blue light that constantly swept across the ice mountain. They formed a spell formation, and the blue light.
[Failure of simulating icy radiation. Icy Jade Scorpion Emperor’s life force is gradually weakening.]
The A.I. Chip intoned with no emotion.
*Bang!* All of a sudden, the crystals emitting blue light exploded, and the rays from the spell formation dimmed.
“Is it still a failure?” Leylin sighed.
This was the Icy Jade Scorpion Emperor that he had taken captive. Ever since he had brought it from the icy caves, it had been constantly weakening. This was even happening while it was in its frozen state, or else it would have long since died.
Leylin had no other ideas. After multiple failures while trying to simulate the special radiation from the icy world, he had already given up on this idea and was preparing to make use of this Icy Jade Scorpion Emperor as much as he could.
“It’s impossible to extract an ancient bloodline from it, and I’ve already recorded all the information I’ve obtained from its blood. So…”
Leylin shifted his gaze to the back of the Icy Jade Scorpion Emperor. The rune of a distorted woman’s face seemed to be alive.
Through the memories in its bloodline, Leylin knew th
at this type of Icy Jade Scorpion originated from the Scorpion Man that had the might of a Morning Star Magus.
The moment Scorpion Man had been drawn into the spatial crack, a drop of the female giant’s blood landed on his back.
From then on, the Scorpion Man’s bloodline was tainted by the blood of a higher ranking being.
The descendants of the Scorpion Man all had this rune on their backs.
Warlock of the Magus World 1-596 Page 242