Advent of the Archmage
chapter-503

Three in the afternoon, one hour after Link finished constructing the castle, a group came from the demon village in the distance. The leader was the elder from earlier.

Looking down from the balcony, Link could see that the demons were anxious and restless. Something incredible seemed to have happened.

When the group was around 100 feet away from the castle gates, they stopped. They paced before the door, wanting to approach it but seemingly stunned by the beautiful building looming over them.

They debated there, wondering if they should enter.

Standing on the balcony, Link wanted to laugh. White light flashed, and he appeared above the city walls. The demons below immediately noticed him. They fell silent and fell to their knees. Then the elder started yelling.

This time, Link could mostly understand.

"God's highest messenger in the mortal world, I have a very, very important thing that may pertain to your safety that I must tell you."

Link already guessed what he was going to say. He purposely waited a few seconds, scaring the demons so much that they started sweating. Finally, he drawled, "Speak."

His voice wasn't loud but sounded clear under the spell.

The elder started yelling again, "God's highest—"

"Enough, get to the point," Link interrupted.

"God…God's messenger, I must tell you that the forest is the territory of the one-eyed King Morophir. He is very strong and has a bad temper. He doesn't like it when people live in the forest…"

The one-eyed king actually had a name. That meant this guy really did exist. After thinking a bit, Link asked, "Have you seen him before?"

The elder and strong men beside him immediately nodded furiously. The elder even opened his arms wide in an exaggerated pose. "Yes, yes. He's as tall as the mountain. When you stand below him, you can't even see his head. His arms are many times thicker than the waist of the red elephant. His slap can turn you into minced meat. He uses the trees as weapons. He can just pull up ancient trees that a group of people can't even embrace with linking arms. Then he waves the tree and hits anyone he sees. No one is his match. He has a lot of powerful underlings too!"

His explanation was a bit exaggerated and filled with subjectively delusional descriptions. But when he spoke, the other demons all nodded in agreement. This meant that most of his words were objective. They probably really had seen Morophir before.

When Link heard the last sentence, he couldn't help but smile. Fighting with trees is such a primitive way of fighting. This is probably a giant with endless strength. Judging from the measurements of the trees, he should be around 100 to 150 feet tall. Indeed, he's unstoppable for regular people.

Thinking of this, he waved his hand. "I see," he said. "You can go back."

Before the terrified townspeople could reply, Link waved his hand after speaking. He used the Dimensional Jump to send them back to the village.

Returning to the castle, he saw that Gretel was telling horror stories to the demon children. They trembled in fear, curling into balls, but they loved the stories. They ended up shaking like quails, making Gretel giggle.

Seeing that Link was back, the kids immediately stood and said in unison, "Housekeeper."

Gretel didn't think Link could discipline children too. She couldn't help but laugh again. After her laughter subsided, she asked, "So there really is a one-eyed king?"

"Yes. He's probably like a Mountain Giant. It has a name too—Morophir," Link answered with a laugh.

Mountain Giants were giant earth-element creatures in Firuman. They were as big as a mountain and on average, above 120 feet tall. They also fought by pulling up trees and were terrifyingly strong. The earth-element power within them was usually above Level-8.

To regular people, this was a god-like existence. But as strong as they were, it was still mortal power. A Legendary figure could still kill thousands with one attack.

In this case, Gretel didn't worry anymore. Chuckling, she said, "Then I'll hand it over to you, house…keeper."

Link laughed awkwardly. After a pause, he said, "I'll go fortify the castle."

This wasn't to defend the one-eyed king's direct attack. Rather, it was to protect against the shockwaves.

Link went to work. Gretel seemed to really like these demon children. She had them gather around and started telling the horror story again. They were so scared they kept shaking.

On the other hand, Link was outside the building.

The castle used regular magic runestones around Level-4. If a Level-4 figure kicked the stones with all their might, it would cause quite some damage. This was naturally insufficient against someone in Level-8. Link used the Void Walk to fly around the castle, continuously slapping on runes.

The walls were white-ish before. After he circled it with runes a few times, a 20-centimeter-thick, translucent, jade-like shield appeared on the walls. This was Level-9 material. Even if the one-eyed king attacked directly, it could last for a while.

After this, Link turned to go study the meteorite. But after flying for a bit, he looked up at the sky. It was four in the afternoon. It was getting late and was dinnertime.

Back in the day, before Gretel's power was sealed, this wouldn't be important. She could go one year without eating. Things were different now. She wasn't any stronger than the others; she needed three meals per day to replenish her energy.

With this in mind, Link flew into the forest. After a while, he carried back an animal like a wild goat.

He first went to the creek not too far from the castle and treated the body with a spell. He separated the meat, bones, and tendons. Thinking back to the delicacies he'd eaten before, he started making it with spells by the creek.

It was overly luxurious to cook meat with a fire spell, but it was fast. Within ten seconds, the taste would settle so Link could experiment quickly. He was a perfectionist too and had to make everything perfect.

The result was that Link tried 109 times within 15 minutes. He kept revising the recipe until he grasped the best fire and amount of spices for a rack of lamb.

When the final result came out, Link tasted what he'd made. He smacked his lips, very satisfied with the taste.

It wasn't enough to just eat meat though. Link then found some edible plants by the creek. He used small water and fire spells to experiment dozens of times before getting nice results too.

After finishing everything, Link flew back to the castle.

"Dinner time!"

As he spoke, Link waved his hand. Dozens of elegant plates appeared on the long dining table in the castle. They were filled with food that looked delicious, all made by Link.

Gretel brought the children over. She sat into the main seat and tasted Link's creation. Her eyes brightened and glanced at him, satisfied. Smiling, she said, "Mm, not bad. Keep working hard."

Link smiled wryly. It felt like he'd doomed himself. However, he only had to wait until Gretel's power recovered. He didn't have to go for that long.

Turning to the children, Gretel said, "Kids, eat up."

The five kids had been eyeing the food for a while. They wanted to just pounce onto the food, but with Link present, they didn't dare go too wild. They had to use the utensils and eat the delicious food bit by bit. They looked very careful.

Link also ate some food. It was a small snack for him. When everyone was done eating, he used a cleaning spell to clean everything. Then he finally went to a quiet room in the top level of the castle to study the meteorite.

The meteorite was dark purple and was room temperature to the touch. When he tapped it, it buzzed softly. It was very strange.

Link cast a small Void Destruction fireball; it exploded on the surface of the meteorite. After the flames disappeared, the meteorite remained unchanged. Even the temperature didn't change.

An interesting rock, but what's the maximum temperature you can withstand?

If it really could be used as a buffer, Link estimated that it must be able to withstand at least a Level-20 attack to create a sufficient buffer for the singularity explosion.

Level-20 was god-level power. Link couldn't do it by himself, but he could use a magic seal to demonstrate it. Of course, the magic seal would be complicated and consume many materials.

This was necessary to experiment though. Link put away the meteorite and took out all sorts of material. He started constructing the high-level magic seal in the room.

It was very, very difficult to create a Level-20 magic seal when he was at Level-11. Link put in everything he knew while using up all the precious material he had. After spending five days, he finally created a large magic seal.　

It took up most of the room. It contained more than 10,000 rune wheels, all sorts of techniques, all the magical knowledge Link had, and the thin piece of time.

Link placed the meteorite onto the experiment rune and then started feeding Dragon Power to the magic seal.

He couldn't accomplish it so easily. In reality, the magic seal would consolidate his Level-11 power to Level-20. Even if he wanted a shred of Level-20 power, Link needed to add in a tremendous amount of Dragon Power.

Link kept inputting power. One hour, two hours, three… At ten hours, the large magic seal was still unresponsive. The only change was that the runes were a bit brighter.

I need at least two million Legendary Dragon Power points to get a bit of Level-20 power. I hope no accidents happen.

If the magic seal failed, and all that Dragon Power exploded at once, the castle would be demolished. That would suck.

The only good thing was that Gretel had taken the kids to pick medicinal herbs and weren't inside the castle. Link could experiment without concern.

This magic seal required two million Dragon Power points. However, this didn't mean that a shred of Level-20 power would equal two million Dragon Power points.

In reality, a true Level-20 figure would think that this magic seal was extremely crude. A lot of power was wasted during the entire process. Link himself estimated that 99.9% of power was wasted. Only 0.1% of Dragon Power would be converted into Level-20 power.

Link sighed. In the end, I'm still not knowledgeable enough.

After resting, he continued feeding in power for another five hours. When the five hours were close to an end, a tiny—almost insignificant—bit of power appeared at the end of the magic seal.

The power seemed solid and was as thin as a needle. It was white and not very bright, but glancing at it, it felt piercing to the eye. Link didn't dare to look for long. He quickly averted his eyes.

This bit of power was scattering as soon as it appeared. From Link's estimates, if it scattered one centimeter, it would completely degrade into regular power. This kind of power was useless in a battle; it could only be used for experiments.

It streaked across the meteorite. Then with a poof, the dark purple meteorite collapsed into a bunch of bubbling purple liquid. It couldn't resist the Level-20 power at all.

Link was greatly disappointed.

The meteorite wasn't strong enough at all. It was so far away, but this was the strongest material Link had. He couldn't replace it, so he had to improve it.

How? Alchemy and enchantments were the only options.

If he wanted alchemy, he'd have to ask Gretel, but she hadn't recovered yet… This was a bottleneck. Link thought some more and decided to find Gretel. He would help her recover first.

He had given Gretel a tracking rune, so he just teleported over. With a few flashes of light, he was beside Gretel.

She was in a forest a few miles away. When Link reached her, she was staring at a huge footprint.

Seeing Link come, Gretel said, "The footprint is fresh. From the looks of things, this guest is at least 300 tons. It's even bigger than a Mountain Giant."

Link glanced over. The footprint was about two feet deep, 15 feet long, and six feet wide. There were two toes, and the two footprints were around 60 feet apart.

"Indeed very big. Should we go look?" Link asked.

Gretel shook her head quickly. "I don't want to keep you back. You go… Here, I drew all the herbs I need. If you see them along the way, take them for me. The more, the better."

Link took the paper and skimmed it. The drawings were very realistic and detailed. It also came with specimens.

"I understand. Be careful while I go check it out."