Age of Adepts
chapter-292

Castle in the Sky. The Inner Circle's Main Hall.

This was a massive hall constructed inside the mountain. It took up a land of nearly three hundred thousand square meters.

Still, a description like this wasn't entirely accurate.

More specifically, this mysterious and magnificent hall was the first to be constructed. The Silver Union had only constructed the mountain as a shell around it to hide the hall’s existence. Most of the architecture in the inner circle had been constructed after the mountain and the hall. Their purpose was to serve as research facilities and cover for the mysterious hall within the mountain.

It was only when you had the opportunity to become a Silver Union adept, and rise to become a member of the Senate, that you would have the qualification to step foot into this mysterious hall. It was here where you learned and researched the ultimate secrets of the esoteric adepts.

You would be shocked to find this place to be a sea of runes and machinery.

The hall interior was a vast and endless space that stretched as far as the eye could see. Hundreds of billions of gears, axles, springs, levers… and an innumerable amount of metallic parts and components floated within this space.

They came in all sizes and shapes. The only similarity was their color. Each and every one of these parts was platinum in color, and a single mysterious golden rune had been inscribed upon each.

Some of these metallic components were as large as an entire island, while the smallest ones needed the use of a microscope to be seen by the naked eye.

They appeared to be floating in the space in a disorderly fashion, but if someone was able to look from a high enough vantage point and see everything within the mysterious space, they would be stunned to find a reason and rhythm to their movements.

The hundreds of billions of runic machines were moving about the space according to a certain powerful law.

The mechanical parts and metallic components of various sizes drifted around. Whenever two different components ran into each other, they would come together and form a new component. Once numerous components merged in this fashion, a mysterious and new runic mechanical construct would be born in the mysterious space.

No one knew what purpose or function this construct served.

It could have been part of a mechanical clock, or part of the body of a powerful runic golem, or a meaningless congregation of gears. Of course, it could also have been the prototype of a mysterious, never-before-seen machine.

Unfortunately, these compound mechanical constructs never lasted for too long.

The newly formed runic mechanical constructs would soon disassemble into their base components when they crashed into another construct. Bizarrely enough, these disassembled components would be completely different from how they were before they had merged into a new construct!

Thus, hundreds of billions of silver parts drifted in the hall’s space, ceaselessly repeating the process of combining and disassembling. It didn't matter how much they merged and split. They were contained within that massive empty space and would never spill out of the hall.

It was as if… as if there was an invisible barrier in the hall!

This was the most classified and most important location of the Castle in the Sky– the Mystic Realm of Machines.

Today was yet another ordinary day within the Mystic Realm.

A dozen adepts in silver robes crossed through this sea of runic machinery under the protection of a curtain of silver light. A silver emblem was pinned to their chests. These were the senate members of the Silver Union. These were the people with the most enviable status and authority in the Castle in the Sky.

However, even these men were nothing more than tireless gardeners and workers when they were here in the hall.

All lifeforms without the protection of Esoteric Talismans would die within this mysterious space. The assembled flood of grinding gears was enough to crush anyone into meat paste, and the energy storms released from the suddenly disassembling constructs could vaporize any adept that went too close.

The entire Castle in the Sky was a massive energy collector. A tremendous amount of magical energy was gathered daily and inserted into this mysterious space, providing it with an endless stream of energy. In return, the mysterious space provided the Silver Union with numerous powerful runic machines.

Every day, some silver-robed adepts would enter the mysterious space and unfurl a runic scroll within the endless sea of runic machinery. This would usually be a scroll that contained the endless blood and sweat of esoteric adepts past and present.

When the silver light engulfed the entire space, countless gears, bearings, grinding wheels, dowels, springs, pipes… and many more strange components of all shapes and sizes were drawn towards the scroll, like bees to nectar. They hovered above the scroll, assembling themselves according to the laws inscribed within the scroll.

There was no need for any external force. Just a golem scroll with complete laws and a self-consistent system caused the parts to automatically assemble into an elegant and powerful silver golem construct. The power of the laws would further enhance the silver golem, allowing it to possess extremely high combat intelligence upon creation. It would be able to perform all sorts of difficult actions as long as they were inscribed upon the runic arrays within their bodies.

As long as the power of the laws within the scroll did not conflict with it, the silver golem would be able to sustain itself indefinitely. A slight inconsistency within the systems and laws would cause the golem-construct to break into thousands of pieces, returning to its base components.

The silver-robed adepts were responsible for recording the construction process of the golem, as well as the process of its disassembly. These records were then handed over to the esoteric adepts to correct and fix the mistakes within the scrolls. It was through such a method that the esoteric adepts were able to continuously go through trial and error, ceaselessly improving upon the golem-construct until it reached their desired standards.

Then they would hand over the blueprints to the golem factory and have them mass manufacture the final product. This allowed them to save on the expensive and lengthy trial process of golem research.

Of course, the Mystic Realm saved them a lot of resources and time in designing new golems. Still, how easy could it be to design a mature and powerful construct golem from scratch?

There were over ten thousand esoteric adepts in the Castle in the Sky, but less than one in ten of them had the right to wear the silver robe. The numbers of senate members were even fewer, with only one in a thousand esoteric adepts being able to attain that rank. Less than ten people held the highest rank, which gave them the right to access the Mystic Realm of Machines and engage it for research.

Every single one of them was a Senate elder, and every single one of them had tremendous authority and influence within the entire Silver Union.

The Silver Union had split their members into five ranks based on the authority they held within the organization. The lowest ranked were the ordinary silver-robed esoteric adepts. These were often the First Grade adepts, and they functioned as the base of the organization. They too had some privileges while they stayed in the Castle in the Sky.

Above the silver-robed adepts were the silver-robed executors. These executors were the more powerful Second Grade esoteric adepts and were responsible for the security of the Castle in the Sky. They had partial authority over the Aerial Guards. The executor headquarters was located in the nests above the Castle in the Sky. That place was also the where the Aerial Guards were stationed.

If the ordinary silver-robes were the citizens of the city, the silver-robed executors were the police. The Aerial Guard was a golem-construct army under the control of the silver-robed executors.

Above the silver-robed executors were the Third Grade silver-robed senate members!

Most of these senate members were esoteric masters themselves. They were the core members of the Silver Union that drove its progress forward. They were the ones that managed most of the Silver Union’s daily errands as they discussed the issues to be resolved, in the Senate Hall.

Even higher than the Senate members were the Fourth Grade Senate-Head and senate elders.

The Silver Union currently possessed one senate-head, one vice senate-head, and seven Senate elders.

These nine people were the core combat strength of the Silver Union. These nine people guaranteed the Silver Union its status as one of the three major organizations on the Continent of Adepts. Their existence was what ensured the tens of thousands of years of prosperity for the Silver Union.

The Silver Union always made sure that there were at least nine Fourth-Grade esoteric adepts within the organization. If someone died because of old age or unexpected factors, the Union would try their very best to fill the gaps as soon as possible.

Thus, the nine Fourth-Grade adepts would always appear as the most powerful force that the Silver Union had, and no one knew whether they were hiding some of their strength. The true prowess of the Silver Union would always remain a mystery to outsiders!

The only ones the adepts ever talked to were their powerful and loyal golems. After all, they devoted their entire lives to the laboratory. This caused them to develop lawful and orderly personalities. Consequently, many outsider adepts found the Silver Union to be a fantastical, powerful, and strict organization after they visited the Castle in the Sky.

The Castle in the Sky had also become a massive stage for all types of magical golems. This was because nearly sixty or seventy percent of all esoteric adepts on the Continent were gathered in the Silver Union. Until now, the greatest mystery, and the one thing that all adepts were most curious about was the number of powerful magical golems the Silver Union had stored in their reserves!

Though the Union sold plenty of golems to the adept clans for the purposes of war, they kept even more of the manufactured golems for themselves. No one knew the specific number of golems the Union hid, but everyone knew it was an unbelievably huge number.

The unusual sound of alarms rang out within the Space Monitoring Committee, located within the Executor Headquarters in the Central Circle.

"Warning. Warning. Unusual spatial flux detected. Initial estimates suggest spatial anomaly to be a small otherworldly wormhole. The target area is being determined"

"Target area has been determined. Origin of space flux located in Outer Circle, Twelfth District,167 Champs Élysées Street. Records indicate the location to be managed by the Byron Clan of Dagon, Zhentarim… "

"Aerial Guard Squad 935 is on its way. Requesting silver-robed executors to head over to the area as reinforcement… "