“Interesting,” Almond blinked. “What are the rewards?”
Simon shook his head and said, “The rewards are not disclosed by the Grimworld in this quest. But you should know Grimworld Quest always gives satisfying rewards.”
Everyone nodded as they knew it was true.
“That’s all,” Simon smiled and gave a sparkling metallic rune to Almond. “Here’s the battlefield’s map and the locations of your spot. You can settle there and prepare any way you want right away.”
“I indeed want to set up a few things,” Almond chuckled and took the rune before it vanished from his hand.
Simon nodded, smiling. “I am looking forward to meeting again when you reach the top echelon of the second layer and join the ascension competition.”
“It won’t be long before we are there,” Almond smiled and stood up before nodding. “Let’s meet on the battlefield next.”
The group left, leaving Simon thoughtful as he muttered, “The House of Regalon. New waves are coming up, eh?”
‘Will they sweep other waves or get swept by others?’
…
Almond and the group returned to their territory and gathered up everyone again.
“Everyone, it’s time to move!”
Almond waved his hand and put the Bloomshard Castle and other structures into his spatial storage as their territory disappeared.
Afterward, Almond summoned a huge airship crafted by Neo to be in seamless synergy with Almond’s space power and also made with metal that had spatial resonance.
Many other ships belonging to other forces were also flying as they were moving to the battlefield to take up their assigned spots.
After boarding everyone on the ship, Almond dropped the weakest group first, which was also the nearest, since those hundreds of territories belonging to various forces were placed behind the battlefield zone.
Almond knew some of the people in this group, like Knight Henry who previously was a member of the Thunderbird Guild, but now he was GAA. Guilds no longer existed, though many changed into Dojos to train young adventurers.
“The Group Leaders will be Henry and Roken. Roken, you know your job. Support everyone by creating Item Runes to give your buffs and overlook the area.”
Henry and Roken nodded.
Some old guild leaders who were top 20 or 30 previously felt dissatisfied that those two were assigned as Group Leaders, but none of them voiced anything in protest.
Roken was a valuable asset that could grant temporary Item Runes to significantly boost their powers.
After learning the Conceptual Power of fruit, it turned out to be a power to create exotic Metals by combining, and he also learned the Conceptual Power of his sub-class, Runic Blacksmith.
These two Conceptual Powers led Roken to craft a brand new type of enchantment—Item Runes. Special metal runes that could imbue within items and grant temporary boosts related to users until the rune is exhausted.
Roken was a field crafter. He could create Metal with suitable attributes according to each person and then create Item Runes from them, boosting synergy and the power of items significantly.
The caveat was that he couldn’t boost Immortal-rank or higher-ranked items yet because Item Runes also had ranks and thus were rank-restricted. Roken must break through to High-Mortal, Immortal-rank, and so on to upgrade his Item Runes.
Meanwhile, Almond trusted Henry more, not only his character but also his leadership in handling groups.
Moreover, only a few people among these Mortals had grasped their Conceptual Powers while the rest were still trying.
Before leaving, Almond created a Fabrication Key and designated this area. Using this key, he would be able to enter this area from anywhere.
Fabrication Key: Creates a key and designates an area. You can enter that area from anywhere using the key.
Since he had also made some progress in his Sub-class’s Conceptual Power, enough to manifest its Ability Tree, Almon had some handy powers.
Though he could only create five Fabrication Keys. Creating more would seal 5% of his soul power in exchange for maintaining the keys.
Such restriction applied when one used their Ability Tree’s powers beyond their limit.
The number of Spirit Lords Almond could keep was also limited to 10 right now, though he had yet to fill all 10 slots after removing Chimera Viperfiend and combining Starlight Beast with Chimera Viperfang along with some new Immortal Emperor Griminion’ Spirits and some nasty individuals he killed during his academy mission.
Spirit Lords were existences bound to Almond, and their spirit souls wielded power. For now, creating an 11th Spirit Lord would directly seal Almond’s soul sea by 10% to keep the 11th Spirit Lord alive.
But of course, such restrictions didn’t apply to Spirit Wraiths, and he could create up to 50 Spirit Wraiths, but Spirit Wraiths couldn’t have their own Arcane Constitution or growth-type soul; hence, even if he created a Spirit Wraith made of Immortal Emperors, its power would be limited in many ways.
Spirit Wraiths were a restricted product of Grimworld, a ready-made result of a ready-made skill made by Grimworld, but Spirit Lords were a product of the full use of Spirit Animation by Almond after understanding its profound knowledge.
And Regalon Race was the entire expression of his life that was manifesting as his Bloodline, in which he interfered and used his arsenal of powers, mainly Spirit Animation, to control its manifestation, resulting in a Progenitor Bloodline capable of altering, or rather, evolving humans into a meta-physical race with elevated innate capabilities!
…
Almond dropped the other Mortal-rank group who had SSS-rank Ability Power at their spot.
Their leader was Selena Lock, previously the daughter of Earth Union and now a member of GAA.
She was a talented mage-type adventurer and strategist.
Afterward, Almond dropped the first group of High-Mortals with Julian and Anya as their leaders. This group also had a majority of Grim Breakers and also had Elder Bianca’s granddaughter as well as Elder Arjun’s grandson.
The top guilds’ executives were also here, like Lady Aria, Executive Ken and such.
But Julian was supposed to be in the second High-Mortal group, which had overall stronger powerhouses like old monsters, top former guild leaders, and some stronger Grim Breakers like Natalia, Marcus, Maya, Kira, Noah, and Emma, but Almond decided to put Julian in the first group as the leader.
In terms of combat power, Julian was the 10th strongest, surpassing the majority of old monsters because of his blooming talent and fast progress that developed because of his hard work, following Almond’s footsteps on training with craziness and risks.
Afterward, Almond dropped the second High Mortal group, which had old monsters, and top guild leaders like Liam Sunbreak, Ruyi, and so on.
Almond created Fabrication Keys, leading to each group’s location, so with just a second, he would be able to go there and aid them in case an accident happened.
Putting away the ship, Almond, Lily, and Admiral Rudra made their way towards the frontlines.
Exiting from the channel, they saw a vast empty ground with eccentric structures and formations floating everywhere in the sky, created by various Immortal Kings.
Going further in, Almond, Lily, and Admiral Rudra saw a bunch of platforms upon which Immortal Emperors sat. Some were sparring, some sat in meditation, and gathered for talk.
“Hey, what are you three doing here? This is not the place for Immortal ranks.”
A group of four Immortal Kings was nearby as they were flying past when one of them called out with intent directed at them.
Pausing, Almond, Lily, and Admiral Rudra looked at the group.
“We are just going to our assigned spots,” Lily indifferently said. “Stop being busybodies.”
Almond chuckled, “Indeed. Now, excuse us.”
The trio continued, but one of the Immortal Kings, a human with shoulder-length blue hair who was sitting calmly and appeared to be the leader, snorted, sending flickering blue-red scaled snakes at Almond, Lily, and Admiral Rudra.
‘These assholes,’ Lily cursed as her eyes glinted as a large rocky-cyan arm belonging to Golem of Gloombound Earth.
‘Don’t kill them,’ Almond wryly said.
The snakes became sloppy and were taunted towards the arm before another arm manifested and squashed the snakes.
“What?!”
The Immortal Kings were startled, but then everyone’s senses suddenly drowned in darkness while countless pairs of crimson eyes popped up.
A chilling cold voice suffused, ringing in their heads.
‘Do you want to die?’
The four Immortal Kings paled as their senses were depraved and fear infused them, their blood freezing and terror increasing.
They couldn’t even utter anything as they felt death was infinitely close and anything could trigger it.
But this only lasted for five seconds before their senses returned.
Heavily breathing and sweating, they looked at each other while those three Immortals were nowhere to be found.
“W-what the fuck?”
“Who was that?”
“They must be suppressing their strengths, those damn Immortal Emperors!”
“Tsk, wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
But Almond, Lily, and Admiral Rudra were questioned one more time as they entered the area belonging to Hyper 1 immortal Emperors with Ability Power ranging from Gamma to Zeta.
Naturally, unlike those four idiots, the Immortal Emperor, who stopped them, just used his token and checked the entries by inserting Almond’s token number. Since each token was traced with a number and its data on group positions, it was easy to see which token had how many groups and their assigned locations in the live map accessible through the token.
Seeing the map with Almond’s token number, the Immortal Emperor saw five spots blink, with one blinking in the frontlines.
“What? You three are in the middle field?!” The wolf Beastkin Immortal Emperor was dumbfounded. “You three can fight at Hyper Speed 2 constantly? Impossible…”
“I like a certain phrase very much,” Almond chuckled in response. “Nothing is impossible if you have the will and grit to achieve it. It’s true, you know?”
“Anyway, all the best.”
The trio continued past the lower field where Immortal Emperors of Hyper Speed 1 were stationed and arrived in the middle field, which was for Hyper Speed 2 Emperors.
But there were two more fields with shorter distances.
The front field for Hyper Speed 3 Emperors and then the five individuals with utterly unfathomable auras, the very peak of existence on the second layer, who had reached a peak in all possible aspects and reached an utter ceiling in everything on the second layer.
They mainly competed in big leagues like Big D to acquire ascension to the third layer and constantly refine their combat ability.
Supreme Emperors.
Almond saw them from afar and knew that the gut feeling he got about there being an Arcane Champion belonged to one of those five.
‘Very powerful,’ Almond’s eyes flickered.
He knew he wasn’t their match at all, but the blaze had burned in him along with a thirst, and he wasn’t going to stop before becoming the strongest.