I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 885: The Dragonblood Mushroomman Legion

With the testing over, Jie Ming returned to his main laboratory and entered the test data for the Return to Ruins Armor and the Great Annihilation Divine Light into his terminal.

Looking over the results, he leaned back in his chair with a trace of regret on his face.

“A pity. I still do not know the upper limit of either of these two pieces of magic.” Jie Ming shook his head.

This round of testing had only verified the lower limits of the two; their upper limits had not been pressed out of them at all.

The Return to Ruins Armor had shown no reaction whatsoever under the wild bombardment of a seventh-level array, which meant its actual defensive power went far beyond that standard, but just how much it could bear remained unclear.

As for the Great Annihilation Divine Light, he had done no more than a few basic power verifications.

It was not that Jie Ming did not want to test them. The conditions available to him simply made testing impossible.

In a conventional planar war, a seventh-level wizard was already absolute top-end fighting strength.

The arrays the various powers had at their disposal could at most simulate the attack intensity of an ordinary seventh-level wizard.

To measure the combat strength of an elite seventh-level wizard, one needed to be able to lay out an elite seventh-level array.

And an array of that kind counted as a scarce commodity across the whole of wizard civilization.

There were two reasons.

First, the materials and knowledge required to lay out an array of that level were far too precious. Many a power with an eighth-level wizard presiding over it could not necessarily produce them, and would wince even if it could.

Second, the wizards capable of laying out such an array were pitifully few to begin with.

At the elite seventh level, combat strength was no longer merely a piling-up of energy; mixed into it was the extension of one’s own laws and one’s own style, and simulating that with a fixed array was extremely difficult.

The more than ten-thousandfold gap in sheer scale between an elite seventh-level wizard and an ordinary seventh-level wizard was, by contrast, the easiest part for an array to make up. The truly troublesome part was the special power each elite seventh-level wizard came to command after deeply mining the laws he had mastered.

Take his senior sister Viola. She was still sixth level for now, but with her talent, when the time came for her to advance to seventh-level wizard she was certain to be an elite seventh.

If one built an elite seventh-level array with Viola as the standard, then how on earth was a fixed array to simulate that ability of hers to grow stronger simply by absorbing pain?

Never mind Jie Ming as he was now. Even if you handed the job to the future Viola, already advanced to elite seventh level, and had her set up the array herself, she would very likely be left scratching her head.

And while the emotion law Viola commanded was on the special side, the mechanisms mastered by the other wizards who could become elite sevenths were absolutely no less formidable!

One could well imagine, then, just how difficult it was to build an array equivalent to an elite seventh-level wizard.

“Though if I remember rightly, the core of every academy in the Noren Workshop is supposed to be an elite seventh-level array…”

Jie Ming rubbed his chin. “Wizard Noren did come out of the alchemy discipline himself, after all, and his attainments in runecraft are quite strong as well, which is why he could equip every academy with an array of that level.”

But turned around, the price of an elite seventh-level array that required an eighth-level wizard as skilled in alchemy as Wizard Noren to build it could well be imagined.

Jie Ming had done the arithmetic in any case: until he converted the returns from his various technologies into high-level military merit, spending every one of the thirty billion high-level military merit he currently held would still only make him one or two elite seventh-level arrays.

And permanently fixed ones at that, the sort that could not be freely adjusted.

The value for money was too poor; there was little point building one before his high-level military merit was ample enough.

A moment later, Jie Ming threw the thought to the back of his mind.

If the upper limits could not be measured, then he would not measure them. By the standard he had measured so far, they were enough as they were.

Besides, a thing like magic had in the end to be proved by his own hand in real combat, and one day someone would measure it out for him.

With that, Jie Ming plunged headlong back into his study of the four elemental laws.

And so time slipped past, and before he knew it several more decades had gone by.

Until one day, word passed on by a Black Giant broke into Jie Ming’s train of thought.

“My Lord, word has come from the Dragonmen.”

The Black Giant priest stood respectfully to one side, a rare trace of hesitation in his voice.

Seeing the state of him, Jie Ming stopped what his hands were doing and turned his head, puzzled. “What is it?”

“The Dragonmen report that the resources allotted to the dragonblood mushroom-man legion have been entirely used up, and they hope another batch of supplies might be assigned to them.”

“All used up?” A flicker of astonishment crossed Jie Ming’s eyes.

He remembered it perfectly clearly: the resources he had allotted the Dragonman race back then were no small figure. Never mind sustaining a single experimental legion; even as an outlay for the whole Black Giant population, the Black Giant priests’ research team included, it would normally have been enough to draw on for many years yet.

Only a few centuries had passed, and they had already scraped the bottom?

“Interesting.”

Jie Ming rose slowly to his feet, an expression of lively interest on his face. “Come. Let us go and see how things stand.”

“Yes!”

Soon the teleportation array in the laboratory activated, and a silver-white radiance swallowed him and the Black Giant priest whole.

The planet the Dragonman race occupied now orbited an array eye.

The All-Heavens Star Grand Array was not yet fully established, but the array eyes he had finished refining were already producing fine effects on their own.

Even the light they gave off held surging power within it, so this planet, already decently green to begin with, had by now turned positively “wild.”

The land was covered everywhere with giant trees grown almost absurdly tall, and Jie Ming could make out dense potion-herb fields in the distance too.

Growing potion herbs counted, at the present stage, as the Dragonman race’s chief means of contributing to Jie Ming’s power.

The two of them had not long touched down before a figure came hurrying over.

“Master.”

The current chieftain of the Dragonman race bent to one knee and performed a deep and respectful obeisance.

He was one of the very first batch of Dragonmen to receive the bloodline-strengthening modification.

Heavy dragon scales covered him from head to foot, a faint golden luster circulating along their edges, and a pair of furled dragon wings hung still behind him like two vast black war banners.

Those vertical pupils were deep and keen, with even something of Suoyuan’s look about them by now.

Beyond any doubt, the Dragonman before him had reached the upper reaches of the seventh level, and was still drawing steadily toward a higher one.

Jie Ming needed only one glance at him to reach a judgment.

At this rate of growth, given another thousand years or so to settle, this chieftain might well have a real chance of touching the threshold of an eighth-level creature.

“Take me to see them.”

“Yes.”

The chieftain turned to lead the way, reporting the latest situation as they went.

“Master, the actual number of dragonblood mushroom-men at present has already passed ten billion.”

Jie Ming did not break stride, but his brow rose. “Oh? That is no small number.”

“Yes.” The chieftain nodded. “However, the great majority of them are settled on another planet for the moment to breed. Taking into account individual combat capability and level of intelligence, I have not enrolled every mushroom-man into the legion.”

“Then what is the size of the dragonblood mushroom-man legion as it stands?” Jie Ming asked.

The Dragonman chieftain promptly gave him a figure. “The dragonblood mushroom-men actually drawn out and formally organized into the legion number roughly a hundred million.”

“How many?”

Jie Ming’s step checked. He turned his head sharply, his gaze fixing keenly on the other. “A hundred million? And what standard is each of them at?”

The Dragonman chieftain answered with unusual crispness. “These hundred million and more legion mushroom-men are fifth-level creatures at the very lowest, and close to ten million of them have already reached sixth level, and what is more…”

A scarcely perceptible trace of pride flashed through the Dragonman chieftain’s vertical pupils. “The strongest hundred thousand dragonblood mushroom-men are seventh level, every one of them!”

“How is that possible?” What Jie Ming had received this time was not a pleasant surprise but a fright.

“Even if you concentrated every resource I gave you on these hundred million mushroom-men, you could not reach that standard, surely?”

The mass of sixth- and fifth-level dragonblood mushroom-men was one thing, and had not exceeded Jie Ming’s expectations. It was chiefly those hundred thousand seventh-levels that were rather too outrageous.

Going by the gap in resource consumption between one level and the next, even if he abandoned numbers entirely and poured everything into cultivating high-level mushroom-men, he would have thanked heaven and earth if that pile of resources turned out a hundred or so seventh-level mushroom-men.

Mushroom-men might advance easily, but even they had to obey the most basic conservation of mass and energy!

Now Jie Ming was genuinely curious. “How did you manage it?”

At the mention of it, the Dragonman chieftain instead prostrated himself full-length before Jie Ming in a great bow. “For all of it we have your glory to thank, Master!”

“Stop, stop, stop. Speak to the matter itself. The resources I gave you could not possibly have cultivated this many seventh-level mushroom-men. How did you do it?” Jie Ming cut short his kneeling.

The Dragonman chieftain got awkwardly to his feet. “Well… the reason is the glory you bestowed upon us, Master…”

But the chieftain’s finger was pointing surreptitiously at the sky. Jie Ming went blank for a moment, then raised his head and saw the sun above.

He blinked, and understanding came at once.

So that was it. The star of the system the Dragonmen now occupied was an array eye of the All-Heavens Star Grand Array, refined by Jie Ming himself.

That array eye radiated vast quantities of power every moment of every day, enough even to make the planet the Dragonmen lived on suitable for cultivating potion herbs.

And since mushroom-men were, in biological essence, genuinely a kind of fungus, they naturally absorbed the power the array eye gave off as well.

“In truth these dragonblood mushroom-men have grown a good deal faster than I anticipated. Left to themselves, their population would even have produced eighth-level commanders.”

The Dragonman chieftain went on explaining in a low voice at his side. “But considering that my own level is only the seventh as things stand, the risk of an eighth-level individual appearing was too great, so I forcibly held their highest level down to the seventh and put all the surplus resources into cultivating seventh-level units…”

Jie Ming was silent for a moment, then suddenly began to laugh. “Very good. You have done very well!”

Reckoned by present combat strength, the dragonblood mushroom-men had at a single bound become the most powerful legion under Jie Ming’s command, edging out even the Black Giant legions by a head.

On the premise, of course, that the Black Giant legions were not issued wizard artifacts.

To tell the truth, the result took even Jie Ming somewhat by surprise.

He had never expected that without noticing it he had come by yet another batch of war machines in an entirely different style!

Jie Ming raised a hand and opened his magical network terminal, and at his operation a fresh sum of resources was transferred over with brisk finality.

“Carry on cultivating them as you see fit.”

Jie Ming looked earnestly at the Dragonman chieftain. “Expand the dragonblood mushroom-man legion to ten billion. And I do not want fifth-level units. I want every last one of them at sixth level!”

“In the wars to come, I want to see results. Fulfill what I have asked, and the Dragonman race may obtain the qualification of a first-level servitor civilization ahead of schedule!”

The Dragonman chieftain’s head snapped up, the dragon wings at his back spreading abruptly, an excitement he could not hold down kindling in those vertical pupils.

Then he swiftly lowered his head again, though his voice now carried a note of agitation he could hardly conceal. “Yes! Thank you for your trust, Master. I will most certainly see it done!”