I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 915: Urgent Mission

Jie Ming had no mind to delay.

The moment he had finished with Augusta, he contacted Clark directly.

On the far side of the light screen, Clark sat in a quiet laboratory, an array turning slowly behind him.

Jie Ming set out briefly what Augusta had found on her side, together with his own judgement of the plane cluster:

“This plane cluster is now in a period of violent evolution. The rules of space are abnormally active, and it has already been confirmed that the technological systems of at least seven or eight different higher civilisations are intervening from the dark. With Augusta’s strength and mine, we are not equal to civilisations of that order.”

When he had finished, Jie Ming looked at Clark. “Mentor, would you have any interest in coming along?”

Clark heard him out in silence, then gave a slight nod. “It sounds interesting. Very well. I have nothing pressing arranged for the next few decades; send word when you need me and that will do.”

Jie Ming broke into a smile. “Good! Then it is settled!”

Just as Jie Ming was about to end the call, a brilliant face squeezed suddenly in from the side of the picture.

That head of red curls took up very nearly half the frame.

“Wait, wait, little Jie Ming, what about me!” Kastilla shouldered Clark aside and waved at Jie Ming, all smiles.

“Something as interesting as this, and you mean to leave me out of it!”

Jie Ming was taken aback. “Teacher, you mean to go as well?”

Kastilla nodded as though it were the most natural thing in the world. “Of course. You are going over there to look into something on this scale; you are bound to meet with no end of amusing things. I am quite curious already.”

Jie Ming could not help laughing. “If Teacher is willing to come, then nothing could be better.”

Kastilla’s eyes at once curved with her smile. “Then that is settled.”

The call ended, and Jie Ming fell to thinking. With these two seventh-level wizards joining, and the hands gathered by Senior Uncle Augusta, himself a seventh-level wizard, the fighting strength of the party was already enough for the great majority of situations.

Unless the other side brought out a ninth-level creature, the party could come away whole from any enemy it might face.

After a moment’s thought, Jie Ming simply sent word to Viola as well. He had invited so many already that one more would make no difference.

Once word came back from Viola that she agreed, Jie Ming troubled himself no further with the matter.

He turned back to his analyses of the various kinds of extraordinary power on Jack’s plane.

…

…

Time slipped by, and several years passed.

Jack’s plane. The northern city cluster. Inside a military training base.

Early morning, in a training room, a young figure stripped to the waist threw a sudden punch.

Bang!

The surface of the alloy training post before him caved in on the instant.

Jack drew his hand slowly back, sweat dripping from his chin.

He turned to the testing instrument beside him, and a blue light screen rose slowly into view:

Extraordinary ability: 62

Life force: 65

Assessed level: sixth-stage transcendent

Jack stared at the two figures for a few seconds, then let out a small sigh.

“Still too slow.”

Had anyone else heard him say it, they would most likely have thought he was playing Versailles.

After all, Jack was a sixth-stage transcendent at twenty years old.

In the whole of the northern district… in the whole of the human world, even, that already made him a genius of the most dazzling kind!

The more so as Jack had been with the military only a few years, and before that had never had resources worth speaking of.

And even so, his rate of growth had already outstripped the great majority of those his own age.

Yet Jack knew, in himself, that a rate of progress like this was still too slow.

Since his life had settled, he had seldom used the System with anything like the frequency he had back in the forest.

At the time he had supposed he would depend on the System for ever; only later did he learn that once life truly steadies, a great many things change.

A fixed place to live. Food he could count on. Systematic training. The military’s vast apparatus of resources.

And, more important than any of them… Sia.

These things had filled the hollow inside him, and that sense of crisis which had once driven him every waking moment to grow stronger had quickly faded away.

Comfort was indeed his greatest enemy.

Jack stared at the figures on the instrument and thought: “I may as well get hold of some energy crystals before long and recharge the System, and give myself an enhancement for the first time in a good while. Otherwise, if this goes on, the real geniuses will leave me behind.”

As he was thinking it, footsteps came from the doorway. “Tired?”

Jack looked back, and there stood Sia.

She wore the military’s regulation uniform, and carried a towel and a cup of warm water.

In the few years since, the girl had shed the last of her early rawness.

“Well enough.”

Jack took the towel and wiped the sweat from his face.

Sia glanced at the testing instrument. “Good results. Though you don’t look the least bit pleased.”

Jack smiled. “I only feel I could be improving faster.”

At that Sia came forward and patted him on the back. “Don’t put so much pressure on yourself. Other people are still struggling at the second and third stages at twenty, and you are already at the sixth.”

Jack shook his head with a smile, and Sia did not press the point, only turning the conversation. “Oh, Army Command has just sent out a notice. You are to assemble in the conference room.”

Jack nodded, took a quick shower, changed into uniform, and hurried to the conference room.

He pushed the door open to find the place already full.

At a glance, all of the city’s dozen-odd top-level transcendents were present.

Jack tugged at his collar, swept his eyes over the crowd, and soon caught sight of Gavin.

The fellow was waving to him, the same open, hearty smile on his face as in the old days; only his bearing had long since been remade entirely, and there was about him now a keenness ground out of blood.

“Jack! It has been a long time.” Gavin rose and came to meet him.

“It has been a good few months.” Jack bumped fists with him, and the two sat down and fell to talking in low voices.

“I hear you are on city defence now?” Gavin asked.

“Mm. Mostly the forest line on the city’s outer edge. Quiet it certainly is, but there is no real fighting to be had.” Jack said. “And you?”

“Me? Wherever a passage opens, that is where I go.” Gavin grinned. “South, north, I have been over the whole of it. And I have finally reached the sixth stage, the same as you.”

“Ah, you have no idea how much trouble these newly surfaced races are. Treemen, insect-men, slime-men, and undersea men of some kind as well; two years ago it was as though a sluice gate had been opened, and out they came, one after another. The people upstairs talk about a ‘convergence of many worlds’, and it sounds like nothing good to me.”

Jack nodded. “It certainly does not sound like a good omen.”

At that moment the conference room doors opened again, and every voice in the place died at once.

A middle-aged man in dark uniform came in, and the rank on his shoulder boards made a good many of those present straighten instinctively in their seats.

A lieutenant general.

And behind him came the lord of the city.

The two of them walked to the head of the room, one before the other.

The lieutenant general wasted no time. He raised a hand and swept it through the air, and an enormous three-dimensional map unfolded in the middle of the room.

“Gentlemen, the situation is urgent, so I shall make this short.” The lieutenant general’s voice was thoroughly grave.

“Army Command has detected fluctuations from a new spatial passage outside one of the energy crystal mines. The seam in question stands at one of the core power-supply bases for the whole of the northern district. If we lose it, the district’s city defences, its factories, its purification equipment and its medical systems will all be left with serious gaps!”

At this the room stirred at once, and none of those present could keep from turning grave.

His gaze swept over them all like a hawk’s. “Army Command is already mustering forces as a matter of urgency, but the enemy’s spatial passage will in all likelihood open fully within a short time. Command therefore requires you to go on ahead and investigate, and, if it proves necessary, to stop any move the enemy makes!”

“You are the advance force, and the last line of insurance besides. This action is dangerous, and refusal is not permitted. This is a military order. It is a compulsory call-up!”

As the words “compulsory call-up” fell, every person in the room came to their feet, and a single ordered response rang out.

“Sir!”

Beside him, Gavin said in a low voice:

“The usual rules. Whoever kills the most.”

Jack turned his head to look at this friend who had fought at his shoulder for years, and the corner of his mouth slowly lifted:

“Done! Only do not tell me afterwards that I cheated again.”

“Don’t worry.” Gavin grinned. “This time I shall certainly win.”