Wizard: Building a Golem Legion From Zero

Chapter 476: Chapter 464: This Is The End

Allen forced down the tremor that arose from the depths of his soul, regaining control of his facial muscles.

He tugged at the corners of his mouth, managing a somewhat stiff smile. "So it’s President Augustus himself. It is an honor. About that anti-addiction system, perhaps I could open a backdoor for you..."

"There’s no need."

The gentle voice cut him off, laced with a hint of amusement. "That is your due. Your rules are fair. Since I am participating as a player, it is only natural that I abide by them."

’A player...’

’I’m the one being played here.’

Allen felt a surge of bitterness.

He sighed softly and bowed slightly, his posture growing even more deferential. "Why have you summoned me, Your Excellency? What are your instructions?"

A ripple seemed to pass through the pitch-black pupil of the massive eyeball suspended high in the air, like an ancient, deep sea reflecting the birth and death of stars.

"Just a bit of curiosity."

Augustus’s voice remained gentle. "You seem to be... quite interested in the natives of that plane?"

Allen’s heart skipped a beat. He chose his words carefully. "They possess a unique talent related to their Spirit Cores. I believe it holds a certain research value."

"Research value?"

Augustus chuckled, and the surrounding ganglia pulsed with a higher frequency of blue light.

"Allen Wesren, Investigator EX-2071. I’ve reviewed your file. You’re quite adept at calculating cost-benefit ratios. So, tell me, have you calculated just how much you’ve invested to protect that insignificant little Aiselan Kingdom?"

"Your Golem Legion, your Half-plane Workshop, your ’Celestial Net’ system covering the entire plane, and that virtual world consuming immense processing power... Can you possibly recoup those costs on three hundred Credit Points and thirty thousand Mid-Level Magic Stones a year?"

Each question was like a sledgehammer, striking a blow to Allen’s heart.

He fell silent.

"You can’t," Augustus answered for him. "Unless, of course, what you’re after is something more important than the reward for the mission itself."

The air seemed to freeze.

Allen felt an invisible pressure closing in from all sides. The massive eyeball’s mere "gaze" was enough to make his soul ache with a piercing, needle-like pain.

He knew that lies were meaningless before a Moonlight Mage.

"Yes, I admit it."

Allen slowly raised his head, looking directly into that deep blackness. "I’m interested in the fundamental mechanics of the ’Spirit Core.’ I also need a stable environment to collect sufficient data, both to develop my Core Witchcraft and to combat the corruption caused by my Meditation Method."

He had chosen to be honest.

"Oh? Data on humanity?" A hint of genuine surprise entered Augustus’s tone. "I see. No wonder... You are indeed honest."

"I’m in no position to hide anything from you."

"Very good." Augustus’s voice sounded slightly more pleased. Then, his tone shifted as he revealed the truth in a flat, matter-of-fact way.

"In truth, you needn’t have gone to so much trouble. The Aiselan Kingdom has always been one of my experiments."

’So it really was you, the rancher!’

The bitterness in Allen’s heart deepened.

’If you’d told me you were a Moonlight Level powerhouse from the start, I wouldn’t have come here if my life depended on it!’

"I have dozens of sites for bloodline experiments just like Aiselan, scattered across different planes."

"Many of them have built civilizations spanning millennia, composing countless heroic epics, both moving and tragic."

Augustus’s voice held a note of wistfulness. "Some of their stories are quite touching. At times, they can even bring a flicker of feeling to my numbed mind. A pity, then, that they serve a more important purpose for me."

"I simply want to see in which direction a bloodline will evolve as life adapts to a given environment."

A chill shot up Allen’s spine, prickling the back of his neck.

"As for those Heart Eaters..."

The Moonlight Mage’s tone held a barely perceptible note of derision. "I imagine you understand they aren’t naturally occurring Demons. That Dawn Star Level flesh-construct and all the spawn it produces exist to serve my pre-established experimental parameters."

"It periodically releases its spawn to make landfall. The true purpose is not to harvest mature Spirit Cores, but to maintain constant pressure and force the Aiselans’ Spirit Cores to keep evolving."

All fifty-three million natives of the Aiselan Kingdom have struggled on the brink of extinction for generations, believing they were fighting a war for their very survival.

Yet in the eyes of a Moonlight Mage, it was all just a small-scale directed evolution experiment.

They were lab rats, utterly unaware of their predicament and thus blind to true despair.

In a sense, ignorance was actually their best protection.

"You’ve done a fine job, Allen."

Augustus’s voice lost its warmth, the temperature dropping abruptly, like a wind off a polar glacier. "You made the defensive lines impenetrable. The Aiselans are living in peace and prosperity, and their mortality rate has plummeted. This has caused them to lose the most important catalyst for their evolution—the intense pressure of life and death."

"My experiment on Spirit Core mutation has all but stagnated."

"So, several years ago, I intended to intervene and simply erase you—the variable interfering with my experiment."

The surrounding air grew viscous.

There were no fluctuations of Magic Power, no shimmer of spells, and the writhing, fleshy landscape fell deathly silent.

Allen felt an irresistible pressure bear down on him from above.

The Magic Power in his body spontaneously stopped circulating; a Second-level Wizard was hopelessly fragile before this force.

Every bone in his body creaked and groaned. The air was squeezed from his lungs, and a suffocating, drowning sensation completely overwhelmed him.

He couldn’t even move a single finger.

Allen gritted his teeth, his gaze locked on the horrifyingly massive eyeball.

He did not cry out for mercy.

Under the absolute, crushing power of a Moonlight Level being, the chance of success for any form of resistance was zero.

Just a second before his neck was about to snap, the pressure vanished.

"But I discovered something interesting."

Augustus’s voice became gentle once more, now holding a trace of admiration.

"I discovered that your Allen Network and Cyber Spirit Realm are quite interesting."

"You replaced brutal physical culling with virtual death and psychological stimulation. In your ’game,’ the younger generation ’dies’ dozens of times a day. Their minds are repeatedly crushed between despair and hope. This high-intensity ’mental extraction’ has increased their Spirit Core awakening rate to three times that of my previous method of using Beast Tides for selection."

"Highly efficient, low-cost, and with no attrition. A very interesting experimental model. That’s why I spared your life and have been observing you for the past two years."

Allen’s tense body slowly relaxed.

’A close brush with death.’

For the first time, he truly felt the weight of those four words.

’I never would have imagined that in the end, a video game would be what saved me from my fate.’

"Speaking of which," Augustus added casually, as if just remembering something, "your predecessor, that Second-level Wizard named Maurice, wasn’t nearly as clever as you."

Allen stood straight, listening in silence.

"He, too, quickly discovered the secret of the Spirit Cores. But he was far too greedy, and far too foolish. He actually dared to secretly conduct large-scale, induced-mutation experiments."

"By the time I noticed, his actions had severely contaminated the Aiselans’ gene pool, forcing me to reset the bodies of over a hundred thousand individuals."

"And so, after he had exhausted his Magic Power, I let that fool be torn into a thousand pieces."

’So that’s what happened.’

Allen was secretly relieved. Thankfully, he had resisted the urge to experiment on the Aiselans himself and had respected that unspoken boundary.

In the eyes of these High-tier Wizards, the White Wizard’s Code was nothing but empty words. The only thing that could truly save your life was reining in your own inherent greed.

Just when Allen thought he had finally grasped the Moonlight Mage’s principles, Augustus’s tone shifted once again.

"While your new method is efficient, it also has one enormous drawback."

Allen’s heart leaped into his throat once more.

"The peace and affluence you’ve brought have significantly increased the Aiselans’ average lifespan, while their birth rate is declining. This severely slows the pace of genetic iteration."

"For my purposes, an observation cycle of over a hundred years for a single sample is simply too long."

"What I require are test subjects that live and die quickly, that iterate rapidly—not a long-lived race that can survive for two or three hundred years."

The Moonlight Mage’s gentle voice echoed softly in Allen’s ear, like the whisper of death itself.

"So, Allen Wesren."

"What, then, should I do with you?"

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