It took almost three hours for everybody to read the two intelligence reports.
The meeting room of the Council of Elders was absolutely quiet.
After a long time, an elder who couldn’t hold back the suffocating atmosphere finally asked, “Alfred, are you sure the intelligence is accurate?”
“I know it looks unbelievable, but it’s true.” Alfred heaved a sigh. “When we lived in seclusion spurning the rest of the world, those Golden Sons ran into our world from an alternate dimension. It was two years ago.”
“They’re undying?” Murphy snorted. “What if their souls are imprisoned?”
Alfred shook his head. “Someone already tried that, but it didn’t work. Their souls seem to be protected by natural laws. After their bodies died, their souls would go into a strange alternate dimension. No spells can work on their souls until they get a new body.”
Everybody felt a strong headache. Creatures that could resurrect, such as the liches, were already tricky enough.
But the liches had obvious vulnerabilities. They could be killed easily when their phylactery was located.
As long as one was good at soul magic, they could locate a lich’s phylactery by tracking down the pieces of the lich’s soul after they destroyed the lich’s clone.
Of course, the lich would try to relocate his phylactery before he was tracked down. All that mattered was who was faster.
In general, while the liches were powerful, they could be dealt with.
However, the Golden Sons’ souls were protected. The only way to weaken them was to kill them nonstop until they became like beginners.
How many times must they be killed for that?
Besides, they could always escape. There was no way to prevent them from making a comeback.
It was pointless to make enemies of these people.
“It looks like we can’t restrain them forcefully,” said Murphy angrily. “Then how should we treat Roland? His spell is as good as any Legendary spell. Most spells can only deal limited damage, but not this spell.”
The other elders all understood Murphy’s intention.
Most low-level spells might become more powerful as their users leveled up or put on new equipment, but the power of such spells had an upper limit. For example, Inferior Fireball could never be more powerful than a Superior Fireball. Even if a god were to cast Inferior Fireball, he could only cast thousands of fireballs at best to increase the power of the spell indirectly.
In terms of the power of an individual Inferior Fireball, even one cast by a god wouldn’t be much greater than one cast by a Legend.
But the self-exploding fireball that Roland created was different. While he could enhance the damage of the spell regularly, he could also compress magic power into the fireball unlimitedly.
The power of the fireball could be infinitely increased as long as the caster could control it.
It meant that, as long as one was strong and had equipment that stored tremendous magic power, the self-exploding fireball they cast could cause an unbelievable explosion.
If a demigod were to use the spell with full strength, they could probably even hurt a god.
“That’s probably the reason why the Goddess of Magic recalled this spell half a day after releasing it.” Alfred spoke of speculation. “After all, Mystra became a god as a human being. It’s understandable that she’s wary of other Mages like us.”
Everybody thought that the speculation made sense.
The gods and goddesses weren’t invulnerable.
At the very least, Mordenkainen defeated the Goddess of Fortune several times.
After being bullied by evil gods for almost a hundred years, Melf created Melf’s God-Slaying Spell and killed five evil gods in a row, making all of them tremble in fear.
Now that a new spell that threatened the gods appeared, it was natural that the Goddess of Magic took it back.
“If Roland is so talented, why don’t we support him?” Alfred said with a smile, “Since Murphy only paid three level-three spells for this spell, it means that Roland is not a petty man who keeps all his findings to himself. Let’s make friends with him first. If he has new creations later, we can make deals with him.”
“That’s a good idea.” Many elders agreed with him.
But Murphy was still doubtful. “What if he won’t make deals with us?”
“That means we aren’t close enough to him.” The Great Elder smiled. “We’ll see what we can do if that happens. There’s no such thing as a perfect plan.”
Then, the provisional meeting was over.
Roland’s life was still busy. Every day, the classroom, the library, and his home were the only places he went to.
After putting on the slave collar, Marilyn spent little time at home. She wandered outside a lot.
In the class, the atmosphere was a lot better after Roland sent out his warning. At least, the students from Fareins dared not openly bully their classmates from other countries or the orcs.
Soon, one month passed. As usual, it was a five-day holiday for the students.
The students were allowed to leave the Red Magic Tower and travel in other places.
Generally speaking, most students would go to Velgat, a neighboring city of hybrids. Most of the residents of the city were vulpera.
After the class, Betta came to Roland and asked hopefully, “Brother Roland, do you want to go travel in Velgat?”
Roland shook his head. “I need to go back to Delpon first.”
Although his friends were defending Delpon for him, and he could ask Li Lin and the others to pass his commands through the guild system, the whole city would become uneasy if Roland, the man who was really in charge, was away for too long.
Slightly disappointed, Betta ran off alone.
Looking at Betta’s back, Roland felt that something was wrong. He felt that two things were hanging on Betta’s back, but when he detected it more clearly, he began to feel that it was his illusion.
After a moment of confusion, Roland left the Red Magic Tower and put down a magic beacon. Then, he activated Long-Distance Teleportation.
Since this place was too far away from Delpon, Roland had to teleport himself three times before he reached Delpon.
Hardly had he returned to the Magic Tower when Andonara hugged him and dragged him to the bedroom.
Though he still couldn’t break her defense, Andonara had other ways to please Roland.
Vivian joined halfway through. This girl didn’t have a high defense. The two of them made Roland’s back hurt.
After that, Roland met with his friends. During the feast, he found that they looked a lot healthier than before. They seemed to have regained their masculinity.
“Roland, how many days will you stay?”
“It’s a five-day holiday, and I have four days left.”
They looked at each other, and Li Lin said, “We’ll be away for three days. We’re going to the neighboring city.”
Roland leaned back. “You’re doing it again?”
“You have your queen and your secretary. Don’t criticize us because you’re not as hungry as us.” Li Lin seemed rather unhappy.
“Okay, you do whatever you want.” Roland shook his head helplessly.
The next day, his friends rode off from the city in the early morning.
When Roland examined the administrative affairs during the month at his Magic Tower, a swarm of plump bats flew in through the window and fell before Roland’s desk as a mature woman in black.
She looked awful, and her face was pale. She seemed to have seen something dreadful and disgusting.
Tapping the desk, she said, “A group of aggressive Golden Sons came for you. When they saw me, they seemed to want to burn me alive.”
The moment she said that, Roland realized who the visitors were.
He personally went to the gate of the Magic Tower and welcomed them.
The visitors were all wearing magic equipment, and their weapons were shiny. It seemed that the weapons were mixed with silver.
The young man in the lead wasn’t very attractive, but when he smiled, one would feel like approaching him.
“Big man, we’ve found four of the bones that you asked for.” The young man took out four bones that were as white and smooth as jade from his system Backpack.
The bones were a pair of hands and a pair of legs. Then, Roland took out the skull from his own backpack and placed it on the top of the bones.
Then, he realized that the bones on the upper half body were still missing.
“I think one part is still missing.” Roland was briefly stunned.
“We can’t find the last part,” the young man said helplessly. “We’ve almost killed all the vampires in the desert and the Fareins Kingdom, but we haven’t found anything. This is what we found. We were told that it was about the last body part, but we can’t understand it.”
He presented a rather old parchment to Roland.
Casting Language Proficiency on himself, Roland smiled and said, “This is exactly the last part.”
Then, he put five bags of gold coins in front of the young man.
“This is your reward we agreed upon.”
“You are a straightforward man.” The young man put five bags of gold coins into his system Backpack. “Do tell us if you ever need us to run errands for you again.”
The young man left in delight after acquiring a fortune.
Roland looked at his system Backpack, only to find that he became poor again.
He had made a fortune before, and gold coins were offered to him from the sacrifices at his statue, or he couldn’t have paid for the quest just now.
Picking up the slim hand and leg bones, Roland walked to the lab on the third floor with the parchment.
He held the parchment in his hand and transmitted his magic power to it.
He was not transmitting the magic power randomly but in a fixed pattern.
The parchment emitted blue light and disassembled into a big blue circle before Roland.
Through the circle, Roland could see twisted views behind it.
It was a dim world. A bloody plain stretched forward to the horizon.
No plants or animals could be seen at all.
Instead of rushing into the world, Roland waited patiently.
Soon, the blue circle vanished and became the ragged parchment again.
Roland stored the parchment in his system Backpack.
The parchment was a magic scroll that had directions on it and could be used repetitively.
Roland sensed that the scroll was malicious.
That was why he didn’t jump into the magic gate.
