The wizard era begins with the alchemist wizard

Chapter 879 The Supreme Ruler's Puppet Core

After seeing Carlo off, Lars returned to the laboratory with practiced ease.

After Richard realized his identity had been exposed, he dissolved his fate contract with Ral. However, their relationship actually became closer because of the contract's dissolution.

Tree Spirits are a very peculiar race.

Theoretically speaking, the Ral that Richard sees is only a part of the Tree Spirit. The complete Tree Spirit should consist of Ral and the World Tree in which he is currently located.

The Tree Spirits, as their name suggests, are spirits who emerged from the World Tree.

This wondrous life form filled Richard with immense curiosity. Ral, a man of unwavering resolve, struck a deal with Richard: he would become Richard's research subject.

Richard's reward to him was a series of evolutions.

The evolutionary path of the Tree Spirit is different from the conventional evolution of the World Tree and the conventional evolution of physical constitution.

The evolutionary path of a tree spirit follows the path of bloodline, but it requires almost no intervention from rules.

For a tree spirit to evolve, it simply needs to continuously develop its bloodline and then move in the direction of its mother tree—the Great World Tree.

Of course, all of this is predicated on the fact that the Tree Spirit must have a world.

Without the world, the Tree Spirit would be permanently stuck as a level 3 creature, unable to move.

However, the astral plane has no shortage of worlds. If all else fails, large-scale dungeons will do.

There are only so many tree spirits that can reach the level of world master, so the world as a resource is not considered scarce.

Upon entering the laboratory, Lars asked a question he had wanted to ask earlier.

"My lord, you don't need to go through so much trouble to see the Great World Tree. You just need to show your strength, and the Great World Tree will definitely grant you an audience."

“But what’s the point of such a meeting?” Richard glanced at him and replied calmly.

"What I want is to meet the World Tree privately. Going to meet it in a grand and public manner is no different from not meeting it at all."

"Ok?"

Ral couldn't quite understand Richard's idea.

Richard offered no explanation; he hadn't been focused solely on experiments these past few days.

Through his clone, he has gained a thorough understanding of the Natural Federation.

Of the five races within the Natural Federation, apart from the Tree Spirit Race, the other four races are divided into two factions: the Mechanical Race and the Tide Spirit Race, and the Dark Horde Race and the Winged Human Race.

The conflict between these two factions is a matter of policy and a product of past contradictions.

The two factions have a very sharp dispute over the Cursed Demon Empire.

The Tide Spirits and the Mechanical Race believe that the Natural Federation should take this time to recuperate and restart its world expansion. The Ghostly Race and the Winged Race, on the other hand, are staunch advocates of war.

They advocated a preemptive strike, taking advantage of the ceasefire in the Cursed Demon Empire to gather forces and launch an attack, thereby gaining the initiative in the war and even defeating the Cursed Demon Empire.

This dispute over the line of action is not only due to the ruler's own personality, but also a product of the accumulated contradictions during the war.

The prolonged war allowed the Dark Horde, a race that relies on the corpses of living beings for evolution, to advance rapidly in strength. Meanwhile, the Winged Humans were the major logistical force, responsible for transporting supplies to almost every battlefield.

As the weakest of the five races, the Winged People naturally did not want the war to end.

In contrast, the Machine Race, facing difficulties in expansion and the constant loss of core members, deeply abhorred civilized warfare. The Tide Spirit Race, on the other hand, naturally disliked conflict. Although powerful, they couldn't sustain themselves through war like the Dark Race, and thus desired no conflict.

In this situation, the attitude of the Tree Spirits is crucial.

Over the past period, the Great World Tree has leaned towards a pacifist stance, which is why war has not yet broken out.

What Richard needs to do is to make the Great World Tree completely side with the pacifists, thereby extinguishing the flames of war between the Natural Federation and the Cursed Demon Empire.

The war with the civilization devourers has already made this monster's mouth water. We can't give him any more war as nourishment.

After thinking it over, Richard took the crystal artifact that Carlo had just given him out of his pocket.

The moment his fingers touched the crystal creation, the Miracle Forge gave him a message.

[Ingredient: The core of the Supreme Ruler's puppet]

[Extractable Information: Core Design Blueprint of the Supreme Ruler]

[Refining Cost: 1000 Spirit Points]

[Refinable Technique: Construct Casting]

[Refining Cost: 500 Spirit Points]

"The Supreme Being dominates the core of the puppet... It's no wonder that this is the most technologically advanced civilization among the three great civilizations?" Richard sighed softly.

Among the previous civilizations, the three civilizations differed in their strengths and weaknesses in various aspects. In terms of the technology of weapons of war, the supreme civilization was undoubtedly the best.

Even the current civilization devourers' army of furnacemen and Titans are mostly equipped with equipment made from the technology of the Supreme Beings.

The Titan King once told him that if the Supreme Beings hadn't risen to power in the shortest time and hadn't had the weakest foundation, perhaps a single Supreme Being civilization could have fought against the Devourers of Civilizations.

Richard did not choose to refine the design blueprints because his mental strength had just recovered to the level of a Dominator, which was 600 mental strength.

He couldn't afford the costs of refining the design drawings at the moment.

However, although the design drawings cannot be extracted, the extraction techniques still consume enough resources.

Richard had always been curious about the alchemy of the Supreme Beings, but for many years he had never encountered a technique that he could refine.

Now, he could finally see it for himself. The refining process was quick; the technique called Construct Forging was refined in just half an hour.

Richard integrated it into his body, but strangely, this time, he saw nothing.

This time, everything in the vision was blurry, as if shrouded in a thick fog, making it impossible to see anything clearly.

This was the first time Richard had ever encountered such a situation.

After a long time, the fog dissipated, but the illusion also dissipated. Richard saw nothing, only that he had inexplicably learned something.

With a wave of his hand, energy began to gather in the void, and free elements in the air also entered the energy model in his hand.

In the energy model, free elements and energy resonated, transforming into tiny crystals. These crystals then spread and connected, and in a short time, a Supreme Crystal the size of a fingernail appeared in Richard's hand.

Richard held the crystal up to his eyes, and under the light, it refracted a myriad of colors.

“Exquisite skill,” Richard said softly.

This technique, known as Construct Forging, essentially relies on energy and elements to create stable structures, thereby transforming enchantments into material properties. Dragon alchemy, used by dragons, is merely a simplified version of this technique.

All enchanting techniques will be rendered ineffective when faced with materials created using this technology.

After all, you can't take away the fundamental properties of a material.

Unfortunately, this technology is too difficult and too complex.

This technology is clearly designed for a specific race. Without a specific racial talent, it would be extremely difficult for ordinary races to learn it, if not impossible.

Even for Richard, if he hadn't refined the skill, it would have taken him a considerable amount of time to master it.

Richard held the core up to his eyes; its complex internal structure resembled an endless maze of mirrors.

"If the craftsmanship is this exquisite, then I wonder how amazing the design must be."

Thinking this, Richard casually waved his hand, and a dimensional rift appeared in the air. Behind the rift, a mist that seemed to steal one's soul was about to invade the astral plane through the rift.

This is a new dimension that Richard discovered, called the Bewitching Dimension.

This dimension is filled with an ever-present, soul-stealing mist, within which countless souls wander. These beings' souls cannot find their way home and can only live in the mist until their soul structures collapse and become part of this eternal mist, or they are hunted down by the natives of this bewitching dimension and become someone else's meal.

Of course, for a ruler like Richard, the effect of this fog was no different from ordinary fog.

The dimensional natives—the Spirits of the Mist—and the souls stolen by the Soul-Stealing Mist, were, to Richard, moving sources of soul essence.

"Lal, I'm going out for a bit. Let me know if there's any news."

"No problem, sir."

……

The Tree Spirit Mother World.

The World Tree, reaching to the heavens and the earth, stands majestically like a pillar of the sky. Over countless years, the bark of this great World Tree has turned into stone.

From a distance, the tree trunk, resembling a pillar, looks exactly like a mountain.

Many tree spirits roam among these mountains.

These tree spirits look like some kind of bee, but their bodies are longer and their wings are larger.

They are the retinue of the Great World Tree, responsible for caring for the Great World Tree and maintaining the world's root system.

"Second Master".

The World Tree trunk, with a protruding branch. The Alchemist Saint Carlo gently shook the trunk towards a tree spirit.

The tree spirit bowed in return.

"Lord Carlo, are you here to visit my master?"

"Correct."

"Then you may have come at a bad time. The master just had a fight with Lord Youming of the Youhai Clan, and he's probably not in a good mood right now."

"Lord of the Underworld?" The eye on the trunk of the tree frowned slightly.

"Has he come to persuade the mother tree to start a war again?"

"That seems to be the case."

Upon hearing this, two leaves fell from the tree canopy.

"Isn't it good to live a peaceful life? We've been fighting this war for five thousand years. We finally had a period of peace, and now there are people who want to reignite the flames of war."

The war between the Natural Federation and the Cursed Demon Empire has not been constant; for the past 50,000 years, their war has been intermittent.

Every so often, the Cursed Demon Empire launches a war. This war, however, has lasted for nearly five thousand years, making it the longest war since the birth of the Natural Federation.

That was also the most dangerous one.

If the Cursed Demon hadn't abruptly stopped the war, the Natural Federation would have dragged the Great World Tree's main body to the front lines.

“That’s how the Ghost Clan is,” the tree spirit said softly.

Carlo swayed the branch and said, "Let the Mother Tree be angry. Take me to see Her. I have good news to share; it should make the Mother Tree happy."

(End of this chapter)