Wizard: My career panel has no upper limit

As for the bloodline... Ron shifted his gaze to the orange-gold hilly area.

The territory of the Bloodline steadily expanded during this chaotic war.

The expansion method is neither the sprawling coverage of the Green Tide nor the mass replication of the Iron Tide.

Upon conquering a new hill, the beast riders first confirm its safety, then the miners explore the geological structure, and the polishers assess the pyroxene reserves.

If the conditions are met, the Echo Tree seed will be planted within seven days, and the Pyroxene Resonance Node will be built within two weeks.

The Soul Backup Network extends to every corner of the new territory.

Then, residents moved in.

Slow, yet incredibly solid.

Every inch of land included in the map is an effective territory that has been fully assessed, systematically developed, and comprehensively utilized.

Not a single vacant plot of land was wasted, and not a single mineral vein was overlooked.

The explorers' paths stretched out in all directions like a spider web, bringing back a continuous stream of geographical information, mineral samples, and ecological data.

Trade with the iron tide steadily expanded, and the specialization of labor was further deepened.

Dawn City gradually developed from a fortress on the high ground into a true metropolis.

Commercial areas, academic areas, workshop areas, and military areas are clearly identifiable functional zones in urban planning.

The Psychic Academy trained the first batch of professional psychics.

It can not only decipher the collective memory within the Echo Tree, but also conduct preliminary spiritual communication, remotely transmitting information between multiple Echo Trees.

This is the bloodline version of the "telegram".

The debates among the three major schools of thought have evolved from casual conversations and verbal sparring into organized public forums.

On the night of the full moon, representatives of the Sunbeam Cult, the Deepstone Cult, and the Faraways hold a public debate under the Echoing Tree in the central square of Dawn City.

The entire city's residents listened in, and sometimes even the patrolling beast riders would stop on the city walls and prick up their ears.

The debate extended from theology to philosophy, and from philosophy to governance:

Who should interpret collective memory?

Should the authority of spiritual mediums be subject to checks and balances?

Is there an upper limit to the exploration range of travelers?

These questions have no standard answers, but the discussion itself is a sign of a mature civilization.

Throughout the entire public server, among all the species submitted by all participants.

Bloodline is the only race that possesses a language system, religious beliefs, historical narratives, urban planning, diplomatic relations, industrial base, military organization, and a rudimentary tradition of intellectual debate.

This is not just a significant lead in the dimension of "civilizational complexity".

This is a comprehensive and balanced development across all dimensions.

The scoring system for the Great Reckoning quietly began to operate.

The scoring system was set by the Creator when the chessboard was created, and has since been maintained and adjusted regularly by the two Witch Kings of his faction.

The system operates independently of anyone's will; once started, it is as unstoppable and unbiased as the rising and setting of the sun and moon.

It scans everything, counts everything, and evaluates everything.

From macroscopic territorial coverage to microscopic genetic diversity indices of individual individuals.

From the overall survival rate curve of a population to the incremental increase in intellectual complexity resulting from the most subtle debate on beliefs within a civilization.

Each dimension of the data is assigned a weight coefficient.

What ordinary participants can see is only the final output – a set of rankings and scores.

Antigonus chose to remain silent while the rating system was in operation.

He sat in the control room of the small chessboard management team, with a dense stream of data jumping on the holographic projection in front of him.

Lady Mercury stood behind him, one hand resting on the back of his chair, her long silver hair cascading down like a waterfall.

"The results will be out soon," Antigonus said in a low voice.

The King of Stability never attends such occasions in person.

The final assessment of the Great Reckoning does not require the presence of any great figure, nor does it require ceremonies or declarations.

All it takes is an extension of will, quietly cast from some distant, untouchable other side.

Just as a sundial eliminates shadows at noon, the time structure of the entire small chessboard silently changes its operating mode.

Time within the grid begins to run.

The day-night cycle is rapidly compressed from its normal rhythm.

It's as if someone put a long, epic film into a high-speed rotating projector, using the violence of film and light to compress thousands of years into a few breaths.

The green tide beneath the azure garden was the first to reach its end.

Ron turned his gaze westward, and as time rapidly passed, he saw the civilization of the Tree of Life School come to an end in a unique way.

The World Tree did not die; the colossal tree that grew through countless seasons of reckoning still stands tall, its canopy stretching across most of the western sky of the planet.

But that fast-forwarded history tells everyone that the continuation of the World Tree's life does not mean the continuation of the Green Tide civilization.

The collective consciousness of the Mother Nest Flower has never truly and completely repaired itself after the impact from the extradimensional creation.

It's like a broken bronze mirror that's been hastily glued back together; every crack is still there, just not very noticeable.

It wasn't until the accelerating tide of time magnified those cracks that Ron could see clearly that after losing several key nodes, the Green Tide's decentralized consciousness network had dropped below a critical value in overall coordination efficiency.

The plants are still expanding, but that expansion has become blind.

The Pioneer Vine spread in the wrong direction, and the Spine Trees covered each other on the land marked as "friendly zone" by the Mother Nest Flower. A war for sunlight quietly broke out within the Green Tide.

In the fast-forwarded footage spanning thousands of years, the territory of the Green Tide not only did not decrease but increased, and its actual control almost collapsed during this period.

The territory is empty.

The rampant plants were no longer coordinated by any central consciousness; they followed their most primal survival instincts and fought for themselves.

The once precise ecosystem, as intricate as a clockwork mechanism, has degenerated into something closer to the wilderness.

The end of the Iron Tide was more straightforward and more thoroughly regrettable.

It was a steel wasteland that followed some kind of excessive success.

In the wave of accelerated time, the Mechanical Empire pushed its replication efficiency to the extreme.

At some point in time, their territory became the largest single power in history.

Without breakthroughs in energy and equipment technologies, the operation of the Iron Tide can only rely on the planet's metal deposits.

After repeated expansions, the total amount of mineral resources could no longer support the energy consumption of that vast mechanical empire.

Mechanical units began to shut down, one after another, starting with edge data acquisition teams, then relay stations, and finally production centers.

That is the destiny of a civilization focused on efficiency.

It is so adept at consuming that it gradually devours the very foundation upon which it depends for survival.

The last batch of Iron Tide units stopped on the barren metal plain.

They stand here, waiting for a maintenance order that will never come.

The fate of the Abyss Descent is the most bizarre of the three.

The periodic aberrations did not completely destroy the species; instead, they gave rise to new things.

As time accelerated, the genes of several generations of survivors recombined themselves at an almost insane speed, producing a very small number of elite individuals who completely broke through the design limits.

These elite individuals are no longer affected by the cyclical distortions.

Their genetic stability surpasses that of their predecessors, while retaining the fighting instincts accumulated by their forefathers through countless brutal eliminations.

The civilization of the Abyss Descent did not continue, leaving behind only a very small elite group.

The other contestants looked at their own squares one by one, each with a different expression.

Some people breathed a sigh of relief, while others nodded slightly, as if everything had been expected.

Some remained silent, their silence a mixture of relief and regret.

I simply gazed at my own little square for a long time, silently bidding farewell to that period of history.

Their race survived.

The city is still here, the system is still here, the flag is still here, and the language is still here.

Perhaps the population has decreased, the territory has shrunk, some branches have been severed, and traditions have been lost.

But the lineage of civilization is a complete thread, stretching from the moment the seed was planted to the present moment touched by the will of the King of Stability, without any break.

That was their answer.

This is what time has given us; no one can deny it, nor can anyone change it.

Antigonus watched from the side, his expression calm and serene.

Ron's grid was the last one touched by time.

He waited for the tide of time to rise and submerge the hilly civilization he had carefully cultivated for so many years.

Those orange-gold city walls, the pyroxene fire burning deep within the rock veins, and the Echoing Tree that quietly stretched its roots through countless dawns and dusks... all were submerged in the torrent of history.

Let's see if they can float to the other side, or if they will quietly sink at some turning point.

The will of the King of Steadfastness arrived swiftly.

The moment acceleration begins, the quality of time changes.

Ron stood in the observation room, looking at the miniature planet in the holographic projection in front of him.

Watch as the bloodline civilization, amidst the rapid alternation of light and shadow, gradually moves towards a tomorrow it never envisioned.

The pressure from external enemies was eliminated during this period of history.

Undoubtedly, sometimes the disappearance of an external enemy is more dangerous than the enemy itself.

That pressure is the glue that binds the three factions of the bloodline together.

The moment the adhesive was removed, the crack began to breathe.

Initially, the debate was at the level of consciousness.

The mediums of the Sunrise Cult say that bloodlines should expand outwards.

Extend the Echo Tree's coverage network to a wider area, extending the network to the boundaries it should reach.

The chief lightsmith of Deepstone said that the expansion is not yet fully prepared technically.

The new configuration of the pyroxene resonant node still has flaws, and rushing into it now would expose everything that has already been built to unnecessary risks.

The generals of the expedition said that expansion was necessary, but not outward from Dawn City as the center.

They should extend their information reach outwards, first understand the boundaries of the world, and then talk about territory.

Three opinions, three directions, but none of them could convince the other two.

Then, the consciousness of the first generation of leaders completely dissipated within the Echoing Tree.

Ron tracked down all the details of that process on the data panel:

The soul imprint of the first generation leader, after experiencing 107 deaths and reconstructions, has come very close to an extreme value.

Each reconstruction is accompanied by a slight loss of information. After 107 iterations, very few of the original tiny details remain.

That kind of death is real, and there is no way to bring the dead back to life.

He's gone, but what he left behind lasts longer than he did.

The problem is: what's left behind needs to be explained.

While he was alive, the three-way debate had a point of reference. Everyone knew that on that fabric woven from the memories of the Echoing Tree, the will of the first leader was the warp, and everything else was the weft.

When the meridian breaks, a power vacuum emerges.

Each of the three parties nominated a new representative, and then sat down at the same table to form a regency council.

The agreement was clear, almost to the point of being rigid:

Any major decision must be agreed upon by all three parties before it can be implemented;

The allocation of public resources must be approved by a vote of the entire parliament.

The deployment of external exploration requires the joint attendance of representatives from all three parties.

An agreement can only be effective if all three parties are willing to abide by it.

Words are dead, but will is alive.

………………

The conflict officially escalated on a cold winter night.

For a spiritual medium, deep meditation is as natural as breathing.

She placed her palm on the tree trunk, her consciousness sinking deep into the roots, wandering through countless layers of collective memory.

This time, however, she sensed something very subtle, something that even "not right" wouldn't be an accurate description.

In her own words, it felt like someone had quietly moved a rock at the bottom of a lake she knew well.

The reef is still there, but it's no longer in its original position.

She didn't speak immediately, but instead engaged in various deep meditations over the next few days.

Each session lasted longer and went into a deeper level than the last.

Her high-ranking spiritualists began to worry.

The medium's diet was reduced by nearly half, and his sleep was almost negligible.

She was either completely unaware of these things, or she was aware but chose not to care.

After some time, she sat in the same spot for a while and finally found two of her most trusted high-ranking spiritual mediums and told them about her discovery.

"The technical team of Deep Stone Sect has moved the tree."

The DeepStone Cult's technical team has the authority to maintain the pyroxene resonance nodes.

This division of labor naturally formed over many years of tripartite cooperation—whoever has the technology, maintains it, and no one questions it.

The energy connection between the Echoing Tree and the Pyrostone Resonance Node underwent a very subtle change after the massive infrastructure upgrade led by the Cult of Deepstone.

The parameters for memory retrieval have been passed over.

Historical memories related to the Deep Stone Cult have been systematically prioritized in search results.

Some key details related to the Sunrise Cult have been buried in deeper, more inaccessible layers.

"Technical audit".

The medium only said those two words and then waited.

The audit team consisted of technical experts nominated by each of the three parties, and the investigation results quickly appeared on the Regency Council's table.

The representatives of the Deepstone Church denied everything in the council.

He sat upright, his expression solemn, and his tone carried the indignation unique to someone who had been wronged.

Nobody believed them.

The figures in that technical report were so precise that the so-called "error" explanation seemed utterly weak.

The Sunrise Cult was furious to the extreme.

The debate in the square turned into a confrontation, which in turn devolved into mutual accusations, and the mutual accusations almost ended in a bloody conflict.

The Regency Council held numerous emergency meetings that year, but none of them yielded any substantial results.

What follows is the story of a young couple, which occupies only a very short segment in historical records, but is undoubtedly a turning point in the bloodline civilization's descent into complete chaos.

At dusk after a joint exercise in Dawn City, a trainee medium sat on the city wall chanting something.

The young officer rode by on his mutated beast, stopped, and asked her what she was reciting.

She said, "I'm trying to interpret an image from a dream I had last night."

The officer sat on the back of the horse for a while, then took a piece of ore out of his backpack.

It was a rare type of stone that he brought back by chance during his last long journey, and it just happened to resemble a sky with wind and clouds.

He handed the stone to the girl and said, "I don't understand what the tree is saying, but I know there are many things outside that we haven't seen yet."

Once you've solved this problem, I can take you to see the others.

The girl took the stone and tilted her head:
Are you inviting me out, or are you proposing to me?

The young man paused for a moment, then burst into laughter.

He asked whether it was possible that the two were not mutually exclusive.

Several years later, the two went from knowing each other to falling in love and decided to get married.

However, there is no explicit rule stating that cross-genre combinations require any additional approval or testing.

However, in reality, with the three-way conflict already beginning to permeate daily life in various ways, both sides quickly put forward their own conditions.

The conditions for the Sunrise Cult are:
If the young officer is willing to undergo five years of formal training at the spiritual medium academy, learn the theological system of the Sunrise Church, and understand the true meaning of light, they are willing to acknowledge this marital relationship.

The travelers also put forward conditions:

Before becoming a formal medium, a girl must personally venture into an area outside the coverage of the Echoing Tree to complete an independent exploration of the outer realms.

There was a unique pride in that condition, a pride that only travelers could possess.

Each of us has stepped beyond the boundary. Would you like to stand in front of that boundary line and take a look?

The girl thought about it all night and then accepted.

She chose the route with the lowest level of danger, but she still had to travel alone outside the border for three days.

For three days, there was no death insurance, no backup, only herself and the outside world.

The following evening, while searching for a rare mineral for her fiancé as a memento of their first meeting, she accidentally fell.

When the message came back, the young officer was in a class at the psychic academy.

Someone pushed open the door and whispered something in his ear.

Those present remember him slowly standing up, putting the pen back on the table, and softly saying, "Excuse me, I'll be right back," before leaving.

He didn't bother anyone, but he never came back.

A month later, border guards found his body at the border.

Just like the death of his beloved, he chose to go outside the coverage area of ​​the Echoing Tree.

For a long time after the two deaths were preserved, Dawn City remained silent.

But soon, both sides began to accuse each other.

The Sunrise Sect says that the conditions for travelers are too harsh.

They used their own culture to disguise coercion, which ultimately led to this tragedy.

The representatives of the travelers looked back coldly and said that the five-year training requirement of the psychic academy was also a form of coercion.

The Deep Stone Cult played the role of bystanders in this matter.

Their chief polisher only said one sentence during that period, which was casually jotted down by his assistant during a informal tea gathering:

"If we had determined earlier who has the right to decide a person's qualifications and who has the right to define what 'qualified' means, those two people might still be alive."

No one responded to that statement.

It was so accurate that everyone knew that whoever responded next would be stabbing the other person in the back.

So it just hung there in mid-air, no one caught it, no one denied it, and no one really faced it.

During the most intense period of conflict, the Beast Cavalry General had a different idea.

When he was with his old subordinates, he suddenly mentioned a discovery he had made:
"Don't you find it strange? Why is everything so perfectly just right?"

Pyroxene, the Echoing Tree, and even fragments of our star all coincidentally appear together and form a harmonious ternary system.

I often wonder if someone designed our race and this environment.

As he said this, a branch in the campfire snapped and crackled softly.

His cavalry captain remained silent.

He didn't speak until his superior finished explaining the series of investigations and inferences based on his speculation and paused to wait for a response.

"You mean, all the choices our civilization has made so far have been illusory?"

On the other hand, the vice-general's reaction was completely different.

He stared at the investigation report, his finger lightly tapping his knee.

"How can we prove that this is not a misinterpretation?"

He said, "There are other explanations for the formation of pyroxene ore deposits."

The uniqueness of the soul's frequency can also be a natural phenomenon.

We cannot draw such a broad conclusion based on just one investigation report.

The general did not rush to refute:

"Let's assume for now, let's assume we really do have a creator."

"But the first thing that came to my mind was not anger and doubt, but the first step taken by the first leader."

He looked up at the other two people.

“No creator told him that he had to do that.”

He walked out by himself on that cold night.

That choice was his, the fear was his, and the courage was also his.

"The Creator can design our bones and blood, bury pyroxene beneath our feet, and let the Echoing Tree preserve our memories."

But the will that led to that step in the cold night belonged to the leader himself; no one could have planned it.

The cavalry commander stared at him for a long time.

"So what are our options now?" he asked after a long silence.

The general looked down at his palm.

There are so many scars there that it's impossible to tell which one was left from which time.

"Tell the chief medium about this first, then tell the chief lightsmith."

This is too important for us to be the only ones to know.

"And then what?"

"See how they respond, and then make a judgment."

He added:
"If there is a creator, then after creating us, he chose not to directly manage us, otherwise our internal strife would have been stopped long ago."

"This shows that he gave us a certain...right to make our own decisions."

The embers in the campfire began to dim.

The three of them sat in that silence for a long time, and no one spoke again.

The blue-gray on the horizon deepened slightly, like paint slowly spreading in water, silently. (End of Chapter)