Wizard: My career panel has no upper limit

The corridor begins to slope downwards after the exit of the third exhibition hall.

The slope is not steep, not as gentle as the gentlest ramps in ordinary buildings.

Those who walk on it can instinctively feel that different kind of gravity.

Ron maintained a steady pace; the length of this descending corridor was difficult to estimate.

Occasionally, something is embedded in the side wall of the corridor.

It's probably not a decoration; it looks like a tool that was casually placed aside during work and then forgotten.

Some are measuring instruments, and the pointers on the dials have long been fixed, so it's unknown what readings were recorded back then.

Some are the remains of model structures, the unfinished core of ingenious construction, with exposed side sections of meshing gears.

There are also a few places that have nothing but the recesses of the inserts and the wear marks on the edges of the recesses.

The atmosphere of this corridor is completely different from the previous exhibition halls; it's much more private.

He looked away and continued walking.

At the end of the corridor was a door.

There was no lock on the door, nor was there a doorknob.

There is only a tiny recess in the very center of the door, just big enough to fit a fist.

Ron pointed the divination disc at himself, quickly made a crisis prediction, and then placed his palm on it.

After about three breaths, the door opened.

The interior was smaller than he had imagined.

Given the overall size of the Craftsman's Labyrinth, the proportion of this inner chamber is like the volume of a seed in a mature tree.

Ron stood at the entrance and scanned every inch of the space.

On the left wall, there was a low table with some tools that Ron recognized most of.

A carving knife, a measuring gauge, and some containers he had seen in the alchemy workshop.

And several folded drawings, which were pressed under a round paperweight.

On the right, there is a chair.

The chair was facing away from him, and a human figure was sitting on it.

He's not tall; his back is much shorter than the average person's.

The head is somewhat round, and the ends of the hair don't look like they grew naturally.

The humanoid figure sensed him and turned around.

The other person's face was made of wood, with clearly visible textures, and a knot scar right on the left cheek.

The body has a deep brown color that comes from soaking for a long time, and its luster has been dulled by time.

The craftsman who created this face clearly possessed extremely high skill.

It seemed to have waited a long time, eagerly anticipating this: "You have finally arrived, ancient alchemist."

At this point, the puppet scratched the scar on its face:
"Of course, only ancient alchemists are generally able to enter here."

"Have you been waiting here for a long time?"

"Not too long." The puppet tilted its head. "Not too short either, just... wait."

It stood up from the chair:

“I am the gatekeeper of the inner chamber, a title I gave myself; the master has never called me that.”

“My owner calls me number thirty-four. My early works were numbered sequentially, but many of them have been removed.”

"I was lucky. One day, my owner suddenly stopped taking things apart, so I stayed."

Seeing that the other person was about to launch into a long speech, Ron quickly interjected:

"So, number thirty-four, what kind of test do I need to pass?"

He wasn't an impatient person, but the situation outside clearly couldn't wait any longer.

Upon hearing this, the puppet pursed its simple mouth, as if it were smiling.

It reached behind its back, took something out, and threw it on the floor in front of Ron.

That was a Rubik's Cube.

The perfect king gave him a gift at his wedding, or rather, a gift for his future offspring whose possibility was uncertain.

He was quite familiar with this, and had conducted a very unpleasant study on it for a period of time.

The puppet observed his expression and nodded in satisfaction:

"It seems you recognize it. Good, that saves me the trouble of explaining the rules."

What are the rules?

"Untie it." The puppet clapped its hands. "Once it's untied, you can go inside."

It pointed behind it, where a faint outline could be seen, but it was sealed away.

"That's where the master is."

Ron picked up the Rubik's Cube from the ground and tried to gently rotate the edge of the first layer.

The first layer moved, the corresponding position on the second layer changed, and this led to the third and fourth layers... He stopped moving his hand.

I had previously disassembled part of it so that he would know how many segments the first layer of this Rubik's Cube has.

The first layer has fewer than thirty visible segments, but the hidden logic contains no fewer than one hundred and twenty lines.

The number of floors, the total... He had given up counting before he could even finish counting on his fingers.

I made a record of it when I was doing my research:
"The number of layers is roughly equal to a power of a very large natural number. The exact value cannot be confirmed at present, but it can be confirmed that 'the bottom has not yet been reached'."

The King of Perfection said it would take five thousand years, so he probably wasn't entirely joking.

This is a partial, realistic estimate given by the other party after assessing the actual complexity of the object and their own computing power.

With external assistance, a smart brain, and other devices, he once made a conservative estimate:
It will probably take several decades to a hundred or two hundred years for me to have any hope of solving it.

This is based on the premise that after deriving the stable formula, the solution can be solved quickly.

At this point, the enclosed space cannot connect to the outside world to access any external computing power.

Ron spun the Rubik's Cube in his hand, feeling its extremely smooth texture and the precision of its interlocking mechanism.

He raised his gaze and looked at the puppet.

The puppet was looking at him: "When do you plan to start?"

It spoke with a mocking tone, as if Ron's actions were something it found extremely amusing.

Ron ignored it and found a place to sit down near the low table.

I placed the Rubik's Cube on my lap and began to re-examine the logic of the first layer.

Yes, this thing is based on the one created by the King of Perfection.

They are largely the same, but completely different in the details.

In other words, I have to start solving it all from scratch.

………………

At the entrance to the Craftsman's Labyrinth, the King of Perfection planted his shovel back into the soil at the edge of the flowerbed.

He stood up and casually wiped his muddy hands on his apron.

I turned my head and looked at a small purple flower blooming at the very edge of the flowerbed.

The flower stem bent slightly when His gaze fell upon it.

"I'll come back to take care of you later," Hephaestus said to the flower.

He turned and walked toward the main entrance of the labyrinth.

The three doors, located in different parts of the corridor, were each open.

Inside Chloe's exhibition hall, the mutated creature was suspended in the very center.

It maintains a kind of change that appears random to outsiders, but in fact has an extremely precise internal logic.

The two were about twenty paces apart.

If someone were to see both the witch and the shape-shifting creature at this moment, they would probably feel that there is some inexplicable similarity between the two.

One is the weaver of the threads of fate, and the other is the eternal changer of forms; both use their own methods to regard possibility as their essence.

“When you find the form you’ve been searching for,” Chloe said, “remember to let me know.”

The entity did not answer; it had never possessed the ability to speak.

But the Weaver Girl could sense that after she finished speaking, the other person's appearance changed a beat slower, as if they were seriously thinking about something.

Chloe walked toward the exit of the passage.

When she walked out, her hands were empty and her back was straight.

But on the loom of fate, new threads quietly connected with the changes in the exhibition hall, weaving them into its own warp and weft.

When Vinard walked out of the seed room, the tool bag he was carrying was much heavier than when he went in.

He sealed the seeds in the exhibition hall separately, placing each one separately to prevent interference between their "drafts".

Especially those drafts with various crack shapes that were considered failures.

For him, the cracked seeds were more valuable than the intact ones.

"Now you know why they cracked, right?"

Hephaestus's voice came through.

Vinard didn't look back and continued walking forward:

"Parameter conflict, each seed contains multiple drafts."

At some point, the Creator realized that if two sets of rules existed simultaneously, they would be extremely unstable and could even destroy each other.

Then He stopped and didn't continue.

"So how do you think those rules should be made to allow them to coexist?"

Vinard then stopped in his tracks.

He stood there for a few seconds, thinking for a moment:

“I would have told Your Majesty before that we should use a more precise control system to manage those conflict points, so that the two sets of rules would never cross each other’s boundaries at the same time.”

The King of Perfection did not respond, waiting for him to continue.

Vinard folded the data summary again and put it back in his pocket.

"But after I looked inside for a long enough time, I realized something."

He turned around and finally faced the King of Perfection; the red dot of the electronic eye remained perfectly stable at that moment.

"The conflict itself... is not the problem."

The sound output from the mechanical device was somewhat choppy.

For him, this moment felt like having taught for many years, only to suddenly contradict his own conclusions in the classroom:

"In fact, some rules can still work even when there are conflicts, just like code. Some rules may have errors, but they can still run."

The King of Perfection offered no comment, but pointed in the direction of the exit: "Let's go, they need you outside."

When Salamander and Teostra appeared, they appeared to be in the worst condition.

At least his equipment and robes were almost completely destroyed, and he could only maintain a semi-elemental state.

After the dragon broke free of the image, its actual size was much larger.

With the wingspan lowered, the wingtips could almost brush against the walls of the corridors on both sides.

Salamanda stood on the dragon's back, arms crossed, her face full of pride.

Chloe carefully circled around the tip of the dragon's tail: "You tamed it?"

"Of course, giant dragon riders, how about it, never seen one before, have you?"

The fire giant jumped off the dragon's back, landing with a loud thud.

Vinard came out, also carefully avoiding the dragon.

He was afraid that the hot air from the other person's breath would damage the precious experimental materials he had painstakingly collected.

“I detected several damages on the walls of the Salamander showroom,” he told the King of Perfection.

“I know.” Hephaestus stood beside the flowerbed, his expression unchanged.
"They can repair that kind of damage on their own."

"That Teostra..."

“Take them all with us.” The Perfect King interrupted him, his gaze falling on the Teostra:
"Although it is fictional based on a specimen, since it has survived to this point, it has the right to choose where to go."

The dragon lowered its head, exhaled another breath of hot air from its nostrils, and hummed:
"Thank you, Your Majesty."

"So this dragon can talk!" Salamander exclaimed in astonishment.

Hephaestus didn't answer, but flicked his hand, and the three people and the dragon were thrown away in an instant.

The aftershocks of the amusement park's collapse continue to spread outwards.

It deflated quietly, like an overstretched airbag.

But this "deflation" tore a hole in the dimensional seal structure.

That opening faces outwards into the outer dimension.

In the outer dimensions, rulers await. The wall has cracked; they don't need to enter fully, just a finger is enough.

The high wizards of the Central Lands are busy dealing with the influx of prisoners after the collapse of Paradise, and the School Alliance's communication channels are so noisy that they are almost unusable.

All forces were focused on the known threats, and no one noticed the quietly widening opening in the peripheral dimension.

The first area affected was the sea area closest to the crack.

That sea area is called the Salt Mist Ocean, which covers a radius of several hundred miles and has a few scattered settlements.

The largest town is called Anchorstone Town, with a population of about three thousand. In the center of the town stands a magical lighthouse.

The lighthouse keeper was a certified wizard who had served as an inspector for the School Alliance for several years before retiring.

Now that he's old, he's spending his retirement in this remote place, and the people in town call him Old Fitz.

Old Fitz was performing routine magical maintenance at the top of the lighthouse, holding a charged crystal in his hand and injecting magic into the magic circle nodes according to a fixed procedure.

He's been doing this very ordinary thing for over a decade; he could do it with his eyes closed.

But that night, when he placed his hand on the node, the magic did not flow in along the usual path.

After it stopped, it began to flow backwards.

Old Fitz removed his hand from the node and frowned as he looked at his palm.

He had no obvious external injuries, and his magic circuits were functioning normally.

But the feeling of being pushed back by something still lingered in my hand.

The sea outside the window was calm, the night wind was light, the stars were clear, and there was nothing unusual.

Old Fitz stared at the sea, sensing something was wrong, but couldn't quite put his finger on it.

His wizarding career instilled in him a habit: whenever he couldn't quite put his finger on what was wrong, he would write it down.

Don't rush to deal with it, and don't rush to eliminate it.

He took out his small notebook:
"The magic flow at the lighthouse node tonight lasted for about three seconds, the reason is unknown."

After finishing writing, he reattached his hand to the node.

This time, the magic flowed in normally.

Old Fitz breathed a sigh of relief and continued with the remaining maintenance.

During the time he was doing his routine maintenance, some things arrived at the south dock of Anchorstone Town.

Those things came to the dock silently from below the sea.

On the other hand, the dock watchman in Anchorstone Town was not cowardly.

He had seen fishermen who had accidentally drowned being pulled from the water, and he had also seen apprentices whose magic had gone berserk blow up huge craters in the docks, but none of this had made him panic.

But that night, he panicked.

The wooden planks on the dock began to creak.

Step by step, the night watchman lowered his head even further into the damp, sticky air.

The sound passed by him a step or two away and paused for a moment.

Seemingly realizing he posed no threat, they quickly left.

The night watchman sat there, counting forty-seven breaths before slowly raising his head.

There was nothing on the dock except for rows of messy, wet footprints.

………………

Old Fitz opened the door and saw the Night's Watchman standing outside, his face as white as a dried fish.

"Come in and speak."

The night watchman's speech was disorganized and he paused frequently, and old Fitz painstakingly pieced together the key information from the disordered words.

It wasn't any kind of sea monster I knew, nor was it one of those prisoners who escaped after the amusement park collapsed; it was...

He frowned, recalling a term he had learned when he was young from reading a tattered book—"the kin of evil gods."

Old Fitz stood up, took the communication stone off the shelf, and tried to tune the channel to the School Alliance's emergency channel.

The channel was already in complete chaos; it wasn't just their area that had experienced trouble.

He interrupted with a report, but no one responded.

The responses were drowned out by the influx of other signals, making them impossible to distinguish.

Old Fitz put down the communication stone, leaned against the window, and looked out into the town.

In the darkness, the lights in several houses were off.

He closed the lighthouse door and reinforced the seal from the inside:
"Stay here and don't go anywhere."

The night watchman sat in the corner, knees to chest, curling himself up into a ball.

In that brief moment, two more lights in the town went out.

Similar anomalies have appeared in settlements around the Salt Fog Ocean.

What seeps in through the cracks contaminates everything within its coverage area.

The lower the magic concentration of a living being, the faster it is contaminated.

Since mortals lack magical barriers, the effects of inhaling those colorless and odorless fumes were not immediate.

At various unpredictable junctures, the pollution begins to change them from within.

The way people change is different for everyone.

Some people's bones begin to change shape as they sleep.

When I woke up this morning, my body proportions were no longer what they were yesterday.

There was a fat woman in the town who sold salted fish, and overnight two extra joints appeared on her fingers.

His skin turned as pale as a fish's belly, and the irises of his eyes spread out, covering nearly half of the whites of his eyes.

She sat at her front door, looking bewildered, wondering why her neighbors all backed away when they saw her.

Some people change from the inside out.

They would stop midway through their normal activities, stare in the direction where there was nothing, and mutter incoherently.

It started as an occasional occurrence, but gradually became more and more frequent, and soon I was stuck in that daze and couldn't get out.

Those that have completed the entire transformation process become something else entirely.

Lower-level supernatural species were the second group to be affected.

There was a group of water elemental spirits who, after being mutated, no longer moved with the water flow.

They began to consciously move closer to land, showing an attraction to places with magical fluctuations.

A patrol consisting of three certified wizards encountered a group of these mutated elves on the outskirts of the Salt Mist Ocean.

Of the three, one of them had his defenses breached by the elves' suicidal attack the moment he made contact.

Subsequently, the magic circuit was damaged, and the user lost the ability to fight.

The remaining men fought and retreated, and the subsequent events were recorded in just one line in the report:

"Contact was lost during the retreat, and subsequent tracking signals were interrupted for unknown reasons."

The word "out of contact" appears very frequently.

Some people have genuinely gone missing, communication has been cut off, and there is no way to verify their whereabouts;
Some people are "out of contact" in another sense, and this kind of loss of contact is much more difficult to deal with than the former.

The alliance's emergency response system is operating at extreme overload.

Old instructions are overridden by new circumstances, and new instructions are overridden again by updated circumstances.

This is a systemic sense of defeat.

Each node is facing pressure exceeding the preset limit at the same time, and there is no one that can be diverted to support other places.

Travis cursed a lot of unconstructive things in his mind, but still gave a very pragmatic assessment on the channel.

She quickly came to a conclusion.

Some places are neither within the scope of what can be defended nor within the scope of what can be relocated; the Salt Mist Ocean is one of them.

The area closer to the crack can no longer be described as "contamination".

The rule begins to selectively fail in localized locations.

Flames don't necessarily burn upwards, and gravity doesn't necessarily fall vertically downwards.

The collision between matter does not necessarily produce the transmission of force.

The most troublesome are those living organisms that remain alive after being infected.

They are still alive and moving, and are constantly spreading the pollution they carry to the outside world.

………………

Nari sensed the crack appearing even before the wizards.

Much earlier than expected, even before the last ley line pillar of Paradise collapsed, she had already noticed signs that the boundary layer of the Great Abyss was beginning to loosen.

The auras that seeped in, upon reaching the boundary of the Great Abyss, gave her a kind of cognition that only those of her kind could share.

The Mother in the Great Abyss is actually the most ancient ruler.

That was a very, very long time ago, so long that even the rulers themselves probably wouldn't bother to look back on that history anymore.

The mother later became the Great Abyss itself, and the Great Abyss merged with the bottom layer of the entire main world.

Nari, who possesses partial authority, can naturally expend power to fill those cracks.

But she did not take immediate action.

She needs to weigh whether it's worth doing, and what the costs will be if she does it.

At the moment her mother fell back into slumber, the Abyss's primary authority belonged to her, and there was no dispute about that.

But by exercising her authority, she was essentially using her mother's power to get things done.

Each movement brings the other person up a little bit, a little closer to waking up.

Of course, she didn't want her mother to wake up.

With this in mind, the tendrils of consciousness began to extend outward, probing the location and size of the crack.

There were more cracks than she had anticipated; they were dozens of openings scattered across nodes in different dimensions.

Some are in the material layer, some are in the information layer, and some are in an intermediate state that she cannot accurately locate at present.

After scanning all those quantities, she realized one thing: filling them all up would be extremely difficult.

Moreover, no one actually asked her to help.

Ultimately, there is only one true connection between oneself and the outside world.

Hmm... Azalea can barely be considered half a [something] now.

Ron is now in the inner chambers of the Craftsman's Labyrinth, trying to awaken the Creator.

The outside world is descending into chaos at an alarming rate.

Those cracks are still seeping outwards.

She couldn't handle the already established contaminated area, nor did she intend to.

That's a problem that the wizarding civilization itself needs to face; she has no obligation to wipe away every stain for them.

But she can plug the crack itself.

She had no special feelings for the main world, nor did she highly value the wizarding civilization.

Those peripheral rulers have no influence over the Great Abyss itself.

In fact, they were all carefully avoiding the Great Abyss.

They were terrified that the "mother" inside would awaken and turn against them, as the example of the Star Eaters was still fresh in their minds.

But if the baby were here, they certainly wouldn't want their home to become ruins.

Nari hopes that when Ron comes out, he will see that there is still a barely intact world outside.

According to her own logic, this matter wasn't an obligation, but rather... a gift.

After making up its mind, the boundary layer of the Great Abyss began to grow towards the cracks, pressing those openings together from the outside in.

The infiltrating energy was blocked outside the boundary layer, and the infiltration was thus cut off.

During this process, there was a very slight fluctuation at the deepest part of the Great Abyss.

Nari ignored it and focused all her attention back on guiding it.

The cracks continued to narrow, and the boundary layer continued to grow.

Those "fingers" that reached in from the outer dimensions began to be pushed outwards, one segment at a time.

But there are also those familiars who have already established themselves in the main world, mortals whose consciousness has been invaded by the aura, and extraordinary beings who were the first to be affected because of their proximity to the source.

She was only responsible for sealing the entrance and preventing more from coming in; the rest was not her concern.

Soon, the penetration from the outer dimensions was completely cut off, and the Great Abyss returned to silence.

Nari sensed deeper and confirmed that his mother was still where she should be, remaining asleep.

The troubles that have seeped into the main world haven't ended yet, but that's no longer relevant to me.

She helped with what she could; the rest was up to them. (End of Chapter)