I became a god through archaeology in the Wizarding World.

The rain poured down, and the night sky over Plymouth was suffocated by thick, leaden clouds.

The carriage wheels crunched over the puddle-strewn cobblestones, making a teeth-grinding sound.

Rhodes sat in the bumpy carriage, his body swaying with the rise and fall of the carriage, but his back was straight, like a sharp sword about to be drawn.

"Barsaze..."

Rhodes murmured the Iron Duke's name, his fingers unconsciously stroking the Titan core fragment he had wrapped in layers of alchemical cloth in his arms.

He underestimated this man.

Rhodes had always believed that the Iron Duke was merely a warlord who revered military might, an ambitious man who sought to use cannons and muskets to challenge the monarchy.

But he was wrong.

The aura emanating from that basement indicated that the Iron Duke had gone further down the forbidden path of bio-alchemy than most of the madmen of the Truth Society.

If the Titan in Rhodes's hands represents the extremely precise and coldly rational mechanical theology of the First Age, then the monster that the Iron Duke is creating is a biological mutation filled with bloodshed, chaos, and rage.

Once that thing is truly completed, coupled with the vast army under the Duke's command...

Rhodes felt a chill creep up his spine to the back of his head.

He's too weak right now.

Whether facing the king's unfathomable power and curses or the duke's impending unleashed war monster, his current strength seems so weak.

He was like a tightrope walker; though he held the power to destroy a kingdom, a slight gust of wind could shatter him to pieces.

"We must become stronger."

Rhodes's eyes gradually hardened in the darkness, even revealing a hint of ruthlessness, "At all costs."

……

It was already late at night when they returned to their secret hideout in the lower city.

On the surface, this place is an old bookstore called Black Cat, but in reality, the underground has been transformed by Rhodes into a sturdy alchemy workshop.

Benjamin was sitting behind the counter wiping a short-barreled shotgun when he saw Rhodes push the door open and a rare look of seriousness appeared on his usually cynical face.

"You look like you just crawled out of a pile of dead bodies." Benjamin tossed him a towel. "Didn't the Duke chop you up and feed you to the dogs?"

"Almost."

Rod took the towel, dried his rain-soaked hair, and said without explanation, "Don't let anyone bother me tonight. Even if the sky falls, wait until I come out tomorrow morning."

Benjamin was taken aback; he rarely saw Rhodes with such an almost obsessive serious expression.

He abandoned his joking thoughts and nodded: "Understood. I will activate all the defensive arrays. Unless they blow this building up, no one can get into the basement."

Thanks.

Rod patted him on the shoulder and turned to walk towards the secret door leading underground.

As the heavy stone door slowly closed behind him, completely shutting out the sounds of wind and rain from the outside world, Rhodes' world returned to deathly silence.

The basement was filled with the familiar smell of engine oil and herbs.

Rhodes wasted no time; he went straight to the experimental table and took out the Titan core fragment from his arms.

It was a black crystal, only the size of a fist, with golden patterns on its surface that pulsated like blood vessels.

Even when stationary, it still exudes a chillingly high temperature, causing the surrounding air to distort slightly due to the heat.

This is the essence left behind after the explosion of the Titan's power reactor, a crystallization of the First Era civilization.

For ordinary people, this is a deadly source of radiation; for the mages of the Truth Society, it is invaluable research material; but for Rhodes at this moment, it is his only fuel.

He was going to try something crazy.

Overload enhancement.

This is a cultivation method that is listed as a forbidden technique in ancient books.

The principle is simple.

By forcibly introducing high-purity energy far exceeding the body's capacity, like forging steel, the magical pathways and spiritual sea within the body are violently expanded.

If successful, one's strength will experience a qualitative leap in a short period of time.

If you fail, at best you'll become an idiot, at worst you'll self-destruct on the spot and turn into a pile of minced meat.

"call……"

Rhodes took a deep breath and took a bottle of dark purple potion from the shelf.

That was his specially made mental stabilizer, a mixture of mandrake juice and krait ink, with a bitter taste that made people nauseous.

He tilted his head back and drank the medicine in one gulp.

The icy liquid slid down his esophagus into his stomach, instantly turning into a cold current that rushed to his brain, making him more aware than ever before, even painfully so.

Then, he took off his shirt, revealing his muscular upper body.

He picked up a silver scalpel and quickly and precisely carved intricate alchemical arrays on his chest, arms, and back.

Blood seeped out, but was quickly stopped by some force, congealing into dark red runes.

This is a flow-guiding array, used to direct the raging energy that is about to surge into the body.

After doing all this, Rhodes sat cross-legged on the metal floor in the center of the laboratory, held the scorching hot Titan core in his hands, and closed his eyes.

"Let's begin."

He whispered something, then suddenly activated the magic power within his body, establishing a connection with the core in his hand.

boom!

In that instant, Rhodes felt as if he were holding a supernova that was about to explode.

Without any buffer, an unimaginably vast golden torrent surged into his body through his palm.

pain!

The pain was indescribable!

If regular cultivation is like a gentle stream nourishing a riverbed, then this is like scalding magma being forcibly poured into fragile blood vessels.

Rhodes felt every muscle, every nerve in his body being torn apart, burned, and crushed.

"Ughhhhh!!!"

An uncontrollable scream escaped from deep within his throat.

Rhodes' body trembled violently, and the blood vessels under his skin bulged out like earthworms, turning a terrifying dark gold color.

The crimson runes that had just been inscribed on his body instantly lit up with a blinding light, desperately suppressing the power that was trying to burst his body.

In his mind's sea of ​​consciousness, a turbulent storm was stirred up.

The Titan Core contains not only energy, but also the remnants of the will of those who died long ago in the First Age.

Countless chaotic, cold, and massive data streams crashed against Rhodes's rational defenses like a tsunami.

[Warning: Unauthorized access detected...]

[Warning: Carbon-based biological carriers have insufficient strength...]

[Cleanup command initiated...]

Destruction... Rebuilding... Order...

Hallucinations abound.

Rhodes felt as if he were standing on an endless steel wasteland.

Giant gears and levers float in the sky, and rivers of mercury flow across the ground.

Countless Titans, each a thousand meters tall, were stomping heavily toward him.

That feeling of insignificance, that feeling of despair, is enough to cause anyone with a weak will to have an instant mental breakdown.

"Get out..."

Rod gritted his teeth, blood trickling down the corner of his mouth.

He constructed his own mental palace within his sea of ​​consciousness.

It was a sophisticated library, representing his rationality and logic as a scholar.

"This is my brain! This is my territory!"

Rhodes roared inwardly.

He endured the excruciating pain of his soul being torn apart, and mobilized all his mental energy, transforming it into countless chains that tightly bound the raging data streams.

He not only has to withstand the erosion of energy, but also has to analyze this energy.

He must, on the edge of life and death, extract the ancient mechanical laws contained within the core of the Titan and engrave them into his own soul.

Time passed by, second by second.

Sweat mixed with blood, pooling into a dark red puddle beneath Rhodes.

His skin began to crack, but it quickly healed under the nourishment of immense energy, repeating this process over and over again, as if he were being repeatedly crushed in a millstone of hell.

With every breath, there was a metallic taste of blood in my throat.

Each heartbeat felt as heavy as the beating of a war drum.

I don't know how much time passed; maybe an hour, maybe a century.

Rhodes's consciousness was beginning to fade, with only one obsession sustaining him.

We cannot lose.

If you lose, you die.

If you die, you'll become a pawn, a piece of trash, a skinned heart in that basement.

"Compress it for me!"

At the critical moment, Rhodes suddenly opened his eyes, and two beams of golden light shot out from them.

The magical circuits within him groaned under the strain, but on the verge of collapse, a new order was being born.

The originally gaseous magic began to undergo a qualitative change under extreme compression and the catalysis of Titan energy.

They become more viscous and heavier, gradually condensing into drops of liquid magic.

This is a symbol of the pinnacle of the ring!

With the formation of the first drop of liquid magic, a chain reaction began.

The originally raging Titan energy seemed to have found an outlet, rushing wildly into the newly formed liquid magic, where it was quickly assimilated and absorbed.

The pain in Rhodes' body began to subside, replaced by an unprecedented feeling of fullness and power.

He felt his senses were being magnified infinitely.

He could hear the sound of spiders weaving webs in the corner of the basement.

He could feel the vibrations of every tiny ether particle in the air.

He could even see Benjamin's anxious figure pacing back and forth above him.

When the last trace of violent energy was tamed, the Titan core fragment in Rhodes' hand had lost its luster and turned into an ordinary gray stone, which crumbled into dust in his hand and fell down in a flurry.

"call……"

Rhodes exhaled a long breath of stale air, which condensed into a white arrow of air in the air and lingered for a long time.

He collapsed to the ground, too weak to even move a finger.

My bones ached as if they had been broken and reconnected, but beneath that pain lay a resilient, steel-like strength of new life.

He succeeded.

Although he is still some distance from the true second ring, his current total magical power and intensity are at least three times that of last night.

More importantly, he etched a mechanical divinity from the Titans deep within his soul.

This means that he will have a unique advantage when operating ancient machinery and analyzing advanced blueprints in the future.

Rhodes lay on the cold floor, staring at the dim ceiling, a forced smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.