Chapter 707: Second Circle Magic, Lunar Blessing
The situation had changed dramatically.
Previously, Locke had been staying in the imperial capital the entire time, making no effort whatsoever to collect total magic pressure. So aside from the wizards in the Golden Crown Mountain spectator section, who had kept their attention on him throughout, and a few acquaintances who were also watching Locke, most wizards had placed their attention on the other three competitors.
But no one had anticipated that what had seemed like Wizard Smith and the emperor joining forces to compete for the championship and eliminate Edgar and Georgina, had now become Locke single-handedly borrowing the entire world dry, with the clear momentum to eliminate all three of them along with the emperor in a single stroke.
At this moment, the image on the Silent Throne reflected the scene of Locke gathering an enormous amount of total magic pressure.
The seven sun ring wizard judges on the competition committee all sat bolt upright, involuntarily turning to look at what was unfolding in the Silent Plane as projected on the Silent Throne.
The amount of total magic pressure being gathered had long since surpassed what was needed to bring down an initial-forging Grand Magic.
What on earth was he trying to do?
At this moment, the Silent Witch seated at the highest point of the spectator stands opened her mouth and uttered four words. "Kingdom Domain."
The Truth Wizard from Green Steel City in the seat to her right gave a corresponding response. "An ancient technique. How nostalgic. To see a Kingdom Domain again here, I feel that our Hand of the Jungle's Second World Plan has tremendous promise."
"This young man has quite a future ahead of him."
At this moment, the wizards in the spectator stands began discussing among themselves. The vast majority of them had absolutely no idea what this thing was. They had only heard mention of it from the Silent Witch and felt that since it had come up in the words of a Fourth Circle wizard, it must be something formidable.
This was because the Kingdom Domain was something that had been superseded long ago. After the Era of Stars, it had ceased to be a primary subject of research in wizard civilization.
Yet during the Era of Stars itself, it had been one of the primary means by which wizards advanced to the Second and Third Circle, and one of the pillars that had shaped the three hundred million magical kingdoms of that era.
In the Silent Plane, vast amounts of total magic pressure, ley line power, magical tides, and the faith of the people all converged toward the imperial capital.
With the imperial capital as its center, a magical realm descended.
The moment this magical realm descended, it expanded rapidly, sweeping outward to cover the entirety of the Silent Plane. The speed was extraordinary. In the blink of an eye, the entire world was completely transformed.
The entire Silent Plane was covered by Locke's Kingdom Domain.
Beyond the main material plane that served as its primary space, the Silent Plane now had an additional world-scale magical realm.
This magical realm provided the Silent Plane with a total magic pressure support equivalent to that of the main material plane itself.
This magical realm occupied the same geographical space as the main material plane of the Silent Plane, differing only in phase.
Both the main material plane and this magical realm occupied the same three-dimensional spatial coordinates. However, the main material plane existed along the three-dimensional space combined with the time dimension, while this magical realm existed along the three-dimensional space combined with the spirituality dimension.
That was the essential point of the Kingdom Domain.
A Kingdom Domain was a world built upon the spirituality dimension. There was no passage of time within it, only changes in spirituality.
This had been accomplished using the Spiritual Cultivation Society as leverage, the mind network as a foundation, and the Moon of Evolution as its core.
By using the Moon of Evolution's ability to reflect the past and present, and the mind network's ability to connect a person's existence spirituality across their past and future, combining the two together and borrowing all the total magic pressure from the past and future existence spirituality of the tens of billions of beings in this world, this realm had been created.
The moment this realm was completed, the total magic pressure of this world doubled instantly. The world's will stirred like a dragon turning over, tearing the emperor's mind network to shreds, rendering it completely unable to suppress the world's will of the Silent Plane any longer.
The world's consciousness now looked upon Locke with complete favor. He could feel that his every word and action seemed to be in harmony with this world.
This indicated that the world's level of trust in him had reached a higher tier, to the point where his words and actions, though not deliberately tailored to align with the world's will of the Silent Plane, were all in accord with the preferences of the world's will.
This was the state of acting from one's heart without overstepping any boundaries.
Locke had not used his own will to replace the will of this world. But at this moment, what he wished to do was also what this world wished to do.
Inside the imperial capital, Locke took one step forward and in an instant walked out of the imperial capital and into the magical realm.
The magical realm was filled everywhere with green mountains and clear waters.
It was as though not a trace of environmental pollution existed here. This was clearly the location of the imperial capital, yet at this moment it was not a massive industrial city, and there were no towering smokestacks reaching into the sky. Instead it was a primeval forest.
Lush and verdant, teeming with green and full of vibrant life.
There were only plants here and no animals, because this was a magical realm of plants. Every tree was an embodiment of plant spirits and spirituality.
Locke had added ritual magic to the spell used to summon this magical realm, which was one of the reasons the realm had been successfully created.
He had borrowed the power of the Emerald Dream, just as Wizard Edgar had created the Land of All Spirits, drawing a great multitude of plant spirits from the Emerald Dream and gathering them together with the Kingdom Domain. Only through this could such a magical realm teeming with enormous life energy have been created.
The scale of this magical realm had already exceeded what an ordinary Second Circle wizard could create. That it had been completed was the result of far too many coincidences converging at once.
The emperor's gullibility and his dependency, his acts of holding the entire world hostage, his mind network's suppression of the world's will, and the world's will choosing him in order to escape its predicament.
Equally, the other three Grand Magics in the Silent Chalice competition had helped him enormously.
Most critically, through the Spiritual Cultivation Society, after applying a hundredfold leverage, there was his act of borrowing from the emperor.
'Once this realm descends, the world's will can naturally free itself from the binding and suppression of the mind network,' Locke thought. "First, the mind network has been borrowed completely dry by me."
"Second, the original principle by which the mind network bound the world's will was to use the inspector system and the empire to unify all the ordinary people and the children of fortune across that world."
"Using this method, every talented person in the world was drawn into the mind network, indirectly binding the world."
"But once I brought this world-scale realm down, everything changed. The empire only ruled half of this world. The inspector system could not penetrate this realm. By expanding the world's map, I have caused the emperor's empire to regress from a unified empire into a fragmented regional power."
"A fragmented regional power naturally cannot bind the world's will."
A full moon appeared behind Locke's back. That full moon descended from on high as though it were crashing toward the earth, and finally came to rest suspended in mid-air behind him, casting its light across the entire Kingdom Domain.
The Kingdom Domain had been borrowed from the emperor, so he held no real control over it.
It belonged to this world.
It was a piece of publicly shared land.
This was why the world's will supported him. Were it otherwise, he would simply be a second emperor.
However, that did not matter.
Because his Moon of Evolution could make full use of this realm.
And at this moment, with heaven's timing, earth's advantages, and the people's support all aligned in his favor, the Moon of Evolution moved directly into the realm, and through his Grand Magic he was able to take control of it.
Most importantly, he had a combination of follow-up moves ready.
He still had more to come.
At the same time, in the main material plane, the emperor had plunged into a furious, betrayal-driven madness.
He roared, "Duke Schiller, do not even think about it!"
At the same time, the highest administrative court in the imperial capital suddenly issued a decree, announcing that Duke Schiller had colluded with rebel forces and plotted sedition. All of Duke Schiller's property was to be confiscated, and every title and position he held was to be stripped.
In the realm, a trace of surprise flickered in Locke's eyes. The fact that the other party could move this quickly indicated that the emperor's act of declaring him a traitor had been prepared long in advance. A single command was all it took for an entire procedure to run its course and announce to the world that he was a rebel and traitor.
The native emperor was an emperor after all. Sure enough, once the rabbit was dead, the hunting dog was cooked.
Only...
Locke shook his head. "That is useless."
"I never held any position within the Spiritual Cultivation Society. Strip me of every title and position I hold in this world, and still you cannot stop me from summoning the realm to descend."
"This is the tide of events. The tide cannot be turned. Emperor, do you not understand?"
At this moment, in the main material plane, Wizard Edgar suddenly moved against the emperor. His left hand flipped palm-upward, and the projection of the Temporal Shadow Fern appeared in his grasp. The Land of All Spirits extended countless ghost vines, attempting to drag the emperor and his Emperor's Hall entirely into the Land of All Spirits.
Edgar's thinking was clear. 'That fellow Locke truly cannot be underestimated. But the emperor is so weakened right now. If I absorbed the contributed total magic pressure on his side, it would serve as a supplement for me.'
'Even if I can no longer seize the initiative ahead of Locke, it is still better than doing nothing.'
He was not the only one with this thought.
At this moment, Wizard Smith had no more time to spare for killing Witch Georgina.
Witch Georgina's condition was not great, but she was still capable of resistance. A victory between two Grand Magics would not come this quickly.
But the currently weakened emperor was undeniably a fat prize there for the taking.
So Wizard Smith immediately consigned his alliance with the emperor to complete oblivion and turned his attention to absorbing the emperor's power.
At this moment, Witch Georgina's expression also shifted slightly.
In truth, if Wizard Smith had just moved against her a moment ago, she would have been immediately eliminated, because unlike the other Grand Magics, hers depended on the combination of her alchemical loom with the existence spirituality of vast numbers of ordinary people in this world to form her Grand Magic.
In essence, her Grand Magic contained a massive population of ordinary people.
But the problem that had now arisen was that Locke had just borrowed all the current and future spirituality of every ordinary person under the empire's system dry in one stroke, and with the world's help had directly created a world-scale realm for the world.
Which meant that the spirituality of these ordinary people in the future, all those surplus spiritual energy increases, would all have to be channeled into that realm first.
Locke's act of borrowing had not relied only on the Moon of Evolution's ability to reflect the past and present, with moonlight appearing at any point in time, forcibly hanging a moon over any place where moonlight could reach.
Nor had it relied only on the mind network itself pushed to its absolute limit, connecting every piece of a person's spirituality across their past and future.
It had also relied on the world's recognition that Locke was borrowing from this world's past and future.
All three elements combined, together with the acknowledgment of the Spiritual Cultivation Society and the emperor, had made this feat possible.
As a result, the Fate Loom had immediately become a losing enterprise, because every fragment of spiritual energy the Fate Loom earned by untangling fate's knots had to be paid directly to Locke's realm.
So Locke's blow to Georgina was far greater than his blow to the other two, nearly equivalent to the blow he had dealt the emperor.
Locke's act of borrowing had severed the roots of her Grand Magic.
Fortunately, she had kept her composure and not shown any opening, otherwise Wizard Smith might have prioritized striking at her first.
Witch Georgina's expression shifted slightly. She had come to represent Bonifacius University's new textile studies in the Silent Chalice this time. If she were eliminated in last place, she would become the sinner of both the academy and the new textile studies.
Their new textile studies, before it had even begun, would suffer a devastating blow.
That could not be allowed to happen.
That left only one option.
And this option...
The more Georgina thought about it, the more certain she was that Locke had done this deliberately.
"Right now, all the current spirituality reserves and all future spiritual growth in this world have been borrowed dry by Locke. Every future increase in energy in this current world must first go toward filling Locke's realm."
Georgina said, "So if my Fate Loom remains in the current world of the Silent Plane, my defeat is assured. Even if no one targets me, my Grand Magic will collapse on its own and I will be directly eliminated from this world."
"My only lifeline is to enter the realm Locke has summoned. All this world's power is currently within the realm. Only by bringing my Fate Loom into the realm voluntarily and becoming part of it do I have any chance of obtaining energy again by weaving fate and clarifying spirituality."
"But in doing so, I would be placing myself under Locke's indirect control."
Witch Georgina gritted her teeth. "Damn Locke. It is difficult to say this was not deliberate. Stripping the skin, extracting the tendons, dismantling the bones, all with such clean precision. Even a competitor is exploited to the absolute limit. With a mindset like this... those black wizards are nothing compared to him."
"But this is indeed the style of us white wizards. Everything done still falls within the Eight Virtues of white wizards."
Witch Georgina was worried that Wizard Smith would come to his senses, so she had no choice but to quickly recite a spell, forcibly opening a gateway into the realm, and with one step she brought the Fate Loom with her into it.
At the same time, Edgar was about to drag the terrified emperor into the Land of All Spirits when he suddenly thought things through, and a chill ran down his spine.
"Locke, what a venomous scheme. I nearly fell into your trap again. That emperor is bait you set out. Whoever swallows him will die on the spot."
"Are you trying to end this competition right now, fighting four Second Circle-level existences simultaneously and winning against all of them?"
Edgar reacted immediately, recited a spell, and stopped the magical vines spreading outward from the Land of All Spirits.
In the next instant, those magical vines were slashed apart by meteor shower after meteor shower.
The meteor showers fell to the earth, and beams of starlight projected outward.
Second Circle Magic, Starlight Projection.
Ten Starlight Projection avatars of Wizard Smith surrounded Edgar, preventing him from competing with Smith for the emperor.
Wizard Smith himself used one Starlight Projection avatar to grab the emperor by the arm and make to drag the emperor toward the Meteor from Beyond the Heavens semi-plane cluster in the sky.
Wizard Smith broke into a hearty laugh. "Can't compete for first anymore? Second will do just fine. You all have eyes too big for your stomachs. Your greed lowers your efficiency."
"Let me be realistic. If the championship is out of reach, then swallowing this emperor and taking second place is not bad either!"
Wizard Edgar's eyes flickered. 'That idiot Smith. Should I warn him? Under normal circumstances, I could not be bothered to warn a weakling like this.'
'But right now I need to compete for the championship, which means I need someone to counter Locke, who is currently the strongest on the field.'
With that thought, Wizard Edgar immediately spoke to Wizard Smith, "Smith, do not touch the emperor."
Wizard Smith narrowed his eyes. "Oh? You want to compete with me for him? Too late. Once I swallow the contributed total magic pressure on the emperor's side and absorb his mind network, I will be the competitor with the second highest total magic pressure on the field."
"Hahahahaha, high capital wins. A truth that never changes throughout history. I..."
Wizard Edgar said with exasperation, "Stop laughing so loudly. It is one thing for Locke to laugh that loudly. Why are you doing it? What total magic pressure does that emperor even have left? Locke borrowed it all dry."
"Not just the present, the future was borrowed dry too. Let me ask you, if you absorb the emperor's mind network, does that count as taking on the assets of his mind network? In that case, the money that should be paid to the realm in the future, who is paying it?"
Wizard Smith's expression froze stiff on his face. His starlight avatar looked in horror at the emperor in his grasp, as though looking at some terrifying entity. "If I absorb the mind network, then my Meteor from Beyond the Heavens would have to be the one paying the total magic pressure to the realm in the future."
"Locke deliberately threw the emperor out there to bait me into swallowing him, so that my Meteor from Beyond the Heavens would become the one left holding the bag?"
"My Meteor from Beyond the Heavens would be completely drained dry by his realm, and end up working for him. What viciousness. What extraordinary viciousness."
"How underhanded... how utterly underhanded... this person is truly a thousand times more vicious than I am."
"It is a good thing I was never deceived by his benevolent exterior back then. If I had let him examine my condition, I would have been subjected to even deeper schemes today."
Wizard Smith looked at the emperor with a horror-stricken gaze and flung him aside with one hand, as though he were some monstrous catastrophe waiting to happen.
Beneath his armor, the emperor let out a long breath.
Although he had not fully understood why these people from the Other Shore Great World had each come after him with urgent aggression at first, only to avoid him afterward as though he were a plague.
But the emperor understood that at least for the time being, it appeared his life was no longer in immediate danger.
At this moment, the Moon of Evolution appeared within the realm, and the main material plane of the Silent Plane also had a Moon of Evolution hanging in its sky.
Announcing to this world the existence of the Moon of Evolution.
In the mortal world, that grey sky bristling with smokestacks spewing black smoke, a sky that had not seen sun or moon in a very long time. The sun still managed each day to pierce the heavy cloud cover for an hour or two, dropping a few discolored rays of sunlight, and the people of the imperial capital had not seen the moon with their own eyes in a very long time.
Now, the Moon of Evolution fell from the sky, like a chess piece someone had picked up and hurled forcefully into the heavens.
In a single instant, the heavy shroud of grey fog was shaken apart. The people of the imperial capital, and the people of many great cities across this world, raised their eyes and finally saw the moon.
Beside that full moon, a dark sun lay quietly suspended.
Because of the Silent Plane's cooperation, the spirituality of this world's sun shifted in accordance with the dragon bloodline within Locke's body, working in concert with Locke to use the dual operation of sun and moon in summoning the realm.
In the mortal world, plants one by one were swept by moonlight. Silver-blue gradient magical radiance appeared on the leaf veins and petals of those plants, and all these plants and magical plants were drawn into the Moon of Evolution's ecology.
And within the realm, forest after forest was enveloped in the radiance of his Moon of Evolution. Every forest radiated silver-blue gradient magical radiance across the whole, as though this scene was destined to become something unchanging and eternal.
Locke's Grand Magic and the Kingdom Domain merged into one. In this moment, his assets and his capital both multiplied.
Locke directly pulled Antoine and Witch Preston, who were at the crystal wall system of the world, straight into the realm.
At this moment, Antoine and Witch Preston were looking at Locke with complicated expressions. Antoine was managing reasonably well.
But within Witch Preston's gaze toward Locke, a hint of awe and wariness had appeared unexpectedly, which was something that came involuntarily even from this witch who was normally so proud and willful.
Antoine said, "Locke, well done. Worthy of our Golden Crown Mountain researcher. You have embodied our Golden Crown Mountain's level of scholarship."
Locke clasped his hands behind his back and smiled slightly. "Not bad."
At this moment, under the illumination of the Moon of Evolution, every tree throughout the realm was touched by Locke's moonlight, and under the light of the Moon of Evolution, these trees, most of which were ordinary trees, gained intelligence one by one and transformed into treants.
The first Second Circle botanical spell into which Locke had incorporated a Grand Magic Rune was the Second Circle Magic, Lunar Blessing.
This was a spell that Witch Yekaterina had once asked him to study.
And at this moment, with the assistance of two First Circle crystallization stage wizards, he was able to quickly incorporate a Grand Magic Rune into this spell model.
The Lunar Blessing could collectively apply to an entire forest the effect equivalent to the First Circle botanical magic, Treant Wisdom Awakening.
Unlike the First Circle stage, where this spell could only be used one-on-one, and even at the crystallization stage could only be used one-on-many, the Lunar Blessing could perform treant awakening on an entire forest at once.
And after Locke incorporated a Grand Magic Rune and combined it with the Moon of Evolution, the effect of this spell became the treant awakening of at least one third of the entire realm's forest regions.
This was far faster than the conventional approach of patiently cultivating plants, or going to a forest preserve to find plants, awakening treants, and accumulating total biomass.
At this moment, treants belonging to him had appeared everywhere throughout the realm.
The existence of these treants further reduced the energy dissipation of his Grand Magic's ecological system, further increased the instantaneous magic pressure output multiplier, and improved energy compatibility, energy stability, and all the other indicators among the eight.
The existence of individual treants could elevate every baseline attribute of the Grand Magic.
This was also why Wizard Smith had been insistent on having star-prayer devotees.
The existence of intelligent life could elevate the tier of a world plane, which naturally also elevated the various baseline performances of the Grand Magic.
So Locke needed not only an ordinary ecological community, but also a treant ecological community with intelligent life as its foundation.
'With a treant community, I can also resolve the problem of my Forest Sanctuary, which has always had no one to tend it and has not dared to introduce animals and insects.'
'For me at the First Circle stage, this was a dilemma without an easy answer. But I did not expect that for me as a Second Circle wizard, it is a problem that can be resolved with a casual gesture.'
Locke clasped his hands behind his back. "Although there is something I would like to do, I believe winning the competition takes precedence. If I can win now, I should win now. I grant you both a Grand Magic Blessing. I hope that at this moment you will both give your full effort to help me drive the other competitors out of this plane."
Antoine nodded. "Naturally."
"Locke, someone has entered the realm."
Locke glanced at Witch Georgina. "Deal with her last. Her Fate Loom has voluntarily aligned itself with my realm and can help me maintain the realm. There is a phase disturbance between the realm itself and reality."
"If there is fate weaving to ease the disturbance, the loss can be reduced."
As Locke spoke, it was as though this world itself was speaking.
Clearly these were his own thoughts, yet he had done it in a way that made the world's thinking coincide entirely with his.
"The only choice I have left her is to voluntarily take on this responsibility for me, reducing the phase disturbance of the realm. That is the only way her Grand Magic can survive."
At this moment Locke was not only aided by heaven and earth. His every thought and intention was in complete accord with what this world was thinking and wanting, which naturally let him anticipate the enemy's moves, calculating Witch Georgina's situation down to the last detail.
Antoine's eyes flickered. This version of Locke made him feel something between fear and excitement.
He was not the protagonist of this competition, so in this match he would listen to Locke's direction and not do anything unnecessary.
Witch Preston lowered her eyes toward Locke. This witch who had always been proud and willful now instinctively followed Locke's commands.
Locke then stepped forward, and in an instant teleported to another part of the realm, then took another step forward.
In one motion he stepped out of the realm and back into the mortal world.
He appeared before the emperor, Smith, and Edgar.
The moment Wizard Smith saw him, fire leapt in his eyes. "You beast."
The emperor, upon seeing him, also felt the sting of betrayal. "A wolf in sheep's clothing!"
Wizard Edgar, however, looked at Locke with flickering eyes. He had guessed at one of Locke's follow-up moves.
But if that was the case, it was not necessarily against his interests either.