Soul of Burning Steel

"disappeared?"

On a certain morning half a month after communicating with Karlis, Joshua, who was walking in the stratosphere, heard a piece of news that surprised him.

The strong wind was blowing high in the sky, and the cold air flow with ice crystals reflected the sun's rays, shining brightly under the warrior's feet. At this time, he was walking in the sky with his hands behind his back, inspecting his territory, and the magic power projection of a winged girl Suspended in front of him, reporting the news with a helpless expression.

"Yes, Joshua, but to be precise, it's not missing, but it's out of my detection range."

Compared with before, a golden star-shaped imprint appeared on No. 3's forehead at this time, surrounded by translucent wings. Merged with No. 3's soul. At this time, the artificial intelligence girl seemed to have a headache. She hugged her knees with both hands, and floated beside Joshua and complained: "You said you want to give those elite students more freedom, so I didn't pay much attention to them... As a result, It’s been almost a week now.”

"Tell me who is missing first."

Joshua wasn't too nervous, he just muttered a few words in a low voice, really worried, and then said calmly: "Tell me, is it Lisa or Ivan? I don't think the others should have the confidence to play missing."

"It's Lisa, your dragon apprentice."

Speaking of this, a schadenfreude smile appeared on No. 3's face: "It seems that you, Joshua, are quite self-aware, knowing that your apprentice likes to run around like yourself... By the way, I forgot to tell you You and Number One are missing with her."

Under the gaze of Joshua who turned his head, No. 3 added another sentence: "According to my guess, she and No. 1 should go to the underground passage dug by No. 1 to play, otherwise, the signal from the information terminal would not be connected." They were all shielded and could not find their location.”

After a few months, the tunnel dug under the Nissier Snow Mountain by No. 1 has become unbelievably large. Those huge caves are deep and long, even wider than the range of activities of the dwarves. From a certain point of view, No. 1 excavated a small underground world almost by itself. According to the words of the dwarven engineer who visited the tunnel, it is "very suitable for the reproduction of underground life."

Because it is too deep, the instructors of Winter Castle don't know where the tunnel leads to, and because the server load is not enough, the information terminal cannot be used in the deep underground. Generally speaking, it is a blind spot.

"Joshua, do you think they will be in any danger?"

Although there was some gloating before, it was just a resentment against Joshua who went out alone, No. 3 still cared about Lisa and No. 1, and she asked with some concern: "Do you need to send the Knights to find them? A week is not long, but it is enough to encounter any danger."

"It's not dangerous. I killed all the slightly dangerous monsters in the sky and the earth in Moldavia. Even if there are fish that slipped through the net, it's not impossible to deal with these two guys according to their strength... What's strange to me is these two people How did they get together, and there is a syndicate, how can they let them run around."

Joshua frowned slightly, but later he relaxed his brows: "It doesn't matter, anyway, it's normal for children to be a little restless, let them play by themselves."

If it doesn't work, he can still communicate directly with Syndicate through the resonance of the power of steel. Now that the other party has not contacted him, it proves that he has not encountered any danger. This channel, even in another world, he can communicate with Balrog, which is much more stable than the information terminal.

On the other side, No. 3 raised his eyes, and began to count the activities of Lisa and No. 1 before they disappeared: "Let's think about it...they first watched the moon in the middle of the night, and met each other while walking in the middle of the night, and then because Lisa could hear Knowing how to understand the electromagnetic signal of No. 1, so we chatted in the middle of the night..."

Everything that followed was a matter of course. It is rare to meet someone who can chat in their native language. The first number naturally has a good impression of Lisa. In the next few days, they have been making appointments to meet and chat, and even went to the dwarf together. After walking around the gathering place for a few times, Lisa was treated with great courtesy because she was a friend brought back by No. 1, and the girl also showed interest in the mysterious underground world.

"And then we went to dig the ground together...Thinking about it, it's a good experience, unknown, mysterious and unpredictable."

Joshua thought about it for a while, and felt that there was nothing dangerous about it. If he always put all the students under his own observation, they would not make any unexpected progress. After thinking about it, the soldier made a decision : "Let Winterhold Academy assign a college mission."

"Explore the underground world, draw a map of the underground world excavated by No. 1, a complete passage is 2,000 credits, and there is no upper limit. Let me see how much they have learned in the academy... and see how much this guy No. 1 has dug. Deep, it can actually block information terminals."

Today, the credit exchange system in the Academy of Wintercastle has been perfected, and even formed a complete market, ranging from gold, silver and gemstones to special mechs. If the points are enough, even small battleships can be exchanged—if If you have the special contribution of the college, you can even accept various special enhancements from the cooperation between Cold Winter Castle and major research parties!

An ordinary task, depending on the degree of completion, is about 50~100 credits, and 100 credits can be exchanged for precious metals that can meet the annual expenditure of an ordinary family of three. 500 credits can be exchanged for living metal forging, which is currently in the experimental stage The magical bursting staff can condense magic power ten times faster than ordinary staffs. It can spray various spells like a machine gun without self-destructing due to overheating. Similarly, there are also various wrist guards forged with special alloys. Armor and helmet, this is a set.

1000 credits, even some extraordinary substances can be exchanged for research or personal use, such as three leaves of life, a small bottle of No. 1 holy water, 50 grams of high-purity mithril, etc. , Meteorite Iron and Anima Crystals are also on the redemption list. Many big forces, such as the Elven King's Court and the Church of the Seven Gods, are wondering why there are their unique collections in the credit redemption list of the College of Wintercastle. I remember that these have been traded with foreign countries, and a certain lord who is experimenting with creation does not express any opinion on this.

And some special requirements are also within the scope of exchange, such as appointing a tutor for individual tutoring. The specific price depends on the tutor's own pricing. Assisting advanced or conducting experiments is also included, and the price is slightly more expensive than tutoring.

The above are just ordinary things that can be bought with money, but if it is more than 2,000 credits, it is more than that—from the exchange list of 2,000 credits, some things that cannot be measured by money gradually began to appear. For example, the latest generation of experimental magic armor is worth 2,500 credits. If it needs to be specially modified for individuals, the credits need to be doubled. There are also various weird magic equipment exchanges, such as The 'portable supersonic electromagnetic gun' worth 7500 points, the 'portable space-time gate' (experimental arbitrary door) worth 8000 points, the 'anti-gravity flying device' worth 3500 points, the 'gold-level element puppet contract' worth 9000 points, 5500 points of 'hypnotic brainwashing glasses' and so on.

The providers of these things are some legendary powerhouses who are unwilling to disclose their names. Most of them are some gadgets they have been thinking about on weekdays. However, although these things contain extremely powerful power, the conditions for using them are particularly harsh. The arbitrary door of an imperial time-space mage, although it is indeed a portable time-space door that can lead to almost any place in the continent, but the user's strength must reach the high-level gold, or be extremely proficient in time-space magic to meet the conditions - there is this With strength and knowledge reserves, he can perform fixed-point teleportation.

And the hypnotic brainwashing glasses from a Mr. William who did not want to be named, although it sounds evil, is actually evil, but it is basically ineffective against creatures with an intelligence index of more than 70, which means that, except for monsters with no brains , there are no human beings who will be recruited, and those who will be recruited are all mentally retarded, and if the monster is smarter, it can also get rid of its control.

But even so, the value of these items cannot be questioned, even if it is not for the value of the item itself, but just to explore the essence of the power of the legendary strongman, they are all worthy of their price.

This series of redemption has reached the 20,000 credits that have never been reached so far. It is a small floating battleship with a total length of 85 meters, equipped with a full set of war equipment, and even a small magic crystal on it. The dust production line can be used to manufacture beam cannon ammunition. This thing is put there mainly because it looks good, and no one thinks that anyone will exchange it.

The special contribution is more mysterious. Except for a few people who have completed some particularly difficult tasks, such as the students who completely wiped out the berserk monsters on the Ural Plain when the demon tide came, basically no one can get this. And some special exchanges can only be exchanged by relying on special contributions plus credits.

Special contributions are divided into five levels: D, C, B, A, and S. Starting from the lowest level of D, there will be a special exchange of "activating hidden blood". Reactivation makes the hidden bloodline ability manifest, whether it is the bloodline of the psionic warlock, the bloodline of the dragon, or other various strange bloodline abilities can be activated. A student from Xishan is a good example. She is the third princess of a psychic kingdom's court. Because she has not awakened psychic power, she cannot compete for the throne. She was supposed to be married to another neighboring kingdom by political marriage, but was sent to Moldavia because of the intervention of the mother clan behind her.

At the College of Wintercastle, she worked hard to become a mage, and then she was lucky enough to get a special contribution in a certain mission and chose to activate the bloodline. After the ceremony, she activated the bloodline and successfully became a real magician. Silver-level psykers have the capital to return to China.

So far, the special exchanges sent out by the academy are only D-level, and higher-level exchanges, such as 'solidified spell-like ability' and 'special extraordinary inheritance' are only there for others to see, and there is no plan to release them for the time being. Some exchanges only exist in the database and are not displayed to the public... After all, whether it is 'living mechanized transformation' or 'experimental empowerment' and 'supernatural organ transplantation' are taboo technologies that are still in experimentation, let alone similar In the 'race conversion ceremony', the 'artificial auxiliary spirit body' involves ethical technology.

Among them, some of the exchanges were researched by Joshua based on his own system. For example, an 'artificial auxiliary soul body' worth an A-level special contribution worth 8,000 credits has auxiliary calculations, auxiliary cultivation, and optimized energy operation systems. , collect information analysis, collect spilled energy, absorb the vitality of dead enemies for their own use and other special functions, which can quickly strengthen a powerless ordinary person into a high-level silver, reaching the level of the golden threshold , which is not its limit.

The only problem with this auxiliary soul body is that when the strength of the experimenter reaches the golden limit in the later stage, it will become unstable, and the artificial soul body cannot fit well with the original soul of the experimenter, which will cause rejection and endanger life. During the experiment, if Joshua and Nostradamus were not watching, the experimenter's life might be in danger.

The reason why the academy’s internal exchange system is so perfect is that Joshua used it as an experiment in the reward system of the pioneering department—when the empire officially began to expand to the outside world, the credits can be renamed as contribution points, and special contributions are not required. They are used as performance rewards other than the original benefits and salary, which can not only stimulate the passion of many explorers, but also reasonably enhance their strength.

"At about the same time, the development department will be officially launched, and the launch of the exchange system will also be put on the agenda... Most of the experimental technologies used as rewards are also time to improve."

Thinking of this, Joshua stood high in the stratosphere, looked to the south, and nodded slightly: "The Imperial family's technical reserves are far from enough... This trip to the Far South is also a good opportunity to find a partner, the Elf family The way of druids can transform into the tree of life or even the body of a dragon at will. In terms of biological blood technology, they are much more advanced than our race conversion ceremony. If they can cooperate, they can quickly transform some experimental technologies Practical."

"But Joshua... aren't you specialized in the power of steel? Why do you study so many strange things?"

On the side, No. 3 asked some puzzled questions. As the founder of the server and database of the Academy of Winterhold, she is also a stored copy of the entire Moldavian database. Of course, she knows that Joshua and Nostradam What exactly are Masi and the others researching? Some of them are acceptable to Ms. Artificial Intelligence, while some, such as the artificial soul body, make No. 3 feel a little creepy and feel in danger.

After all, she is also an artificial soul, but the degree of completion is much higher than that. Even though she knows that Joshua is not a madman, she still feels a little scared.

"Specialize one, of course you can be brave and diligent, but if you don't open your eyes to see the world and understand the vastness of the world, you will only fall into the vortex of ignorance and cannot extricate yourself."

Stretching out his hand, Joshua originally wanted to pat No. 3 on the head, but No. 3 turned around a bit angry and let the soldier's hand pat her wings. Joshua didn't care at first, he knew that No. 3 Tangled mentality, but when he felt an unusual touch in his hand, Joshua was startled: "Wait, in such a short period of time, you have already initially completed the materialization of your soul?"

The smooth feather in the soldier's hand just now feels a little illusory, but it already vaguely feels like water... Joshua didn't take it seriously at first, but after reacting, he was shocked: Since the last time the sage of the East China Sea came to Moldavia and exchanged the mass-spirit conversion rune with him, I had no time because I wanted to help Israel, Barnier and others improve the production line of the Void Battleship and the information terminal server. Therefore, he handed over the body of the rune to No. 3, and let this girl, who also only had a soul, explore the mystery of metamorphic transformation by herself... But how long has it passed? There is already an achievement?

"Hmph... After all, I have been getting His Majesty Geer's rune for so long, and this metamorphic rune is indeed in line with my current state. It's just a small achievement, nothing more."

Seeing Joshua's surprised look, No. 3 couldn't help shaking the little wings on her back. She has been in this state since she achieved something, but the soldier never noticed it, which made her very discouraged. , but now, to be able to shock him, No. 3 is satisfied.

"Not bad, really good..."

Joshua's face was full of joy, as if he was happier than his own advancement. He reached out and touched No. 3's head again, but this time, No. 3 did not avoid it.

Artificial intelligence, No. 3, understands the man in front of him better than most people—rather than his own strength advancing by leaps and bounds, leaving everyone behind him, he hopes that the people around him can keep up with him. Go forward with him.

"go home."

After being relieved, Joshua looked at the direction of the sun, and then said: "The time is almost here, and the time-space gate should be adjusted."

"OK."

Number 3 nodded, she knew the warrior's plan.

Today is February 15th, 837 of Starfall, and it is also the day he planned to go to the far south forest elf gathering place, around the Eternal Lake, to meet with the natural teacher and the contemporary elf queen.

So, in the next second, the two of them fell from the sky, passed through the clouds and the strong wind, and came to the sky above Moldavia. From here, they could overlook every corner of this big city with millions of people. Right in the center of the city, on the top of a building that looks like a castle, there is a faint blue light of time and space flickering.

It's time to go.

Ask for a monthly pass at the beginning of the month.

PS: Recommend a friend the "Summoning Master" DND Conferring Gods, the protagonist has the summoning golden finger to come to another world, gradually promoted from weak to powerful to legendary, condensed divinity, ignited divine fire, weaved godhead, obtained priesthood, and created through golden finger [Summoner] This spellcaster profession.