End of the Magic Era

In Solomon’s eyes, everything was fine…

Last time, in the Ash Tower’s Secondary Plane, that young Great Mage did something similar. He complied with Merlin’s request for cover fire, and the young mage casually went over and dismantled the two puppets. How could it not be fine now?

Solomon was no stranger to Lin Yun’s actions.

As a layman in the field of alchemy, how could he know how complicated alchemy puppets were? How could he know what kind of skill would be needed to instantly dismantle puppets? In Solomon’s eyes, it was a matter of course. Weren’t puppets the result of alchemy? With a Master Alchemist here so close to them, weren’t they just waiting to be dismantled?

After returning from Oddrock City, Solomon had complained a few times to Thorpe, saying that puppets were truly too unreliable. If they could be dismantled so easily by alchemists, then the Sage Tower couldn’t rely on them too heavily for the defense of their territory. Hearing these words, Thorpe had looked at Solomon with a rather strange expression.

It was natural for Solomon to think this way because of his time spent with Lin Yun and his inexperience when it came to the subject of alchemy.

But Suyass was an expert…

Moreover, he was an expert among experts, to the point that there weren’t many people more skilled than him in the entire Andlusa Kingdom.

Solomon didn’t know how complicated puppets were, but Suyass most certainly did. Solomon didn’t know what instantly dismantling a puppet meant, but Suyas knew…

Suyass looked as if he had seen a ghost.

“High Mage Solomon, d-d-didn’t you see?” Suyass was staring foolishly at the scene and wobbling sluggishly, not even controlling the Thunderstorm as he rubbed his eyes…

‘There must have been something in my eyes, definitely…’

Suyas comforted himself…

But Lin Yun didn’t even give him the opportunity to comfort himself. As Suyass rubbed his eyes, the Hasted Lin Yun accelerated and used the cover of Solomon’s flashy spells to reach another puppet.

Then, his hands only softly moved twice more before that puppet stiffened and collapsed, scattering into a pile of components.

The remaining puppet was less troublesome. Lin Yun didn’t even bother waiting for Solomon’s supporting fire and used an Ice Fire Shield. He relied on the protection of the quickly rotating red and blue lights to rush through the magic rays and dismantle that puppet on the spot.

And after that… Well, there was nothing after that…

“Th-thi-this… This is broken….” Suyass’ eyes were almost swollen from the rubbing. But as looked at the three pile of components on the ground, he almost went crazy.

‘What kind of situation was that… How could he have done that so fast? Those were Vaughn’s puppets, they had to be dismantled according to their original plan! How was this any different from sleight of hand?”

“High mage Solomon, yo-yo-you saw, right?” Suyass stammered before asking again.

“I saw, I saw…” Solomon casually answered and thought that Suyass was truly very sheltered for an Archmage. To him, this dismantling had seemed kind of slow. Yet, Suyass was almost scared into pissing his pants. What kind of expression would he have if he had seen what happened before in the Demiplane?

‘How come such a person came out of the Mercury Tower? He is so weak-willed!’

Solomon made a mental note.

“It’s settled, let’s go.” Lin Yun had already finished picking parts out of the piles of components. It would be more appropriate to say that he plundered most of them, as every single useful component ended up in his spatial ring. After finishing, he noticed that Suyass’ expression was a bit weird. “Is there something wrong, Sir Suyass?”

“Nothing, nothing…” Suyass recovered upon hearing Lin Yun’s question, but his gaze was extremely complicated while looking at Lin Yun.

It was normal for him to be bewildered. After all, Suyass was a peak Master Alchemist, and he was bound to enter the Artisan realm. Moreover, he was in contact with Nolan and Karon on a regular basis, so he had seen a realm of alchemy that regular alchemists could never hope to see.

Suyass then found out that this young Great Mage had attained a high level of mastery over alchemy. Otherwise, how could Merlin have helped him crack a Maze Array close to True Spirit level by casually pointing something out?

But Suyass had never imagined that it would be this high.

This already couldn’t be described as high, this was completely broken!

Suyass wasn’t Solomon. Solomon was able to just think that all of this was normal, but Suyass was the disciple of an Artisan, giving him a great understanding of the workings of alchemical puppets.

But it was also because of this understanding that Suyass knew how frightening this young Great Mage was.

That dismantling speed could only be reached when one had a complete understanding of the puppets being taken apart.

The so-called complete understanding pointed to the understanding of every detail of each component. This could be explained if it had been the creator of the puppet, but that young Great Mage obviously had just encountered those three puppets for the first time like himself. He didn’t even know the model of the puppets before the information from the Mage Eye came back…

From the time he looked at the puppets until he dismantled them, no more than a minute had passed.

But in that short minute, he had already been able to thoroughly understand the details of each of the puppets. What horrifying insight, what frightening computing ability…

There was also his dismantling skill.

Compared to the insight and computing ability, his dismantling skill truly rendered Suyass dumbstruck. Suyass had led puppet legions into battle for several years in the Golden Forest Plane, so how could he not know how frightening that dismantling skill was? It was like sleight of hand, a sort that had to be repeated a million times at the very least before it could reach this level.

An average person might just think that this technique was miraculous after having it explained, but Suyass knew that this wasn’t as simple as being miraculous. It meant that this young Great Mage had incredibly deep knowledge of puppets. That kind of experience could have come from building countless puppets or from fighting countless puppets before he gained some sort of instinct against them.

That discovery made Suyass realize that he wasn’t just a genius…

After dealing with the three puppets, the four of them left the botanical garden, but the way Suyass looked at Lin Yun was clearly different now.

“I think that we should be able to directly reach Vaughn’s laboratory from this botanical garden…” Lin Yun actually didn’t feel that anything was wrong with Suyass’ expression.

As for dismantling puppets… There were indeed few alchemists in this era that could contend with Lin Yun; even the creators of the puppets wouldn’t do. They just hadn’t experienced that future era…

At that time, multitudes of puppets were buried in the deserts. They had lost the source of their mana and were just strewn about, immobile. After generations of dismantling and scavenging them for useful materials, the available parts became fewer and fewer in number. In the end, the puppets that Lin Yun could find in the deserts had been practically stripped bare.

But Lin Yun wouldn’t even let go of these puppets. He would sometimes crouch in the deserts for nights in order to get a few screws or a few springs… After twenty years, Lin Yun had already seen all kinds of puppet models. After dismantling puppets thousands of times, he had already engraved all of their details in his mind.

As for his dismantling skill…

Anyone could reach Lin Yun’s level of skill once they dismantled as many puppets…

“This is hard to say. Vaughn was the last Artisan of the 3rd Dynasty. A Great Mage like you can’t imagine how he did things. What if the botanical garden and the laboratory are separated?” Although Fran was surprised by Lin Yun’s way of dealing with the three puppets, he still acted contrary due to his grievances.

Unfortunately, he was opposing Lin Yun.

“Haha, High Mage Fran’s imagination is quite vivid.”

“You…”

“Fran, shut up.” Suyass’ expression turned unsightly.

Fran didn’t dare to say anything else after Suyass intervened. He only muttered, “But, what if…”

“What if what!” Suyass became angry, and his voice rose quite a bit. “If you were Vaughn, would you be foolish enough to establish an alchemy laboratory far away from the botanical garden? Don’t you know about magic materials that can only be preserved for a limited amount of time?”

“…” Fran stiffened, unable to retort, because he really had forgotten about that.

“Okay, it’s not far ahead…” Lin Yun didn’t pay attention to Fran and only focused on his Mage Eyes scouting the surroundings. After a dozen seconds, he had seen what he needed, causing him to frown. “There is a bit of trouble…”