End of the Magic Era

He could only compound a bottle of Rebirth to deal with this emergency. Rebirth Potion needed a total of four ingredients. Lin Yun looked around his pockets and quickly found three of the needed ingredients, but after a few minutes, he found out that he was missing the Blazing Flame Grass.

‘Misfortune never comes alone!’

But soon, Lin Yun felt a warm aura within his Magic Array. This made his eyes shine. The Blazing Flame Grass was a very common herb that usually grew in hot environments, so it shouldn’t be hard to find some around here.

Lin Yun patted the dust off his clothes and examined his surroundings. It seemed to be a naturally formed cave, a huge, naturally formed karst cave. It was very wide, and after some calculations, Lin Yun roughly estimated that this place was five kilometers away from the surface… Yet it wasn’t dim at all…

He followed the warm aura forward and walked for roughly a dozen minutes before the scene in front of him shook him deeply. A huge palace was hovering in midair, fastened to the ground with countless thick chains, and the warm aura was coming from that palace.

What truly shook him wasn’t the hovering palace, but the manpower needed for such a great feat of engineering. Even during the flourishing period of the 3rd Dynasty, if the entire country was focused on this project, it would still need at least ten years!

He walked to the hovering palace by following a thick chain. The heatwave coming from below made him frown. There was boiling lava emitting terrifying heat below. In a short few seconds, the high temperature made his robe stick to his body due to sweat, and his face flushed red.

Although the mana here wasn’t as chaotic as earlier, there was still a lot of interference. In such circumstances, it would be very difficult for him to survive if he fell.

‘Eh?’

With a quick glance, he discovered something.

There were four skeletons floating in the lava. These skeletons were a bit special, as they weren’t human skeletons. With a careful look, Lin Yun noticed that they were emitting a gloomy dark-gold luster, and the people these four skeletons belonged to should have been about a meter tall when they were alive…

‘Dark Iron Dwarves?’

Lin Yun frowned. He could confirm that these were the skeletons of Dark Iron Dwarves. They would spend most of their time working by a forge, so they naturally had extremely high heat resistance. It could be seen from these four skeletons. They remained there for at least a millennium and were floating in the lava, but they had yet to melt.

‘But, how come Dark Iron Dwarves died in this place… After all, this is within the borders of Okland…’

The Dark Iron Dwarves were famous in the Nesser Dynasty. They were the servants of the Chromatic Dragons and they held the richest mineral resources on Noscent. They had the most advanced forging techniques, but unfortunately, the era of the Dark Iron Dwarves fell alongside the Nesser Dynasty, when the Dragons went to the void. Now, the Dark Iron Dwarves couldn’t be seen in Noscent. They were already hiding underground and few people would ever meet one alive. Only the best auction halls of Noscent would see a masterpiece of a Dark Iron Dwarf from time to time, proving that the race had yet to become extinct.

‘But, what happened to those four Dark Iron Dwarves? Is it related to the hovering palace?’

Dark Iron Dwarves were innate forging masters, so finding a hovering palace near them wasn’t surprising at all, but their death put Lin Yun at a loss.

As he moved alongside the chain, Lin Yun paid attention to the lava below, and sure enough, the number of Dark Iron Dwarves’ skeletons weren’t limited to those four. After walking a few more minutes, he found a dozen more.

A heatwave suddenly rose up as a large, flaming bird came out of the lava with a sharp cry, flapping his wings, surrounding Lin Yun in countless flames.

‘Flame Vulture!’

This abrupt change startled Lin Yun. He had had a strange feeling while going up the chain, as if someone had been spying on him, but he had been unable to find anything amiss, so he had been walking cautiously for the past few minutes. He understood when the Flame Vulture appeared. The Flame Vulture itself was a fire lifeform and had been hiding in the lava. No wonder he hadn’t been able to find him…

That Flame Vulture wasn’t very powerful. It was approximately only level 31. Had it been before, a magic beast of that level wouldn’t have drawn Lin Yun’s attention. But the environment here was very bad for Lin Yun. The mana was chaotic, greatly weakening his power, and the fall had also injured him.

He gently raised the magic staff and three Ice Walls instantly rose up in front of him, blocking the flames. At the same time, the Ten Thousand Spell Wheel also rose up behind him and burst with mana, forming a flood of spells that engulfed the Flame Vulture. At this time, Enderfa came out of the Spell Wheel, and with his control, the Ten Thousand Spell Wheel ruthlessly bombarded the Flame Vulture.

Lin Yun didn’t know what Enderfa used the Variant Black Lizard Blood for, but after getting it, the Ten Thousand Spell Wheel’s might did increase a lot. Just as Enderfa had said, it reached the level of a middle-rank True Spirit Magic Tool!

After being bombarded by the Ten Thousand Spell Wheel, the Flame Vulture slowly became unable to resist. The frequency at which it flapped its wings gradually slowed down until it finally chose to flee with all its might. Even if the spells were low-tier spells, they were all-powerful and greatly injured it. In less than five minutes, the flames on its body darkened and it was riddled with scars.

Growing tired as it ran for its life, the Flame Vulture didn’t notice the three clear blue rays of light, those three Frost Lances. The Flame Vulture let out a mournful howl as the flames on its body stopped burning. At this time, a large Magic Hand grabbed it.

Lin Yun bent down and carefully extracted the Flame Vulture’s mana crystal.

But Lin Yun’s expression became strange when he took out that mana crystal. He looked at it thoughtfully.

It was too strange…

The fighting power displayed by that Flame Vulture had already surpassed level 30. In other words, its mana crystal should have reached the realm of spirit mana crystal…

The mana contained within spirit mana crystals was pure, and not only could they be used in any field of alchemy, but even low-rank mages could directly draw power from them.

But the mana crystal in Lin Yun’s hands was far from being pure. The mana contained within was extremely complicated, and even Lin Yun, with his experience and knowledge, couldn’t help shaking his head. This mana crystal would be poison to a low-ranked mage.

If that were all, Lin Yun wouldn’t have lost any self-control.

The Flame Vulture was a fire lifeform. The condensed mana crystal should contain fire elements, but that mana crystal didn’t just contain fire elements… It also contained earth, wind, and water!

What did that mean?

One mana crystal contained four elements… Lin Yun had never heard of such a thing, even 30,000 years in the future.

He was very curious about how the Flame Vulture could condense such a strange mana crystal.

After carefully observing the crystal, Enderfa’s lofty voice echoed. “Shit! What’s going on! Merlin, come over and take a look…”

Lin Yun frowned and crouched down. The Flame Vulture’s body had stopped burning and was just a pitch-black corpse now. He followed Enderfa’s sight and discovered a scar that was hard to notice. After carefully observing it, he discovered that there were traces of the scar being sutured. With the addition of the strange mana crystal, Lin Yun froze, a preposterous thought flashing through his mind.

The four-element mana crystal should have been man-made before being implanted into the body of the Flame Vulture.

If his guess was correct, then the person that did such a thing was too crazy…

But after thinking about it, Lin Yun felt that this was inconceivable. How could a four-element mana crystal be man-made? Moreover, how could a magic beast be unscathed after being implanted with a mana crystal? There would be a lot of trouble to extract the mana in the mana crystal to cast a spell…

“That magic beast isn’t the only strange thing, its mana crystal is also strange…” Lin Yun frowned and showed that strange mana crystal to Enderfa. Enderfa’s three faces turned contorted.

“This, this…” Enderfa was also startled speechless…”Merlin, don’t you think this place is very strange? Most of the bones floating in the lava came from Dark Iron Dwarves. Who knows how they died here?”

Lin Yun nodded but didn’t say anything before resuming his path.

Before he passed the chains to reach the hovering palace, Lin Yun discovered some herbs growing on the wall. His pupils constricted as he saw that the Blazing Flame Grass he needed was among them.

But the Blazing Flame Grass wasn’t easy to pluck. It was tenaciously growing on the wall and needed Lin Yun to use Levitation to harvest them. This wouldn’t pose a problem normally, but the mana was in chaos now and was seriously interfering with casting. Other spells would be fine, but Levitation was out of question. If the chaos suddenly became worse, wouldn’t Lin Yun fall to his death?