End of the Magic Era

Many precious materials and documents were engraved in some of the buildings of the ruins in order to be preserved for a long time, but the buildings themselves would suffer the greatest damage during excavation, causing a lot of it to be damaged beyond repair.

The Firerock Dwarves could unearth these valuable materials without causing any damage.

This was also why, in a few millennia, major forces were willing to bleed to hire a Firerock Dwarf to excavate ruins.

But these Firerock Dwarves weren’t without weaknesses. They were obsessed with blacksmithing and craftsmanship. Anything new could make a Firerock Dwarf crazy with desire.

Lin Yun still remembered the most famous occurrence of a Firerock Dwarf being swindled. An alchemist once had a sudden stroke of inspiration and fused a few kinds of materials by refining them to obtain a composite metal that didn’t actually look like a composite metal. It looked just like a common piece of magic metal.

That guy looked for a Firerock Dwarf to appraise it. Who would have thought that the Dwarf would appraise it as a never-before-seen magic metal and then hug it as if his life depended on it?

Then, that alchemist, who had just become a Master Alchemist, did something even crazier. He used that piece of magic metal to deceive an entire clan of Firerock Dwarves.

The piece of fake magic metal was given to these Firerock Dwarves, but the price was to have their clan serve him for two centuries.

During the first hundred years, he used these Firerock Dwarves to crazily excavate ruins, raking in absurd amounts of wealth and resources. He then relied on these resources to reach the peak of the Artisan realm, and his strength also grew to the peak of the 9th Rank Archmage realm by taking advantage of all the valuable materials he got from the ruins.

But after a hundred years, that piece of metal he had given to the Firerock Dwarves was eventually discovered to be fake.

Ultimately, that guy was chased by the angry Dwarves through three planes before being turned into paste by the dwarven hammers. His skull was hung at the entrance of the Firerock Dwarven Clan all year long.

“What should we do? The Firerock Dwarves are the strongest of the three races, they aren’t easy to talk to, and they are very irritable, smelly, and forceful…” Elsa was worried. They were about to find what they were looking for, but the Firerock Dwarves were in the way. There was nothing more vexing than this.

Lin Yun waved his hand, not worried at all. Instead, he grinned as if he had heard something laughable. “It’s all right, it’s actually very easy to negotiate with Firerock Dwarves.”

After saying that, Lin Yun took out a few pieces of high-rank magic metal.

Enderfa glanced at them and his mouth twitched. “Although these magic metals are quite good, these Firerock Dwarves won’t be lacking in those. You plan on bribing the Firerock Dwarves with these? You are hoping for too much…”

Lin Yun remained silent and took out a refining table and used Flaming Hand to wrap the metals together.

Soon, the few pieces of metal melted together, and under Lin Yun’s control, these melting pieces of metal slowly flowed towards the center of the array on the refining table.

The array started shining as the liquid metal slowly fused within. As the last flame dissipated, the liquid metal quickly solidified, turning into a block of silvery-gray magic metal.

But the fluctuations coming from that piece of magic metal were those of a low-rank magic metal.

Enderfa was distracted as he looked at the piece of composite metal. “I hope you aren’t thinking of using this piece of metal to trick the Firerock Dwarves? They can’t be tricked…”

Lin Yun smiled as he held the metal up. “Who says that this is composite metal? This is a piece of unknown magic metal!”

Lin Yun knew of the Dwarves being cheated for a hundred years, so how could he not know what array was used? Although he couldn’t make a perfect fake at the moment, by using a few high-rank metals and discarding their effects, he created a composite piece of metal that could only be seen as a true low-rank magic metal. There was no problem.

Moreover, they were only here to enter the ruins and get the Incarnation, which wouldn’t take too long. He only needed to trick them for a bit; he certainly wouldn’t need a hundred years.

Elsa was stunned as she was dragged along by Lin Yun. Just as they approached the ruins, they were discovered by a few Firerock Dwarves.

“Who are you!?”

In an instant, a dozen hammer-wielding Firerock Dwarves rushed over and surrounded Lin Yun and Elsa.

“What are you up to?” a Firerock Dwarf loudly shouted, but then, his eyes were attracted by the piece of low-rank magic metal in Lin Yun’s hands, and the other Firerock Dwarves stared at it too.

“Hey, what’s that piece of metal in your hand?” A Firerock Dwarf apparently forgot to ask about their origins, his attention too focused on that metal.

Lin Yun smiled and raised his hand.

“You mean this? I also don’t know, I unexpectedly obtained it while being chased by an Orachiss. I searched through all kinds of records, but I couldn’t find out what kind of metal this was, so I thought that the Firerock Dwarven Clan would definitely now. Thus, I came to give it to you.”

Lin Yun threw the piece of metal, and all the eyes of all the Dwarves followed its path through the air.

“Gifting it to us? For real?”

After hurriedly catching the piece of metal, the leading Firerock Dwarf looked pleasantly surprised, but he then recalled something and hesitantly asked, “What are you after? Do you have your sight on these ruins?”

Though he was a bit wary, the Dwarf was still caressing the piece of metal as if it was a lover.

Lin Yun shook his head. “We have no interest in this ruins themselves, but a Magic Tool Incarnation of the Dark Elven Clan has escaped here. We wish to capture it and return it, but we don’t have any interest in what’s inside the ruins.”

Hearing this, how could the cheerful Dwarf still doubt them? He promptly agreed.

“Okay, you can go in, but you can only catch that Magic Tool Incarnation. Anything else has to remain in place.” He gestured to the others, and a few Firerock Dwarves hurriedly opened the entrance of the ruins, apparently afraid that Lin Yun would back out of this deal.

Enderfa was thoroughly stunned this time.

Xiuban scratched his head, running off his mouth and asking, “It’s not such a good metal, is it?”

The leading Firerock Metal disdainfully glanced at him. “How could a Beastman like you understand? This is an extremely rare first-rate magic metal!”

Xiuban opened his mouth but didn’t know what to say.

Enderfa had an ugly expression and mumbled after a while, “Just f*cking go…”

The group of Firerock Dwarves acted like hospitable hosts and urged Lin Yun’s group to enter the ruins, not even asking who they were.

The group seemed to have lost all ability to reason. How could such a hastily made composite metal make these Firerock Dwarves act so brainlessly?

Lin Yun also felt that this was going smoothly… Too smoothly, as he hadn’t even gotten a chance to use all the eloquent words and explanations that he’d prepared.

They clearly weren’t a group of Dark Elves. Going in the ruins to capture a Dark Elven Clan’s Magic Tool Incarnation, who would believe such nonsense so easily?

Lin Yun had pulled Elsa with him to reveal her identity as a Dark Elven Princess, but these Firerock Dwarves didn’t even ask…

‘Isn’t this too careless? Firerock Dwarves are fanatical when encountering new and unknown materials, but it wouldn’t be to this extent, not to the point where they would let unknown people enter the ruins, right?’

Lin Yun turned to glance at those Firerock Dwarves and suddenly realized something was wrong.

These Firerock Dwarves had surprised him with their ready acceptance of the metal, which had almost made him overlook this detail.

The eyes of Firerock Dwarves were red, especially when they were emotional, which would make their eyes look like burning flames.

And what could make the Firerock Dwarves more emotional than discovering a new magic metal?

Nothing.

These Firerock Dwarves looked extremely excited, but their eyes weren’t red at all… It looked like blue flames were burning within.

“Something’s wrong! Everyone stop!” Lin Yun shouted in a low voice.

No one knew why Lin Yun was stopping them, but he was frowning while looking at the Firerock Dwarves. Sure enough, all the Firerock Dwarves seemed to have blue flames flickering in their eyes, giving a completely different impression from normal Firerock Dwarves.

The leading Firerock Dwarf was startled by Lin Yun’s suddenly stop and quickly put the magic metal away.

“What? Why are you still here? Since you already gifted it to us, don’t think of taking it back!” one of the Firerock Dwarves loudly shouted.

“Go in! Quick, go in! Damnit, why are you still here?”

“They are definitely regretting! We can’t let them snatch this piece of magic metal!”

“Make them go in! No, they are definitely regretting, what should we do?”

“Kill them! Right, we can only kill them, and the magic metal will be ours!”

The blue flames in the eyes of the Firerock Dwarves were now flickering even more fiercely.

Lin Yun hadn’t said a word to them. He’d only stopped, yet those Firerock Dwarves now wanted to kill them. After the first Firerock Dwarf expressed his doubts, the rest approved immediately.

“It’s no good, there is some abnormality with these Firerock Dwarves…”