Soul of Searing Steel

“Instead of your feats, I’m actually more curious about you. As a swordsman, what’s the interesting thing that keeps you in the lab almost all the time?”

Glancing through the decorations and statues around the hallway, Joshua asked Brandon a random question casually, “I’ve been meaning to ask you back then when we were communicating through letters. From the looks of it, you’re a regular here, aren’t you? You do not appear as you seem to be.”

“I’m a swordsman. That’s true.”

Facing the warrior’s doubt, Brandon responded very quickly as he ought to be, “But I’m a scholar as well. It’s not conflicting anything, is it? I’m a member of the Kaos Family. So I must not leave myself unattended in the arts of magic. I must at least know something about it.”

Joshua gave some thought about it for a brief moment. After all, that was indeed how it should be.

Kaoses were a distinguished noble family that have been serving the royal family for a long time. Obviously, they belonged to the central faction in the Empire Kingdom. Among the three that founded the Imperial Royal Mages Guild was an elder of the Kaos family. With a rich family history and excellent bloodline legacy, each generation could give birth to quite a number of mages that were much more superior in their strength. Hence, they had more rights to speak in the circle of mages in the Empire Kingdom.

Not to mention that Kaos family had once fostered a Legendary-tier archbishop in their family history that did many great things in the past. As the heir to the Kaos family, even though Brandon had become a swordsman because of his inner potential and the fact that he was blessed with the Dual Blades of Order, his family would not have kept him from learning even the slightest knowledge about magic. The nature of the scholar profession was nearest to the nature of the profession blacksmith. That profession did not contradict with Brandon’s main class. So it was indeed very normal that he turned out to be a scholar as well.

The two men were talking to each other as they were walking towards the interior of the Mage Guild. As it was already past midnight at the moment, the lighting in the interior of the association had become dimmer. The lighting of the magic lamps that were adjusted to their brightest could not even match the brightness of the moonlight that was shining down from the heavens. However, the remaining people in the vicinity including Ying and Ling had the ability to see in the dark though. So they would not make any silly mistakes that would get themselves banging into walls or pillars or anything else around them. After a brief moment, everyone had arrived at a large silver door leading into a laboratory.

Brandon moved forward a little. Then he raised his right hand up and pressed his palm on the right side of that silver door. Instantly, a fluorescent light flashed across Brandon’s hand as if his palm was being verified by the door. After a while, the voice of a gentle girl was heard echoing from the other side of the large door. “Brandon Kaos. Welcome to Magic Creature Research Facility 3. The current date is Year 834, 5th of April, 10.22 p.m.. Do you wish to open the main door to the facility?”

“Activate protocol to open the door”

“Affirmative.”

The swordsman straight away gave the order and the silver door opened swiftly without making even the slightest sound. Brandon also noticed the curiosity that was stirring in the eyes of Joshua and the others. He turned around smiling, before he went on to explain, “That one is the Association’s ‘Tower Intelligence’, Flora. She is the one who was talking to us a moment ago. She is responsible for handling the jurisdictions within the association’s internal security issues.”

“Artificial Intelligence, or artificial soul…”

Joshua squinted at the two little people at his side. Then he remembered 03 who was currently in Moldavia. After that, he only reacted and came back from his thoughts. “That’s right. Technically speaking. Although technical abilities of the Imperial Mage Guild is not on par as the technical abilities of the few mage organizations in the flatlands of the East, they should still be capable of creating an artificial body without much problem. After all, they’ve created the first generation of the Divine Armaments 400 years ago by referring to information and data from the outside world. So why do I have to seek far and neglect what lies close at hand then?”

Upon resting his thought about that here, the warrior had made his decision to ask Brandon about it afterward. That should fulfil 03’s wish.

Behind the door of the laboratory, there was a small compartment. The blond swordsman stepped into a space that seemed like a cubicle that was connected to another room. Instantly, countless magic lights were seen sweeping all over his body. There was no need to explain. Joshua could tell by just looking at it. That was a spell used to detect any specks of dust, dirt, and bacteria on the body of the person who went through the scan. The scanning spell was basically harmless to the body. Plus, it was the standard procedure for entering and exiting all the major spell labs. Hence, he also walked into the scanning area, followed by Ying and Ling, and went through the antivirus scan.

What lied ahead of the cubicle was the standard laboratory. That lab was a wide rectangular room. The walls were all made of silver-white steel. Around the room, there were various utensils, test tube bottles, and jars. There were also sets of magic material cabinets and a large magic furnace. The dome-shaped ceiling of the lab was filled with densely packed magic crystals pipes that were used to supply magic energy to the lab. Entering the lab along with Brandon on the front, these magic crystal pipes began charging up all sorts of equipment and facilities in the lab. The pipes were glowing with cold blue light.

“This is pretty good… this looks much more professional than I imagined.”

Even Joshua could not help but admire and praise. He could tell by just looking around. Casting aside everything else in the lab and the lab itself, that set of energy-saving equipment and the magic furnace should already cost approximately ten thousand gold pieces, and that was just the basic cost of it. Together with the other professional equipment and magical materials accounted for, setting up each lab should require at least ten thousand gold pieces. Meanwhile, that amount of money would be more than enough to fully equip an army of three thousand from the top of their heads all the way down to their toes. Set aside the nobles who were dukes or duchesses, those superior nobles who were a little less rich would not have the money to maintain a facility like this.

Master Nostradamus was truly remarkably rich!

“Isn’t that right? Well, I can say that as long as it’s not some sort of forbidden experiments, ordinary mages from the Empire City will choose to carry out their experiment here in the association. The level of these facilities provided by the association is so top notch that even Nostradamus would praise and recommend people to come here. Let alone the others.”

Brandon seemed to be very contented with the facilities in the labs that the association was proving. Currently, he was bending over to open a steel cabinet at the corner. As he was keying in the passcode, he said, “On my usual days, I would usually end up here with a few archmages. We’re here doing research on the Berserk Dragon Virus and the creature from the Dark Abyss. Our research has finally bore fruit… Take a look at this.”

After saying all that, he had already opened the extremely solid steel cabinet that seemed to be used to isolate some sort of hazardous items from the other parts of the lab. There were numerous white holy patterns that were floating adrift around the cabinet at a very slow pace looking like an existence that purified all the time.

Right at the moment the cabinet was opened, Joshua felt that the Azurite orb right before his chest throbbing violently. Instantly, he was shocked to the core of his heart—the warrior had possessed the item of the Sage Inheritance for quite some time ever since he came across it. Hence, he was familiar with its reactions to a certain extent by now. The moment when the Azurite throbbed, the warrior knew what it meant. It meant that there was an extremely powerful Chaos creature before him.

But where?

In fact, not only did the Azurite orb had a strange reaction. Ying who was initially standing by the side turning her head around looking at her surroundings with curiosity was completely startled by the presence of that Chaos. She also turned her head towards the same direction instantly. The fierce eyes of the silver-haired girl swept around the surroundings once again. However, she could not detect any presence of any sort of enemy.

Ling had also become vigilant. However, he did not overreact like Ying did. The black-haired boy only took a step closer to Joshua as he was prepared to transform into his Divine Armament form to engage into battle anytime.

Right by the side of Brandon’s waist, the dual double-edged swords which seemed ordinary, the Dual Blades of Order, were strangely surging with holy light. It reacted towards the presence of Chaos like how the Azurite orb did. However, judging from the look on their wielder’s face, it seemed that the swordsman was already gotten used to it. The blond swordsman just took something from the cabinet and stood back up with his back straight again. Then he turned around and showed everyone the thing in his hand.

It was a black crystal that was sealed in a column of cylindrical crystal. It was only the size of a thumb. There were innumerable complex reflective surfaces across the surface of that crystal, reflecting all of the lights that came in contact with it. The center of the crystal had a dark red light mass that looked like a heart. That heart-like light was creeping slowly, changing its shape from time to time.

The appearance of this crystal looked ordinary and unremarkable. From the looks of it, the crystal could at best being deemed as a black diamond that was not half bad itself. But Joshua knew… if one would actually weight the value of the crystal by referring it to the value of an ordinary crystal, that person could be deemed as the dumbest being on the planet.

“Heart of Chaos… Divine Crystal.”

He whispered to himself, “This is truly a surprise. I’ve never thought that I would see this thing at a time like this.”