Chapter 387 - 286: Isaac’s Underground Palace City

Chapter 387: Chapter 286: Isaac’s Underground Palace City

Isaac was rather casual about choosing a location for the Underground Palace City. As long as there were three to five Underground Palaces nearby, it would be enough. He needed to create the impression of a normal conflict for the Demon Gods behind those Underground Palaces.

As for the terrain...

The name of this world, Wilderness Dungeon, was quite telling. This world was either Wilderness or Underground Palaces. The vast majority of the land consisted of boundless great plains, and the few strategic locations had long since been occupied.

Besides, Isaac had no intention of being the public face of this Underground Palace City. He wouldn’t even provide it with technological or material support like that one Grand Arcanist had.

This was for the Trial mission, and it was also a part of Isaac’s attempt to defy the Great Wizard!

Soon, Isaac found a suitable location—a small hill that was easy to attack and difficult to defend.

Don’t let its less-than-ideal terrain fool you; there were many Underground Palaces nearby!

A full seven of them!

Most importantly, these Underground Palaces were all in a semi-dormant state. Therefore, within a radius of hundreds of miles centered on the small hill, the concentration of Demons was not particularly high, making it perfect for gradual development.

The so-called semi-dormant state of an Underground Palace was an energy-saving mode. The Demon Gods set up these Underground Palaces in this world partly because they were forced to by the Great Wizard’s tyranny, but also because they could gain many benefits here.

But simply setting up an Underground Palace didn’t mean they could directly reap the benefits. At most, it only saved them from annihilation.

If the Demon Gods wanted to gain benefits from the world of Wilderness Dungeon, they had to participate in its game—the Trial.

This Trial referred to outsiders like Isaac and his kind, as well as to another opposing force—the Sects.

The three factions used the Wilderness Dungeon as their battlefield, fighting one another. The Underground Palaces accumulated Magic Power, created Demons, and wreaked havoc. The outsiders hunted Demons, conquered Underground Palaces, and protected the world.

As for the Sects...

They acted as competent shit-stirrers, making trouble here and there. They never did anything productive; they just played around.

This was the nature of the Evil Gods, and it was also the task the Great Wizard had given them.

One could say this arrangement perfectly combined the interests and natures of all parties.

However, this led to another problem—

The Demon Gods were too diligent, and the Evil Gods were too crazy.

Because the Demon Gods had an Infinite supply of Magic Power from the Dimension Worlds, building Underground Palaces for them was essentially just a matter of time cost. So, if they wanted to, they could create Underground Palaces without limit!

And in fact, that’s exactly what they did.

And while the Sects would also conquer and destroy Underground Palaces, this wasn’t their mission. The vast majority of the Underground Palaces they conquered were merely coincidences.

As a result, the number of Underground Palaces in this world would just keep growing!

And if the Demons in the Underground Palaces weren’t cleared out regularly, they would swarm out and cause massive destruction!

Naturally, this was not what the Great Wizard wanted to see. After all, the worlds within the Endless Tower weren’t disposable toys; that would be too wasteful.

Thus, a rule was born: when an Underground Palace went uncleared for a long time and the number of Demons swarming out reached a certain stage, the Underground Palace would temporarily cease to function until someone entered it again.

These seven Underground Palaces were currently in this state, which would give Isaac’s Underground Palace City some room to develop.

Now that he had selected a location, the next step was, naturally, to create a Virtual Divinity.

This time, Isaac didn’t plan to create another Evil God’s Divinity. There was already a place for Evil Gods in the Wilderness Dungeon. Although he planned to use a Sect-like organization to conquer Underground Palaces for him, he didn’t want to further develop a Sect of an Evil God.

A True God would be quite suitable.

However, just because it was a True God didn’t mean they could solve the problems of this world’s humans. Even for a True God to develop their own Church, there was only one choice, the same as the Evil Gods’—the non-human path!

Of course, that wasn’t important.

Although he harbored the idea of challenging some of the rules of the Great Wizard’s Great Creation, Isaac wasn’t naive enough to think that his current [Miracle] alone was enough to defy the rules of the Great Creation.

After all, you have to eat a meal one bite at a time.

And compared to an Evil God’s Divinity, a True God’s Divinity was much simpler to create. After all, many of the current True Gods were quite friendly towards Wizards. If one just needed a little bit of their Divine Power, setting up a simple prayer ritual was enough.

However, even though it was a prayer ritual, Isaac didn’t actually need to pray himself. The Faith of other humanoid beings—even just a few simple, temporary prayers—would suffice. After all, who could argue when the Wizards now held the bigger stick?

After some effort, Isaac obtained the Divine Power of the Sun God, the War God, the Fighting God, and the Fire God. The material cost was basically nonexistent—just a dozen or so loaves of bread.

In fact, for such a simple ritual, if it hadn’t involved Faith, Isaac could have completed all of them by himself without any materials, given his current abilities.

Afterwards, he spent another two days weaving two Virtual Divinities: [Blade of the Scorching Sun] and [Fighting God]!

That’s right, one of them was named [Fighting God], the same Divine Name as the Deity from whom he had borrowed Divine Power. Of course, while the Divine Names were the same, their Divine Power and Divine Authority were vastly different.

That Fighting God presided over the authority representing skill and was a top-tier Existence among the Deities. His power had grown even stronger, especially with the rise of the Knights.

In contrast, the [Fighting God] Isaac had created possessed the Divine Powers of [Strength], [Struggle], and [Combat], with the Divine Authority of [Combat Techniques]. By any measure, it was an extremely subpar creation.

It was far inferior to [Blade of the Scorching Sun]. Isaac didn’t really mind, though. After all, this Miracle had come too easily. The process of weaving a Divinity was still in the "loot box" stage at this point; what he got was completely up to luck.

This was also why the True Gods Isaac sought out were all powerful combat-oriented Deities. It increased the chances of getting a combat-type Divinity.

It’s worth mentioning that, like [Evil Eye], both of these Virtual Divinities had been nurtured with Divine Fragments by Isaac, and they also possessed the [Eternal] characteristic!

This meant that unlike other Virtual Divinities, they didn’t have a time limit on their existence; they just couldn’t increase in strength.

But this had no impact in the Wilderness Dungeon. After all, the power ceiling here was only Tier Four to begin with, so there was nowhere to improve anyway.

However, Isaac wasn’t actually very satisfied with this. Although the production efficiency of Divine Fragments had increased, it still wasn’t enough. It had taken him over two years to produce just two Eternal Virtual Divinities. ’This technique still needs to be optimized...’

While contemplating how to optimize the Divine Fragment technology, Isaac arrived at a human settlement. He entered silently and began to observe quietly.

He was searching for a suitable candidate to merge with a Virtual Divinity.