Chapter 857: The Second World Tree Leaf and the God-King’s Cry for Help

Above the near-void orbit, Locke did not immediately send the three wizards he had selected into the Three-Hole Plane. Instead, he first sent out a small detection device built into the Exploration Vanguard, a carpet-shaped magic carpet, and launched it into the Three-Hole Plane as a test.

The ten registered wizards behind Locke collectively began chanting spells, and within their chanting, the control staff of the cockpit released magical radiance.

The magic carpet, whose surface resembled a mosaic painting, began continuously adjusting and aligning itself with the planar principles. Only after approaching the Three-Hole World's planar principles did the magic carpet rush into the crystal wall system, not being detected and resisted by this world's world force.

The magic carpet entered that world directly. But the next moment, a fire arrow struck the magic carpet. In an instant, flames spread across the carpet, but after one layer of the carpet's surface enchantment defense formation flashed with magical radiance, the flames gradually died.

Only the surface of the magic carpet was slightly scorched.

Even if the entirety of this world's fire principle targeted this First Circle crystallization-grade magic carpet, it could not destroy it.

The Flame Giant looked up as the magic carpet descended from the sky, intending to approach the crater rim.

But in the sky between the crater rim and the great land below, as well as above the sky, lay the domain of this Three-Hole Plane's God-King.

The next moment, a bolt of lightning struck from the sky. With a tremendous crack, as if the entire world's planar principles were attacking the magic carpet, the entire carpet suddenly shattered.

As the operators behind the carpet, the ten registered wizards' expressions shifted slightly. They felt as though the entirety of the Three-Hole Plane's planar principles was rushing toward them in a wave.

Locke, however, remained calm.

"It seems the giants within this plane who call themselves 'divine beings' have prepared their defenses after detecting our void cube the last time."

Old Pirate Henry commented, "Being able to construct defensive measures within the crystal wall system is not bad. That Flame Giant's magic pressure is 16,000. Unfortunately it has no means of improving energy efficiency. Against a First Circle wizard there is still a size advantage, but against the three of us it amounts to nothing."

"But the magic pressure of that sky domain is approaching 19,999, which is nearly the ordinary Second Circle limit. This world is truly unusual. For a mere medium-scale plane, it has produced two and a half upper-tier planes and has such powerful native existences."

"With that sky domain covering the present world blocking the way, sending anyone down to land will be very difficult. Everything we send in will be destroyed by that domain, and the three of us and the void warship, because our total magic pressure is too great, cannot directly enter this medium-scale plane without a ritual summoning."

Hussein said, "Just have the three wizards we send down find mortal natives, establish a ritual, and summon us down. Summoning our saintly avatars would also work."

Old Henry looked at him. "But the prerequisite is being able to safely send people down. Otherwise it is like facing a tortoiseshell. Nothing to bite into."

The three wizards Locke had originally selected for early entry into the Three-Hole Plane looked at one another with expressions of concern.

They had only a few experiences following Second Circle great wizards in void exploration and were entering a void plane for the first time on their initial landing. They had not known how dangerous it would be before. Now, seeing the magic carpet that had been shattered into a fireball by the native world's sky lightning, they each began to feel afraid.

Even a crystallization-grade magical artifact could be blasted into a fireball by that lightning. If that fell on them at the gas stage, would they not be in serious trouble?

And once they entered that world, the three great wizards like Locke could not force their way in. Forcing their way in would mean a direct clash with this world's fundamental self.

Even if they managed to land successfully, they would face total isolation with no support.

Enemies would come at them in endless waves.

And those enemies could all draw upon the planar principles of the entire world.

These crystallization wizards would eventually be ground down and killed.

Witch Ada used her pendulum divination technique to divine the short-term fates of the three wizards and said to Locke, "Mr. Augustine, my divination has revealed the deaths of the three of them."

"Although this result may not necessarily be accurate, it illustrates the danger of sending people down directly."

The three wizards' expressions changed.

Old Pirate Henry said with dissatisfaction, "Everyone here is a registered wizard. If you want to do things with no danger, you might as well go retire in a lower wizard territory. Void exploration has always been extremely dangerous, especially in a world like this that wizards have never set foot in before and that clearly shows signs of having been modified by another civilization. Danger is inevitable, but as wizards, finding a solution amidst danger is the proper course. That is just how it is."

Witch Ada gave a cold snort. She held considerable reservations about this old black wizard inwardly, but since the other party was a Second Circle great wizard, she did not dare say much to his face.

The three Illusion School gasification wizards all looked toward Locke at once.

At that moment, Locke, as the organizer of this mission and the highest authority on this void warship, the highest commander among those who had come here as representatives of wizard civilization, had to make a decision.

Every day spent in this near-void orbit consumed resources and energy. If no progress could be made for an extended period, a return voyage would be necessary to replenish resources before coming back. All the earlier investment would have been thrown away for nothing.

Back in the day, the reason Wizard Gakula had gone bankrupt during void exploration was precisely this.

Fortunately, Locke was not without experience entering other worlds.

Locke recalled the experience from his previous three World Wars and from the Silent Chalice. He quickly judged that either the mortals of this world would summon their saintly avatars to descend, or this world itself would summon them to descend.

But in truth, the initial test of launching the magic carpet had already revealed the world's attitude: the entire world appeared to be under the complete control of those twelve giants, the world had fallen into a state of confusion, and the attitude of the twelve giants had actually become the attitude of the world.

Therefore, before finding a way to inject their own power and make true contact with the world will, they could only face the reality that the entire world rejected them, driven by the will of those giant kings.

Hussein placed his palm on the control staff and immediately piloted the void vessel to drop a black rod magical artifact into the world below. It was wound with a vampire transformation blood curse, designed to attempt to create vampires in the Three-Hole Plane upon entry.

But the black rod magical artifact had barely entered the sky domain when it was shattered by a bolt of divine power lightning and the curse was cleared.

Not only that, the entire Three-Hole Plane's planar principles further rejected them.

Seeing Locke look toward him, Hussein knew he had made a rare mistake. He coughed once.

"Did not expect that."

Locke said, "The planar principles of this world naturally reject the magic of the Mind School. Your vampire transformation blood curse had too much magic packed into it. Although based on blood curse studies, a sub-direction of the Spirit School's curse magic, there is also Mind School magic encapsulated inside. For example, your vampire transformation blood curse would carry the Mind School spell of Ancestral Tracing built in."

"That is the key to allowing higher vampires to command lower vampires. And beyond that, it involves life-threatening through curse magic."

"Even if you had truly managed to drop the curse successfully, I imagine those vampires would find it difficult to take your orders due to the absence of the Ancestral Tracing. You could only remotely control them with a weak curse from outside. Not to mention, the entire world has now further rejected us because of this."

Hussein nodded. "I made a mistake this time. I was originally trying to test it with a curse, to see if I could quickly resolve things. But I just realized the rejection of the entire world. If I were to place a curse, I would have to curse the entire world."

Hussein was somewhat at a loss.

He had two major areas of experience. The first was developed at the Blood Curse Court, where he had gotten into the habit of cursing others at the slightest excuse.

The second was developed at the Mithril Law Firm, where he had developed the habit of checking whether others were breaking laws at the slightest excuse.

And now the Three-Hole Plane was rejecting his curses as a whole, and there was no law to speak of.

He had something of a momentary sense of not knowing what to do.

Locke then closed his eyes, entered the Advanced Meditation Method, and sank into a state of deep meditation. He wanted to use the Advanced Meditation Method's characteristic of merging his consciousness into the primordial force tidal wave, then through the primordial force tidal wave directly communicate with the entire world.

Before developing a plane, he needed to have a conversation first.

Because according to wizard civilization's principles, wizard civilization did not necessarily need to conquer a plane. There were many ways to obtain resources.

Only during the great void exploration era did wizards go around conquering everywhere. In the modern magical era, wizards often only wanted specific resources from a plane, such as its World Stone or certain special materials.

In that case, commerce, trade, and similar arrangements could entirely suffice.

Very often, both sides could benefit.

Only at that moment, Locke held little expectation that communication would achieve anything, because this plane was clearly wrong in some fundamental way.

At that moment, Locke's consciousness merged into the primordial force tidal wave, then attempted to resonate with the entire world ahead and sought out the suppressed world consciousness.

The next moment, Locke seemed to see a lush mountain range, radiant with divine light and auspicious mist, harmonious and peaceful, filled with the atmosphere of natural accord.

Locke was somewhat taken aback, because he had not expected the plane to appear like this in his meditative state.

On this crater rim, sat a king of giants. The instant he saw Locke, his eyes filled with excitement. "Nature Guardian, you have finally come."

Locke looked at him with puzzlement.

Behind the throne of this giant king was a tree, lush and flourishing, with nothing extraordinary about it. But what made Locke's pupils suddenly contract sharply was that on that tree hung a World Tree Leaf.

He could recognize it as a World Tree Leaf because he himself possessed one, having built a Grand Magic around it as its core.

And the tree behind this giant king also bore a World Tree Leaf.

The giant king said to Locke suddenly, "Nature Guardian, this is the first time in ten thousand years that we have been able to communicate with you as a natural avatar. After you sent your power into our world, I detected you and immediately placed my power on the cube you sent over, sending you a call for help. Did you receive it?"

Locke's expression remained unchanged. He simply watched the giant king calmly in his deep meditative state, because he was not certain whether this was a trap.

'A call for help?'

Locke said, "This existence of the Three-Hole Plane, you say you sent me a call for help? Then why did your call for help suddenly attack me?"

The giant king sitting on his enormous throne, hearing these words, immediately went pale. He looked as though he wanted to stand up and say something.

"Attack you?"

"No, there has been a mistake, a great mistake. Nature Guardian, help us, we need help."

"Our world has invaders."

"If that signal attacked you, does your coming here not mean you came to help us?"

The giant king's face showed astonishment.

He tried to rise from his throne, but the next moment many stone chains suddenly appeared on the throne.

The giant king let out a roar of fury. "No."

The next moment, within this deep meditation, the entire world spun. The mountain range that had been full of peaceful atmosphere suddenly became bleak and barren. The sky seemed to undergo some kind of transformation, and one eye after another descended from the heavens.

In the sky appeared one enormous eye above all the rest, its pupil filled with contemptuous indifference.

"Outsiders, what have you come to this world to do?"

Locke furrowed his brow. He had been attempting, in a state of deep meditation, to communicate directly with the world will, but he could not find the Three-Hole Plane's world will. He could only communicate with this world's God-King.

And the God-King had suddenly called out to him for help.

Then within his communication with the world, this strange entity had suddenly intruded.

What was this thing?

Locke's state of mind was as calm and still as still water. He decided to see this through to its conclusion.

"We are wizards from the wizard world. We wish to complete a commercial transaction with your esteemed world. I want to make contact with this world's World Tree Leaf, to explore the mysteries of this world. In exchange, we will elevate your world's civilization level and provide you with corresponding things you desire."

"I ask whether you wish to complete this transaction. Completing this transaction should bring great benefits to you as well."

The pupil of that enormous eye in the sky full of countless eyes immediately revealed malice. It was the instinct of a bully, awakened the moment it detected Locke's goodwill.

Its original bluster and bluff vanished at once.

"I do not need it."

"This world does not need civilization elevation. Maintaining the current state is perfectly fine. Leave our world immediately. Otherwise, my means are more numerous than you can imagine. I will kill every last one of you."

"Wizard, I am no stranger to your kind. Heh heh..."

"Get lost. No, before you go, leave behind some of your resources..."

Locke's expression remained unchanged.

"So this is a declaration of war?"

The pupil of that eye in the sky was immediately taken aback.

"What?"

Locke said, "Understood. I accept your declaration of war against our wizard civilization."

"But I warn you, I never fail."

The pupil of that eye at the center of the sky suddenly contracted sharply, because it seemed to have misjudged something.

This person was nothing like a soft-hearted easy mark.

The next moment, Locke left the deep meditation and severed his connection with that world.

Locke looked down at the Three-Hole Plane, then turned to Old Henry and Hussein. "This world runs deeper than I expected."

If what truly sat behind the giant king was a World Tree Leaf, then the way the giants of this world had originally obtained their power was very likely through a gift of nature.

But why had they ended up in their current state?

Why had the God-King called out to him for help, and what exactly was that enormous eye that had suddenly intruded on his communication with the world?

Locke looked at the three gasification wizards and said, "Proceed as originally planned. The three of you are all Illusion School specialists."

"Here are three branches of the Scarlet-Earth Holly. The Scarlet-Earth Holly has low environmental requirements. After you land, immediately select a safe area and plant them."

Locke looked at one crystallization wizard from the Protection School.

"This is why I invited you, a Protection School specialist, beforehand. You will prepare three sealing scrolls. When these three wizards land and plant the trees, and then face life-threatening danger, immediately seal all three of them on the spot."

"This will protect their lives. At the same time, we can lift the seal at any time depending on the situation. This gives us considerable flexibility."

The three gasification wizards' eyes all brightened.

They thought Locke's idea was excellent.

This way they could complete the mission and bring magic into that world, while also having a degree of safety assurance, and the seal could be lifted at any time to resume activity in that world based on the situation.

Old Henry's eyes lit up.

"Good idea."