Pillar of Yita

Ultimately, the Lion People and the Papalarians were still allowed to pass, after all, their Magic Guided Reactor, though peculiar, did not violate any competition rules. The Continental League had not stipulated that Alchemists must use a specialized Magic Guided Reactor for the competition.

Guided by the staff, the three of them passed through a long corridor to enter the competition room, which was a closed space. Before the Dwarf staff member left, he couldn’t help but ask with a bit of curiosity:

”Gentlemen, why must you use such a Magic Guided Reactor?”

”My friend, haven’t I told you?” Reed responded with grace, ”I am a Holy Temple Knight, not an Alchemist.”

”Ha, you’re quite the joker.” The Dwarf laughed heartily, winking and ribbing him: ”Look at those guys, their faces are turning green with envy. So what if we have Combat Artisans, our Holy Temple Knights are also Alchemy Masters——”

The Lion-man shrugged his shoulders, about to tell him that he was no Alchemy Master. But then he heard the Papalar person loudly say, ”You’re absolutely right, I am an Alchemy Master; not just that, I’m also a Cartographer. Because I do several jobs at once, I always get hungry quickly—you must understand, a person’s energy is limited, but the appetite of a Papalar person is infinite.”

The Dwarf nodded in understanding, then closed the door.

Outside the arena, the atmosphere was already a joyous sea——

”Ha-ha,” the Dwarf Lady laughed, unable to resist punching the air after hearing Reed’s response: ”Such a good answer. We don’t even need to deploy a specialized Alchemy Master; our Holy Temple Knights’ Alchemy skills are far superior to those poor Ancient Tower folks. Wandering Horse, look at their faces when they hear this; it’s funnier than when Aquitez fell into a pile of horse dung last month—comical indeed.”

The Wandering Horse also found it quite funny, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that the Big Cat Person wasn’t lying, prompting him to ask, ”What if what he said is true?”

”True?” Aisha shook her head as if she’d heard the biggest joke: ”How could it be? Our staff aren’t fools; how could they really let a Holy Temple Knight enter the competition?”

The Wandering Horse looked at the projection above the arena and couldn’t help but nod in agreement.

Indeed, how could it be?

He was really worrying over nothing.

In the projection above the arena, Fang Hong was entering the competition room, curiously looking around. Naturally, he had no idea that his actions were being watched by thousands of eyes, making him remark inwardly that Elpaxin’s examination room was truly large—at least much larger than Kapuka’s.

The Kapuka Artisan Association’s examination room only had one console, allowing only one person to take the test at a time. But Elpaxin’s? It had as many as five.

He curiously touched here and there, which, to the spectators, elicited another wave of knowing laughter.

Too exaggerated, too flamboyant—Elpaxin’s event was one of the last rounds in the league, and every team’s participants had seen such rooms countless times, even if they hadn’t competed themselves. Was there a need to act like country bumpkins seeing the big city for the first time?

In the eyes of Elpaxin’s audience, this was clearly a slap in the face of those Ancient Tower folks. In their view, Fang Hong’s attitude was saying—even if I haven’t seen these things before, even if I’m just a rookie, I can still easily defeat you and comfortably make it into the top five.

As for whether he could win, wasn’t that obvious? As the birthplace of the Construct School, the Kapuka Artisan Association, though not large, had a long history and was even ranked above Elpaxin in the Alchemy Realm of Colin Ishurian. As long as they were not disqualified by absence, even if they made several big mistakes and only scored the basic points, they would still not fall out of the top five with the points they had accumulated before.

Thus, the audience burst into laughter, while the Ancient Tower’s delegation area was dead silent, just as Lady Aisha had said, with everyone’s face looking as if they had swallowed a live fly.

But Fang Hong was completely unaware of the situation outside.

Poor thing, he was actually examining the room—it was a circular room filled with pipes. The brass-shelled pipes all led to a metallic giant sphere floating in mid-air—this was in fact a spherical Magic Guided Conductor, known as the Ether Furnace. Since the Numelin Elves Era, Alchemists had been using this so-called ’CNC Machine Tool’ to craft top-notch precision Magic Guided Conductors and mechanical Constructs.

And to this day, the core of this thing hasn’t changed much; it has only been improved for safety and stability.

Of course, he knew that the Ether Furnace before him wasn’t a real Ether Furnace but a modified teaching aid specially used for testing, and it did not have a real smelting function. He had seen something similar in Kapuka, only much smaller than the one in front of him.

He looked at the five consoles rising from the ground, then took off his control gloves and handed them to Reed behind him, before proceeding alone towards the front.

At this time in the arena, it was like a stone had been dropped into water, rippling outward in waves.

The audience in Elpaxin stopped laughing, whispering to each other and gradually spreading their murmurs throughout the venue.