Abe the Wizard

There was still quite some distance between the spiritual guardian knights and Bruce. Moreover, since they were not under the range of the “faith” spiritual qi light ring, their attack powers were much weaker.

At the same time, the inferno knights were long-distance attackers. They weren’t so much stronger in their close-range capabilities. So when they got close to the spiritual guardian knights, something of a stalemate was what resulted. On average, it would be two spiritual guardian knights against one inferno knight. That could only stall the inferno knight.

Still, Abel was more than satisfied with this. There was too much distance in terms of how the inferno knights could cast spells over proximity. If it weren’t for the spiritual guardian knights, there was no way that he could easily cast any spells. With a wave of his hand, he activated one “aging” curse on Hephastos while commanding the eleven spiritual guardian wizards to assist in the offense.

With the help of the spiritual guardian knights, the inferno knights starting to lean towards Abel. The next step would be to kill Hephastos. After losing so many of its minions and hell creatures, its fate was already decided. With the “aging” curse, “faith” spiritual qi light ring, the grey bear, and Bruce’s close-range attack, its life points were being reduced. Abel and Frankenstein would stay on the side and cast their spells in a careful manner.

After ten minutes, all five of the inferno knights were killed. The eleven spiritual guardian knights and spiritual guardian wizards also joined in on the attack. Hephastos let out a terrible cry as it fell on the ground. Beside its corpse, a dark golden hammer fell nearby. Abel’s attention was deeply captivated by this hammer. He didn’t pay any attention to the soul that flew out and the golden ability ball.

“The inferno furnace hammer!” He picked it up and called out its name. This was a dark golden item that came in a set with the inferno furnace. From memory, this hammer would break on its own after being used one time. He had to use this only on the Mephistopheles’s soul stone, then. With that in mind, he took the soul stone out of his portal bag and placed it into the slot that was on the altar.

Abel looked towards the summon creatures beside him. It was Frankenstein, Bruce, Black Wind, and many others that he felt appropriate bringing out. He wanted to test if the soul stone could be used on all of his minions. So he called out Johnson, Jason, Flying Flame, and Doff. He was trying to create a team bonus buff by forming a unit of eight.

As for the summoned creatures, no matter how many there were, there was just no way that the dark world would acknowledge them as the team members. He had his doubts, though. If a non-summoned creature was to appear out of nowhere, he might have the chance to gain another spare rune. But, on the other hand, he wasn’t sure if trying was too hard. He wasn’t going to bother, anyway. The dark world had more living beings than ever before, so he might try not to accidentally put his elite elves as sacrifices for rulemaking. At the oak tree that was near Blood Moor, at least 500 elves were living here. They were always increasing, and they would continue to grow whether the oak tree grew more fruits.

Having thought for a while, Abel decided to head back to the Mana Gathering Fort with his Town Teleportation Scroll. Until then, he would head to the Rogue’s Encampment. At Blood Moor, which was right outside of the Rogue’s Encampment, he ordered the elite elves to group together and left the elite elves to look after the herb gardens and the newborn elves. After that, he brought the entire group to pass through the waypoint and went to the fort.

For a while now, Abel’s been banning his elite elves from accessing the waypoint. He even banned any elite elves from going forward. The reason was simple. There weren’t enough of them, so losing even just one of them would hurt their population growth. If it weren’t for the oak tree, their birth rate might decrease severely. One major, no, the minor accident could destroy them all. The elite elves just weren’t that good at increasing their own numbers. Several decades passed, and only a handful were born.

To keep the elite elves alive, Abel’s was busy moving fruit trees into Blood Moor. He was doing what he could so they didn’t have to worry about food. However, he was extremely careful in the way he was helping them migrate, fearing that any death or casualty would greatly reduce their rate of survival.

Abel teleported himself back to the inferno furnace. From there, he opened up his Town Teleportation Scroll and opened a portal. The elite elves flew into it and went to the inferno furnace. Abel had used up ten scrolls to bring them all to where the inferno furnace was. Once they were all there, the elite elves became a lot noisier. That being said, the fact that Abel was there kept them very vigilant about following all his orders.

Yes, Abel was a god to these elite elves. In their hearts, they all lived for Abel. The extraordinary heat of the inferno furnace did not affect the elite elves. Before they could even feel the temperature around here, they easily put on their freezing element armor and put themselves to safety. Afterward, they threw their admiring look towards Abel as he placed the Mephistopheles’s soul stone into the offering altar. He placed back the “spirit” sword and shield and switched into an inferno furnace hammer.

He watched as an intense energy shock wave was felt on the stone. There was much more energy than what was contained. He was quite hesitant. From what he could feel, under the guidance of the stone, the offering altar became something like a volcano that was about to erupt. His instincts didn’t sense any danger, however. He turned to Bruce and tried to confirm. If he couldn’t sense the threat, perhaps a fanatic knight with years of experience would.

When Bruce shook his head, Abel was able to let down his guard. It wasn’t like he was too paranoid. But, again, there weren’t that many elite elves here. If there were any accidents, their kind was as good as over.

After raising the inferno furnace hammer with his hand, Abel slammed straight towards the Mephistopheles’s soul stone. When the hammer made contact with the soul, a blinding light was emitted, and when he let go of his grip, the hammer became nothing but a pile of fragments. The soul stone had an opening, and endless streaks of energy poured out.

“Fall back!” Abel screamed, realizing how much energy was inside. He wrapped his power of the Will around all his summon creatures and contracted creatures. With one leap, he went several hundred meters out. It was a lot easier for the elite elves. They were only flying up high when they tried to dodge the hits of the energy attacks. It was getting too hard to see because of all the light that was sparkling about.

“How much energy was in this stone?” Abel thought to himself. The inferno furnace had been sucking energy from the river of lava for thousands and thousands of years. There was no telling how much was stored.

Abel’s power of the Will could sense that items were flying out of the offering altar. It wasn’t just one or two, but many, many piles of them. After receiving the influence of the strong energy streams pouring, while he wasn’t sure what those were, a smile of satisfaction appeared on his face. This was definitely more than what he and his team of eight needed.

The burst lasted for tens of minutes before it stopped. Abel regained his vision when the light energy slowly faded away. After that, he saw the runes and various gemstones that were lying on the ground.

“I’m rich now!” he laughed out loud as he went to pick up all these treasures he discovered. He didn’t pay too much attention to the gemstone. As precious as this seemed, because he had the Horadric Cube, he could create whatever amount that he required from resources that he gained from another world.

The only thing that he cared for, really, was the runes. Carefully but quickly, he scraped through runes from the mountain of gemstones. It was hard work, but the elite elves made it a lot easier to locate the runes. He basically told the elite elves that they could keep all the gemstones. He was thanking them for coming help.

After, the elite elves brought the gemstones and left the River of Fire. They returned to Blood Moor while Abel was left to examine the runes that he gathered.

There was a total of 508 runes he got. It was the exact same number as the non-summon creatures he arranged this time at the inferno furnace. Although the altar could only produce a total of eight, that would only be if eight people were at the furnace during the same time. It was quite different this time. There was just too much piled up after the last tens and thousands of years. When the offering was made, the energy outburst influenced the channeling of the circle, making it so that the whole procedure was clearly made, so there was enough for 508 people.

Abel thought as carefully as he could. He didn’t think that it was going to work. He was regretful. If he knew that this is what would have happened, he would have done this much later. Given his current speed, it would be about several more years until the central continent had a total of tens and thousands of elves. He might have a better chance of getting more runes by then.

Actually, no. He couldn’t help but shake his head and laugh. He knew how greedy the idea was. Right now, out of the 508 runes he had, ranging from 15# hel to 25# gul, 21# pul was taking up the vast majority of the numbers. Watching these runes, his mind raced back to thinking about the rune formula that was inside his mind. He couldn’t make a real top-level rune with these, but there was a very solid chance that he could make some intermediate ones that could come quite handy.

Abel placed the runes into his portal bag. His eyes focused back on this inferno furnace. This altar was the best location for the blacksmiths. What he didn’t know was that the blacksmiths used to work here. At the time, the grandmaster blacksmiths would discover a huge chunk of strange stone, which they would then use to make the special board that was on top of this river of lava.

Basically, things started to change after the underworld took over the world. The entire area was seized and made into an offering altar. This became a place where challengers from heaven and the underworld would create runes and gemstones that they needed. If no one was visiting, the altar would continue to absorb the energy of the lava until the next time it was activated.

“It’s a shame,” Abel thought to himself. He really thought that it was a shame that the “Mephistopheles’s soul stone” and the “inferno furnace hammer” were one-time items. The next time he wanted to activate this altar, he would have no idea where to get himself some new ones. It was becoming increasingly more difficult to find runes in the dark world. At the rate things were going, he might just find more boxes and barrels than anything useful.

Yes, Abel did think about finding a method to produce runes on his own. He could integrate technologies from another world and use the mana environment here. He could start by breeding large numbers of blue howling rabbits and synthesize their crystal cores continuously. If he was doing that, he could get an endless supply of runes up to no. 10. He couldn’t do that for middle-upper runes, though. As many crystals as there were, there just wasn’t the time to spend all that time creating the runes.