Earth's Greatest Magus

“This is the person you chose?… He is but a boy.”

Randhall’s fragmented voice echoed through the burning workshop, disbelief dripping from every syllable.

Vic blinked. “Sir-what is happening-why am I here-?!”

Emery placed a steady hand on Vic’s trembling shoulder.

“He doesn’t look like much,” Emery admitted, “but he is a dual master,”

Randhall grunted. “Whatever… I’ll give you five minutes.”

Emery shot up. “Five? That’s barely enough to explain anything to the boy. I need thirty.”

“Ten minutes is all you have.”

Vic’s soul form wobbled like jelly. The young magus glanced like he had just been told to lift a mountain single-handedly.

“Stay calm,” Emery said, tightening his grip on the boy’s shoulder. “You can do this.”

The words hit Vic like a divine mantra. His back straightened. His expression sharpened with dramatic resolve. “I cannot let Sir Emery down. Everyone depends on me!”

He puffed out his chest-still shaking-and leaned over the glowing metal, channeling his spirit sense into it. “How can I assist you, Sir?” he asked, voice cracking with forced confidence.

“You try your best first,” Emery said.

That single line lit a bonfire under the boy.

“Yes!! I will not fail you!”

He raised his hands. In the soul realm, tools could appear with single thoughts -what he conjured were slender sculptor’s chisels and a delicate mallet, not the heavy blacksmith gear one would expect. Vic didn’t strike like a smith; he carved like an artisan, shaping delicate jade. Precise, elegant.

Emery was impressed too… though he kept his expectations low. Very low.After all, he didn’t bring Vic to complete the task.

He brought him to buy time.

While Vic threw his whole soul into sculpting the volatile metal, Emery secretly coordinated with his dark avatar and VIA. The avatar had already slipped out of the vault, blinking through segmented corridors using short-range spatial rifts, working its way toward the surface to prepare an exit portal.

At the same time, VIA continued to hack into the tomb’s control systems, searching for any override that could stop the self-destruct sequence.

All of this needed to happen in ten minutes.

Time was of the essence.

Three minutes passed.

Randhall’s ghostly gaze narrowed. “You put great faith in this boy… and you haven’t joined the refinement at all.”

This pressure only pushed Vic even harder.

He refined with one hand, fingers slicing and shaping the glowing metal with impossible precision, while his other hand flew through rune formations so fast it looked like he had grown a second brain.

Even Randhall paused, eyebrows lifting….This boy can perform dual-method refining? Interesting”

Five minutes passed. The metal was no longer raw material-it had taken shape, thin lines of power already pulsing along its surface. It was entering its critical state.

Which was a problem.

If Vic made even a hairline mistake now, the whole thing could collapse. Emery realized Vic might finish-or destroy-the piece before his escape plan was ready.

He had no choice. He joined the refining.

“I’ll hold the energy balance,” Emery snapped. “You refine!”

“Yes, SIR!”

The pressure spiked instantly. Emery locked the energy flows, stabilizing the violent fluctuations, while Vic hammered away with his mental chisel, shaping with wild determination.

Then-

“Sir-Sir Emery-I messed up!!”

The energy around them lurched dangerously.

“Urghh-just focus on the form! I’ll handle the fluctuation!”

It took everything Emery had. He forced the Heaven-and-Earth balance into the core, smoothing the instability, while Vic shifted into a frantic sculptor’s rhythm-quick cuts, gentle taps, precise strokes.

Slowly… impossibly… their movements began to sync.

They forgot the countdown.They forgot the panic outside.They forgot

everything but the task.

And then-finally-The metal stopped trembling. The runes settled.The glow softened into a steady, perfect pulse.

It was done.

Vic collapsed to his knees, panting like someone who had sprinted across three continents. He looked up at Emery with a dazed, triumphant smile.

“Sir… we actually did it… I never thought it was possible… Thank you for

believing in me…”

Emery gazed at him.

Because the truth was… he hadn’t believed in him at all. He had been stalling. Improvising. Desperately trying to cheat a millennia-old ghost test with last-minute teamwork and panic-driven miracles.

But looking at Vic’s glowing, trembling, hopeful expression…

Emery swallowed the truth and patted his shoulder.

“…Good job.”

Vic beamed like he’d been knighted by the gods.

What followed was Randhall’s faint, weary smile, and the burning spirit

workshop around them began to crumble into shimmering dust. The spirit realm crumbled in on itself, and the next thing Emery and Vic felt was the

sensation of falling.

They snapped back into the real world inside the vault.

The moment their eyes opened, everyone watching stiffened. Dravic’s body shuddered once before collapsing like an empty shell. A soft hum rippled through the air as the pendant on his chest armor broke free, drifting upward in a gentle glow. It hovered for a moment, as if deciding its owner, then floated

directly into Emery’s palm.

Emery instinctively reached out with his spirit sense.

Inside the pendant, he felt the final flicker of Randhall’s consciousness. A faint

whisper echoed in his mind-calm, resigned, almost tender.

Then silence. The last remnant of the legendary Celestial Machinist finally faded away.

Beside him, Vic gasped for air, blinking rapidly. His soul had returned to his

body so suddenly that he nearly toppled over. Annara caught him by the

shoulder.

“Easy there, hero.”

“Am I… alive?” Vic asked, looking half-dazed, half-proud.

“For now,” Annara muttered.

Julian approached cautiously, gaze fixed on the collapsed Dravic. “Is it… over?”

Emery nodded.

A collective exhale swept through the hall. Dozens of weary magus finally loosened their grips on weapons and defensive artifacts.

With the crisis ended, the next matter loomed-the fate of the Volkov faction.

Thankfully, Julian had already secured an agreement with Guskov, ensuring

cooperation and stability.

What followed were several days of work:

Sorting the riches of the tomb.

Cataloging materials and treasures. Disabling the remaining constructs. Preparing the site for departure.

Then long negotiations on how the spoils would be divided.

The ordeal of Randhall’s tomb…

was finally over.