141: Genuine vs. Pirated

Marshall was half-kneeling on the ground, a dagger glowing with purple light plunged into his chest.

"Gendar, you've actually been corrupted!"

"When did this happen?"

A purple codex flew up behind Gendar, and the sounds of blasphemy began to ring in Marshall's ears, making his head feel heavy.

Giles stepped up behind Gendar, accompanied by Santos and three other members of the Council of Elders.

"Archbishop, all plans have been very successful. Lucos has already begun sacrificing the minor plane; the sacrifice is expected to be completed very soon."

"Very good. Once the sacrifice of the million people in that minor plane is finished, and Cold Wind City is completely corrupted and sacrificed, you all will be able to break through to the Legendary domain."

"The Holy Church can add at least five Legendary Apostles this time, and the entire Cold Wind Territory will become a Chaos Paradise."

Giles's words made Santos and the others extremely excited. The reason they had fallen was because they lacked the pursuit of eternal knowledge and power.

"Alright, speed up your movements. Let us welcome our noble Grand Duke of Cold Wind into our big family."

Under Giles's control, the blasphemous tome flew out of the Chaos magic runes, and the voices of blasphemy grew even louder in Marshall's head.

Marshall clutched his head, crouching on the ground.

"You want to corrupt me?"

"What kind of joke is this, you puppets of Chaos!"

A silver gemstone appeared in Marshall's hand, which he immediately crushed.

Space distorted, and Marshall's figure vanished from before Giles.

"Spatial fluctuations... was that a Spatial Beacon?"

"Damn it, how could he have such a thing?"

"Quickly, tell all the Deception Warlocks to speed up; the sacrificial array must be activated immediately!"

While Giles was reacting quickly, Marshall had already been transported outside Cold Wind City. The Spatial Beacon in his hand flew out, forming a massive portal in mid-air.

"Kid, you're still too impulsive!"

Marshall heard a familiar voice, then felt a large hand press down on his shoulder. A powerful force began to purge the Chaos energy within him... "You seem quite interested in the lair core!"

Inside Red River Fortress, Alistair watched as Renn stood in front of two farmstead lairs and recruited twenty Nest Farmers.

"Yes, these things have been a huge help to me. The agricultural technological innovation of the Red River Territory depends on these Nest Farmers. The production techniques inherent to these products of ancient relics are very useful."

"Then take these as well; perhaps you'll find a use for them."

Seeing how much Renn valued the lair cores, Alistair took five lair cores out of her spatial ring and handed them to him.

"Here are two farmstead cores, one blacksmith shop core, and two swordsman cores."

"The farmstead cores are the same as the two you have. The blacksmith shop core can manifest a complete blacksmith shop and recruit up to ten blacksmiths for forging; their forging skills are at the peak of ordinary blacksmiths, just below a Transcendent Blacksmith."

"The two swordsman cores can recruit Silver Rank swordsmen to fight for you, with five slots available per week. However, compared to recruiting ordinary Farmers, recruiting these swordsmen requires a Bronze Rank mana core or Transcendent Material that can provide an equivalent amount of energy."

Renn looked at Alistair in surprise.

"You're giving all of these to me?"

"Of course. My father gave these to me, hoping I could use them in the territory. But I wasn't interested in manifesting them before, and now they're even more useless to me."

"It's best to give these tasteless items to you, though I expect you won't find much use for them soon anyway."

Renn felt that these ancient relics, which he considered extremely precious, were not worth mentioning in Alistair's eyes. She gave them away just like that—five at once.

"Then thank you very much!"

Renn didn't stand on ceremony and directly accepted the five lair cores.

Melissa curled her lip as she watched the beaming Renn. Being so happy over some low-quality imitations from the Human Empire era—if he got a genuine article from the Arcane Empire era, he'd probably die of joy.

"Imitations? Genuine articles?"

"These things are divided into imitations and genuine articles?"

After putting away the five lair cores, Renn looked at Melissa, who was curling her lip at him, and asked humbly.

"lair cores were originally products of the Age of Gods. The ancient gods used their authority to create all sorts of lair cores."

"However, back then they weren't called lair cores; they were called Miracle Cores. Moreover, every god gave these miraculous buildings different names."

"Valhalla, Reincarnation Pool, Hall of Immortality, Gate of Rebirth, and so on."

"At that time, the capabilities of these buildings were far more powerful than they are now. With sufficient resources, they could produce a large number of transcendent creatures without restriction, and every creature possessed normal intelligence, unlike the recruited idiots without wisdom today."

"Possessing intelligence... do all the gods have the authority to create intelligent beings?"

"How could that be? Creating intelligent beings is a power that only the most powerful group of gods could possibly master."

"The reason these special buildings could produce intelligent beings was entirely because they were injected with souls during production."

"After the death of a god's followers, their souls would be guided back to the god's divine kingdom to continue serving them. Every god had a vast number of souls in their hands."

"Once these special buildings created by the gods produced a body, they would attract a soul from the divine kingdom to descend into the body, giving the produced creature intelligence."

"With the blessing of a god, these special buildings could mass-produce creatures of at least Silver Rank, proficient in combat skills or other auxiliary arts. The souls injected into the bodies could instantly master these skills to drive these creations to fight for their god across various planes."

"When facing an alien plane, a god didn't need to go through the trouble of finding a way to break the planar barrier to descend personally and conquer it."

"They only needed to open a tiny gap and send a team of believers with a batch of Miracle Cores to take root in a remote part of the alien plane, placing the cores to manifest the Miracle Buildings."

"Then, in a very short amount of time, they would recruit a powerful army to conquer the alien plane. Combined with the proselytizing of the god's cult, this two-pronged approach was something very few alien planes could withstand."

"The gods relied on Miracle Cores to be invincible, conquering countless alien planes and spreading their faith far and wide."

"After the gods faded away, the powerful Arcane Empire was established. Those Arcane Sovereigns with formidable strength who studied the arcane created lair cores based on the Miracle Buildings; that is the origin of lair cores."

"The lair cores created by the Arcane Sovereigns were not weaker than the Miracle Cores at all. At that time, lair cores still had no quantity limits, the strength of the recruited Lair Creatures was equally high, and the various skills they mastered were also outstanding."

"Did the Arcane Sovereigns also possess faith and a large number of souls?"

"No, they didn't need faith or souls. Collecting souls was too much effort for the Arcane Sovereigns."

"Those incredibly powerful Arcane Sovereigns created auxiliary creations called Tower Spirits, which possessed super-high computing power."

"By mass-producing Tower Spirits, a single Arcane Sovereign could control a vast empire. Behind every Arcane Sovereign could be a great empire; one person was an army of thousands."

"The Arcane Sovereigns installed intelligent core technology in the lair cores and then had Tower Spirits mass-produce intelligent cores. They controlled the produced Lair Creatures by assigning different levels of artificial intelligence cores."

"The lowest-level Lair Creatures possessed low-level intelligence and could complete basic commands, just like these Farmers you have now."

"Besides that, there were intermediate intelligence, advanced intelligence, and top-level intelligence."

"Lair Creatures installed with intermediate intelligent cores were already no different from ordinary people. Advanced intelligent cores completely surpassed ordinary people, and top-level intelligent cores were geniuses."

"The Arcane Sovereigns called Lair Creatures with advanced and top-level intelligent cores 'Heroes' because intelligent cores of this level could not be mass-produced and had to be handcrafted by Arcanists using significant effort and rare resources."

"Intermediate and low-level intelligent cores could be directly mass-produced. The equipment for this was built into the lair buildings, and it could be automatically installed when the Lair Creatures were produced."

"And those Heroes were the assistants the Arcane Sovereigns used to govern the legions of Lair Creatures."

"Relying on lair cores, the Arcane Sovereigns also conquered countless planes, performing no worse than the gods."

"Now, these products imitated by humans during the Tamriel Empire era have very obvious flaws."

"First, there are quantity limits. Based on the rate of recruiting a few per week, the bodies of the recruited Lair Creatures will collapse after twenty years at most. Thus, each core can only recruit ten or twenty thousand Lair Creatures over twenty years."

"Furthermore, the intelligence of these Lair Creatures is a major weakness; without someone to command them, they are basically half-useless. Their strength is also low; there are very few lair buildings that recruit Silver Rank Professionals—most are below Silver Rank, failing to even reach the minimum standard of the ancient genuine articles."

"This kind of restriction makes them suitable for use by small and medium nobles, or for great nobles to guard private planes."

"Although the human powerhouses of your Tamriel Empire didn't crack the Arcane Sovereigns' manufacturing technologies regarding intelligent cores, Lair Creature strength, or quantity limits..."

"...they did master one point, and that is loyalty. Every recruited Lair Creature has absolute loyalty to the controller of the core, which counts as one of its few advantages."

"So Renn, if you're just a small noble in the future, these cores will certainly be of great use to you. But once you've developed, these cores will basically be useless to you."

"However, if you could possess a lair core created by an Arcane Sovereign, that would still be useful."

"I've heard that the Golden Royal Family holds some lair cores left over from the Arcane Empire era. Relying on these lair cores, the Golden Royal Family controls quite a few alien planes."

"I don't know if it's true or false."

Everything Melissa said was of interest to Renn, and he listened extremely intently.