Chapter 3851: Testing the Shield

Alex walked over to where the Artifact God was standing. He looked next to her at the shield that lay below, with a clear blue shade to it and an aura that told one just how strong it was.

"May I?"

The Artifact God gestured for him to do whatever it was that he wanted.

Alex nodded and walked over to the shield, picking it up by the straps. He held it in his hand for some time, closely feeling it.

"Hmm?"

As he felt it, he sensed an aura from it that should not have been there. He only then remembered something that he had nearly forgotten in his fascination with the newly formed Primordial artifact.

"Senior, we still haven’t put it through the second bracer," Alex told her. "We need to undo what we did."

"We will," the woman said in a voice that was both tired and slightly exasperated. "But it needs to stay this way for now."

"Really?" Alex asked, his eyes narrowing. "Why?"

"So we can test it," she said while making a gesture to relay the fact that it was the obvious choice there. "If something is wrong, we don’t want to redo it all over again just to fix it again, do we?"

Alex blinked. "I suppose not," he said, looking back at the shield. "But then, how are we going to test it? We need to stress test it, after all, and with the Reduction aura still on it, that may be difficult."

"It’s still a perfectly fine artifact," the Artifact God said. "It may not be able to withstand a Divinity’s attacks, but it can certainly defend against an Immortal. And for now, that is all we need. We’ll need to test just how good the defense is, and not how strong."

"Hmm..." Alex thought for a moment and nodded. "If you think so."

"Give me the shield," she said, taking it back. "Now let’s try this artifact and see how well it works on me."

Alex nodded. "I’ll attack."

As soon as he said so, four golden spears appeared around him in an instant, which he immediately tossed toward the Artifact God. The woman barely had time to respond. She put the shield before her, not even using the slightest hint of Qi at all.

The physical strength of the shield itself was strong enough to block all attacks from Alex’s Qi. At Immortal Spirit 7th realm strength, his Qi was near the peak of the Immortal realm. Most people with this sort of Qi would usually already have formed Divine Qi.

"A few more!" she demanded, and Alex complied. He threw different attacks, each one of a different element, to test the shield against them.

Nothing managed to put even so much as a speck on the shield.

The Artifact God looked at the shield with a proud look on her face. "Now, let me try it activated. Do you have anything strong you can use? Maybe bring out an artifact or something."

Alex narrowed his eyes. "Well, I can do this."

He brought out Midnight, surprising the Artifact God for a brief moment. Sword Heart filled his sword in that moment, as Sword Qi elongated outside of the sword, making it appear nearly 3 times longer.

"Hmm..." she made a small sound upon seeing it. "That’s your master’s technique, isn’t it?"

Alex nodded. "Here I come."

He dashed forward and swung down at the Artifact God with all the might he had. As he did, the shield glowed a bright but soft blue color.

Alex’s sword was halfway to reaching the shield when he felt something interesting. His sword seemed to physically slow down when nearing the shield, as though it was moving through something viscous. The energy in his sword also seemed to fade a little, though not enough that he was powerless before the sword struck the shield.

However, when it did strike the shield, he realized that he had truly underestimated just how incredible the shield was. Right on contact, Alex felt the energy from his sword hit the shield and spread around in an instant, no longer striking just the single point of contact.

At the same time, Alex also felt a strong shockwave coming out from the clash, which was stronger moving away from the Artifact God than it was moving toward her.

It was as if the attack had suddenly been distributed evenly throughout the shield, and then the shield had thrown it outward, away from its user.

Alex pulled back his sword, stepping back a few steps.

"Whoa!"

The Artifact God slowly lowered the shield, a bright smile evident on her face. "Incredible, isn’t it?" she asked.

Alex couldn’t help but nod. "It works so much better than I thought it would. Removing the various other auras does seem to make sense now."

"Of course it does," she said with a sigh. "Come on. Hit me some more. We need to test how efficiently it is refracting the force away from the user. I have an artifact we can test it with."

After several rounds of testing, they came to the conclusion that, for early Divine realm strength at least, the shield was refracting at least seven-tenths of the power away from the user, though it used a decent amount of Qi to do that.

"We need to check how much better it is when attacked by actual Divinities. And then, if we can get your master to test it out, we can also check how much it can protect against Celestials," the Artifact God said. "But that comes later. For now, we need to test something else."

Alex narrowed his eyes. "Test? There’s more?"

She nodded. After a brief moment, she brought out a purple glass vial and looked at it.

Alex narrowed his eyes. "What’s that?"

"Poison from a Divine plant," she said without taking her eyes off the vial.

"And... why are you bringing that out?" Alex asked.

"Because one of the main things that this shield can do is defend others against poison."