Chapter 60 - 59: The God’s Ring

Chapter 60: Chapter 59: The God’s Ring

Before Aegon could place his Golden Griffin Badge onto the polished counter, a low murmur of awe from the center of the lobby caught his attention.

?Ten paces away from the reception desk stood a tall octagonal pillar made of star-iron. Gathered around the pillar were a dozen Second-Year and Third-Year students from the Runic and Combat Departments, all staring intently through a transparent glass dome at the object resting atop a crimson velvet cushion.

?It was a ring.

?More accurately, it was the shattered husk of an ancient platinum band.

The center of the ring’s, where a thumb-sized dimensional gem had split into three dull, lifeless fragments.

Yet even in its broken state, microscopic silver runes still flickered intermittently along the inner band, releasing faint ripples of spatial distortion that made the air around the cushion bend like heat haze.

?"Look at the complexity of those inner rune engravings. There are at least 10,000 interlocking spatial nodes carved into a band no wider than a finger. Even after coming to the Arcane Training Tower for a full year, I still get dizzy just looking at it," a Second-Year scholar whispered, pressing his spectacles closer to the glass

?"Don’t bother staring too long. That thing has been sitting in this lobby for ten years. Even the elders of the Runic Tower gave up on it."

?Aegon paused by the desk, his dark eyes locking onto the fractured platinum band.

?The instant he saw the three split fragments of the dimensional gem and the intricate silver runes along the inner band, a crucial memory from the original novel surfaced in his mind.

?The God’s Ring!

?Behind the reception counter, the elderly proctor finally looked up from his ledger. Seeing another newcomer staring at the central pillar, the old man adjusted his silver-rimmed spectacles and let out a raspy chuckle.

?"Caught your eye, did it, freshman?" the proctor said, leaning his elbows on the counter. "Every year, a fresh batch of first-years walks through those doors and falls in love with that piece of scrap metal. Do you know what you’re looking at?"

?"An ancient spatial artifact," Aegon replied calmly, walking a step closer to the pillar to inspect the runic structure.

?"Not just any spatial artifact. That is a relic from the Mythic Era, forged 800 years ago by the Dimensional Sage himself. Back then, the rulers of the continent called it the God’s Ring."

?One of the other freshmen standing nearby couldn’t help but ask, "Proctor, is it a high-grade storage ring?"

?"Hmph, just a storage ring?" the proctor scoffed,

"Using the God’s Ring to store luggage would be like using a divine dragon to pull a farmer’s cart! Inside that platinum band is an independent, collapsible pocket dimension. It is a portable Personal Spatial Training Center!"

?A collective gasp echoed from the younger students in the lobby.

?"When the God’s Ring was still intact, its owner could project their consciousness and physical body directly into the pocket dimension inside the gem," the proctor explained, holding up four wrinkled fingers.

"First, the internal array can simulate up to fifty times normal gravity, ten times higher than the first floor of this very tower.

Second, it automatically draws in world mana and condenses it into pure spirit mist, allowing a mage to meditate at triple their normal speed without spending a single credit.

?"Third, and most miraculously, the ring’s core records the combat styles of every enemy its master has ever faced, generating lifelike phantom projections inside the space. You can fight a life-and-death duel against a phantom blade, get your head chopped off inside the ring to fix the flaws in your swordsmanship, and wake up in the real world without a single scratch on your body! And fourth, because it is bound to the user’s soul, you can enter it anywhere, whether you are sitting in your bedroom or camping on a battlefield!"

?The eyes of every student in the lobby turned blazing hot with greed.

?A personal training tower that you could wear on your finger, complete with free mana condensation, fifty-fold gravity, and immortal combat simulations?

For any sorcerer or warrior, possessing such a treasure meant having 24-hour access to a supreme cultivation ground!

?"Then why is a treasure like that sitting in the first-floor lobby, Proctor?" a freshman asked breathlessly.

?"Because it is dead, boy. During the Calamity War 500 years ago, the last owner of the God’s Ring was ambushed by three Seventh-Circle Demon Kings. Although the ring saved his life, the backlash shattered the primary spatial core. For the past century, even Seventh-Tier Runic Grandmasters have tried to mend that crack, and every single one failed. Because, the spatial nodes inside are too fragile. Whem anyone injects external mana to weld the fracture, the remaining pocket dimension will collapse completely and turn the ring into ordinary scrap iron."

?The old man shook his head and gestured at the small bronze plaque at the base of the pillar.

?"Out of frustration, the Supreme Dean placed it here in the Training Tower ten years ago with a standing rule. Any student can pay 200 Academic Credits to take the broken God’s Ring off the pedestal permanently for personal research. In ten years, three rich noble fools tried buying it, failed to make a single dent in the puzzle, and ended up returning it to the Academy in disgrace just to get half their credits back."

?Hearing the price of 200 Academic Credits for a completely unfixable piece of scrap metal, the surrounding students immediately lost their enthusiasm, muttering in disappointment as they turned back toward the training chamber stairs.

?Aegon, however, stood completely still in front of the glass dome, his heartbeat thrumming steadily against his ribs.

?The Runic Grandmasters of the Empire couldn’t fix the God’s Ring because normal mana was too coarse to mend a collapsed Mythic-Era spatial core.

?But Aegon knew for a fact that someone in this Academy could fix it.

In the original novel....