Chapter 1056 - 870: Philosopher’s Stone (2)

The Earl stood at the edge of the square, the knuckles of both hands turning slightly white from how hard he was clenching them.

For the first time, that deeply wrinkled face of his lost all composure.

His aged features twisted under the residual glow of the runes, his lips trembling violently, as if he had suddenly aged several more decades in an instant.

He stared at Duke, extreme anger and disbelief surging in those cloudy old eyes, along with a kind of indescribable, unspeakable unwillingness.

"You..." His voice was so hoarse it was almost gone, every syllable squeezed from his throat like sandpaper scraping on glass. "I always thought Wizards were cold-blooded and cruel, that you plunder Planes, slaughter natives, and would do anything for resources. Hundreds of commoners’ lives—what difference do they have from ants by the roadside in your eyes? But you actually destroyed my Divine Sacrifice for the sake of these insects."

He took a palm-sized, exquisite metal box from his breast.

The box was entirely forged from a dark-silver metal, its surface engraved with dense, ancient runes, identical to the ritual patterns carved into the stone slabs of the square.

The Earl opened the lid; inside lay a thumb-sized dark-red Crystal Stone, within which a slowly rotating blood-colored nebula seemed to be sealed.

He clutched that metal box in a death grip, raised it toward Duke, his voice shifting from hoarse to hysterical: "Do you see this? This is the product of the Divine Sacrifice, the Philosopher’s Stone! It can extend my lifespan, let me live a few more years!

I’ve relied on it to hold on until now. At first, a single stone could add over a hundred years to my life, but now taking one can only buy me a few years. I’ve been trying to improve the ritual, to raise the quality of the Philosopher’s Stones produced. Yet in recent years it’s as if the ritual has failed—each sacrifice produces Philosopher’s Stones with pitifully little Energy. I exhausted myself gathering information on Wizards and learning about your civilization, all just to find where the problem lay.

When you first arrived, I truly meant to treat you well—fine wine, fine food, maids, Gold Coins, whatever you wanted I would have given you. I originally meant to offer this Philosopher’s Stone to you as payment, in exchange for your help in discovering what was wrong with the ritual!"

Duke walked forward and took the metal box from the Earl’s trembling hand, pinching the dark-red Crystal Stone between his fingertips to examine it closely.

The instant his Spiritual Power probed into the stone, an extremely complex surge of Life Energy flowed back along his Spiritual Power tendrils.

It was the essence of hundreds of living beings whose lives had been forcibly extracted, compressed, and refined; in every thread of Energy lingered the fear, pain, and despair of its original owners at the final moment of their lives.

This Life Energy was extremely concentrated, almost condensed into physical substance, yet its structure was loose and chaotic, far inferior in purity and gentleness to the Spring of Life he had encountered before in the Light God Court.

He put the Crystal Stone back into the metal box, then raised his head again to look at the Earl.

"You have the strength of a Level 1 Life," Duke’s tone did not fluctuate, as if stating the most ordinary of facts. "Within the system of Extraordinary Power, the lower one’s Life Level, the lower their absorption rate for external Life Energy. For a Level 1 Lifeform, an item like the Philosopher’s Stone, condensed from other people’s Life Force, is something the body can only absorb to a very limited extent.

Moreover, such items usually have strict potency decay. The first time you consume it, the effect is the strongest; with every subsequent use, your body’s resistance to it increases, and the absorption rate drops another notch. The fact that you’ve managed to live to this day on them is already a miracle.

In recent years these Philosopher’s Stones have had almost no effect on you, not because the ritual went wrong, but because your own body has become nearly completely immune to them. No matter how good a Philosopher’s Stone it is, it can no longer help you."

After hearing this, the Earl’s entire body froze on the spot.

The expression on that deeply wrinkled face shifted from anger to bewilderment, from bewilderment to despair, and finally solidified into a complex, indescribable calm.

He lowered his head to look at his own withered hands, then raised it to glance at the surviving believers in the square who were helping each other to their feet. His lips moved a few times, but in the end he said nothing.

He wanted to refute him, but he knew every word Duke had spoken was true.

No one understood his own body better than he did; he had simply refused to let go of this only lifeline, while Duke had now taken even that straw away.

When Duke obtained this Philosopher’s Stone, a sweep of his Spiritual Power was enough for him to figure out its properties and category.

This method of extending one’s life by sacrificing other lives was not uncommon in the Endless Plane.

It was just that this particular Philosopher’s Stone seemed somewhat special, to have allowed this Earl to consume it so many times, only becoming largely ineffective in recent years.

Ordinarily, methods of extending lifespan would become void after a single use at most; one would need other types of items afterward.

Yet the consumption limit of the Philosopher’s Stone seemed very small, and judging from the Earl, it could be taken many times.

The natives of the Elderlands all pursued longevity to an extreme; there were many people like this Earl, and there were likely many similar methods.

To the Earl, the peasants of his territory were nothing more than rice in the paddies, to be harvested when the time came.

While Duke was pondering, the Earl at his side grew more and more twisted in expression, his entire being sinking deeper into madness.

He looked at Duke, at those commoners, at the Divine Sacrifice ritual that had been destroyed more than halfway, then reached out and ordered the soldiers around: "Kill all these commoners. Continue the Divine Sacrifice!"

The Earl appeared completely insane now, seeming to have forgotten that the altar had already been destroyed, and that even if these commoners were killed the Divine Sacrifice could no longer continue.

But the soldiers around them did not care about that. They were the Earl’s most trusted core subordinates, acting with the simple obedience of tools; they immediately began preparing to carry out the slaughter.

Duke raised his right hand and gave a casual wave.

Dark-gold sand grains poured from his sleeve, forming an extremely thin and swift arc of light in midair that swept past the Earl’s neck.

The Earl’s crazed grin froze on his face as his aged head rolled from his shoulders, bouncing once on the stone slabs. Dark-red blood spurted from his neck, splashing onto the rune-carved grooves that had long since lost their glow.

"The Earl is dead." Duke’s voice was not loud, yet it carried clearly into every corner of the cavern. "He was not killed by you; he was killed by me. Your duty of loyalty has ended. Now, put down your Weapons and escort these commoners back to their village."

Before he finished speaking, a sharp sword wind slashed toward him from behind.

Duke did not even turn his head. Two fingers lifted from his side, and the Longsword, into which Lloyd had poured all her Energy, was pinched firmly between them.

With a light flick of his wrist, the Longsword flew from Lloyd’s grip, traced an arc through the air, and plunged point-first into a gap between the stone slabs.

Several streams of dark-gold sand flowed from his sleeve, binding Lloyd tightly and lifting her off the ground.

Duke lifted his head to look at Lloyd, who was suspended in midair by the yellow sand.

Her eyes were bloodshot, and her lips had been bitten bloody, but she did not cry, nor did she struggle any further.

Lloyd merely glared at him, those deep brown eyes surging with extreme anger, unwillingness, and humiliation, but above all, helplessness.

She knew there was no way she could so much as scratch this man before her.

Duke did not avoid her gaze. His tone was calm, yet earnest: "Don’t do such meaningless things. The Earl is dead, but you are still alive. You need to hurry back, inform his children, decide as soon as possible who should succeed to this territory and stabilize Stone Crown City, instead of staying here to be buried with him."

The Rules of the Magical Path forbade large-scale slaughter of the natives here. If it was not necessary, Duke had no desire to violate that Rule.

He waved his hand, and the yellow sand silently receded, gently setting Lloyd back on the ground. Then, without looking at her again, he turned and walked toward the ritual area; he still needed to record and study the information here.