Chapter 927 - 700: Flaws? None!

At this moment, the young Gridis received a letter from the Sanctuary Empire. The content of the message was sealed within a crystal stone, accessible only to him.

The message came from Landers, who requested Gridis’s help to investigate a person named Long Yi and vaguely outlined the conflict between Long Yi and Landers. It also mentioned that Long Yi once clashed with Ai Lin and ended up in a draw.

Gridis could not refuse a request from Landers. He immediately sought out August to inquire about Long Yi.

Upon mentioning Long Yi, August truly looked regretful.

"Actually, the powerful Long Yi was originally one of our own, from The Divine Auffa Empire!" August roughly detailed Long Yi’s affairs. When Gridis heard that the Divine Armor that Long Yi created in the Sanctuary Empire could turn an ordinary soldier into a Seven Star Mage, his eyes widened in shock, "I can understand how changing a spell could make a mage stronger, but a set of armor that could turn someone into a Seven Star Mage! That’s simply inconceivable!"

August gave a bitter smile, "The crux is that Long Yi is from our enemy nation, the Sanctuary Empire."

Gridis immediately let out a dry chuckle, "Right, right!"

August knew Gridis was such a person, always interested in these matters, so he didn’t blame him, "Landers wants to inquire about some weaknesses of Long Yi, and that’s good for The Divine Auffa Empire. However, I can only regretfully tell him that so far, we haven’t grasped any weaknesses of Long Yi that could be exploited by us—unless you’re a warrior who can match him in strength, but unfortunately, we are mages, and Long Yi’s skill in magic is quite strong. I even suspect that only those old monsters who haven’t been seen in ages could match Long Yi."

Having never seen Long Yi nor knowing just how powerful this so-called Long Yi could be, Gridis still believed August’s judgment. After all, the proud Landers had actually taken the initiative to consult him about this matter, which indicated that even he probably had no way to deal with Long Yi.

Gridis decided to ask Ai Lin.

It was actually quite easy to find Ai Lin. She was generally either at the Magic Research Institute or studying various teleportation gates. When Gridis found Ai Lin, she happened to be beside a Teleportation Gate.

The Teleportation Gate was a relic left by the Giants. Although The Divine Auffa Empire had obtained the gate, activating it just once would consume an astoundingly large amount of resources and energy, yet it might not yield any gains, making the Teleportation Gate a symbolic artifact with little practical use. Thus, despite the portal’s significance and magical importance as a relic of the Giants, there were no soldiers guarding it.

Of course, no one would steal it.

When Gridis discovered Ai Lin, she was studying the Teleportation Gate while recording something in a small notebook. Ai Lin nodded at Gridis on seeing him, then continued her notes. Only after she had finished and put away the notebook did Gridis speak up, "Actually, I wanted to ask you about Long Yi."

"Long Yi? Is it that guy named Landers who asked for your help?" Ai Lin said with a smile.

"Yes," Gridis, not adept at lying and seeing no need for it, acknowledged openly.

"Well, that explains it. I heard that upon his return to the Sanctuary Empire, he found out that his student Mai Zhuo was killed by Long Yi, and that ill-educated friend of his also died at Long Yi’s hands—oh right, I remember that guy also challenged me to a written test on magical knowledge. What was his name?"

"Slade," said Gridis.

"Right, that’s the name. He claimed to be a Master, but when exposed, he still denied it, which was really boring," Ai Lin recounted.

"Ah, I was asked to do this favor, and yes, Slade was indeed a bit out of line. But Landers is a good friend of mine. Do you think you could help him?" Gridis asked.

"I don’t have any good methods. If it were up to me to deal with Long Yi, I might be able to barely outmatch her. But if it’s that Landers guy, you’d better advise him to apologize to Long Yi instead, for Long Yi is not as even-tempered as I am," Ai Lin said.

"Does that mean Long Yi doesn’t have any exploitable weaknesses?"

"There is one—Long Yi’s left hand is just a tad faster than his right."

"And that counts as a weakness?"

"To me, it does, but for Landers, maybe not so much," she replied.

"Alright, I understand."

Gridis was somewhat resigned. Not being one to excel in combat, he didn’t quite comprehend how strong those top powerhouses could truly be. In his view, becoming stronger was far less interesting than delving into magical research.

Ai Lin took out her notebook and continued to ponder over her notes. After a while, she suddenly turned back and asked, "Mr. Gridis, did you really enter the middle layers of the Plane?"

Gridis nodded, "Yes, we all succeeded, we were reverse summoned into the middle plane. We arrived on a planet ruled by a Giant Beast where we were protected by the Giant Beast and learned about its culture and magic. Later, we were discovered by the fleet of the Hong En Empire and brought back to the civilized world."

"What exactly is that middle plane like?" Ai Lin asked again.

"The people there are much more powerful than us, whether mages or warriors. In that place, even our Sanctuary mages were no match for the median strength warriors there. However, in the middle plane, wars are decided by fleets. Those massive fleets cruise through space and can bombard a planet from outside its atmosphere. Oh, that’s right, Landers and I learned the principles of the ship’s cannons and developed magic based on that."

As he spoke, Gridis cast a spell and formed a glowing orb in his hand.

"To trigger magic within the sphere, but these two arrays at the front are too crude, not quite your style," Ai Lin commented as she glanced at it, and effortlessly condensed a light orb as well.

Gridis felt a surge of emotions. The student who was touted as a genius and brought by Landers took two weeks to learn it. Ai Lin only took one look to perform it and could even point out its structure and defects.

"Yes, I completed the sphere part, and he completed the focusing array. But to be honest, it is indeed a bit crude," Gridis agreed.

"It’s not a problem, just need to tweak it a little."

Ai Lin directly altered the structure of the two arrays, and then a very fine beam shot out. The hot beam sliced through the wall, completely melting the edges of the cut.

Gridis was dumbfounded. Ai Lin truly was exceptional, casually improving the spell!

"And then what happened?" Ai Lin casually dismissed the magic as if it had been a trivial task.

"After that, we lived there for over a decade, bouncing around among several fleets. Until later, the Giant Beast Empress Isrile and the Nightmare Knight Order Group Leader Ruosha appeared."

"Cough cough cough cough!" Ai Lin suddenly started coughing violently.

"Are you okay?" Gridis asked anxiously.

"I’m fine! Cough! No problem! Just a bit dusty here!" Ai Lin tried hard to suppress her urge to laugh.

"It’s said that the Giant Beast Empress Isrile was a war creature left by the Giants, and after the war ended, she was imprisoned within the Whitestar of the Nightmare Knight Order. Later, because the Whitestar was invaded, she escaped, gathering Giant Beasts across the plane as her army. She also found a phantom battleship left by the Giants to use as her base and eventually joined the Hong En Empire with hundreds of thousands of Giant Beast troops."

"As the Group Leader of the Nightmare Knight Order, Ruosha, in an attempt to recapture Isrile, decided to join the strongest Empire in the middle plane, the Azure Sky Empire, and used the power of the Azure Sky Empire to force the Hong En Empire to stop providing shelter for Isrile. Shortly before we left, a massive war broke out between the Giant Beast Legion and the Nightmare Knight Order, a war that terrified the then ranking powers of the Azure Sky Empire and the Hong En Empire in the cosmos."

"That was a battle far exceeding the scale of normal combat, Landers and I were like in a dream. Those indestructible Nightmare Knights and the Giant Beasts of enormous size with inexhaustible energy clashing in space. Every recollection of it seemed like a nightmare! But thankfully, at that time, we finally completed our reverse reverse summoning spell and returned to this world."

Gridis recounted quietly, while Ai Lin listened, her emotions surging. It seemed, Ruosha and Isrile were really thriving in the middle plane!

But Ai Lin didn’t get lost in joy because there was one detail she cared about all along.

"What I’m really curious about is, what exactly does ’reverse summoning’ mean?" Ai Lin asked.

Gridis, hearing Ai Lin asking such a question, was first puzzled—didn’t Ai Lin know? But indeed, Ai Lin didn’t know; this was her first time hearing about it.

So Gridis explained to her. Summoning mages fight by summoning otherworldly servants through contracts that break through the plane barriers. This relies on the power of the contracts, which is extremely potent, even stronger than Divine Power, a force that even gods cannot violate. Hence, some mages have been trying to discover a new magical means through researching contracts, and reverse summoning is one of them.

By constantly communicating with their contracted servants, they allow the servants to establish coordinates in another Plane and maintain them. Then they perform the summoning on themselves. This process isn’t complicated, but it requires running the contract in reverse. Since the summoned servants of most summoners aren’t particularly clever, even the slightest error could lead to death in the process of reverse summoning.

However, Landers and Gridis were lucky, with no mistakes occurring.

"Contract magic, huh!" Ai Lin’s eyes widened with excitement.

This was a category of magic that had never been conceived in the Human Realm! Indeed, even in this desert of magic, there was an oasis! (To be continued. If you like this work, you are welcome to vote for it with recommendation tickets and monthly tickets on Qidian. Your support is my greatest motivation. Mobile users please visit m.qidian.com to read.)