The Era of Gods

“That’s not very fortunate, as both of us were excellent participants in the last Summer Camp. If I could be here, you definitely could too.”

Lin Xiao laughed heartily, not dwelling on this point, but rather looked eager to test his skills as he said,

“We talked about having a skirmish last time, didn’t expect to meet here. Why wait for another day when today is as good as any, how about today?”

Wu Zhonglin’s eyes immediately lit up with a fighting spirit as he replied,

“I couldn’t agree more!”

“Right now?”

“Right now!”

“Hey, wait a second…”

The dozen or so men and women who came with Wu Zhonglin snapped out of their daze, and the man in the center with a peculiar mark on his forehead, looking a bit amused and helpless, put a hand on Wu Zhonglin and said,

“Hold on, I was here first.”

He then addressed Lin Xiao,

“I heard you’ve recently been listed on the subsidiary list of the Celestial Talent List, with a higher rank than mine, and I must say, I’m not convinced.”

Lin Xiao sized up the man, who, from his tone, also seemed to be a high-level contender listed on the subsidiary of the Celestial Talent List, and he was quite surprised.

Before he was on the list, it was rare to meet one; and now, soon after being listed, he instantly met another. If it weren’t for the fact that there are only thirty-six positions on the Celestial Talent List, and that they’re carved up by the four great powers of the Main World, he would have thought it was an era where becoming a Celestial Talent was a dime a dozen.

Since he was also a super elite listed on the Celestial Talent List, Lin Xiao’s attitude was naturally different; he clasped his fists in salutation and formally introduced himself:

“Lin Xiao, from Elite Class 1 of the Shining High School Department.”

“Yan Huang War Zone number five, First Expeditionary Army, Third Division, Nirvana Battle Group, Elite Second Lieutenant—Luo Shuang, codename Draco.”

Draco…

That codename sure has style, and this guy named Luo Shuang turned out to be from the military rather than an academy, which is why I hadn’t heard of him before.

“This isn’t the place to fight, follow me.”

Luo Shuang turned and walked away, with a crowd of military elites following him in a flurry, and soon only he and Wu Zhonglin were left looking at each other, with Wu Zhonglin making a gesture of invitation as he walked and talked:

“In the military, reality prevails, respect is given to the strong. Although you’ve just made it onto the Celestial Talent List, you lack actual combat achievements, they will certainly not respect you. If you want them to respect you as they do me, you’ll have to defeat them with strength, convincingly.”

“I understand.”

He knew this well, not just in the military but even in Shining as well. Wasn’t his title as ‘Shining’s Number One’ gained by directly defeating elites like Li Xiushen and Dongfang Piaoxue? Without absolute strength, who would respect him?

“By the way, now that you’re on the subsidiary list of the Celestial Talent List, traditionally, you can pick a codename for yourself.”

“A codename?”

“Yes, one that resonates like thunder when people hear it. To put it in a more boastful way, it’s called swagger.”

Lin Xiao turned his head in surprise, finding it strange to hear the words ‘swagger’ and ‘show off’ coming from Wu Zhonglin. In his memory, wasn’t this guy always low-key and quiet?

Could it be…

He wasn’t calm and silent but secretly pretentious?

Curious, he asked,

“Everyone has a nickname, what’s yours then?”

Upon asking, he saw Wu Zhonglin reveal a strange smile and, after a moment, spit out two words:

“Dragon Emperor!”

“Ah…”

Now he was sure, this guy was truly secretly pretentious.

However…

A codename full of swagger could indeed be quite interesting.

As a super elite listed on the subsidiary of the Celestial Talent List, tradition states you have the right to a swaggering codename, and no matter how arrogant it is, no one would think you’re just showing off because you truly are awesome.

After all, out of the countless young elites in the vast Main World, being one of the top thirty-six was indeed an explosion of awesomeness.

In fact, in addition to the Celestial Talent List, many elites on the Unique Talent List of 108 and even the Majestic Talent List of 3000 have their own codenames, just not as bold as theirs, they dare not use too pretentious ones.

For example, a codename like Dragon Emperor is not something that an elite on the Majestic Talent List would dare to claim; they could be challenged by others at any minute.

Having a badass codename that you can’t live up to won’t be recognized by others and can only serve for self-amusement. If you dare to publicize it, you’ll constantly have people coming to beat you up until you change it.

As for his own codename, Lin Xiao didn’t have one in mind yet.

He had just heard about this and couldn’t think of a suitable codename at the moment; he’d consider it when he had some time.

Luo Shuang hurriedly led him to a room reserved for challenges within the Military Divine Domain warriors, randomly picked a login pod, lay down in it, and said to Lin Xiao as she closed the pod door:

“This is the internal LAN, my number is UG14854510, let me know when you’re ready.”

Lin Xiao gave her an ‘OK’ sign with his hand and also lay down.

He returned to the Divine Realm with practiced ease, first checked the changes in the Divine Realm during this time, then pulled up the Extraordinary Magic Network list, and thought for a bit while looking at the two extraordinary abilities listed. He flipped his hand, and a stack of glittering gold cards appeared in his palm.

Facing his first challenge against a Celestial Talent List participant, he needed to be thoroughly prepared, to have an assortment of extraordinary abilities for the Clan to summon.

There were only two extraordinary abilities listed on the Extraordinary Magic Network at the moment, Foreknowledge and Godspeed.

Before, he didn’t have the means to get them, but now he had three Quality Ancient Cards and more than twenty Mythical Quality Five Star Cards in his hand, especially the ten Mythical Quality Five Star Cards that Jin Sisi, his homeroom teacher, awarded to him. Half of those were the various ability cards he had requested, which would come in handy right now.

With a flick of his hand, he floated a stack of cards in the air and quickly drew a line across them with his hand. The twenty-five gold cards aligned neatly and his gaze swept over them, picking out three decent ability cards as enhancement bases.

The three cards were a Water Elemental Call Card, a Berserk Card, and a Fireball Technique Card.

The effect of the Water Elemental Call Card was to randomly summon one to three Super Large Rank 6 Water Elementals, which is not a spell but the innate Talent ability of Super Large Rank 6 Water Elementals.

Indeed, whether it’s Water Elements or other elements, they naturally possess the class spell ability to automatically summon like elements.

Class Spells are the innate talents of various creatures.

The ability itself is quite good, and when infused into the Creation Magic Cube, with the Creation Energy added…

A full ten units of Creation Energy were infused, which is the limit for enhancing a Rank 1 Transcendent ability.

Through exploration, Lin Xiao discovered a pattern: the limit for enhancing a Rank 1 Transcendent ability is ten units of Creation Energy. Any enhancer consuming less than ten units won’t produce abilities exceeding Rank 1.

If it exceeds even by 0.1 unit of Creation Energy, then the level of the extraordinary ability will surpass Rank 1 and temporarily become unusable.

The summoning ability can theoretically be enhanced to a very high limit, as elemental creatures have no upper limit in strength. Rank 10 elemental Lords equivalent to Demigods are aplenty in the Chaotic Void of the Crystal Wall Universes, including those surpassing Rank 10 and equivalent to True Gods, the Elemental Gods. Theoretically, it’s possible to infuse an infinite amount of Creation Energy for enhancement.

However, that is just theory. In practice, such enhancement isn’t feasible. Lin Xiao guessed that the most one could go was to enhance it to summon a Rank 10 elemental Lord equivalent to a Demigod, and it’s impossible to summon an Elemental God.

Or rather, even an elemental Demigod Lord would be extremely difficult to summon, as elemental Lords of that caliber have the autonomy to decide whether to respond to a summon—and if they are unwilling, no summoning spell, however powerful, can bring them forth.

Most summoning spells of that level involve personally communicating with the Elemental Deity, establishing a contract, and offering tributes to summon their Incarnation; it’s almost impossible to summon their True Body.

Of course, Lin Xiao had no intention of enhancing to that extent. He would focus on enhancing to the peak of Rank 1 for now, considering the enhancement to Rank 2 or even Rank 3 on the Extraordinary Magic Network for later.

With ten units of Creation Energy spent, a sparkling card emerged before him.

Enhanced Summon Water Elemental: Pay sufficient spiritual power to randomly summon three to five Elite Rank 7 Water Elementals. The base duration for the Water Elementals is one hour; if the time is exceeded, it will consume the summoner’s spiritual power to maintain presence. If the spiritual power is insufficient, they will return to the Elemental Plane.

The second card, the Berserk Card, derives from the innate Berserk Talent of trolls. The original effect provides a 30% increase in the troll’s attack speed and movement speed upon activation, slightly reduces pain, and marginally increases resistance to negative states, the effects intensify based on how grave the injuries are, peaking at a 50% increase.

While Berserk, their rationality decreases—the deeper the Berserk state, the greater the loss of rationality; in the case of trolls, whose rationality isn’t high to begin with, they virtually become berserk, recognizing no kin.

Lin Xiao used this talent as a basis and spent ten units of Creation Energy to enhance it, resulting in an enhanced Berserk named Transcendent Berserk.

Transcendent Berserk: Pay sufficient spiritual power to increase one’s own attack speed and moving speed by 100%, significantly reduce pain, and greatly enhance resistance to negative states. The stronger the hits taken, the more potent the effects, providing up to an immunity against most negative states with a cap increase of 200%.

The ten units of Creation Energy don’t seem to provide a high degree of enhancement, primarily because most of it went into eliminating the negative effect of rationality reduction. In other words, this enhanced Berserk won’t reduce rationality, which greatly increases its utility.

The third card, the Fireball Technique Card, comes from a fire-attribute creature’s innate class spell, similar to the Spell Fireball Technique.

A normal Fireball Technique is a fire spell resembling a shell with a small AOE range, like a small room in size, and decent power.

After ten units of Creation Energy enhancement, Lin Xiao focused most of the Creation Energy on the explosion range rather than power, resulting in an enhanced Fireball Technique with an extremely wide explosion radius.

Cloud Burst Fireball: Pay sufficient spiritual power to conjure a powerful fireball to inflict direct explosion damage on enemies within a thirty-meter diameter, causing both immediate and sustained burning damage over several seconds, with more potent effects than the Fireball Technique.

The enhancement of the three Transcendent abilities used up thirty units of Creation Energy, which were then loaded into slots consuming forty-seven, forty-five, and forty-four units of Creation Energy, respectively. After tallying, this move in total consumed one hundred sixty-six units of Creation Energy, leaving four hundred sixty-nine units of Creation Energy remaining.

“Being rich feels so good!”

Having spent so much Creation Energy and still having so much left, over four hundred units of Creation Energy were enough to continue filling up the remaining five slots on the Extraordinary Magic Network.