End of the Magic Era - Chapter 1245

Chapter 1245: Exploring and Dismantling

The fights between low-level puppets would be over this kind of territory. Those with the biggest territory and the most Rust Eaters would find more high-grade parts and would level up faster.

Gandaph led Lin Yun out of this graveyard of parts. On the edge, they saw a dozen puppets around level 10 fighting. They were clearly fighting over territory.

Those puppets were completely different from human-made puppets. Their bodies were covered in welding marks, and the parts didn’t fit with one another. Their weapons and shields were made of relatively large parts and looked very crude.

The battle ended quickly and the victorious puppet didn’t even care about its own injuries as it rapidly tore open the bodies of its opponents and dismantled their parts to upgrade itself.

Lin Yun and Gandaph turned invisible and walked through these ruins only to see an endless expanse of black land spreading in front of them. Large chunks of steel could be seen exposed on the ground. In many locations, the purity of the ore had already reached a very high degree, and the ground ahead of them already looked like pure black steel.

They kept walking over the black land and saw mountains of parts every few kilometers. There was even a mountain range that spanned several dozen kilometers.

Gandaph was right… This was indeed the safest entry point. They flew at a low altitude for a few dozen kilometers and could only see a pure forest of steel. The strongest puppet they saw was only at Level 33.

They saw a huge steel tower after flying more than seventy kilometers. Terrifying energy flickered at the peak of the steel tower, and lightning condensed into a large sphere that then shot into the sky.

“This kind of scene is hard to come by,” Gandaph sighed.

He stood where he was and looked towards the expanse of the sky.

Three seconds later, Lin Yun saw a meteorite falling down terrifyingly fast, and it was at least several kilometers wide. At that time, the huge sphere of lightning came into contact with that meteorite.

The lightning bolts were like countless sharp blades flashing and instantly wrapping around the meteorite before cutting it into many pieces.

Those countless fragments scattered and fell over a large area. Over that range, and with the size of the fragments, the damage to the earth would be almost negligible.

Gandaph glanced at the fragments and said with a regretful tone, “Did you see that meteorite’s color? It seemed to have been carrying some rare metal… It was likely Eternal Dark Gold. Unfortunately, the sky of the Puppet Plane has no anti-meteorite defenses. It could be said that the Puppet Plane’s anti-air defenses are very weak, and thus, meteorites are frequently falling down.

“Those lightning towers are built by Heaven Puppets as anti-meteorite defenses. This should be the territory of a Heaven Puppet. Seeing a lightning tower means that we aren’t far from a city of steel. Let’s wait… Since there is a kilometer-tall lightning tower, that means that the steel city shouldn’t be small. It might have many Heaven Puppets.”

Lin Yun didn’t say anything and observed the lightning tower instead. Just now, the power of that lightning sphere was comparable to a Heaven Rank powerhouse’s all-out spell. But that lightning tower only took a second to condense the lightning sphere, and it perfectly deduced the meteorite’s trajectory.

Seeing Lin Yun’s appearance, Gandaph didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Sir Mafa, I urge you not to attack the lightning tower. If you do so, we might end up attracting a puppet army, and a terrifying puppet might appear.

“Alright, here it is!”

As soon as Gandaph’s words echoed, Lin Yun looked into the distance and saw a seven-meter-tall puppet flying in the air and rapidly catching those falling meteorite fragments. Every piece was flickering with metallic luster, clearly containing highly pure metal.

Gandaph scattered his invisibility and calmly floated in the air. At that moment, that four-armed puppet turned towards them, its blue crystal eyes flickering with light as it immediately discarded the ores in its hands. Four greatswords slashed towards Gandaph.

Gandaph calmly hovered, looking at that Level 43 puppet. An impressive blue law rune suddenly shot out of his fingertips, turning into a pale blue radiance flashing towards the puppet and trapping it in a sphere of water. No matter how much the puppet struggled, it was no different from an insect that had stepped in glue.

Gandaph floated over and put his palm onto the surface of the water sphere, and the rays of light flickering within the puppet’s eyes instantly dissipated.

Lin Yun wasn’t too surprised by the fact that Gandaph easily took care of that puppet. With Gandaph’s strength, getting rid of a Level 43 puppet shouldn’t be too difficult, even if it had an ability rune. But Lin Yun didn’t even see how Gandaph dealt with that Heaven Puppet…

As he descended, Gandaph casually threw a few law runes out to cover an area of a hundred meters, sealing everything.

At the same time, several dozen small streams of water formed within the sphere of water before transforming into knives or tools. Using the continuous power of those streams, the Heaven Puppet was slowly dissected.

But every water knife was vibrating at an inconceivable frequency, shortening the meticulous work to only a few seconds. And using that method to dismantle the puppet didn’t cause any harm to the components. Instead, it cleaned the rust from some components, making the parts stronger.

The puppet’s four limbs were disassembled into parts, each of which was undamaged. These parts floated within the water sphere, very close to their original placements, making it look as if the puppet hadn’t actually been dismantled.

Gandaph was very fast, and the puppet’s movable parts were dismantled one by one. But seeing the circumstances within the puppet’s body, Lin Yun could no longer remain unperturbed… He was quite surprised.

Gandaph’s dismantling skill didn’t look like much, but as a Peak Artisan, Lin Yun could see the technique contained within. Gandaph wasn’t relying on strength…

This kind of dismantling could also be done by Lin Yun. Dismantling inside a sphere of water could undoubtedly bring many benefits and wouldn’t damage the components. It would even polish old parts.

But Lin Yun couldn’t do what Gandaph was doing, transforming several dozen water streams into tools every second. Moreover, these tools were continuously changing. This tested alchemy proficiency and knowledge of puppets.

Basic knowledge like what tool needed to be used where had become the most difficult part here. The way Lin Yun dismantled puppets in mere moments was actually a kind of violent dismantling. In order to get all of the parts, that kind of dismantling wouldn’t be chosen; it would only be used in battle.

Forcibly dismantling a puppet in a moment would damage some weaker components. But what really shocked Lin Yun wasn’t the dismantling technique Gandaph was displaying, but the fact that this puppet was in perfect condition.

All the parts and all the systems were in perfect condition. In other words, this puppet was still alive. This was the true dismantling technique that was able to keep all the parts in perfect condition.

Gandaph dismantled the torso of the puppet little by little, and every part remained in perfect condition. The control system, mechanical system, wisdom system, weapon system… Everything was pristine. Even after the puppet’s head was dismantled, Lin Yun didn’t discover any damaged parts.

This was the most terrifying part… Letting a Heaven Puppet live while all of its components were dismantled.

Lin Yun stared blankly. With his current strength, he wouldn’t be able to flawlessly dismantle a puppet and keep it alive during dismantling, even if he was only disassembling a Level 30 puppet.

He could see Gandaph’s experienced movements and tell that this was clearly a new developed technique in the Starry Sky College.

After Gandaph thoroughly dismantled every part, the puppet only looked slightly bigger. After a careful examination, one would discover that although every component was at its original spot, there was a very small gap between all of them.

If Gandaph wanted to, he could instantly reassemble this puppet and revive that Level 43 puppet. But because all the parts had been processed and some of the old parts had been polished and strengthened, the puppet might still be stronger than before.

After finishing his dismantling, Gandaph shook his head and released the water sphere, letting it collapse to the ground with the parts.

“Not this one, let’s go…”

Then, without throwing a second glance at the parts, he turned around to leave. Lin Yun’s mouth was wide open. He glanced at the parts and conveniently collected them.

Gandaph didn’t care about these parts, but that didn’t mean that it was the same for Lin Yun. He had previously gotten rid of quite a few Heaven Puppets, but due to the battles, their components had been unusable and could only be treated as raw materials. He hadn’t been able to gather some of the more fragile key components in a long time.

It had been a while since the patched puppet got an upgrade. He had been unable to upgrade it recently, but he now had intact components from a Heaven Puppet, he could definitely restore the patched puppet to its Heaven Rank strength.

And thus, Lin Yun collected these components without shame and kept following Gandaph. As for what Gandaph wanted to do, it wasn’t important anymore. Lin Yun would get a few intact Heaven Puppets to upgrade his patched puppet.

After flying over thirty kilometers, they encountered a puppet army of three or four thousand Level 25 to Level 39 puppets led by a Level 42 Puppet. These puppets looked extremely strange.

Human-shaped puppets were actually a minority. Most of the puppets were beast-shaped, and many of them were in the shapes of spiders, ants, or other insects. The Heaven Puppet leading them was an extremely large beetle that was over a dozen meters in length. When lying on its stomach, it was close to two meters in height. A huge rune the size of an adult head could be seen atop its carapace.

That was one of the rare defensive ability runes for Heaven Puppets. It was just that its specific effect was unknown. Even if the ability rune was the same, the effect would vary from puppet to puppet.

Gandaph was hovering in the air and released a barrier covering them.

“There is no other Heaven Puppet within thirty kilometers, only that one,” Gandaph casually said.

It sounded as if that army, which could wipe out some of the Andlusa Kingdom’s middle-sized forces at will, could casually be erased.

Gandaph looked at the sky and threw a blue rune. The rune transformed into a blue ray of light that flew into the sky. It instantly roused the Puppet Plane’s rarefied atmosphere and started condensing a dozen-kilometer-big black cloud in midair.

After a few seconds, black drops of water started falling from the sky onto the earth. Upon contact with the ground, the black drops created wisps of white smoke as if they were made of acid.

This was the characteristic of the Puppet Plane: The atmosphere was very sparse, and when looking up, they could still see a scorching sun in the depths of the void. The rain was also completely made of acid, even if it was in very small quantities.

As the rain fell, the ores spread over the black land slowly started melting. Once the rain evaporated, what remained would form flat and smooth steel ground.

The acid rain was the thing puppets disliked the most, especially low-level puppets. Many of their components would be corroded by the acid rain, and their durability would decrease. To some low-level puppets, the acid rain was even deadly.

This puppet army encountering acid rain was like a swarm of insects encountering a deadly crisis. The army instantly fell into chaos.

And at that time, Gandaph extended a finger and threw out a blue law rune. The vapor coalesced on the ground rapidly condensed, and several thousand blue water spheres suddenly appeared on the ground, each of them containing a puppet.

From the Heaven Puppet to the lowest Level 25 puppet, they were all wrapped inside the water spheres. Aside from the one holding the Heaven Puppet, streams of water started frantically revolving inside the water spheres.

Whether they were Level 25 or Level 39 puppets made no difference. In less than a second, several thousand puppets were forcibly dismantled into piles of components, and most of the components were distorted until they couldn’t be used anymore.

Seeing Gandaph and Lin Yun floating down, the eyes of that beetle-like Heaven Puppet started frantically flickering. It also let out roars creating shockwaves that continuously attacked the water sphere, which in turn reflected back to the beetle.

The rune on the back of the beetle suddenly shone brightly and a layer of dark silver light enveloped its entire body, thoroughly protecting it. It looked as if the beetle had completely changed, and its defensive ability rose by one level.

Lin Yun indifferently looked at the beetle. He didn’t think that this pitiful beetle could stop Gandaph’s dismantling.

Sure enough, Gandaph extended his hand and touched the surface of the twenty-meter-wide water sphere. Like before, it took an instant for the eyes of the puppet to lose their radiance and for its mana fluctuations to dissipate. The ability rune on its back also darkened.

Lin Yun frowned as he saw Gandaph’s movements. Even after seeing it twice, he still didn’t know how he did it. He didn’t feel any Extraordinary Power fluctuations, nor did he feel any mana fluctuations. This was obviously not the result of Gandaph’s physical strength, but rather a kind of mix of power and deep alchemy mastery allowing him to perfectly dismantle the puppet’s core.

But it was clear that Gandaph didn’t plan on giving that alchemy technique to Lin Yun for nothing. But it didn’t matter if Lin Yun saw the later dismantling steps. After all, any skilled alchemist could do that.

Gandaph once again performed the perfect dismantling of a Heaven Puppet as if it was a performance.

But this time, his expression changed as he reached the last step, and that huge blue water sphere changed shape.The parts other than the core of the puppet were separated and thrown aside like trash. Gandaph didn’t even spare a glance at the carapace with the ability rune.

In the end, the water sphere was completely dispersed, only leaving a meter-sized part of the torso. Gandaph took out a pair of mana-insulating gloves and a dozen kinds of tools before solemnly and cautiously using both hands to dismantle it…