Dark Wizard: Rise! My undead army!

All eyes were fixed on the few fist-sized gray crystals floating in the center of the platform.

Aldrick, the president of the World Alchemists Association, stepped forward.

He was tall and thin, with gray hair, a gaunt face, and wore thin-rimmed glasses.

He stood there, raised his right hand, and the crowd below fell silent, with only the low whistling of the wind passing through the square.

Aldrick's voice clearly reached everyone's ears: "Today is the day the world enters a new phase."

"Our alchemy has reached a bottleneck, and every step forward has become difficult and lengthy."

"Because the world we depend on can no longer bear any more rules and energy."

"And the world has reached its limit, just one opportunity away from breaking through."

Aldrick pointed to the few floating gray crystals in the center of the platform and lowered his arms to his sides.

"These Worldstones are the core condensations I obtained over the years by refining other worlds in the void using alchemy. Each one contains the remnants and fragments of the rules of a small world."

"Tonight, we will integrate these Worldstones into our world, initiating a world ascension ceremony, allowing our world to cross that threshold and become a truly grand world!"

The entire scene erupted in excitement, and all the alchemists were thrilled.

This is a historic moment. If they can successfully advance, the alchemist profession can go much further!

Aldrick stood on the edge of the platform, looking down at the surging crowd below.

Hundreds of thousands of faces flickered in the gray-white light, each pair of eyes reflecting the few World Stones floating on the high platform.

The gray crystals rotated slowly, their surfaces occasionally flashing with tiny glints of light, like the scales revealed when a slumbering beast turns over.

These Worldstones are the essence of a world, the most powerful artifacts for alchemists, greatly increasing their ability to invoke the rules of the world.

Aldrick looked at the excited faces and nodded.

Ascending to the world level is not only about the world's advancement, but also about his personal advancement.

He had remained at the position of high-level alchemy master for so long that he had almost become accustomed to the stagnation.

Obtaining each true name becomes increasingly difficult, and each time the laws of the world are invoked, stronger and stronger resistance is felt.

The fluidity of his youthful connection with the world has faded, replaced by a frictional feeling, like walking on a dry riverbed.

He knew where the problem lay.

The alchemist's path of cultivation differs from other cultivation systems; alchemists resonate with the world and invoke its laws.

The growth potential of an alchemist is directly limited by the world's own capacity.

The intensity of rule calls that a medium-sized world can withstand is almost at its limit for a high-level alchemy master.

The power he can summon has already reached the ceiling of the world.

Further up, the backlash from the world's will will become more and more frequent and intense, until one day his spell fails, and he is reduced to ashes...

Fortunately, there's nothing left in this world worth my full effort.

World promotion provided him with a path to break through the ceiling.

When a medium-sized world transforms into a large-scale world, the world's own system of rules becomes larger, more complex, and more flexible.

The previously suppressed space for maneuvering will be expanded again, the tolerance threshold of the world's will will be raised as a whole, and the upper limit of the power he can draw from the world will also be increased accordingly.

More importantly, a special kind of "rule shock" occurs when the world advances.

That is the primordial fluctuation released when the world expands its boundaries, which contains the underlying structural logic of the world's essence.

These fluctuations are extremely brief, usually lasting only a few days.

If he can capture the rhythm of the oscillations and understand the underlying structural logic during this period, he will be able to establish a deeper resonance with the world and touch the shape of the threshold of the "Alchemist Sage" (True Spirit Wizard).

From "caller" to "symbiotic"!

Aldrick stood on the high platform, watching the Worldstones slowly merge into the rune array in the center of the square.

These World Stones were refined by his own hands, and he knew the origin of each stone.

The one on the left comes from a small world that he refined with an alchemy array for seven years. The entire core rules of that world are sealed inside that stone.

The one on the right came from a medium-sized world that had been half-corroded by the abyss, and it took him a hundred years to cleanse its remains.

The largest one in the middle is almost reaching the limit of a small world.

This is from a dead, ownerless world floating in the void.

That world seemed to have undergone a ritual of sacrifice by an evil god. When he found it, it had already collapsed into a large part, with only the hardest core still maintaining its shape.

It took him three hundred years to refine it into a usable World Stone.

Three hundred years...

Aldrick repeated the number to himself, feeling deeply moved.

How many three-hundred-year periods does one have in a lifetime?

He has lived for 1,400 years and has been stuck at the position of high-level alchemy master for 600 years.

Over the course of six hundred years, he tried every method he could think of.

Displacing the world's rules, forcibly resonating with a higher-level world, refining a part of one's soul into the world's core...

But each attempt ended in failure, resulting in an increasingly fierce backlash from the world's will.

Regular cracks had begun to appear on his body, spreading from his fingertips to his wrists, and then from his wrists to his forearms...

He used alchemy to seal the cracks, but he couldn't stop them from spreading.

How much time does he have left? He himself isn't sure, but it certainly won't be enough to wait another six hundred years.

Therefore, he must succeed.

The boundaries of the world are expanding outward, and the rules are beginning to expand and reorganize. He knew that the moment he had been waiting for had finally arrived.

He had made thorough preparations and poured all his savings into it; this was his only chance, and his last chance.

He has lived long enough. If he can't get through this, the rule-shaking impact brought about by the world's advancement will be the last thing he can sense.

He raised his right hand, his fingertips pressing against the edge of the last unactivated rune in the center of the platform:

"Let's begin, I need everyone's strength."

Hundreds of thousands of alchemists in the square raised their heads at the same time.

The eyes of hundreds of thousands of people were fixed on the few floating gray crystals in the center of the platform, like countless tiny rays of light converging on the same point.

Aldrick was the first to raise his hands, and a grayish-white light began to shine from his palms, flowing down his fingertips and into the rune array on the platform.

The nine people behind him also raised their hands at the same time, and different colored lights shone from their palms. Their energy gathered into a thick beam of light, which shot towards the center of the platform.

The hundreds of thousands of alchemists in the square also began casting spells in unison.

Hundreds of thousands of tiny beams of light lit up simultaneously, like countless fine threads intertwined to form a giant net of light.

Optical networks cover entire cities, entire continents, and the entire world.

The light on the surface of the world barrier began to flow, like a lake surface ruffled by the wind, converging from the edge to the center and then spreading outwards.

Hundreds of thousands of rays of light lit up at the same time, like a reversed starry sky rising from beneath his feet.

The world trembled, rumbling as if the earth were turning over.

Aldrick closed his eyes as well, letting his consciousness flow like a river into the surging tide of rules, trying to capture the moment when the critical line blurred and disappeared.

At this moment, the world is moving towards new frontiers, and so is he.

He wanted to get there before the new border was settled.

...