Chapter 771: The Race to Build a Dimensional-Scale Dark Gate

Taking the next assessment, Garrick was asked to choose between territorial construction and expedition.

“Of course, it’s expedition!”

With a tap of his finger, the virtual environment quickly changed into a battlefield.

[Please survive as long as possible.]

“Oh? You want to test my ability?”

Watching the surging number of enemies, Garrick smirked. Compared to that mind-numbing work and those exams, he liked this straightforward one.

Fighting to his heart’s content, he saw the monsters coming from all directions slowly increase in number and grow stronger. Yet the more enemies there were, the stronger Garrick became.

“Come on!”

He became the leader of the Silverleaf Team Alliance despite his simple mind because of his overwhelming combat strength and ability.

Facing monsters from the same realm, no matter how many there were, it could only serve to further his bloodlust.

—

Soon, after a day of fighting, surviving the onslaught of even a Tier 8 wave of monsters, the trial finally ended.

[Trial Ended!]

[Evaluation: SSS]

“It’s not easy…”

Failure after failure, he had thought he was truly useless. Now it seemed he had just been in the wrong place. The battlefield was his true home!

[Initiating the next trial…]

Before Garrick could even react, the virtual space suddenly changed again. From a ground battlefield, the place turned into a void. He was now a captain, commanding an eternal military outpost besieged by countless dark beasts.

[Please survive as long as possible.]

“Oh? Is this trial testing my ability to command? No problem!”

While he had a simple mind, he was compassionate and could instinctively read the flow across a battlefield. With a single thought, he began commanding the people at the Eternal Military Outpost to withstand the onslaught of the dark beasts outside.

Although limited by energy, as they killed dark beasts, some energy would be replenished, giving them more endurance to continue fighting. Micromanaging everything in the Eternal Military Outpost, Garrick was like a god, withstanding a tsunami of dark beasts without dying.

—

As days and weeks passed, Garrick stood tall until Tier 9 dark beasts appeared, chasing them all over the map to their doom.

[Trial Ended…]

[Evaluation: SSS]

[Congratulations, you have been designated as one of the Expedition Commanders.]

“Expedition Commander? How high is that?”

Previously, no one would answer his questions. However, as his rating increased, the trial’s management system answered him.

[An expedition commander can manage 10,000 Eternal Military Outposts.]

“Ten thousand Eternal Military Outposts?!”

This was basically a position just below Teal, the overall commander of the expedition. His authority was basically higher than even those former leaders of a top-level team alliances.

[Please report to Supreme General Teal promptly. The training and mobilization of the expedition force is underway.]

“I understand!”

From failure to becoming the commander of a ten-thousand-strong army, Garrick felt like he was dreaming. As he thought of the coming expedition, he couldn’t wait to see the grand formation of ten thousand Eternal Military Outposts under his command.

—

A month after the assessment trials began, all the elite runic engravers had finished their preliminary training and entered Eternal Time Server 01.

With an additional 6 trillion elite runic engravers, the number helping Nash engrave runic patterns reached 18 trillion. Increasing their efficiency by 50%, the original timeline Nash had was massively shortened.

“If nothing else happens, the Mind Hive Module will be done in a year!”

After years of millions-of-times acceleration, the Mind Hive Module was finally about to be completed! If not for bottlenecks and setbacks, he was confident it would be done in half a year.

“It’s a pity I can’t mass-produce Faith Origin Potion.”

He had deduced the Faith Origin Potion formula a few weeks ago. Yet after creating a batch, he didn’t even need to deduce to know they were impossible to mass-produce with their current technology.

The Faith Origin Potion contained the power of origin, which only a Tier 9 powerhouse or technology could possess. Given their manufacturing and technical abilities, even with complete Tier 9 materials and a blueprint, they couldn’t create it.

Nash himself possessed the power of origin, given his primordial origin path. However, if he were to create the Tier 9 industrial production technology himself, it would take at least centuries.

He could only put the project aside and wait for the Eternal Star Alliance to grow. Perhaps he could create a module system that could let others borrow the power of origin.

Turning his attention to the workers building the Eternal Military Outpost, he smiled.

“5,000 Eternal Military Outposts each month? Not bad.”

They currently had 45,000 Eternal Military Outposts, and with current production capacity, reaching 100,000 was not far off.

With the opening of the dimensional-scale dark gates, the importance of the Eternal Military Outposts was growing. On the defensive end, they were basically equivalent to a pillar to a foundation.

“Huh~ Now everything is stable…”

With no critical matters to face, Nash began focusing on deducing the Mind Hive Module System. From time to time, he also hand-crafted Faith Origin Potions for Camilla and Elizabeth.

As for using it himself, he had no time. Besides deducing the Mind Hive Module, he was also busy virtualizing each law. Furthermore, although the Faith Origin Potion was effective, he would need a large amount.

Even if he brewed potions day and night for decades, he still couldn’t push his primordial fusion progress by even 1%. Thus, instead of wasting time, it was better to prioritize other things first.

Once he freed his hands, he could even use Merit Source to accelerate the natural time around him while producing the Faith Origin Potion.

—

Soon, while Nash and the Eternal Star Alliance were busy, the entire discovered domain area in the Empyrean Will Primogenal Land slowly calmed down.

With the dimensional-scale dark gates’ problems under control, the seven major alliances finally had time to address matters concerning the cosmic teams previously in their territories.

As war loomed over, the three opposing major alliances stood on a knife-edge, ready to defend and counterattack at any time.

Fortunately, before any conflict truly broke out, the seven major alliances sent envoys to apologize for their lack of consideration.

Since they had become major alliances and absorbed such large populations, it was indeed inappropriate for them to occupy only a small piece of land.

Letting their intentions be known, they hoped to renegotiate the treaty at the coming Altier Convention.

Hearing the message relayed by the envoys, the three opposing major alliances became more wary rather than relieved. They would have been unsurprised if the seven major alliances had only asked for compensation for their actions, yet they not only didn’t ask for any reparations, they even apologized!

Realizing the seriousness of the matter, they could only conclude that the benefits of the dimensional-scale dark gate were beyond their imagination. As it was restricted knowledge, even the Altier Arcane Tower didn’t contain such information. They could only guess that the benefits were so great that the three major alliances couldn’t compare.

Feeling the urgency of the matter, the three major alliances even began to panic. They had allied together to barely catch up to the seven major alliances, and now, by the looks of it, they were about to be left behind again.

At that moment, they knew that if they didn’t want everything to go back to how it was before, they needed to step up and take a risk. Now, building a dimensional-scale dark gate was the only straw they had left to hold on to. Even if it was full of thorns, they had to reach out and grab it.

Thus, regardless of the danger and cost, each of the remaining three major alliances began to focus all their manpower and resources on building a dimensional-scale dark gate.

—

In the Eternal Star Alliance, Nash was pulled from his busy schedule to address this urgent matter.

“What happened, Teal? Are you ready to go on an expedition?”

“Expedition? We are facing a major problem, how could we still have a mind for an expedition?” Teal sighed. Because of the Mind Hive Module’s importance, he hadn’t dared disturb Nash, even when envoys from the seven major alliances arrived.

However, coming to a grim conclusion and fearing the repercussions if they didn’t step up, Teal had no choice but to call Nash to point them in a direction. As Teal explained what had happened over the past few months, Nash’s expression also changed.

“Just what could it be that those major alliances would prefer to apologize just to stabilize the situation?” Nash frowned.

After poaching hundreds of thousands of cosmic team alliances, he was even ready to pay billions’ worth of resources, yet they apologized just to avoid the slightest hint of disruption?

“Should we begin building a dimensional-scale dark gate?”

“Can we even? Those purification devices aren’t enough to withstand the baptism of a dark origin chaos tide.”

While information about the benefits of a dimensional-scale dark gate remained unknown, the Altier Arcane Tower still recorded some of its dangers.

One of them was the dark origin chaos tide. It was an energy tide mixed with dark origin essence and chaos energy. Such a corrosive force was not something their territory could withstand.

Even with the Tier 8 array, the sudden surge of dark origin chaos would quickly melt them. They might survive, but their people would be purged into nothingness.

“Can’t we build them far away from our territory? That way, they would be diluted by the dark energy.” Teal said, following the solution the other two major alliances had adopted.