"Should I say it was expected...?"
"Alone, I truly struggle to control the entire tower."
The sky was gloomy.
The earth lay silent.
The wizard's tower had crash-landed on a plain.
Smoke rose from multiple gashes, its battered and broken form a pitiful sight.
Earthen puppets emerged from within, carrying out repairs in orderly fashion, while Xu Xi stood some distance away, silently watching the tower's restoration.
As a mobile war fortress,
from the very beginning,
the wizard's tower was never meant for solo operation.
The ideal model was to have the strongest Tower Lord at its core, supported by lower and mid-tier wizards each fulfilling their roles.
Yet the current circumstances were exceptional.
Apart from Servia, Xu Xi had no other capable personnel at his disposal.
"...Forgive me, Lord Wizard."
"...I am too incompetent."
Servia's expression was downcast, the blade of her knight's sword chipped and shattered—clear evidence of recent fierce combat.
"Servia, you need not apologize to me. You've done nothing wrong."
The girl blamed herself so deeply,
believing the tower's damage was due to her inadequacy.
Xu Xi gazed at the lightless world, comforting Servia, telling her not to grieve—no one could have foreseen the overwhelming ferocity of this Dark Tide.
It seemed truly endless.
The number of undead stretched beyond sight.
Even a wizard would feel powerless before such a calamity.
...
[After the Tower of Salvation was repaired, you resumed its flight]
[In the current wizarding world]
[every corner teemed with dangerous undead]
[This was both a peril and your opportunity]
[Ordinary wizards could barely defy the laws of the Netherworld, laboring for ages to capture mere wisps of soulfire]
[But with your Soul Collector trait, you could effortlessly harvest abundant soulfire for your own use]
[You ceaselessly eradicated the undead]
[The sheer density of soul energy made weaker undead begin to fear you]
[You noticed that Servia's weapon, battered by the Dark Tide's intensity, was on the verge of shattering, rendered nearly unusable]
[You forged a new enchanted sword for Servia]
Silver light glinted, sharp and piercing.
The blade was heavy and elongated,
engraved with amplification runes.
On the pristine floor, iron boots stepped forward as hands solemnly accepted the sword.
Gripping the hilt, she effortlessly lifted the heavy mithril blade.
Under the overhead light, the sword gleamed brilliantly, casting an ethereal glow over her vibrant green eyes.
"Lord Wizard... may I truly keep this?"
"Of course. It was made for you, Servia."
Xu Xi spoke,
explaining the blade's enchantments to help her master it swiftly.
Finally, he assessed his work: "Adequate, I suppose. Materials were scarce. I’ll craft a better one later."
"No, Lord Wizard. This sword is perfect."
She sheathed the blade,
cradling it in her arms.
Her green eyes, layered with depth, softened.
"Lord Wizard, I love it. Truly... deeply."
Because it came from you, there could be no other answer.
No matter its form, no matter its quality—
the answer would always be love.
Bone fingers brushed the hilt through her armor,
clenching slowly, then releasing.
In that rhythm, the soul within her undead frame seemed purified,
flickering with quiet joy.
Abruptly, as if struck by a thought, Servia removed her gauntlets,
revealing pale skeletal hands.
She repeated the motion, gripping the sword bare.
"Servia, what are you...?"
"Lord Wizard, holding it like this... feels comforting," the Hero murmured, speaking of warmth in her hands—
though an undead body should feel neither heat nor cold.
...
[You and the Hero pressed onward]
[The wizard's tower’s firepower accelerated your soulfire collection]
[To counter the enigmatic Seventh-Circle Wizard]
[you sought even greater efficiency]
[You experimented relentlessly, refining the tower’s spirit to process faster and smarter]
[The Tower of Salvation soared swiftly]
[carrying you and Servia from desolate wilderness back to lands once inhabited]
[You faintly recalled a kingdom here]
[but found only ruins]
[The dead clawed free from flesh, bones scraping through rubble, contorted figures weaving through smoke-choked flames]
[Fire raged upward]
[Souls wailed silently]
[You witnessed true hell]
The combined devastation of the Black Sun’s fall and the Dark Tide
far exceeded Xu Xi’s expectations.
If, at the fifth simulation’s start, the living still clung to survival,
now, the wizarding world offered no refuge.
Before the collision of worlds brought final ruin,
the undead would erase all life,
twisting terrified souls into the very monsters they feared.
"BOOM—!!"
Above the burning ruins of the fallen kingdom,
the wizard's tower unleashed its fury.
The undead swarmed so thickly that even blind firing reaped soulfire aplenty.
Xu Xi swung his staff, unleashing a Third-Circle grand spell to obliterate skeletal dragons ambushing the tower.
Servia guarded his flank,
her gaze flickering toward the inferno below.
With every surge of flames, her grip tightened.
Then, from the crimson-dark despair,
a blade’s light tore through.
Strong.
Yet fragile.
"Lord Wizard... I hate this world."
Her voice was rough with sorrow, rage, and bitter defiance.
"Likewise," Xu Xi replied, his eyes reflecting the flames and the sea of pale bones.
Wind howled between heat and cold,
a chorus of the dead.
...
...
[Year 17 of the simulation. Age 34]
[You grasped the first threads of Fourth-Circle ascension]
[You and Servia endured the heaviest year]
[The world hadn’t fully crumbled]
[but its people saw no dawn ahead]
[You piloted the Tower of Salvation from one human kingdom to another]
[only to find ruins every time]
[Crumbled walls, eternal pyres]
[The stench of rot blanketed lands devoid of villages, towns, or nations—only a handful cowered in hiding]
[You and the Hero saved some]
[In hushed reverence, they spoke of you not by name, but as "That Lord"]
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
ts me of treason?" "Correct. The host must return to the capital and gradually build up influence." "Wait—I have half a million soldiers, and you want me to go back to the capital to 'build influence'?" "Host, you are currently the Northern Garrison General, loyal to the Great Xia Dynasty." "Of course I am loyal to Great Xia! Absolutely loyal!" "But you keep referring to yourself as 'We'..." "Never mind the details! Summon all the regional commanders and military officers! We suspect treacherous officials are manipulating the court! They shall march with Us to the capital and purge the corrupt!" "......"
transmigrates into the world as the sect master of the Heavenly Yan Sect, which is on the verge of being wiped out. He binds a system that grants him cultivation power based on the number of disciples he has: for each disciple, he automatically gains a year's worth of cultivation every single day! Take one disciple: every day he gains 1 year of cultivation power. While others struggle through a year of bitter training, he gets the same just by sleeping through a single night. Take ten disciples: every day he gains 10 years of cultivation power. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul—he breezes through all bottlenecks without lifting a finger. Take one hundred disciples: every day he gains 100 years of cultivation power. Even a Soul Transformation Venerable before him can’t survive a single blow. Take ten thousand disciples: every day he gains 10,000 years of cultivation power! With a wave of his hand, he topples empires. With a single step, he crushes the sacred grounds of the universe. ... While others fight tooth and nail for secret techniques, Lin Yan casually hands out Nascent Soul-level cultivation manuals as beginner textbooks. While others strain to find talented recruits, Lin Yan opens his doors to anyone—so long as they’re human. In just three short years, the Heavenly Yan Sect went from a backwater sect made up of three crumbling huts to a sacred land that every cultivator under heaven would kill to enter. ... One day, otherworldly demon gods invade, with a million demon soldiers pressing down upon the realm. Lin Yan, yawning, rises from his lounge chair and glances at the system panel: [Current Disciples: 1.28 million] [Daily Cultivation Increase: 1.28 million years] He waves his hand casually, and the countless demon soldiers are reduced to ashes in an instant. “So noisy… interrupting my fishing.”
