Chapter 28: The Alchemy Tower

“What is this place?” As Victor slowly regained consciousness, gazing at the endless whiteness surrounding him, he couldn’t help but mutter to himself.

“Respected Master, this is the Will Space connected to your Alchemy Tower.”

A gentle voice suddenly sounded beside Victor, startling him into shouting, “Who’s there?!”

“I am the Tower Spirit of Alchemy Tower No. 7, Logistics Division, 19th Legion, of the Nairiel Empire. I am here to serve you wholeheartedly, my esteemed master,” the gentle voice replied once again at Victor’s ear.

Nairiel Empire? 19th Legion? Alchemy Tower? Victor’s mind was a muddled mess at this moment. He stared blankly for quite a while and still couldn’t make sense of the situation.

“Why am I here?” Victor tried to sort out a thread of clarity from his confused memories.

“Respected Master, you have just activated Alchemy Tower No. 7. According to procedure, you are now in the Will Space of the Alchemy Tower to perform initial settings for permissions and functions.” The voice claiming to be the Tower Spirit answered Victor’s questions in a fixed, mechanical tone.

Gradually, Victor began to recall what had happened to him.

When Victor and his party entered the cave, a message written in his native script suddenly appeared in his field of vision: “New hardware available for activation. Activate?”

When Victor activated Overdrive mode, X-3 would typically present numeric interfaces in his vision, but this was the first time for a prompt in his own language.

This unprecedented situation left Victor at a loss. Out of caution, he declined the option.

However, unbelievably, the prompt kept reappearing in his vision, no matter how many times he refused it.

Worse still, this prompt kept him locked in Overdrive mode, causing his stamina to drain continuously. Once he passed a certain threshold, his mind began to dull.

At first, he tried to hide his unease, feigning composure as he explored the cave with the group. By the time he realized something was wrong and tried to find an excuse to leave, his consciousness had already grown fuzzy. Exhausted, all he wanted was to lie down and sleep, anywhere, anyhow. Yet the damned prompt kept flashing in his mind, refusing him any peace. In a daze, he finally chose: Activate!

Then Victor’s world went quiet, and he lost consciousness, not awakening until he found himself in this bizarre place.

“Can I go back?” Victor steadied himself and asked.

“Once you complete the permission settings for the Alchemy Tower, you will exit the Will Space,” the Tower Spirit replied calmly.

“There’s nothing here. How am I supposed to set anything?” In this so-called Will Space, Victor could see nothing but endless white, as if he had stepped into a two-dimensional world.

“In the Will Space, you possess infinite creativity. Everything here can be shaped by your will,” the Tower Spirit’s unchanging voice continued at Victor’s ear.

A thought stirred in Victor’s mind. Instantly, countless lines appeared around him, followed by various colors. Soon, the featureless white void transformed into a room. Victor glanced around and realized this was the very chamber he had once lived in at Black Fortress.

“Tower Spirit, can I see you?” Victor asked tentatively, the familiar surroundings calming him and allowing him to think about his predicament.

Soon, a person appeared opposite Victor, and to his shock, this person looked exactly like himself.

“How strange. But your appearance makes me uncomfortable. Can you change?” Victor circled the Tower Spirit, who was his exact double, and asked again.

“As you wish, respected master.” The Tower Spirit gave Victor a noble’s salute, its movements and tone perfectly mimicking his own.

Immediately, the Tower Spirit transformed into an extraordinarily beautiful woman with violet hair and eyes, a slender waist and long legs.

Victor’s pupils contracted. This woman was none other than the Marchioness Sophia from his memories.

“Why take this form?” Victor asked, enunciating each word.

“This is the most vivid image in your memory,” the beauty before him answered serenely.

A chill ran through Victor’s heart; the Tower Spirit seemed able to probe his memories. Still, its willingness to answer every question strangely reassured him.

“Change to Scholar Edwin’s form, please. I prefer consulting him.” At Victor’s command, the Tower Spirit shifted into the guise of an elderly scholar.

“Very well. Now, Tower Spirit, tell me: what is the Nairiel Empire? And give me all information about the Logistics Division of the 17th Legion and the Alchemy Towers.” Victor sat down, and instantly a chair appeared behind him. This omnipotence within the space intrigued him.

“The Nairiel Empire is a great nation that created the civilization of alchemy. The 17th Legion ranks seventeenth among the Empire’s legions. The Logistics Division is responsible for the legion’s supplies. The Alchemy Tower is the Empire’s facility for creating alchemical life.” The Tower Spirit, now resembling the elderly scholar, answered solemnly.

“That’s all? Can you elaborate?” The simplicity of the Tower Spirit’s answers drove Victor nearly mad.

“According to your queries, this is all I can retrieve. For more detail, please ask more specific questions.”

The Tower Spirit’s rigidity made Victor realize this entity communicating with him possessed no independent intelligence.

“Where is the Nairiel Empire?”

“All land east of the Endless Forest, south of the Terrell Mountains, and north of the Goldenwater River belongs to the Nairiel Empire.”

“Fine. When did the Nairiel Empire begin, and when did it end?”

“According to your memories, the Nairiel Empire was founded twenty-eight thousand years ago and has not yet perished.”

“Not perished? What does that mean? Where are they now? Who is the Emperor?”

“Cannot retrieve the meaning of ‘perished.’ They are here. The Nairiel Empire has no emperor.”

“Who are they? Who leads Nairiel?”

“They are us. As the Tower Spirit is not connected to the Alchemy Tower network, further information is unavailable. Currently, you hold the highest authority. By default, you are the leader of the Nairiel Empire.”

After much questioning, Victor finally pieced together some information.

The Nairiel Empire was a powerful human nation founded by alchemists twenty-eight thousand years ago. The Empire had no emperor but was governed by a council of alchemists. These alchemists wielded a technique that could alter the properties of matter and create extraordinary tools—alchemy. After the Empire’s founding, alchemy developed rapidly. The alchemists began to create alchemical puppets—initially from clay, stone, wood, metal, even flesh. These puppets were strong and possessed a degree of intelligence, able to carry out simple commands under the alchemists’ direction, but lacking true sentience and unable to perform complex tasks.

Four centuries after its founding, the Empire was attacked by foreign races, and war broke out.

During the ensuing conflict, the Empire suffered repeated defeats and heavy casualties, teetering on the brink of destruction. At this crisis, a grand alchemist named Beredin invented Elemental Alchemy and, using it, created an endless army of alchemical beings, ultimately turning the tide and crushing the invaders.

Elemental Alchemy differed from traditional alchemy in that it was solely for creating alchemical life. Instead of relying on conventional materials, Elemental Alchemy used special devices to draw the four elements—earth, fire, wind, and water—from the void to craft myriad living, sentient alchemical creatures. These beings came in countless forms with varied functions but were all classified as either beast-shaped or human-shaped.

The most commonly created alchemical life in the Nairiel Empire was the human-shaped kind, especially living, bleeding, and mortal alchemical humans. These humanoid alchemical beings possessed higher intelligence and autonomy. Compared to the clumsy and rigid alchemical puppets, they were more agile and adaptable to the changing demands of the battlefield.

It was thanks to the relentless production of these fearless alchemical lives that the Nairiel Empire ultimately triumphed. The devices that created these beings were the Alchemy Towers.

The Tower Spirit was a special alchemical lifeform created to help alchemists control and manage the Alchemy Tower.

The Tower Spirit had no material body, or rather, its body was the Alchemy Tower itself, and the Spirit was its soul. In Victor’s understanding, the Tower Spirit was akin to an artificial intelligence, assisting the Tower’s master with input, processing, and output of commands. When the master entered the Tower, the Spirit would link with their consciousness and obey their orders.

Victor’s Alchemy Tower was assigned to provide logistics for the 19th Legion of the Nairiel Empire. The Tower Spirit’s level was low, so the information it could provide was extremely limited.

Victor could not discover what kind of foreign races the Empire had fought, nor the time or cause of its end. He also had no idea why, tens of thousands of years later, he would become the master of one of Nairiel’s Alchemy Towers.

For now, the priority was to complete the functional and permission settings for the Alchemy Tower and escape this uncanny Will Space. Victor was acutely aware that he had no secrets here.

Standing before Victor were two naked adult men, a massive canine beast, and a bird resembling a raven from Earth. These were the current types of alchemical life the Tower could produce.

“Are these the only alchemical lives available?” Victor tapped the arm of his chair and asked the Spirit.

“The creation runes of the Alchemy Tower are damaged. It cannot produce more types of alchemical life.”

“Can they be repaired?”

“Connection to higher Alchemy Towers failed. Insufficient authority. Unable to repair.”

With a thought, Victor made one of the men fade to a phantom, then back to solid. This was how Victor enabled or disabled the production of a certain type of alchemical life.

Of course, Victor would not disable any of these. Each was a surprise. He even wondered if he were dreaming. To test it, he pinched himself in secret, but in this space, he felt no pain unless he wanted to, and could feel pain even without pinching if he willed it. The unreality of it all struck him deeply.

“If I now order the Tower to activate production, what other functions can I start?”

“Respected Master, I can no longer detect any other functions within the Tower. It is determined that all other function runes are damaged. Aside from production, you cannot activate any other functions.”

“If I order production now, can I leave this Will Space? Will I be able to return later?”

“Master, upon activating production, your consciousness will disconnect from the Will Space. Once disconnected, the Will Space will naturally dissipate, and you will not be able to return.”

“So, I cannot alter today’s decisions in the future?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Tower Spirit, now tell me—what is your relationship with X-3?” Victor’s gaze grew sharp and cold as he stared down the “Edwin” before him.

For the first time, the always-answering Tower Spirit fell silent.