Chapter 1079: Giant Serpent
If these components were fused into any other magical artifact, you could only merge one at most, and even then, the restrictions would be severe—its true power could never be unleashed.
Could it be that the Fate Stone Tablets are truly components of the Spellbook of Ages?
Leon kept replaying everything he knew about the Fate Stone Tablets—the more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed.
The Spellbook of Ages is said to contain every spell in existence. Each time you open it, the spells you see are completely different.
Ever since Leon obtained the Spellbook of Ages, he’s been poring over its spells. By now, he’s lost track of how many he’s seen, but even now, every time he opens it, the spells are always different.
And with all the rumors about the Death Tome and the Spellbook of Ages, Leon had always believed the Spellbook was a True Spirit Artifact. That’s pretty unbelievable, considering its abilities—it should be a Mythic Artifact by any measure.
But for some reason, the Spellbook of Ages is only a True Spirit Artifact. Most importantly, it still hasn’t manifested a magical avatar!
A True Spirit Artifact with power rivaling the very best, and yet it hasn’t produced a magical avatar—something about that is just plain wrong.
That alone points to one thing—the Spellbook of Ages is incomplete!
Just like with the Death Tome—when Bain got his hands on it, he said the Death Tome was hiding some big secrets, and that it seemed incomplete too.
So up until now, the only parts of the Death Tome Leon could really use were the powers of those few magical components embedded in it.
Leon kept pondering, then finally gritted his teeth, pulled out the Spellbook of Ages, and took out a Fate Stone Tablet.
He slammed the Fate Stone Tablet onto the Spellbook of Ages. Instantly, the Spellbook floated up, wrapped in a swirl of seven-colored light. The Fate Stone Tablet dissolved into a stream of radiance and merged into the Spellbook.
In just a few seconds, the Fate Stone Tablet had vanished. The Spellbook of Ages didn’t look much different, but when Leon flipped through it, every page now had more spells, and the spells were much stronger. Before, most of the spells were low-level and random—you had to rely on luck to find something good.
But now, after flipping through it twice, Leon was sure—the odds of seeing powerful spells had definitely gone up.
Holding the Spellbook of Ages, Leon pulled out a second Fate Stone Tablet. Whether this worked or not depended on the second one.
As long as the second tablet could be fused, that would prove the Fate Stone Tablets really were components of the Spellbook of Ages. If not, it didn’t matter—a little waste, but at least the Spellbook had gotten stronger.
He pressed the second Fate Stone Tablet against the Spellbook of Ages. The same seven-colored glow appeared again, a glowing sphere wrapped around the Spellbook. After three or four seconds, the light faded and the Fate Stone Tablet was gone...
Seeing this, Leon couldn’t help but let a hint of delight show on his face.
Who would’ve thought that overlooked record was actually true—the Fate Stone Tablets really are components of the Spellbook of Ages!
Thinking that, Leon took out the remaining eleven Fate Stone Tablets and fused them into the Spellbook of Ages one by one.
Slowly, the Spellbook of Ages began to undergo a dramatic transformation. Its cover turned an ancient bronze color, as if forged from metal, and its size grew several times over. On the surface, chains made of spells slithered and shifted constantly.
It looked as if spells were crawling out from inside the Spellbook, endlessly changing. These chains of spells bound the Spellbook, and unless you were its master, the only way to open it was to instantly summon the unlocking spell from those chains.
But those spells kept weaving in and out of the Spellbook, and the unlocking spell was always changing—never repeating.
To instantly pick out the unlocking spell from those chains? Even the strongest Heaven-tier experts couldn’t do it. The only one who could match this ever-shifting spell, second by second, was the Spellbook’s master.
After fusing twelve Fate Stone Tablets, the Spellbook of Ages had changed drastically, its power surging—but it still hadn’t manifested a magical avatar or advanced to a Mythic Artifact.
Glancing at the last Fate Stone Tablet in his hand, Leon gritted his teeth and slammed it onto the Spellbook of Ages.
If there were only thirteen Fate Stone Tablets in total, and all were fused into the Spellbook of Ages, that would make it complete—and it would definitely evolve into a Mythic Artifact.
But if the Spellbook of Ages had more than thirteen components, fusing this last one would just make it a little stronger, nothing more.
As the last Fate Stone Tablet touched the Spellbook of Ages, a burst of seven-colored light erupted instantly.
But this time, the seven-colored radiance swelled at a terrifying speed, ballooning to over a hundred meters high in a matter of seconds.
The hundred-meter-tall sphere of rainbow light floated in midair, its dazzling glow spreading in all directions. At the same time, a terrifying pressure was surging wildly.
Within seconds, that horrifying pressure surpassed the limits of a True Spirit Artifact, and it felt like some monstrous being was being born inside the sphere of rainbow light.
Waves of terrifying energy rippled out like a tide, spreading across the land. Beneath the sphere, the ground rippled like a pond, earth churning outward. In just a few seconds, a massive crater hundreds of meters wide appeared.
Then the light exploded, and the drifting clouds in the sky were ripped apart as if torn by a giant. Within a few kilometers, the sky became a pure, crystalline blue.
Thousands of meters away, a few jungle wolf-like pseudo-Heaven-tier magical beasts seemed to sense something. Howling in terror, they tucked their tails and fled in panic.
Beneath the sphere of rainbow light, Leon’s face was flushed red. The overwhelming pressure made it hard to breathe—he had to raise three layers of shields, plus three fire shields, and even then, his bones creaked under the immense force.
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As the aura from the sphere kept intensifying, Leon had to retreat several steps before he could barely withstand it.
The mage legion had already retreated two or three kilometers away. Even Xuban and Reina couldn’t handle the pressure and had fallen back to a full kilometer...
Only Leon remained, standing just a hundred meters from the sphere of rainbow light.
Delight shimmered in Leon’s eyes—the Spellbook of Ages really did have thirteen magical components. Thirteen Fate Stone Tablets, all gathered at once.
Now, the Spellbook of Ages was beginning its transformation into a Mythic Artifact, and the faint aura of life inside was the magical avatar being born within it.
Waves of transcendent energy surged outward like a tide. With every pulse, Leon’s triple-layered fire shields shattered—the only thing that could withstand it was the rune shield.
The process of a magical artifact evolving into a Mythic Artifact is when it unleashes its strongest aura. It’s the only time a Mythic Artifact can radiate its full power without a wielder or any outside support.
As the Spellbook of Ages—holder of every spell in existence—advanced to Mythic Artifact, the energy it released far surpassed Leon’s expectations. The aura was so intense, even its master could barely withstand it.
Feeling this power, Leon knew that even after the transformation, he wouldn’t be able to wield the Spellbook’s full might yet. Only when he reached Heaven-tier could he truly master its strength.
The terrifying energy waves lasted for a full half hour. Then, a suppressed roar echoed from within the sphere of rainbow light, which began to twist and contract toward its center.
The collapse sped up, and when the sphere shrank to just fifty meters across, it finished the last stage of contraction in an instant.
As the light gathered at the center, a half-meter-tall rainbow-hued book floated quietly there. Countless spells flowed across its surface like living things, while chains of spells formed a halo around the Spellbook of Ages.
Around the newly reborn Spellbook of Ages, a massive gray Giant Serpent—dozens of meters long—coiled in a circle, biting its own tail and encircling the Spellbook at the center.
As the Giant Serpent spun, it slowly released its tail from its mouth. The more it let go, the larger its body grew.
When it finally spit out its tail completely, its body had grown to seven or eight meters thick and over a hundred meters long.
The Giant Serpent’s diamond-shaped vertical pupils snapped open. It twisted its body and, in an instant, swallowed the Spellbook of Ages whole. Then, with its enormous jaws, it inhaled sharply, pulling in the endless rainbow light with terrifying force.
After devouring the Spellbook’s core, the Giant Serpent began to absorb the surrounding energy. Its aura soared, rising from a fifth-rank Title Archmage to the very peak of Title Archmage in just seconds.
Its massive body swelled rapidly, reaching three or four hundred meters long, with its thickest part a full twenty meters across—all fueled by the energy released from the Spellbook of Ages.
Once the Giant Serpent had devoured all the energy unleashed during the Spellbook’s ascension to Mythic Artifact, its aura hit a critical point and exploded to Heaven-tier.
Elemental forces in the area were pulled in as if by invisible hands, flooding into the Giant Serpent’s body. Its gray scales shifted colors—scarlet red, icy blue, radiant white, shadowy black...
After a dozen seconds of shifting hues, the Giant Serpent’s body returned to its ordinary gray. Only then did its aura finally settle, but within ten kilometers, not a single living thing remained—the pseudo-Heaven-tier beasts had all fled in terror.
Leon gazed at the Giant Serpent, astonishment in his eyes.