[Conversion successful. This blueprint has been converted by Kazehaya Haru, the Divine Emperor of the Aetherium Empire, and only he can use it.]
He didn't find the restriction troubling as he hadn't been planning to hand the Myriad Starfall Tower to anyone else. The construction requirements hadn't changed with the conversion: one Heart of the Demon Nest, a hundred thousand Divine Crystals, ten million units of Refined Iron. He'd expected the Heart requirement to disappear after the faction switch, but it hadn't.
The GM clarified: the Heart was the tower's core, the component that gave it the ability to scan the void. Without it the tower was just a very tall building. The Abyss' evil power inside the Heart would be purified and destroyed during the construction, leaving only its functional properties.
He already had the Heart. Christine had found it while searching for Divine Crystals in the 'End'. She stumbled onto a Demon Nest, destroyed it, and transferred the Heart to him as part of sealing the alliance between the Beast God Pantheon and the Empire.
He designated a large open section of the Imperial Plaza, and used the new blueprint, and waited.
…
While the tower took shape, Celestia delivered the spoils count.
Power Stones: 30 Billion+
Magic Crystals: 1 Billion+
Divine Crystals: 800,000+ (From Kills)
Divine Crystals: 2 Million+ (From Storage Artifacts)
Blueprints: Millions
God Tier Artifacts: 460,000
Demigod Tier Artifacts: 1.2 Billion (Mostly Damaged and Saturated in Abyssal Aura)
Now his total reserves of Divine Crystals were approximately 5 million. It was still short of the ten million per artifact required to upgrade either the Scepter or the Armor, which was quite frustrating. Still, he noted it and moved on.
Among the millions of blueprints, the most numerous were Bloodline Evolution Blueprints, followed by architectural blueprints, then Troop Summoning Blueprints and finally the various special blueprints.
As for the Artifacts, when the Imperial Army's troops stacked them in the plaza, the piles formed several mountains. The Evil Abyssal Aura power radiating off that volume of equipment was significant enough that Haru had to set up a Time-Space barrier around the area before the counting began.
Without it, the effect on the hundreds of millions of citizens in the Imperial Capital would have ranged from psychological disruption to outright demonization.
His net worth, totaling everything, now exceeded Elunara's. Then he thought of another situation. He could easily purify these Artifacts, but what about the other Castle Lords?
He checked with the GM and the answer was that they could use Power Stones to cleanse the equipment. The GM clearly wasn't going to let the Castle Faction accidentally demonize itself through its own loot. That would have been counterproductive.
Thinking of this, he activated the Abyss Law in his Godhead and the Evil Aura in the Artifacts responded immediately. Every piece of equipment in the plaza-mountains released the Evil Aura, and it flowed towards him like water finding a drain.
The spirituality of the artifacts was affected in the process. Their Abyss Laws' divine sources were consumed along with the ambient evil power, which reduced their combat strength, but this was unavoidable and also irrelevant.
An artifact stripped of its abyss evil power was no longer a Demonic Artifact. It was simply equipment that could be used by anyone. No further purging was required, and their value was substantially higher than what Elunara had warned him to expect. The Elf Empress would have no grounds to ask for a discount on the price.
When it was done, the Abyss Law's Source in his godhead had grown by roughly 30%. In terms of raw volume, the Abyss Law was already the largest of all his Divine Law Sources, continuously fed by the Eye of the Abyss from within his Godhead, accumulating faster than anything else.
The Space-Time Law's Source, on the other hand, although smaller in quantity, was superior in raw strength. Anyway, both of them had different roles. Today's absorption had pushed the Abyss Law further towards God King Tier, which was the only direction that mattered for it. Every increment slowly closed this distance.
…
He swept the equipment mountains into his storage ring and looked up. Three golden light spheres still hung in the air above the plaza — Lysandra, Eveline, and Nova, their evolution was not yet complete. Crossing from sixteen wings to eighteen was difficult enough that even the GM needed time to manage it. He wasn't concerned though. The outcome was guaranteed, and the duration was just duration.
For now, something had gone unspoken about the Empire's actual strength, and he found himself reviewing it. The evil pantheon—Micteya, Malakar, and Skarion—believed that the Empire had two Supreme Gods. One was Celestia, who they knew from the recent battle, and the second was Haru himself, whose promotion had been announced via a World Announcement.
What they didn't know was that Celestia was at the late-stage now, not early-stage and Haru was also at the late-stage. Moreover, there was Yvonne, who was at the intermediate-stage, and they didn't know about her at all!
These three Supreme Gods, plus thirty-nine High Gods and almost 200,000 True Gods. Imagine the three Evil Supreme Gods walking into that, believing they faced just two Supreme Gods…
This was going to be a specific kind of surprise. Add Svetlana—his future wife, as the river of fate had clarified—and the margin widened further. He didn't think she'd stand aside if it came to that.
Although the Empire wasn't invincible across the full Endless Continent yet, it was no longer the fragile thing it had been during the recent Divine Battle, when Celestia alone had been the only Supreme Goddess standing between the empire and collapse. That era was finished.
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