Lich for Hire

Chapter 212: God of a New World

The Chairman was not someone who could be easily fooled. Ambrose had prepared for this long ago.

Still, his shrewdness exceeded Ambrose's expectations. He had cut straight to the chase.

"Don't you trust me, Chairman? Sounds more like you're trying to get me to tell you how to leave this place."

The Chairman replied calmly, "It's the same thing. Prove your sincerity by telling me how to get out."

What a crafty old fox.

Fortunately, Ambrose had no problem answering the question honestly. "You know this place is a dumping ground for the gods. You can't get in via ordinary means. I happened to encounter a special spatial link by chance and ended up in this realm. Come take a look yourself—you'll understand."

The Chairman's single eye rolled twice before he said, "Very well. Let's see what's going on."

The half-transparent tentacled creature immediately floated upward.

His current form was unique and far beyond what natural biology could achieve. Ambrose, however, had no ability to pass through walls. He could only retrace his path down into the sewers to return to the surface.

The Chairman hovered silently amid the ruins. Ambrose couldn't read any expression from the one-eyed tentacled monster, nor guess whether he felt any nostalgia or regret, so he simply got straight to the point.Ambrose raised a finger and pointed toward the sky. Above them lay the swamp where the splaad lived.

"Up there in that swamp is a colony of splaad. They can create spatial links that connect to the outside world. That's how they hunt and reproduce. I slipped in by luck, then jumped from the swamp down into these ruins. You should be able to tell whether I'm telling the truth."

The Chairman stared upward at the swamp. After a moment, he said to Ambrose, "Yes. Everything you said is true, but there's still information you're concealing. Naturally, you're trying to maximize your profit. Let's not waste time: can those splaad get me out, or not?"

Partial truths apparently didn't work very well on the Chairman. He could easily see through Ambrose's deception.

"How should I know?" Ambrose replied frankly. "All I can say is that it's possible. After all, if I managed to get in, I should be able to get out again. The real question is, even if the splaad really can open a spatial link, can you leave this city? If you can't, you aren't planning to drag the entire city back with you, are you?"

The Chairman's soul was fused with the magical array beneath the sewers. Moving from the sewers to the surface was one thing, but leaving Alkhemia entirely was impossible for him.

The Chairman pondered the question for a moment before saying, "As long as I can obtain the relevant data, I can create a larger spatial passage myself."

Creation required luck and inspiration. But duplication? The Chairman believed that he could reproduce what he saw given enough time. That was the confidence of a legendary alchemist.

Ambrose shook his head. "Then you'll have to connect Alkhemia to that swamp first. There are barriers between different land fragments, so it won't be that simple."

The Chairman lowered his gaze toward Ambrose. "Don't tell me you came all this way just to say that. You're not the reckless type. Speak. What's your plan? I've grown tired of this tedious probing since my transformation."

Ambrose almost admitted that his arrival here had been a complete accident. But after a moment's thought, he changed his wording. "Chairman, you may have less patience now, but you're as frank as ever. I did come prepared with a solution. Lend me your magic power and allow me to cast Terraform. That will allow me to merge the two land fragments into one, and I'll easily be able to summon the splaad then."

Ambrose understood the magical array beneath Alkhemia better than anyone. Aside from turning the Chairman into a living artifact capable of infinitely casting Wish, the array could also store vast quantities of magical energy. That energy was originally meant to power the array, allowing it to brute-force calculations for the Wish spell, essentially analyzing the laws of the world and granting the caster authority to reshape them.

The remaining matter in Alkhemia was insufficient to cast another Wish, but sacrificing half the city and converting it into magic power should be sufficient to fuel a Terraform spell.

The Chairman snorted dismissively. "Terraform? You?"

To the Chairman, even if Ambrose now had an extradimensional space capable of manipulating time, he was still little more than a half-baked legend. Forget Terraform—he might not even manage a Meteor Shower.

But the past was the past. Ambrose was no longer a half-baked legend. The Golden Throne greatly amplified his spellcasting power, though he disliked draining it too heavily. With the Chairman's magical support, the cost of the spell would drop to perhaps one percent of what it would otherwise cost him.

Ambrose said confidently, "You're an alchemist. You wouldn't understand a mage's business even if I explained it. That's the plan. Are you in or not? If you refuse, I'll head back up to that swamp, capture some splaad, torture them until they open a spatial link, and leave. You can stay down here alone with the ruins."

The Chairman wanted to retort that, although he was an alchemist, his understanding of magical theory surpassed most legendary mages'. He simply lacked talent for spellcasting.

If Ambrose had claimed he was capable of Terraform before, the Chairman would have thrown him out immediately. As if!

But thinking rationally, the lich had somehow made his way here. He wouldn't have done so merely to waste the Chairman's magic. That would be meaningless. In other words, it was likely true that the lich could now cast Terraform—but he was still hiding far too much from him.

What exactly could it be? Another conspiracy?

The Chairman's suspicion wasn't unreasonable. Ambrose's sudden appearance really was far too strange.

"Tell me the truth," the Chairman said. "Did you really come here to help me leave? What exactly do you want?"

Ambrose shook his head. "Leaving is impossible, Chairman. You've probably guessed that you were exiled here by the gods. They won't allow an artifact capable of unlimited Wishes to exist. That would plunge the world into endless chaos. Every Wish consumes matter, and eventually the world itself might collapse.

"Even if I helped you return to our original world, how long could you stay? What's stopping them from exiling you again?"

The Chairman fell silent. Ambrose's words struck directly at his weakness.

In the end, he was only a mortal who had dared to chase godhood. The shocking thing was that he had even achieved a small measure of success. Even with infinite matter and infinite Wishes, he could never truly contend with the gods. Wish had limits; it could barely affect divine beings.

"Then why did you come to me?"

"It's simple," Ambrose said. "I came to help you fulfill your dream." He smiled faintly. "Chairman, you even abandoned your own family. What's left in that world for you? Your goal was to become a god and prove that alchemy can accomplish anything. Haven't you already achieved that?

"Even the gods had to exile you. That means they acknowledged your power. So why obsess over returning? If you insist on going back, the gods might simply grow impatient and kill you outright. Erase your existence, and a few hundred years later no one will remember that a genius named Gary Watts once challenged the gods—and succeeded."

The Chairman sank into deep thought. Ambrose's argument was persuasive.

He was not arrogant enough to believe he could challenge true gods, especially one as powerful as the Lord of Knowledge.

"Then what exactly do you want to do?" the Chairman asked.

For the moment, he had indeed abandoned the idea of returning.

Ambrose chuckled. "It's simple. You're already a god. It doesn't matter where you live. Look at this chaotic space: it's filled with things exiled by the gods. Besides the splaad, there must be plenty of other dangers here. Chairman, if all these land fragments were connected together, the resulting territory wouldn't be much smaller than in our original world, would it?"

The Chairman suddenly understood. Ambrose was proposing to unite this shattered realm of chaos and turn it into a new world.

The idea genuinely excited him.

At his level, ordinary goals held no appeal.

But conquering this chaotic realm and becoming the god of a new world… That was a challenge worthy of him.

With enough intelligent beings, he could rebuild his Alchemists' Council here and resume studying alchemy. Perhaps one day he could even ascend to true divinity, becoming strong enough to ignore the gods entirely and travel wherever he wished.

The Chairman looked at Ambrose. "Very well. I understand your idea. If you aren't lying, I will support you fully."

Ambrose replied with complete sincerity, "Of course. Why would I lie to you? I can't even bring you back. What would be the point of entering this realm just to deceive you?"

"What exactly is your plan? What do you intend to reshape with Terraform?"

Ambrose smiled mysteriously. "You'll see soon enough. I guarantee you won't lose out. Come along if you trust me."

This time, the Chairman did not hesitate. Ambrose's grand vision had already taken hold of him. He too wanted to become the god of this chaotic world.

The already-ruined Alkhemia began to tremble once more. Bricks and stones vanished piece by piece as matter was converted into immense magical energy.

One of the Chairman's tentacles wrapped around Ambrose. A torrent of magic poured continuously into his body.

Without hesitation, Ambrose summoned his Golden Throne and prepared to cast Terraform.