Chapter 595: Duel and Release

Several months passed in the blink of an eye.

The dueling arena operated at full capacity from dawn till dusk.

Wizards from the four factions lined up to enter, then lined up to exit—some beaming with joy, others bruised and swollen; the latter usually faced opponents of equal strength.

Yet such unlucky souls were few.

The parallel-world wizards' attitude shifted rapidly—from initial wariness and resistance, to eager anticipation, to now bringing their families to volunteer themselves—so swiftly that even Gao Jie Ming felt a pang of reflection.

The change began with the first batch of wizards who signed the contracts.

Those gaunt, mad-eyed parallel-world wizards, the day after signing, seemed like entirely new people.

They wore the new robes issued by their counterparts, their physical condition visibly improved, eating the arena's free meals and sitting in the spectator seats cheering for people they knew.

When asked about the contract's contents, they didn't hide anything—they simply pulled out the text and showed it to others.

The high-rank wizards of the four factions, free from heavy life pressures and possessing ample moral leeway, had a far higher moral standard than their parallel-world counterparts.

Moreover, the wizards all knew that only if the other version of themselves grew strong enough could they assist in research or support each other along the same path.

Thus, their terms toward the other self were not harsh—essentially a variant of an academic cooperation agreement:

Party A provides knowledge and resources to help Party B enhance their power; Party B serves as Party A's research assistant for a specified term, aiding in experiments; upon contract expiration, both parties agree to cease hostilities and dissolve the agreement peacefully.

After reading this contract, the parallel-world wizards' expressions were uniformly astonishing—first disbelief, then wild elation.

After all, in their worldview, "research assistant" meant "experimental material plus slave"—something disposable after use. But what happened?

These elegantly dressed peers actually treated them as "assistants."

They had food, drink, books to read; after thousands of years of labor, they regained their freedom—and took their skills with them.

This contract was infinitely better than the soul-selling pacts they'd once signed just to gain knowledge!

The news spread like a plague through the parallel-world fleet.

The low-rank wizards, once huddled in corners trembling, initially refused to believe it—but once they confirmed its truth, they began dragging their families to the arena.

Some came seeking their own counterparts; others, unable to find them, begged any four-faction wizard they liked for shelter; still others simply came for the free meals—the arena's free rations were ten thousand times better than their usual battlefield rations.

The sixth-rank wizards tasked with maintaining order couldn't stop them; finally, Felix appeared and announced, "All parallel-world wizards willing to accept the civilizational integration plan shall receive temporary residency status," restoring order.

For these past months, Gao Jie Ming had done nothing but sit in the spectator seats watching fights.

One after another.

From sixth-rank to eighth-rank, from elemental to fate systems, from formal duels to street brawls.

The Fate System operated at full capacity, recording every battle's data and categorizing it meticulously.

After several months, his combat database expanded enormously.

And the battle dynamics matched his expectations: combat between different wizard civilizations was utterly one-sided.

The technology held by the present-world wizards vastly surpassed that of their counterparts.

It wasn't that the parallel-world wizards were weak—it was that they were too strong.

It was a system crushing another system, a complete tradition crushing fragmented knowledge.

But Gao Jie Ming also noticed something interesting.

Though the parallel-world wizards were technologically backward across the board, their most elite fighters possessed even stronger combat instincts than present-world wizards—their ruthless drive to squeeze every ounce of power to its limit was unmatched.

Though Gao Jie Ming's wizards had also fought countless wars, neither their combat mindset nor the brutality of their battlefields came close to their counterparts'.

The fight he was watching now was the perfect example.

This duel drew most of the wizards' attention—it was rare to see an eighth-rank versus eighth-rank match.

The present-world side was a wizard from the Void Architecture Institute; Gao Jie Ming couldn't recall his name, only that he was one of the institute's delegates, his aura as steady as a mountain.

The parallel-world side was a being barely recognizable as human.

Half his body was a writhing mass of tumors; the other half, exposed bone.

His skull hung crookedly from his shoulder, with only one eye retaining a human shape.

That eye held no madness—only cold calm.

When Gao Jie Ming noticed this, his spine prickled slightly.

After months of watching fights, he knew the parallel-world wizards' combat style too well.

The calmer they appeared, the more insane they fought.

"Hehehehehe…"

At the moment the duel began, the parallel-world eighth-rank wizard let out a cruel laugh.

The sound was hoarse and grating, like air forced through a broken bellows.

He raised his hand, and infinite elements in the void converged upon him.

Fire, wind, water, earth—the four elements were forcibly condensed in an instant, then compressed and collapsed under his control.

Thus, a star formed in his palm.

The "star" was not metaphor—it was a real star.

That blazing plasma orb rotated and burned in his palm, releasing energy capable of annihilating entire dimensions.

Gao Jie Ming, protected by the arena's barrier, felt no heat—but from the simulated environment instantly vaporized inside the arena, he knew this was no prop.

But this was only the opening move.

Then, the star was rapidly compressed—from tens of millions of kilometers in diameter, to hundreds, to kilometers, to human height. Finally, the star was compressed into a shuttle of human height.

Its once-burning surface calmed instantly, growing unnaturally dark; once its volume breached a critical threshold, its color turned absolute black, warping light and spacetime around it.

That was… a black hole!

And this monstrous thing floated in the parallel-world wizard's palm like a spear ready to be thrown.

Gao Jie Ming sucked in a sharp breath.

Shouldn't it be expected of an eighth-rank wizard?

Even the opening move was this absurd!

Had this arena not been specially built, the moment this thing appeared, it would have destroyed the surrounding dimensions!

Seeing his counterpart made no move to interfere, the parallel-world wizard unhesitatingly hurled the shuttle.

The instant it left his hand, all light in the void dimmed for an instant.

Along its path, every ray of light was absorbed!

The arena's protective barrier flickered wildly, countless talismans igniting simultaneously to lock the shuttle's gravitational waves within the arena. Spectators felt only a faint tremor—but Gao Jie Ming knew that if the Void Architecture Institute hadn't designed the arena with such attacks in mind, even the residual gravitational waves alone would have torn every spectator apart.

Seeing his counterpart finally attack, the Void Architecture Institute's eighth-rank wizard moved.

He vanished in a flash.

The next instant, he reappeared at the opposite end of the arena.

But the shuttle turned with a sharp, physically impossible angle, continuing to pursue him.

Flash again—pursued again.

Flash again—pursued again.

The eighth-rank wizard used at least seventeen different techniques—from phase-jumping to space folding, from existence-erasure to probability-shifting. Each technique alone could shake off nearly all lock-on spells—but the shuttle clung to him like it had eyes, never letting the distance grow by even a centimeter.

Gao Jie Ming narrowed his eyes, analyzing rapidly in his mind.

"Guaranteed hit." He concluded instantly. "It's fate-system knowledge. The opponent directly set 'hit' as the outcome—no matter how the target dodges, the result won't change."

From the data Gao Jie Ming received on the parallel-world wizards' civilizational history, they had studied ninth-rank beings in their quest to reach the ninth rank.

Though they ultimately failed to achieve their goal, they did acquire fictional laws capable of transcending illusion and reality—and thus genuinely obtained fate-system laws.

But unlike Gao Jie Ming's civilization, the parallel-world wizards' fate-system development path leaned entirely toward combat applications.

Like this guaranteed-hit causality effect right now.

On the arena, the Void Architecture Institute's eighth-rank wizard suddenly stopped.

He hovered in midair, back turned to the approaching shuttle, a look of quiet reflection on his face.

"I never thought…" His voice was quiet, yet clearly amplified to every spectator's ears, "that I had the potential to study fate-system knowledge."

Before he finished speaking, the shuttle struck.

Blinding white light swallowed everything.

Even with the arena's protective array, the glare forced Gao Jie Ming to squint instinctively.

But the Fate System kept running, faithfully recording every frame.

Under the shuttle's impact, the outermost layers of the eighth-rank wizard's energy defenses burst like bubbles.

The shuttle pressed forward, slamming into the wizard's chest.

Then—the shuttle shattered.

The black-hole spear, upon striking the target's chest, disintegrated like fragile glass into countless shards. The shards flew in all directions, striking the arena walls; the immense force was absorbed by the arena's protective array, and the residual matter instantly dissolved into fundamental elemental particles, expelled into the endless chaotic void.

The Void Architecture Institute's eighth-rank wizard simply stood there, looking down at his chest.

His robe bore a fist-sized scorch mark—and nothing more.

He reached out, casually flicking the scorch mark as if brushing off a speck of dust.

"I'm truly terrible at this kind of fate-system knowledge. Dealing with guaranteed hits is indeed difficult," he said. "But if you can't penetrate an enemy's defense, it's meaningless."

"Still… thanks to your reminder, I've seen another possibility—I might explore fate-system development further…"

Across from him, the parallel-world eighth-rank wizard stood frozen.

His expression shifted from sneer to shock, from shock to disbelief, then to something bordering on collapse. "Impossible…" he rasped. "You… this…"

The Void Architecture Institute wizard offered no explanation.

He simply stood there, calmly watching his opponent, like a patient teacher waiting for a student to accept reality.

The parallel-world eighth-rank wizard did not surrender immediately.

He roared and attacked again.

Countless twisted tentacles surged from the void, each carrying curses capable of corroding entire dimensions.

He tore open space again, summoning a colossal beast slumbering deep within the void.

Or he could directly unleash all his spiritual energy as a psychic shockwave slamming into his opponent.

But every attack dissolved into nothing the instant it touched the body of the eighth-rank wizard.

The tentacles shattered, the beast howled as it retracted into the void, and the psychic assault struck an invisible wall, stirring not even a ripple.

Gao Jie Ming sat in the audience seats, watching this scene, and shook his head helplessly.

The attacks of wizards from parallel worlds seemed strange, powerful, and impossible to defend against—but all of it was illusion.

Since the wizard civilization deciphered the essence of the four elements, combat methods have grown increasingly simple and brutal.

After all, all flashy techniques are meaningless before an absolute numerical disparity.

The wizards from parallel worlds are not weak.

They can enhance the output multiplier of individual elements through knowledge and unleash destructive power far exceeding their own rank.

But their output multipliers are an order of magnitude lower than those of present-world wizards.

This is not because they are weak—it is because the technological gap between the two sides is too vast.

Perhaps in the early stages, under the catalyst of war, the wizards of parallel worlds would develop rapidly.

But in the middle and later stages, without a suitable environment for exchange, their wizard civilization's technology would stagnate.

In an environment where everyone hoards their knowledge, new wizards must constantly start from scratch to rediscover techniques long since studied. Meanwhile, the present-world wizard civilization's technological level would surge forward at an absurd pace and overtake them.

On the dueling ground, the eighth-rank wizard from the parallel world finally stopped.

He hovered in midair, gasping for breath, the eye still retaining a human shape flickering between madness and calm.

Then he smiled.

The smile held bitterness, relief, and a touch of long-absent ease.

"I won't fight anymore," he said. "I can't win."

The Void Architecture Institute wizard nodded, pulled out a pre-prepared contract, and handed it over.

The eighth-rank wizard from the parallel world took the contract, didn't even look at it, and immediately imprinted his soul mark onto it with spiritual energy.

A flash of light—the contract activated.

The Void Architecture Institute wizard neatly tucked away the contract and extended his hand: "Pleasure doing business."

The two hands clasped together.