Chapter 327: Chapter 327: The Advancing Image Capture Monsters
Lava General’s words brought the somewhat restless Church of Technology battle clerics back down to earth a bit.
He was right!
This was the Tulip Kingdom, after all!
Before, they’d only known that the Tulip Kingdom had a large number of legendary magicians, but that was about it. But after actually arriving, they learned that everyone in the Tulip Kingdom was a supernatural being, and the number of legendary-level powerhouses was approaching a hundred.
If this were the outside world, they’d probably be close to completely ruling the entire continent. As long as they didn’t mess with powerful long-lived races like dragons and elves, it would be a walk in the park.
But even with that kind of strength, they were still struggling against these Hollows, weren’t they?!
They’d only had such smooth sailing because the War Soldiers happened to counter them.
But did the War Soldiers really counter all Hollows?
That wasn’t necessarily true.
They just knew way too little.
After ordering his men to imprison the Hollow and test it thoroughly, Lava General was just about to go study it himself when the Magic Net suddenly notified him that someone important was contacting him...
At almost the same moment, Ren and the Goddess of Magic appeared in the Sky Colosseum, though both chose to remain hidden. Throughout the entire massive colosseum, the three thousand battle clerics didn’t sense anything unusual at all.
"Your battle clerics are way more impressive than I imagined."
The Goddess of Magic watched these battle clerics, observing them carefully before commenting, "Though their individual strength isn’t that strong, if you equip them with powerful Magic Conductors, the results they produce will be extraordinary."
"I’d say these are the supernatural beings who can increase their combat power the fastest that I’ve ever seen."
"Because from the very start, when I designed them, I was thinking about how to quickly build up combat strength," Ren said with a smile. "You just need clerics at the entry level—even the lowest rank. Give them some powerful Magic Conductors, and they can still cast legendary-level magic. It just burns through money pretty fast."
"But what war doesn’t burn through money?"
Looking at the disciplined battle clerics standing ready below, Ren was quite satisfied.
After chatting for a good while, they finally got to the main point.
"Should we send magical creatures or your mechanical life forms to the other side first?"
"You decide. You’re in charge of this, I’m just assisting." The Goddess of Magic shook her head slightly.
"In that case, let’s have the image capture monsters I made go over first." After thinking for a moment, Ren said with a smile.
The image capture monsters were a type of mechanical life that Ren had specially created for exploration missions. They looked kind of like dragonflies, built entirely from metal, with no special abilities—just compact + flight + evasion + recording.
You could totally think of them as spy robots.
Of course, to test whether Magic Net information transmission could work through that portal, Ren had also added a real-time information relay function. If they were on the continent and there was abundant magic power around, you could directly check what the image capture monster was seeing through the Magic Net.
However, Ren was just trying this out and wasn’t too concerned about it.
Because he also figured it probably wasn’t possible.
Even the Goddess of Magic, directly controlling magic power, had trouble entering the other side of the portal. How could it support magic power information transmission?
Unless the other side also had magic power, and the magic power on both sides was interconnected.
First, they needed to figure out what was on the other side of that rift. Since Hollows occasionally came through these gaps, that area on the other side should probably also be under military management. Worst case, it should be something like an instance activation hall.
It definitely couldn’t just be out in the wild.
"After you enter the world on the other side, no matter what you see, return within ten minutes."
After explaining everything clearly, Ren added one more instruction to the image capture monster.
The image capture monster buzzed twice, then flew straight toward the portal.
Actually, this made sense.
When Ren designed these pathfinding mechanical life forms, he deliberately didn’t give them too much intelligence. From the start, their role was pathfinding, and the mortality rate was just way too high. If they had high intelligence, first of all, getting them to carry out suicide squad missions would be difficult, and second, it would make Ren feel kind of bad about it.
Low intelligence meant they were just creations. High intelligence meant they were life forms. At least, that’s how Ren saw it.
The God of Technology’s authority allowed him to grant the power of life to some inanimate objects, which fundamentally changed how he perceived certain things.
As it turned out, sometimes having an extra backup plan was super important.
The Goddess of Magic really couldn’t control magic power to directly invade the world on the other side, but the portal had been here for three thousand years—how could there not be even the slightest bit of seepage?
Controlling massive amounts of magic power to enter the other planet seemed to be blocked by the rules, but little bits that gradually seeped through did have an effect.
After the image capture monster entered the world on the other side, it actually could transmit some images back, though they weren’t very clear and seemed to have some lag.
"Steampunk?!"
Looking at the images transmitted by the image capture monster through the portal, the first thing you saw was tons of gears turning, huge chimneys everywhere, and countless smog-like stuff covering the entire world—not a ray of sunlight in sight.
"What’s steampunk?" The Goddess of Magic was confused.
Ren’s mouth often came out with some weird terms that were hard to understand at first, but after explanation, they really hit the nail on the head. The Goddess of Magic wasn’t too bothered by this and was actually quite eager to learn.
"How should I put it... basically, in my vision, during the industrialization process, magic power isn’t the only thing that can provide energy. For example, when boiling water, when water transforms into a gaseous state, the force that produces."
After thinking carefully for a while, Ren figured out how to explain it. "I suspect the world on the other side is using this method to industrialize. I just don’t know how far along they are..."
Just as they’d guessed, the other side of the portal was also a fortress.
From the images transmitted by the image capture monster, there were massive gears everywhere—who knows what they were meant to drive. Probably some kind of powerful countermeasure.
Outside the walls, everything was shrouded in smoke and fog.
The image capture monster continued exploring. The Goddess of Magic looked thoughtful. "I see. Using other forms of energy to drive industrialization... So the world on the other side has something similar to your technology? Come to think of it, that makes sense. If it weren’t like that, how could they have so many mortals?"
"We need to keep exploring to know the exact situation. That’s just my first thought. Things might be different."
Actually, Ren wasn’t all that confident about this either. They just knew way too little.
The ten minutes he’d originally commanded quickly ended, and the image capture monster hadn’t flown very far.
However, they could confirm that during those ten minutes, everywhere the image capture monster went had enough magic power to transmit information back to Ren and the others.