Lord of Myriad Flesh, I'm Fucking Coming!

The transaction with Filo was merely a small interlude. Though Isaac was surprised that Filo had the nerve to let him fleece her, that was all it was. He had even more confidence in himself!

Otherwise, he would not have kept the original terms after Filo backed down and still chosen to trade for golems.

Golems were expensive, but they were not actually easy to sell. A complete Obsidian Golem had a market price of around a hundred thousand, but that was for individual sales. For bulk purchases, each unit would probably go for seventy to eighty thousand Gold Coins. A hundred of them could fetch at least seven million!

But who would buy so many golems for no reason?

After all, even Solomon Territory only kept three hundred in regular service. That was because it was a border territory with a naturally larger military budget, and aside from the territory's own spending, the Empire also allocated part of the funds.

Even so, they only maintained three hundred. Buying golems was not the end of it. Even if they were never activated and merely left sitting there, their upkeep alone cost a considerable amount.

These things were made for combat. What if they cut costs on maintenance, only for them to fail when they were actually needed?

So overall, golems were very valuable, but only valuable. Their market had long been saturated, and only war-torn regions needed large quantities of them.

Yet the golem supplies in such places were generally controlled by established suppliers. Under normal circumstances, there was no way to get a foot in the door.

Even Solomon Territory would need a long time to absorb a hundred units.

But Filo understood that as well, which was one of the reasons she had agreed.

She had been disgusted, so naturally she wanted to disgust him in return!

If it had been pure Gold Coins, she would not have given Isaac the time of day!

In the end, Isaac got rich, but somehow did not seem any richer...

So, onward with the gathering~

This year-end grand gathering of the Mad Wizard Society lasted for an entire week. During that time, Isaac gained a great deal. After all, this was the Mad Wizard Society, and most wizards focused their discussions on Outer Gods.

Though none of their ideas were as insane as Isaac's, their countless strange and ingenious notions still gave him tremendous inspiration.

Especially regarding Forced Awakening.

Unlike what outsiders believed, most Mad Witches nowadays were not insane. On the contrary, they were very cautious!

Yes, although they were bold enough to trade with Outer Gods, they were actually cowards.

This strange duality of recklessness and cowardice appeared in nearly every Mad Witch, including Filo and Isaac, whom the Empire publicly regarded as lunatics.

For example, Grand Princess Filo would never conduct a ritual to trade with an evil god unless she had the Emperor Token in hand. Likewise, Isaac would never make a move unless he had pushed his ritual's success rate up to one thousand percent.

If even they were like this, the other Mad Witches were naturally even more cautious.

And under such cautious circumstances, the Mad Witches made a remarkably unified choice—slumbering Outer Gods!

When trading with an Outer God, the most dangerous part was that the Outer God would not honestly uphold the deal. Instead, it would try to bypass the ritual's power and swallow the wizard presiding over the ritual whole!

But if one could trade directly with a sleeping Outer God...

How the fuck was that any different from entering a girls' school with a hypnosis phone?!

You could do whatever you wanted, whatever you wanted!

Thus, this was the kind of issue most Mad Witches discussed. And surprisingly, quite a few of them really had something worthwhile to offer.

After all, there was no upper limit on the wizards' ranks at this gathering. Those big shots had plenty of tricks up their sleeves. While there were no great figures capable of casually playing with Outer Gods, High Wizards were everywhere. Isaac had no idea where they had scraped up so many Mad Witches.

Isaac guessed that either they were not on the same continent, or they were not in the same world.

The former possibility was similar to the wizard worlds from his previous life: they might merely be on a secondary continent, with a far broader world beyond it. The latter was more like a crystal-wall cosmology, with more worlds beyond this one.

Isaac leaned more toward the latter, because he had already encountered many existences that transcended worlds. Besides, the supernatural beings of this world were simply... absurdly powerful!

At the third rank, they could already wield Time Magic with remarkable fluency. And Terra Emperor was even a demigod. If this were only a secondary continent, then what level would the continents outside be?

The Primordial Continent?

But in the end, these were only guesses. Given Isaac's current strength, he could only glimpse a small part of what this world truly looked like.

So Isaac did not dwell on it too much. When the time came, he would naturally understand.

Still, there was one regret. Whether there had been too many Mad Witches for him to encounter the person, whether that person had not attended, or whether Isaac had simply failed to notice them, he still had not found the slightest clue about the culprit who had cursed his mother to death all those years ago.

But Isaac was not in much of a hurry. If there were no clues, he would simply continue developing steadily. If possible, he still hoped to take revenge with his own hands!

Yet that would be difficult. That person had already been a High Wizard when they cursed his mother, and nearly twenty years had passed since then. As long as they had not died, their strength must have grown increasingly terrifying.

Although a Legendary Wizard's magic power growth slowed dramatically after reaching the third rank, only their wizard rank slowed. Their actual strength would continue increasing along with their accumulated knowledge.

So...

Lord of Myriad Flesh, I'm fucking coming!

The moment the gathering ended, Isaac took advantage of his still-burning inspiration to hastily optimize the ritual, set it up, and immediately got to work.

Before activating the ritual, Isaac habitually checked the success rate. One thousand percent, exactly the same as before.

Yet Isaac remained calm, because this was not the ritual's success rate. It was his survival rate.

It was not that Isaac did not want to use the Golden Finger to directly determine whether the ritual would succeed perfectly. Rituals were unlike surgeries or potion brewing, where there were only success and failure.

In a ritual, there could also be... other outcomes.

Unless it was a complete, existing ritual, he could directly check its true success rate. Otherwise, he could only see which outcome it leaned toward.

If he checked the success rate for awakening the Outer God, he could not check the survival rate. If he checked the survival rate, he could not check the success rate.

Fortunately, this was not much of a problem. As long as he ensured his survival rate, he could simply test them one by one. Isaac had not come this far solely by relying on the Golden Finger's cheats. He had also put in effort and sweat!

Before long, crimson radiance filled the entire laboratory, and Isaac's consciousness followed it into a mysterious void.

This void differed from the one where he obtained things from Outer Gods. By their definitions, this place should be God's Dream Realm, though only its shallowest layer. The deeper dream layers could not be entered, and they were far too dangerous anyway.

In truth, at this point, other Mad Witches would already consider the ritual successful, because they could now trade with Outer Gods. Most of their requests would be fulfilled, and it was extremely safe.

However, for Isaac, this was only the beginning...