Over at the Bloody Foothill outside of Harrogath City, Abel was continuing on with his combat conquest. Things had been going smoothly for him, in spite of how increasingly diverse the attacking methods of the dark creatures he fought had been.

His combat squad had been hanging on. They had adapted to the geography here quite well. Now, Doff, Flying Flame, Johnson and Jason were all participating in the fight. It was starting to get easier and easier. Following that, with the combined effect of the spiritual light rings of Bruce and Wale and the spells of Abel, Frankenstein, and Wizard Downey, everything was under Abel’s control. The angelic body, also, was like an unstoppable machine that no one could defend against.

This was the last piece of continent left inside the dark world, but the fight was starting to become a lot easier. Abel was just noticed that his fighting power did increase, especially after he obtained the angelic body. He was finally confident enough to feel like he could handle anyone inside the dark world.

Suddenly, an elemental cluster fell from the sky and exploded somewhere near him. The “grey bear” beside him did its job and blocked the lightning explosion that was triggered. Another cluster then fell and became a green, poisonous mist. Abel used his power of the Will and allowed it to spread. As he did so, he wondered where the attack might’ve come from. From what he could tell, it was more than what his power of the WIll could handle. The environment here did have some suppression effect over his power of the WIll, but he could do a quick scan of everything that was within a 500 meter radius.

Abel took out the mystic headband and started wearing it. He could now detect anything that was within a 1000 meter range, but he still couldn’t locate the source of the attack. He started getting curious. He didn’t think that the long-distance attack came from some sort of hell creature.

Under his command, Flying Flame also began to extend its search range. Inside the dark world, it seemed that only Flying Flame was capable of flight. The angelic body, Thief God Milton, and Wale the legendary sacred knight seemed to be restrained by their own powers, so they couldn’t make their bodies float in the air.

Flying Flame searched in the sky for a bit and let out a dragon’s roar to Abel. Since this was the dark world, the only effect of a dragon’s roar was for communication purposes. If Flying Flame was doing the same thing on the central continent, most creatures within at least a 10-mile radius would either be paralyzed or intimidated to leave their natural habitat. Dragons were a scary kind, but here inside the dark world, no hell creature would suffer from any indirect attacks coming from them.

Abel was bringing his squad to head over towards Flying Flame. He was fighting the hell creatures that were on the way. He considered himself powerful enough to handle any of them, but he wasn’t so bold as to just leave any of them and go on his way. He fought every single one of them as he moved on. Very quickly, he took notice of the thing that was attacking him from afar. It was a catapult with a pentagonal circle on its base. On the top was a special mechanism that was constructed with special materials.

Abel ordered all the members of his combat team to not attack the catapult. Instead, he teleported himself right next to it. He could see that it was made all with some sort of special ingredients. At one end, there was an inferno soul container where the attack came from. The catapult was a hell creature, technically, but it wasn’t exactly that. The container did not possess any attacking power on its own, but it was the one sending out commands for the catapult to be activated. The energy stored inside the pentagonal circle would be loaded onto the device then shot out.

Abel seemed to be quite interested in this catapult. In just one minute, the catapult was switching between different elements at the rate of one every second. There was poison, freezing, lightning, and fire, which were all formed at the bottom then moved onto the projection device. The inferno spirit would operate the attack and send out appropriate commands in the meantime. It lacked the ability to unleash close-range attacks, so Abel was not taking any damage even if he was standing right in front of it.

It would be quite convenient to have an automatic weapon that could launch four kinds of elemental attacks from a long distance. Abel was starting to think that maybe he could make this catapult his, but before that, he might have to sort through some things himself. It’d be easy to kill the inferno soul that was within the container, but after he did a light hit, just for testing purposes, he realized that the catapult would just be destroyed if he destroyed the soul. He couldn’t attack it, so, maybe the next best thing to do was to just take the catapult apart.

Perhaps for someone else, taking the catapult apart was a very complicated job on its own. However, after Abel activated the world stone fragment, things started to get a lot easier. Every route each circuit went, all the way down to the composition of the pentagonal circle were under his recording.

Abel reached his hand and pressed on the pentagonal circle above the catapult. The grandmaster alchemist rune inside of him started flashing, and energy that appeared inside this world started influencing the materials that were used to construct the pentagonal circle. A missing gap was seen on the main circuit of the pentagonal circle. The circle just lost an energy supply source. The catapult was finally stopped, and no matter how much the inferno soul was trying to send out the command, not another elemental cluster was seen.

Abel’s power of Will locked onto the mechanical part of the catapult. His brain was analyzing a way to deconstruct this device in the right steps. The parts were gradually taken apart, and the pieces broke the connection with the inferno soul. It was why he wasn’t putting everything into the divine portal bag. These parts would only belong to him if he was breaking the connection of the inferno soul.

The deconstructing was actually the easy part, which was all thanks to his world stone fragment. Actually, a diagram of the whole device was already inside of his head. The last piece missing would be the inferno soul container. During the designing process, most parts would already have to be taken apart for the container to fit in. In a sense, someone would’ve already expected the catapult to be taken apart to come up with some sort of security device to do something about that. It didn’t work, of course, given how ridiculously good the world stone fragment was.

As the soul container left the catapult, all the remaining parts just became materials that were without soul essence. Shamefully enough, Abel didn’t have a clue what these were made from. Of course, he didn’t want to think about the kind of things that would’ve come out of the underworld to be made into these. Knowing might just make him not want to use this.

At last, once the remaining parts were taken apart, everything along with the bottom base was put into the divine portal bag. He was already losing the thought to continue on with the fight. Since it was already the tenth day inside the dark world, he decided that he might as well just end the fight early today. With that, he called back his combat squad and returned to the golden castle.

Abel went above the starlight defensive circle and took all the catapult’s parts out of his divine portal bag. He then began assembling them. It was actually pretty easy, given how the catapult blueprint was already inside his head. Very quickly, a catapult emerged on top of the circle. It was without an inferno soul container, but it was no different from any catapult that was from the underworld.

Abel spoke to the circle spirit, “Do an analysis. Place a control circle if you have to.”

“Yes, Master!”

The circle spirit replied and scanned across the catapult. Two delicate construction puppets began using the short-distance teleportation circle. The engineering puppets brought out materials out of their one portal bags, and they began setting up control circles at the spot that was meant for the inferno spirit circle. The delicate mechanical fingers started launching out streaks of fire and ice to mold the ingredients into the appropriate shapes so they fit better onto the structure of the catapult.

Next, the knives were extended out of the fingers so complicated runes could be engraved. The puppets weren’t the ones to make these, of course. Rather, they were the work of the circle spirit’s commands. The set-up process lasted all the way until the final activation process, which reflected just how fine the engineering puppets the dwarves manufactured were. Come to think of it, maybe that’s why they had the puppets do everything when they tried to install spell circles.

The circle spirit’s voice came over, “The control circle is all set up now, Master!”

Abel took a look. He could see that this was a control circle that was identical to the control circle of the puppies. Quickly, he did an ownership claim process to it so he could have full control. He was just starting to recover the pentagonal circle that was on the base, otherwise, the catapult might’ve just launched fifty-something attacks on its own.

Now, the central continent did really have pentagonal circles. This was really the work of the dark world, as pentagonal circles would mostly be found in the dark world. While Abel did already have a precise understanding of where the circuits would be by now, he still had quite some trouble remaking them. The circle wasn’t drawn. Rather, it was carved out of some sort of special ingredients. What he needed to do now was so that the missing gap he carved was recovering on its own. Perhaps it was only possible for a grandmaster alchemist like him.

Abel’s power of the Will was seizing full control over the energy that was over the grandmaster alchemist rune so that the missing gap was reverting to its original state. Under the help of the world stone fragment, he was very certain that the form it was reverting back to was not, in any minute detail, different to before. Once the pentagonal circle was repaired, it very quickly started gathering energy on its own. It would take only half a second if it was collecting energy from inside the dark world, but now, it would take up to five minutes for it to be filled.

Once the energy was filled, a lightning cluster automatically appeared at the middle of the circle and followed one pathway before it was sent to the loading dock. Abel’s power of Will could reach up to 1650 meters. His target was fixed to a mountain boulder that was far, he quickly used his control circle to unleash an attack.

The mechanical parts of the catapult started moving on its own. The lightning flew quickly, and even Abel’s eyes couldn’t capture the entire process. The lightning cluster did hit the boulder. Followed by a very extreme explosion, the boulder started exploding, and all the trees and rocks nearby were hit. The trees fell down and the rocks were torn everywhere. Abel was devastated by the impact. This was much stronger than when it was inside the dark world, perhaps due to the many environmental constraints that were over there.

No, Abel didn’t stop there. He put on his mystic headband and placed his target at a spot that was around 3300 meters away from him. He reactivated his catapult, but he didn’t hit the target this time. The elemental cluster was dropped at a spot that was only 3000 meters away. After a few experiments, he made sure that the maximum attacking distance was at 3000 meters. The explosion would reach up to 30 meters in range. The power of the catapult was very strong, much stronger than he had anticipated. There was a problem with that, though. It was so slow that it had to charge once every five minutes.

The mana concentration of the dark world was much higher than on the central continent, which was why it took five minutes to charge the catapult here. Still, given how powerful the shots were, Abel decided that maybe there was still a place for it. Actually, even the ancient runes were not as strong as this. The Firetooth Battle Fort would have to use top-level gemstones to launch an attack of the same strength.

Abel continued to take out a few top-level gemstones to place inside the pentagonal circle. The circle quickly charged itself up to full. A poisonous cluster appeared amidst the pentagonal circle and was sent to the loading dock.

Abel just thought about something. Maybe he should just do research on catapults with the dwarves to see whether he could make the same thing with materials that could be produced from the central continent.