The devil walked out of Adam's mind, cackling as it stepped forward and picked up the crystal skeleton. Looking at the energy aura draining rapidly from it, it said with contempt, "Master, this is the medium. I can smell low-grade energy on it — cack cack. A medium this weak proves its power is just as weak. And an idiot like that actually wanted to invade the Mage Plane?"
The First Servitor lay pinned to the ground by five lightning spears, her soul fire faint. With difficulty she said, "Put down my child..."
The devil held up the crystal skeleton and asked her, "Your child?"
"Put down my child. The Supreme God promised me — if I helped him descend into this world, he would resurrect my child..."
"And you believed him?!" The devil took human form, its expression startled and comical.
The devil was besides itself with glee. It could hardly believe the world held a person this stupid. True resurrection was not the sort of trick that made mutated flesh or commanded the undead; even rebuilding a soul and pouring the memories into it did not count, because the original self was already dead, and afterward, however identical, the one alive was another person entirely.
If resurrection truly existed, it would be the staggering feat of manipulating the entire timeline — erasing the person's death from time itself and making everyone on that timeline forget it, or accept it. In all the devil's memory, no one could do such a thing.
"How would blasphemers like you understand the Supreme God's power? God would never lie to me!" the First Servitor cried anxiously, wanting to refute the devil — though it sounded more like she was trying to convince herself.
"Master, did you hear that? Cack cack cack. Resurrection..."
Adam had no interest in jeering at a dying woman. He walked up calmly, took the crystal skeleton in his own hand, then came before the First Servitor, ready to wipe out the Church of the Supreme God for good.
"I can't die. I still have to resurrect my child. Give it back to me..."
Adam reached out and brushed his hand across the lightning spears.
"It's possible, isn't it? The Supreme God can resurrect my child, can't he?"
The lightning spears burst apart, and the blast crushed the First Servitor's bone body to powder. Looking at her soul fire guttering like a candle in the wind, Adam said quietly, "Impossible."
A light breeze swept past, carrying away every proof that the First Servitor had ever existed. Whether she heard Adam's answer, no one could say.
Before long, Cristel and Ophelia came to Adam; shortly after, William arrived at last.
Adam did not ask William where he had just been — it was not important, and he did not care. William, however, put on a huge smile and asked eagerly, "Adam, is it all settled? This is the other-plane creature's medium?"
Adam found his tone strange, but answered anyway: "Yeah."
Cristel, holding Ophelia up, said, "Adam, Miss Ophelia, she..."
"I'm fine." Ophelia's voice was unnaturally hoarse. She pushed Cristel's hand away and said to her, "Didn't you want to go back to Northland and have a look? Let's go together."
Cristel said anxiously, "But your body?"
Ophelia insisted again, "I'm fine." Then she said to Adam, "We'll be going, then."
Adam felt something was off about her, but had no interest in prying into another person's privacy. He nodded indifferently. "I'll wait for you in Southern Seaport City for seven days. If you're not back in seven days, I'll return to the academy first."
Over the next seven days Adam turned down every banquet William and the Duke offered, shut himself in his room, and spent the time either adapting to his improved electrical magic or studying the crystal skeleton.
The second of those, though, earned him the devil's mockery.
"Master, do you know why only level-five Mages are called Transdimensional?"
Adam was taken aback for a moment, then asked, "Your inheritance memory has recovered again?"
The devil gave a cackle and shook its head. "Because only professionals above level five have the ability to read other-plane coordinates through a medium. Don't ask me why — I don't know either — but that's the rule every plane follows. Until one's life tier undergoes a second metamorphosis, not even a Mage can decode coordinates."
Adam gave it a cold glance. The devil had a bad feeling. "Master, what are you going to do?" — and, without knowing whether it'd live or die, it actually turned into the shape of a woman and struck a seductive pose.
Adam crooked a finger, and the current at his fingertip gathered into a whip. He punished the devil without mercy, beating it until it howled and wailed.
This was the new change in his magic.
He had once thought elemental evocation had no practical meaning: a cluster of flame and a fire dragon, at the same temperature, ought to do the same damage. He no longer thought so.
Evocation really could raise lethality. Shaping meant binding the messy, violent elements together; the more stable the evoked structure and the more elements it held, the stronger the corresponding magic.
Adam found elemental evocation fascinating. So every elemental magic rune group in the library was the result of Mages who had mastered the core knowledge shaping the elements.
It was like programming back on Earth. Mages were programmers who held the knowledge, and the programs written out through evocation were magic.
This sort of thing came to Adam effortlessly. Once he worked out the trick, one electrical magic after another was constructed successfully; and because he was their creator, he could wield the magic he had made at will, which saved him a great deal of time gathering elements.
Spell rune groups could also be traded: as long as he could prove a rune group was self-consistent, he could sell it to the academy or to anyone else. Whether the buyer could master the electrical element was not his problem.
Once back at the academy, Adam would apply to set up an elemental laboratory again with this batch of new rune groups, and surely the academy would not refuse him this time.
On the evening of the sixth day, Cristel and Ophelia returned together to Southern Seaport City, and with them came one person and one horse — Count Johnson and Dark Cloud.
Adam and Count Johnson had no exchange at all. He only knew that, with the royal city destroyed, Madeira Island needed a new master.
Dark Cloud, on the other hand, was affectionate the moment it saw Adam, trotting over with a clatter to rub its face against him and even trying to stick out its tongue to lick him.
Adam still remembered that this horse was the first creature to recognize that he was no longer "Adam." A rare smile appeared on his face; he played with Dark Cloud for a while and personally prepared its feed. The sight utterly shattered the devil's worldview — it concluded that either the past few days of electrocution had given it hallucinations, or the master in front of it had been taken over by some strange thing.
While Adam was away, it sneaked over to Dark Cloud, grabbed its mane, and muttered, "Whose master is he, anyway? Why has he never been this good to me?"