Chapter 418: The Transformation

John stood his ground, watching the struggling light. He knew exactly what was missing. He needed the right amount, and more importantly, the right type of Mana Gemstones to complete the birth of his first, Mana-based, evolved weapon.

"Let me try ten of the green Gemstones then."

He didn’t waste a second, instantly retrieving the ten white Gemstones and replacing them with ten of the green ones.

The moment the swap was made, the atmosphere in the basement shifted. The green Mana Gemstones dissolved into a liquid-like emerald light, rushing forward to merge with the stagnant white glow. The combined radiance became a blinding veil that totally covered the cluster of towers.

John held his breath, waiting impatiently to see the end result. The towers he had used for this initial test were his thirty-meter models, the basic form of defensive towers in his arsenal, and the ones he possessed in the greatest quantity.

The transformation didn’t take longer than a couple of minutes. When the light finally dissipated, the new structure emerged, and John felt his jaw drop.

"Damn me! I’m so fcking good!"

He blinked rapidly, trying to process the scale of what stood before him, before finally breaking out in hysterical laughter that echoed off the metallic walls. The ten original thirty-meter towers had merged into a single, five-hundred-meter-high behemoth.

It hadn’t just evolved in height; its base thickness now spanned a radius of over one hundred meters. At its apex, the ten green Mana Gemstones had integrated into the structure, pulsing with a rhythmic, lethal glow.

Luckily, his friends had anticipated the sheer scale of weapons from the new world, so they had ensured the basement and the circular ring provided enough depth and clearance for such giants. John estimated that even if an item grew over a thousand meters tall, the circular platforms would accommodate it comfortably.

Regular towers functioned on a single white Gemstone and were already quite deadly to standard enemies. But this?

"Like this, I can easily enhance all the weaker towers to be far more ferocious than ever. And this is just the beginning, hehehe!"

John didn’t stop there. He instantly took out the different cores and fed them to the tower. As he expected, the moment the first core touched the tower’s massive body, it dissolved instantly into the surface, proving his theory that once he edited a structure’s code and merged it, he could enhance it using cores.

The changes that followed were no less dramatic than the initial merge.

First, the Mana Gemstones at the top shifted colour, darkening into a deep, vibrant blue. The tower didn’t grow taller or wider, but its surface underwent a terrifying structural change.

Thick, interlocking layers of dark scales began to ripple across the exterior, reminding John of the impenetrable armour covering Sorolith and its elite guards.

"It’s still lacking... Let me take a deeper look then."

John wasn’t satisfied with just the visual changes. He reached out and touched the tower’s base, and a system message popped up, detailing the full statistics of this final version. As he read through the scrolling text, his puzzlement turned into an immense thrill.

"It’s overkill!!"

What John read made his heart palpitate.

The tower had developed two distinct special effects. The first was Meteor Rain, which allowed the tower to launch a relentless shower of fire over a one-kilometre radius. Whether the enemies were aerial or ground-based, they would be subjected to a literal hellscape of high-density mana fire.

The second effect was even more domineering: The Fear Effect. This was a passive-active hybrid that triggered once every ten minutes.

It would blast a wave of psychological terror across a two-kilometre radius. Enemies caught in the blast wouldn’t just retreat; they would lose all sense of self and run mindlessly, attacking anything and anyone in their path. In the heat of a chaotic battle, like the massive wave-based wars John had fought in the pocket trial, this effect would turn an invading army into a self-destructive meat grinder.

"It’s time to mass evolve everything else."

Now that he had confirmed the process, John began a systematic mass evolution. He moved from the towers to the walls, and then to the Draconic and Demonic items. He was careful to create a tiered catalogue for the Machine Factory. He made basic versions, those created by simply merging ten of the same item, and higher-level versions, which were the merged items further enhanced by the three cores in succession.

He did this to ensure the Machine Factory had a variety of production options. He was worried about the resource requirements for the higher versions, so he wanted to have more affordable mass-production options available rather than limiting the factory to only the highest-tier, most expensive gear.

As he worked, the basement began to fill with impossible structures. The walls, once twenty meters high, grew into staggering four-hundred-meter ramparts, thick enough to house internal barracks and lots of cannons.

The Claws aerial carriages evolved into massive transport vessels capable of carrying several thousand humans with ease, their flying speed and maximum altitude tripling. The Scales and Wings followed suit, with the Wings transforming into something resembling a small, flying metallic town. It had enough interior space to house fifty thousand humans or more, a literal fortress in the sky.

This was only the initial phase. By the time he applied the three cores to these flying carriages, they gained two specialised effects each. Since they were transport and support vehicles, their special effects were naturally directed toward increasing flying speed and adding a temporary impenetrable defence.

John shifted his focus toward the ordnance he had salvaged from the Demons, specifically the Stingers and the Breakers.

As he initiated the batch evolution, the cannons underwent a grotesque and terrifying transformation.

They grew significantly larger, their barrels extending and thickening into reinforced muzzles that pulsed with a dark energy.

When the light faded, they had developed deadly special effects that made John smile for a long time, his hand affectionately patting the cold, newly evolved metal of these precious babies.

One effect allowed for a concentrated armour-piercing beam that could melt through hard plating, while another provided a wide-area concussive blast that could liquefy the internal organs of anything within fifty meters of the impact.