"It seems the one who destroyed the town has been discovered by people from the Sanctum of the Sacred Sword," Ryan said, gazing at the distant horizon where bursts of magical light continued to erupt.

  "Something feels off," he muttered, his face full of confusion.

  "The Sanctum of the Sacred Sword is so far from here. How could Vaelor arrive instantly?"

  The town had only just been destroyed, yet Vaelor appeared almost at the same moment. The timing was far too strange.

  Under normal circumstances, it should have taken a considerable amount of time to reach this place from the Sanctum of the Sacred Sword, unless Vaelor had already been lying in wait here.

  Could there be some kind of hidden magical treasure in this region? Ryan could not help but speculate. That was the only explanation that made sense.

  "Let's go. This has nothing to do with us," Evelyn said, her gaze sweeping over the distant battlefield where deafening clashes still echoed.

  She secretly felt relieved. Fortunately, they had left in time. Had they been even a step slower and been drawn into that battle, she doubted she could have escaped unscathed even if she tapped into the magic stored within the corpse of a Grand Magus.

  Ryan gave a brief response, suppressing the doubts in his mind. Carrying Evelyn on his back, he changed direction and continued onward, following the guidance of the map.

  Originally, he had only planned to destroy this magic altar before leaving, but now it was clear that the altar had to be destroyed at all costs.

  When he had searched Berton's memories earlier, Ryan had discovered that there was more than one such altar.

  The magic altars scattered across different regions seemed to be connected in some way. At fixed intervals, they would capture people without magical aptitude, slaughter them, and use them as sacrificial offerings for the altars.

  A massive conspiracy was clearly hidden behind all of this. Even in the Central Continent, a land filled with orthodox magical powers, the Shadow Cult could still find protection. One could only imagine how dire the situation was in other regions.

  Now, with an unknown Archmage casually annihilating a town, the Headmaster of the Sanctum of the Sacred Sword personally taking action, and mysterious magic altars spread throughout the Central Continent, Ryan felt increasingly uneasy. He could not fathom what these forces were plotting.

  After a rapid journey, Ryan and Evelyn arrived at the location marked for the magic altar.

  Carrying Evelyn on his back, Ryan hid behind a patch of tall grass and glanced toward the altar. The entire structure was dyed blood red, with several black robed figures guarding it.

  The black robed figures looked utterly bored. Among them, the strongest possessed no more than the strength of a First tier Senior Mage.

  Once he assessed their power, Ryan did not hesitate. He burst out from the grass with Evelyn on his back, driving his magic to the limit as he surged forward like a blur.

  He gave the black robed guards no chance to react. Violent magic gathered in his palm, and he slammed it forward at them without mercy.

  A series of dull explosions rang out. The guards did not even see the figure rushing toward them before they were blasted into fragments by the raging magic, dying without a chance to scream.

  "Whether you built this altar to summon demons or to refine magic power, it ends today."

  Facing the blood colored magic altar, Ryan lifted his right foot. Channeling all the magic throughout his body, he stomped down violently onto the base of the altar.

  The heavy impact made the ground tremble slightly, yet the scene he expected never came.

  The blood red magic altar remained completely intact, without even the slightest crack.

  Seeing this, Ryan realized that the magic altar could not be destroyed through brute force alone. He carefully set Evelyn down from his back and helped her sit beside a large tree at the edge of the altar's perimeter.

  "Wait here for a moment. Do not wander around. If anything happens, shout for me," he instructed.

  Evelyn responded softly, her gaze following Ryan's back as he turned and walked toward the magic altar.

  She stared at the red altar radiating an eerie blood colored glow, her thoughts unclear even to herself, shock impossible to conceal in her eyes.

  This was a God Ascension Altar.

  It was an extremely ancient and forbidden apotheosis ritual, an evil secret art that used the sacrifice of countless souls to forcibly cross the boundary of mortality and steal a divine seat.

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  Even someone like her, a Grand Magus who had lived for tens of thousands of years, had only seen scattered mentions of it in the oldest forbidden tomes. She had never imagined that anyone would truly dare to recreate such an inhumane ritual.

  Once a God Ascension Altar was activated, the fate awaiting the entire magic continent would be nothing but utter devastation.

  According to the records, the altar consisted of a supreme main altar and countless subsidiary altars spread across the land. These subsidiary altars were tightly linked to the main altar through evil alchemical arrays.

  Whenever any subsidiary altar began a blood sacrifice, the energy it produced would be transmitted through the void to the main altar.

  Once the accumulated energy reached a critical threshold, the main altar would fully awaken.

  At that moment, a blood colored vortex vast enough to blot out the stars would appear above the continent, madly plundering the life essence of every living being on the land.

  In the end, the divine blood energy fed back from the vortex would converge upon the master of the altar, helping him ascend to godhood.

  Of course, these were merely fragmented descriptions Evelyn had read in ancient texts. She did not know the true, complete form of a God Ascension Altar.

  She had devoted her entire life to orthodox magic and had never considered raising her magic rank through such a bloody and forbidden method. Naturally, she had never studied these dark arts in depth.

  Yet now that she was seeing a God Ascension Altar with her own eyes, the shock in her heart was beyond words. Someone truly dared to seek godhood by destroying the continent itself.

  It must be him. It had to be him.

  A name instantly surfaced in Evelyn's mind, an existence she had never crossed paths with since becoming a Grand Magus, yet had always heard about.

  Even before she ascended to the rank of Grand Magus, that person had already been a supreme Grand Magus standing at the peak of the continent.

  After so many years, his magic power must have grown to an unimaginable level, perhaps even to the point of madness, daring to use a God Ascension Altar to forcibly open a path to the divine realm.

  Suddenly, a deafening boom erupted, snapping Evelyn's thoughts back to reality.

  She followed the sound and looked toward the God Ascension Altar, only to see that a heavy warhammer had appeared in Ryan's hands at some point.

  It was a rare grade heavy warhammer. Gripping the handle with both hands, Ryan brought it down fiercely onto the base of the magic altar.

  Though this magic altar was extraordinarily sturdy, it was ultimately only a subsidiary altar.

  There were countless such subsidiary altars across the continent. As long as they were destroyed one after another, the energy accumulation of the main altar could always be weakened.

  Although this subsidiary magic altar was indeed solid, it ultimately could not withstand the blows of a warhammer.

  Ryan raised the heavy warhammer once more, aiming at the core area at the center of the altar where strange magic runes were engraved, and smashed it down with full force.

  A violent explosion rang out as dust and debris shot into the sky. A bottomless crater was blasted into the center of the altar, and the blood glowing runes that had been flickering there immediately dimmed.

  "The final strike!!"

  Ryan's gaze hardened as the magic within his body surged wildly, pouring entirely into the warhammer in his hands.

  The warhammer burst into dazzling light. Gripping the handle with both hands, Ryan leapt upward, spun rapidly once in midair, compressing his magic to its absolute limit, and then slammed down fiercely onto the base of the altar.

  As the final blow landed, magic power and raw impact intertwined, and a violent magical shockwave erupted from the point where the hammer struck the altar.

  At that moment, a dense surge of blood colored energy suddenly burst out from deep within the altar and collided violently with the magic, producing a shrill, thunderous roar.

  Ryan's heart jolted. Without time to think, his body moved on instinct as he lunged toward Evelyn.

  A ring of blood colored shockwaves mixed with magic swept across the area. Wherever it passed, grass and trees instantly withered and turned to ash.

  Ryan precisely pressed Evelyn beneath him, taking the full force of the blood colored shockwave on his own back.

  A hideous wound tore open across his back, flesh split apart and blood pouring freely. The intense pain forced a cry from Ryan's throat.

  The blood colored energy was as violent as an explosive shell. Fortunately, Ryan's physical body far surpassed that of mages of the same rank. Though the wound looked terrifying, it did not damage any vital areas.

  As the blood colored aftermath slowly faded, the crimson magic altar collapsed with a thunderous crash, completely reduced to rubble. The purpose of this magic altar had come to an end.

  …

  Beyond the vast and boundless oceans lay a continent known as the Arcadia Continent.

  At the top of a hidden floating mage tower, the circular pitch black mark in the palm of a white haired old man suddenly trembled violently.

  This old man was the very Demi-God Realm elder who had previously searched for Arcane Enchantment within a secret realm, only to leave empty handed and furious.

  In the end, Arcane Enchantment had inexplicably appeared on Ryan.

  "Balthazar, what happened?"

  Opposite him stood another white haired old man, likewise radiating the terrifying magical fluctuations of the Demi-God Realm. His strength was only slightly inferior to that of the man called Balthazar.

  "It is nothing. Another subsidiary altar has been destroyed," Balthazar said darkly as he withdrew his hand, his voice filled with anger.

  "Those people from the magic academies are truly relentless. If we did not still need to use their territories to conceal the main altar, I would have slaughtered them all long ago!"

  After calming himself somewhat and forcibly suppressing his emotions, Balthazar looked at the white haired old man opposite him and asked,"How are your preparations progressing?"

  "Almost complete. In no more than a thousand years, the energy of the main altar will be fully accumulated. When that time comes, the two of us can rely on the power of the God Ascension Altar to break through the shackles of the Grand Magus realm and ascend to godhood!"

  "At that point, the two of us shall ascend together and share endless eternal life!" Balthazar laughed loudly as well.

  "What a pity." As he laughed, Balthazar's tone suddenly shifted, and he let out a regretful sigh.

  "The two Grand Magi of the Esoth Continent are gone. One is dead, and the other has vanished without a trace."

  "Otherwise, with the magical power of two Grand Magi reinforcing it, when the God Ascension Altar reached completion, the energy fed back to us would certainly be far greater, and our chances of becoming gods would increase even further!"

  What he referred to was precisely the great battle between Ryan and Evelyn that had taken place ten thousand years ago.