The deal with Philo was just a minor interlude. While he was surprised she had the guts to let him fleece her, that was about it. He was, after all, far more confident in himself!

Otherwise, he wouldn’t have stuck to trading for Golems instead of changing the terms after Philo conceded.

Golems are expensive, but they aren’t actually easy to sell. A complete Obsidian Golem has a market price of around one hundred thousand, but that’s for a single unit. For bulk purchases, the price is between seventy and eighty thousand Gold Coins per unit. A hundred of them could sell for at least seven million!

But who buys that many Golems for no reason?

After all, Solomon’s Domain only keeps three hundred Golems in its standing reserve. This was only because it was a border territory with a large military budget, and on top of its own procurement, the Empire provided subsidies as well.

And even then, they only maintained three hundred units. After all, buying a Golem is just the first step. Even if you don’t normally activate them and just leave them sitting there, the maintenance alone costs a considerable amount of money.

These things are made for combat, after all. What happens if you skimp on maintenance and it breaks down when you actually need it?

So, all in all, Golems are valuable, but that’s all. Their market has long been saturated, and only places rife with conflict would need them in large numbers.

But those places tend to have established suppliers, making it impossible to break into the market under normal circumstances.

Even a territory like Solomon’s Domain would need a long time to absorb a quantity as large as one hundred units.

But Philo understood this as well, which was one of the reasons she agreed.

Having been provoked, she naturally had to provoke him in return!

If the deal had been for pure Gold Coins, she wouldn’t have given Isaac the time of day!

The end result was that Isaac was rich, yet not really rich at all...

So, time to get back to browsing the gathering~ 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

The Mad Witch Association’s big year-end gathering lasted for a solid week, and during that time, Isaac found it immensely fruitful. It was the Mad Witch Association, after all, where most Wizards focused their discussions on the Outer Gods.

While none of their ideas were as wild as Isaac’s, the sheer variety of creative and ingenious thoughts gave him a great deal of inspiration.

This was especially true when it came to the topic of forced awakenings.

Contrary to popular opinion, most Mad Witches today weren’t actually mad. In fact, they were incredibly cautious!

Yes, while they were bold enough to trade with Outer Gods, they were actually quite timid.

This duality of recklessness and cowardice was present in nearly every Mad Witch, including Philo and Isaac, the Empire’s two most recognized lunatics.

For instance, Princess Philo would never conduct a ritual to trade with an Evil God unless she had the Emperor’s Decree in hand. Likewise, Isaac would never make a move unless the margin for error on his ritual was pumped up to one thousand percent.

If even they were this cautious, it went without saying that the other Mad Witches were even more so.

And with the Mad Witches being so cautious, their choice was naturally, and surprisingly, unanimous: sleeping Outer Gods!

The most dangerous part of trading with Outer Gods was that they wouldn’t trade honestly. Instead, they would try to circumvent the power of the ritual and devour the presiding Wizard whole!

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

...then how the hell was that any different from walking into an all-girls school with a hypnotic phone?!

You could do whatever you wanted! Absolutely anything!

So most Mad Witches discussed topics like this. And what’s more, quite a few of them actually had some real tricks up their sleeves.

After all, there was no upper limit to the Wizard Level at this gathering. Those heavy hitters had plenty of tricks. While there weren’t any titans who could casually toy with an Outer God, High-level Mages were a dime a dozen. He had no idea where so many Mad Witches had been scraped together from.

Isaac guessed they were either from different continents or different worlds entirely.

The former scenario was like the wizard-centric fiction from his past life, where their current location was merely a subcontinent with a much vaster world beyond it. The latter was more like a Crystal Wall System Universe, with many more worlds existing outside their own.

Isaac leaned more toward the latter theory. So far, he had already encountered many Existences that transcended worlds. Besides, the Transcendents of this world were just... absurdly powerful!

A Tier Three could already master Time Magic with incredible fluency, to say nothing of the Emperor of Terra being a Demigod. If this damn place was just a subcontinent, then what Level would the continents outside be?

The Primordial Continent?

But in the end, this was all just speculation. As for what this world truly looked like, with Isaac’s current power, he was only seeing the tip of the iceberg.

So Isaac didn’t dwell on it too much. When the time was right, he would naturally find out.

The trip was not without its regrets, however. He still hadn’t found a single clue about the culprit who had cursed his mother to death all those years ago. He didn’t know if it was because there were too many Mad Witches to possibly meet them all, if the person simply hadn’t come, or if he just hadn’t been perceptive enough.

But Isaac wasn’t in a rush. No clues? Then he’d just lie low and continue to grow stronger. If possible, he still hoped to take revenge with his own two hands.

But accomplishing that would be difficult. That person was already a High-level Mage when they cursed his mother. Now, nearly twenty years later, as long as they were still alive, their power must have grown even more terrifying.

Although a Legendary Mage’s Magic Power progression slows drastically after entering Tier Three, that slowdown only applies to their Wizard Level. Their actual strength continues to grow as their reserves of Knowledge increase.

So...

Master of Billions of Flesh, I’m fucking coming for you!

The moment the gathering ended, while his mind was still fired up, Isaac hastily optimized the ritual, set it up, and got right to it.

Before activating the ritual, Isaac habitually glanced at the margin for error. One thousand percent. Same as before.

Isaac, however, remained perfectly calm. This wasn’t the ritual’s success rate; it was his survival rate.

It wasn’t that Isaac didn’t want to use his Golden Finger to see if the ritual would be a complete success. The problem was that rituals—unlike surgery or brewing a Magic Potion—didn’t just have outcomes of "success" or "failure."

In a ritual, there was also the possibility of... "or."

Only with an existing, complete ritual could he directly check the true success rate. Otherwise, the results would be skewed toward a specific outcome.

If he checked the success rate for awakening the Outer God, he couldn’t check the survival rate. If he checked the survival rate, he couldn’t check the success rate.

Fortunately, this wasn’t a major issue. As long as he could guarantee his survival rate, he could just test things one by one. He, Isaac, hadn’t gotten this far solely by cheating with his Golden Finger. He had also put in his own blood, sweat, and tears!

Before long, a blood-red radiance filled the entire laboratory, and Isaac’s consciousness arrived in a Mysterious Void.

This Void was different from the one he entered to take things from the Outer Gods. According to their definitions, this place should be the Divine Dream Realm—just its shallowest layer. The Deep Dream Realm was both inaccessible and far too dangerous.

In fact, for any other Mad Witch, reaching this stage would already be considered a success. Here, they could trade with the Outer God, and most of their requests would be safely fulfilled.

For Isaac, however, this was only the beginning...