Rise Of The Infinite Sovereign-Chapter 409: The Desolate Madlands

While inspecting the Ogre corpse, he spots something else in the distance.

It was neither a cloth nor a weapon.

Grabbing it, Ezra finds it to be a sinister looking metal head with sharp metal teeth, encased in a metal helmet while severed wires dangled out of the exposed neck.

While the metal head had rusted and discoloured, the metal it was encased with remained as intact and sturdy as ever.

’So this is a madman’

Realizing it’s identity, Ezra ruthlessly tore off the helmet and stored it in his space ring, tossing the head away.

Concealing himself, he picks up speed but remains at a moderate pace, taking his time to observe the surroundings as he passes through.

One thing to note was that uncountable battles had happened in this secret realm, and the blood of many had been spilled.

After ten minutes, he halts.

Having reached the vicinity of the mountains he was looking at earlier, Ezra finds a madman walking on all fours on top of it.

Growling a screechy and hoarse sound as it scoured the rocks.

Madmen.

It was the name given to metal puppets within this secret realm, because they attacked any living creature on sight and fought like wild beasts.

Literally, they could switch from fighting with legs and arms like humans to fighting on all fours like animals.

Armed with additional armour on top of their skin, they scoured the secret realm, looking for living entities to rip apart.

Clamouring at their opponents into a dogfight was their specialty and if surrounded, one had little chances of survival.

Which was why moving in groups was the most ideal way to do things.

Sometimes the puppets were even armed with weapons.

For one, the metal armour worn by the puppets was very valuable.

It is made of the special metal, Ladium, that reduces the damage of both elemental attacks and even physical ones at the Transcendent realm.

There used to be a good amount of puppets at nascent rank, but they had all been destroyed.

But it could be reforged to withstand the power of Nascents.

So, it is highly regarded.

Unlike the puppets in the Alchemist’s Tomb, these ones were more mechanical, composed of different wires and such, which made a section of people believe the secret realm was made a constellation from the race of automatons.

As for other types of rewards such as pills, those were usually chanced upon due to the nature of the secret realm.

Leaving weapons, armament and Ladium armour as the main treasures of this secret realm, and most of the time, you had to defeat madmen to get them.

So you had a desolate land ripe with murderous puppets mad for blood.

Thus.

The Desolate Madlands.

This secret realm is said to smaller people in size compared to the Alchemists Tomb, but it is still very wide.

Thanks to the Nascents who came earlier, few madmen remained close to the secret realm entrance.

One had to head in deep to encounter them.

On the other hand, one also has to be careful so as not to end up in a vicinity with multiple of them as they were highly alert to sounds.

Therefore, carelessness could have one surrounded in mere minutes, depending on how many are nearby.

As such, the best strategy is to lure a single madman and defeat it before moving to the next.

Moreover, one had to do it within a short space of time so the sounds wouldn’t attract other madmen.

Taking his time, Ezra climbs the mountain. Closing in on the madman, he observes it for a while.

With red eyes, its head turned in every direction, moving from one side of the mountain to another constantly, growling incessantly.

After a few minutes, Ezra’s interest wears out.

He was observing to see how different they were in comparison to the puppets in the Alchemist’s Tomb.

If they were, he would like to see if he could repeat his actions and abduct the puppets into his universe for personal use.

From the looks of it, that was an impossibility, these madmen didn’t seem to have any other activation buttons, they were simply created to tear apart all signs of life.

It was synonymous to having the puppets in the Alchemist’s Tomb in their frenzied state at all times.

But unlike the puppets with weapons as appendages, madmen turned their limbs into weapons when engaged in a fight.

Ezra takes out Skyfall and beheads it in one fell swoop, before stripping it of all its Ladium armour.

It was interesting to see that upon death, the Madman reverted back to his human stature.

While he didn’t see much usefulness in the madmen, Ezra inducts into his universe.

’Could be useful later’

Just in case.

Done with that, he picks up speed once more, getting out of the mountain range in little time.

Only to find a much larger mountain range at least eight times wider awaiting him in the distance.

’The Mad Caverns’ Ezra thought.

As this secret realm had been dealt with for centuries, it eventually became that most of the madmen were concentrated in the largest and widest mountain range, presumably stretching across the entirety of the secret realm.

Congested with madmen, they had dug deep into the mountains like a colony of ants, forming pathways through a lot of mountains.

Inevitably, this was also the path used by many of those in the secret realm to get around.

Which is why although it’s a mountain range, it is called the mad caverns.

The distance between the last mountain range and the caverns was about two miles.

Sure enough, plenty of madmen lay scattered across the distance.

Some were in human form and others in animal form, each one was making low growls with their heads turning in every direction incessantly, and sometimes bumping into each other.

But unlike their frenzied state, they did not attack one another, and would simply make distance if they came too close to another.

Seeing as they were packed together, Ezra conjunctured that it would take a large group to pass through here.

’Although, I’m don’t think many of them would want come over in the first place’

The amount of puppets in the first mountain range was good enough for those looking for moderate gains and risk.

It is very possible that Ezra would be the only one to reach the caverns during this expedition.

Running across the distance, Ezra did not avoid the madmen, rather, he was beheading them as he passed by.

With Skyfall, he beheads them and then inducts their bodies into his universe.

Stripping all the Ladium armament from each puppet was not only stupid but also time consuming at this point in time.

Ezra did not have such time to waste.

His activation of skills was now much faster, making the process much easier.

In a normal sense, the half mile distance filled with madmen would be enough for Ezra to grab more than enough Ladium armour.

But he had a different objective in mind.

While reading up on the secret realm, Ezra wanted to know exactly how the Nascents had made sure no more nascent level madmen would be lurking around, and thus requested this information.

While the red dragon clan didn’t have much leads on the issue, he was able to obtain a lead on how it was done.

After the treasure the Nascents sought after went extinct, they began planning how to pass it to Transcendents as a training ground.

To do that, they had to first clear out all the Nascent level madmen, else it wouldn’t be a training ground but a graveyard.

They determined that madmen were created in a hidden factory or were stocked in a hidden base, to be deployed at some time in the future, or when other madmen were destroyed.

As that was the only identifiable reason the number of nascent level madmen didn’t seem to lessen no matter how many they destroyed during yearly expeditions.

In short, the Nascents somehow found the factory where nascent level madmen were created and destroyed it.

This gave Ezra a dangerous idea.

The secret realm was created by a constellation, therefore, it should be within reason that another constellation would be able to tamper with it.

This rarely happens because secret realms made by constellations rarely have anything that could incite the greed of another constellation.

Rather, most constellations made it a priority to not put anything that could allure other constellations into their secret realms to deter them from arbitrarily tampering with it or even destroying it outright.

He knew this through Zydrax.

Moreover, since it is meant for those of the lower levels, it makes less sense for a constellation level treasure to be within it.

When thinking of it, Ezra conjectured that the Alchemist’s Tomb must also have something similar which is behind the continuous creation of puppets.

That made him wonder whether he could gain control of such a factory with Zydraxs help.

From Zydraxs words, artificial secret realms aren’t things just any constellation could create.

One usually had to be amongst the peak of the realm to do it and thus, one had to be a peak rank constellation to tamper with it, else they would be unable to force entry and be repelled instead.

While Zydrax was not a peak rank constellation at his prime, he claimed to have been close to it.

Now that he existed as a conscience, materialized as mental energy, the restrictions did not apply on him.

As such, taking control of the factory should not pose a problem for him.

With it, Ezra imagined creating a training ground for Transcendents in his universe.

It was only a matter of time before he achieved Nascence. Ezra was thus thinking ahead of time.

Since he wouldn’t be introducing most of them to the main universe, he had to find his own way to cultivate higher beings.

Ezra’s objective was thus set.

But to take over the factory, he had to find it first.

With that in mind, Ezra drew closer and closer towards the mad caverns.