Following Ryen's breakdown of the spell interactions, the gathered fighters quietly calculated the combat potency of the staff within the context of Teyvat.
At the start of battle, the wielder could cast Frost Armor for absolute defense, slowing down any assailant who dared close the distance. An immediate transition into Containment Zone would lock the target in place. Following up with Rain and Blizzard would flash-freeze the immobilized foe solid.
Before the enemy could even attempt to recover, Black Hole could be dropped directly onto their coordinates, unleashing an inescapable vortex of sustained catastrophic damage.
Against such a sequence, let alone standard divine remnants, even Zhongli privately acknowledged that he would be pushed to his absolute limits to endure it unscathed.
This did not even account for Ganyu's innate prowess. With the sixty-percent elemental amplification granted by the Master Cryo Staff, Ganyu, whose power already bordered on the divine, would ascend to an unprecedented combat tier.
The baseline strength of the weapon was staggering.
"I do not wish to replace a single one," Ganyu murmured softly, her gaze locked onto Ryen with bright anticipation. "I would rather expand the staff's internal slots later to incorporate Black Hole."
Ryen smiled, reaching out to gently stroke the base of Ganyu's horns. "Then we will leave it as it is for now. The Master Spellbook remains in our inventory; it can be used repeatedly whenever you are ready."
Ganyu's eyes curved into crescent moons of pure delight as she wrapped both arms around Ryen's arm, leaning her head against his shoulder. Beyond the weapon's sheer power, her deepest joy stemmed from a far more intimate detail.
Her weapon was the Staff of Eternal Winter, and Ryen's personal weapon was also the Staff of Eternal Winter.
It was an undeniable pair of matching staves.
Both weapons even shared the signature spells Blizzard and Wall of Frost. In her heart, this masterwork ice staff served as the ultimate testament to her place beside him.
The surrounding companions looked upon Ganyu with traces of gentle envy, offering warm congratulations on securing such an exceptional artifact. No one contested the ownership of the staff. Ganyu had negotiated the trade through her own absurd luck, using resources provided by Ryen.
Securing a weapon of this caliber so early in the journey would only bolster their momentum as they sought out additional wizard towers across the New Continent.
Ryen then led those who wished to adjust their active spells to the Arcane Workbench to slot the Black Hole grimoire.
Zhongli naturally kept his current loadout untouched. His Master Healing Staff possessed a flawless synergy of defensive and restorative arts, and with his innate destructive capability, he had no need for spatial gravity spells. He viewed his weapon strictly as the ultimate support implement.
Hu Tao deliberated for a long moment before choosing to preserve her current configuration as well, preferring to expand her staff's slots at a later date.
Ningguang and Lisa adjusted their loadouts with effortless ease. Ningguang found certain dark arts on her Master Necromancer Staff far too distasteful for practical use, promptly overwriting the Decay spell with Black Hole.
As for Lisa, her staff had originally carried lower-tier spells from the Twilight Forest bundle. She had no hesitation in swapping them out, equipping both Black Hole and Scepter of Striking Lightning's signature spell, Call of the Storm. With those two additions, her weapon was transformed into a premier instrument of raw devastation.
During the adjustments, Baizhu successfully processed the gathered mana crystals into stacks of Large Mana Bottles. Each member of the vanguard received a personal reserve of four to five flasks.
Although they had brought a considerable quantity of raw crystals on this voyage, they had to reserve adequate supplies for future trades with wandering wizards and the discovery of ancient Library ruins. There was no need to brew everything at once. For standard combat engagements, their modern firearms were more than sufficient to handle routine threats.
Seeing everyone prepared, Ryen dismantled the Arcane Workbench, placing a hand lightly at Ganyu's waist as he turned to her with a smile. "Lead the way, Ganyu. Let us rely on your intuition once more."
Still gently turning the Staff of Eternal Winter in her hands, Ganyu gave a bright nod. Closing her eyes to let her senses guide her, she pointed toward a broad vector on the horizon.
Ryen waved his hand forward. "Let us move out!"
Departing from the clearing outside the wizard tower, the vanguard resumed their expedition across the frontier. Meanwhile, the pioneer divisions that had landed along the coast continued their rapid construction of the deep-water harbor.
A naval facility designed to dock tens of thousands of vessels was a colossal undertaking. Even with block placement techniques, finishing the baseline structure would take four to five days, while a fully realized trade hub would demand at least two full weeks.
Time slipped past effortlessly. Within the span of a few days, the exploration of the New Continent advanced by leaps and bounds.
During this period, Ryen and his companions set aside all external affairs, immersing themselves entirely in the rhythms of the world. By day, they mapped uncharted terrain and admired the untamed scenery; by night, they gathered around the campfires to rest and converse.
The geography of the New Continent possessed a distinct, wild grandeur compared to the Main Continent. Even without material rewards, the journey itself was deeply refreshing.
With Ganyu's uncanny luck serving as their compass, their haul was nothing short of extraordinary.
Over the course of three to four days, the party located over a dozen Wizard Towers. While not every tower yielded Master-tier treasures, the overall harvest was immense. Advanced staves and intermediate spell scrolls had become standard drops.
Venti and Nahida each acquired a Master Sorcery Staff. Ei and Makoto secured matching Master Lightning Staves. Jean obtained a Master Nature Staff, the Tsaritsa claimed a Master Ice Staff, and Klee happily received a Master Fire Staff.
Counting the staves previously acquired by Xiao and the core vanguard, the party had gathered a total of twelve Master-tier staves, along with more than a dozen Master Spellbooks. As for Apprentice and Advanced scrolls, their storage chests were overflowing.
The potential of the Electroblob's Wizardry mod unfolded at an astonishing pace. Only after systematically categorizing these treasures did the gathered leaders truly comprehend the terrifying ceiling of the magical system.
The only regret was that ancient Library ruins and ritual Obelisks had yet to surface.
Behind the vanguard, the secondary mobilization had firmly taken root. Nearly two thousand Khaenri'ahn pioneers, having completed their standard block construction training, were deployed directly to the New Continent under Aether's command.
They broke ground upon the sprawling central plains, laying down the defensive perimeter for what would eventually become their capital city. Following the developmental model of Mondstadt, their initial outpost would steadily expand into a fortified metropolis.
At the same time, the joint military engineering corps received directives from Ningguang to turn the coastal port into the primary transit lifeline between the two continents, creating a central maritime market for cross-continental trade.
The Khaenri'ahn engineers studied the joint corps' urban layout closely, absorbing advanced construction techniques. The restoration of Khaenri'ah was officially moving forward. At their current pace, the foundational walls of the first city would be completed within three months, paving the way for a formal restoration ceremony.
Aether's mood had remained exceptionally bright over the past few days. Even when Lumine deliberately paraded her newly evolved Master Staff in front of him with teasing smirks, he simply smiled and offered no sharp retorts.
Every day brought noticeable progress in the mapping of the New Continent and the exploitation of the Wizardry mod. At this rate, two more weeks of exploration would allow every frontline fighter in the expedition to equip a Master-tier staff. The subsequent phase would focus entirely on staff upgrades and the acquisition of complete Wizard Armor sets, which would require the discovery of Obelisks and Library ruins.
Beyond the vanguard's success, Albedo's research division had achieved monumental breakthroughs of their own.
The emergence of the Large Mana Bottle revealed vast new horizons for the application of liquid energy. While a standardized pipeline for industrial use was still under development, numerous theoretical models were already being tested in collaboration with the scholars of Sumeru.
If their hypotheses proved correct, the primary imaginary core of the Jade Chamber could be transitioned to a liquid intake system. Instead of requiring Xiao and the Adepti to manually channel their life force, the fortress could be kept operational simply by feeding large batches of mana fluid into the core on a set schedule.
Even in the short term, immediate practical applications had already materialized.
Recharging Delusions no longer required the divine residue of captured demon gods. A Delusion could simply be submerged in mana fluid or energized through direct consumption of the potion.
Albedo calculated that a single Large Mana Bottle was sufficient to completely replenish the energetic matrix of a Delusion, or even a divine Vision, to its absolute limit.
This meant that the elemental output of Vision-bearers and Delusion wielders had entered a state of complete liberation. With a steady supply of mana flasks, casting an Elemental Burst in battle could become as routine as a standard attack, limited only by the wielder's baseline energy threshold.
Expanding that threshold had also become remarkably simple.
Holding a Master Staff allowed an ordinary Vision-bearer to project elemental authority rivaling that of a minor deity. For the elite champions of the Seven Nations, who were already the strongest mortals in existence, a Master Staff elevated their destructive capacity across every metric.
The same rule applied to divine authorities.
The mechanics of the Minecraft world were absolute. Whatever properties were stated in an item's description were enforced with algorithmic precision.
If a Totem of Undying stated that it negated all fatal damage, then even a cosmic strike from the Imaginary Tree would be nullified upon triggering. The system adhered to its internal rules with rigid, unyielding logic. Objects forged within this realm bypassed foreign physical laws, answering only to the fundamental code of the world itself.
If the Sword of the Cosmos possessed an absolute execution script stating that no entity could survive its edge, it conflicted directly with the Totem of Undying. Yet if the weapon's descriptive parameter explicitly bypassed death immunity, the system would enforce the execution unconditionally.
This was the nature of the realm: an interlocking series of rigid logical parameters, functioning like nested lines of code that executed without deviation.
Applying this logic to the Master Staves revealed their true terror.
A flat sixty-percent increase to all attributes.
In a world governed by strict programmatic logic, such a description held staggering implications. Elemental capacity was an attribute; elemental density was an attribute; elemental recovery rate was an attribute. Every single metric tied to an individual's combat potency was amplified by sixty percent.
The amplification applied equally to divine power. The system did not distinguish between mortal elemental channels and the authority of an Archon. So long as the energy aligned with the staff's elemental discipline, the entire output was forcefully elevated by sixty percent.
As Zhongli had observed, while the staff claimed to provide a sixty-percent boost to elemental potency on paper, anyone who believed the actual increase in overall combat strength was merely sixty percent was operating under pure, naive delusion.