Chapter 880 - I knew you would do that (Patreon)

[Acceleration].

This is one of Tacita’s skills, I think, or something with a similar name. I noticed it a few times previously, but the way she can build up speed out of nothing, the signs of the skill activating, and the fact that the longer she runs, the more speed she can gather, all point to it.

Some of these thoughts come from me directly, mostly thanks to my observation. Others come from training inside my mental space, those 600 days I spent there with Lissandra.

Or was it 601? Yeah, I think something like that.

I am reminded of that as I watch her just run around playing with Fuci. Dennis sometimes joins her, and she seems to be part annoyed and part unbothered by that. It is like some sort of swallow watching a little chick trying to fly.

Anyway, I use these thoughts as a distraction. A distraction from Savant and Sophie, who are fighting once again, and from the notification I got just a few seconds ago.

[Mana Manipulation - lvl 85 > Mana Manipulation - lvl 86]

This... this is a bit worrisome.

The duo seems like they are done arguing, and they look down at the crate where the talnium is stored. We have not even finished fully unpacking it.

The yellow wooden crate is open, but inside it was a green metal crate wrapped in what seems like a reflective blanket made of silver metal, or whatever it is.

Opening the green metal crate, you can see another smaller crate. This one is silver in color and placed inside a sponge-like pink material that is extremely good at kinetic absorption. And at this point, you begin to worry if you should continue and open the silver crate.

We surely did. Each step took us a few hours of extremely careful examinations and a few trades with corporations nearby, aided by Izzy, who checked for lies.

So now, even the silver crate is opened, and inside of it lie a few vials of a transparent liquid that feels a bit like mercury, and inside of it is the talnium. The metal is in the shape of loops, exactly like the sort you have in your cereals. Moreover, talnium looks like it is a mix of dark gray metal and an obsidian-like stone, somehow perfectly blended together.

And it is as weird as expected.

We have been warned, so all of us avoid using any sort of spatial skill nearby, or teleportation marks, and similar things. Even the twins’ telepathy reacts a bit unpredictably, so Dennis most of the time stays as far away as he can. Min-Jae, with his gravitational energy, is not allowed to even reach for it, and every time he wants to take a look at the talnium, he borrows one of Tess’s old eyepatches to cover his implanted gravitational eye.

I wonder, what would happen if Noodle ate talnium? What would happen if you stored talnium in a spatial cache?

And what would happen if you tried to store a spatial cache in a spatial cache?

Important questions like these that keep me up at night.

Sophie and Savi fight against me wanting to take one piece out and experiment with it. Their argument against it is pretty strong. They just point out the defenses of all the crates.

Fair enough.

Many times, I heard that people here harvest talnium, not truly mine it or anything, but harvest it. And apparently, it is a process where you place a special item at certain very carefully chosen places.

Then you wait 100, 200, or 1000 years to return, and there should be some talnium gathered around that special item. It is something about spatial resonance and harmonic diffusion, or whatever, which gathers particles of sand over time and makes them, under their own force, turn into this state.

There used to be natural places like this where talnium gathered, but they were overharvested, and these places broke and became incapable of continuing the process naturally.

So, the processes to do it artificially were developed, and there are only certain zones where you are permitted to do so. Of course, this is all done while hiding your talnium growth support device so people will not steal it.

Interestingly, there are likely hundreds and possibly thousands of devices all over the planet. And more interestingly, plenty of them belong to groups or corporations that got destroyed, and no one knows of their locations. Some might even be hidden, illegally placed by some higher-ups from a corporation.

That results in people, once in a while, finding a place like that where the device has lain for thousands of years, placed by a long-forgotten, already erased group or corporation.

I think most of the corporations do not even mark where they placed the devices out of worry of espionage, and the information is shared between higher-ups only, often leading to this sort of situation.

I find it all very, very cool. As a simple man, I want to take a shovel and go out, try my luck, and dig into the desert to get my jackpot. After all, I am different, luck will smile upon me.

As for the crate I forgot I placed here long ago, it is likely one of the illegal ones. Harvested, shielded, hidden, and waiting for a ship to come to pick it up, that, for some reason, never came.

[Selective Adaptation - lvl 26 > Selective Adaptation - lvl 27]

Another notification appears, and satisfied, I wait a bit and then stab myself in the leg with Veto.

“Earth calling to Nathaniel,” Sophie grumbles.

Without taking my eyes off the notification, I reach to my subminds, and through a bit of thought acceleration, I quickly replay the past 30 seconds of arguments they were having.

“I agree, we will likely need the devices the corpo guy mentioned to be able to safely manipulate the talnium, and even then, we would likely waste it,” I say.

“What did you even expect of this? You can probably count on your fingers the number of people or groups able to use talnium,” Sophie sighs.

“Six-armed thylarin have like 30 fingers.”

“You know I meant human. And yes, maybe there are some other things you can do with talnium other than spatial caches, but you heard how expensive those blueprints are,” she says.

“Well, no matter how much they ask, I refuse to sell them my blood, eyes, hair, flesh, or bone. At least until I am confident Lily can make sure they won’t be able to clone me or use it against me somehow.”

“Don’t forget them wanting to trade for your sp-”

“We don’t talk about that, and stop laughing, you asshole,” I interrupt her and turn to Savant. “What do you think?”

“I find it fascinating, and the concept of spatial caches is interesting. But other than that, it is valuable mostly only for big intergalactic travel gates.”

“That? You can just learn to teleport. Ruby can easily teleport all over the universe.”

“I think your view of something like that might be skewed. Not to mention she likely needs to place a mark or reach towards that place before she opens the teleport there,” Savant shakes his head.

“Yeah, Nat, the universe is kind of big,” Sophie adds.

“Yes, yes,” I wave my hand, and looking at the vials with talnium, I swing my hand down and slap that bad boy to create a satisfying noise.

Both Savant and Sophie jump up while Sophie shouts, “MOTHERFUCKER! I knew you would do that. I KNEW IT! And it still scared the shit out of me!”

I nod to that and think that maybe I am getting too predictable as of late.

As I begin to close the boxes one after another and set back the defenses, I ask, “So how much talnium is this?”

Savant gets to answer, “This should be five packets worth, so quite a bit if you consider that to complete the 11th floor quest, you would need half a packet per person.”

I look confused, and so does Savant when he sees my expression, but Sophie gets it first. “A packet is around the amount that would fit into that tiny pre-workout drink bottle. I have no idea why it’s called a packet, but it’s always measured in that. For long term storage, you put talnium into bigger vials with more of that weird liquid, as you can see in the crate that you forgot you buried on the planet of Xyphos.”

“That’s a better answer. Savi, learn from her,” I say, nudging him, and then, deciding to be a good person for today, I add, “Sophie is smart, isn’t she?” as I try to raise Savant’s image of Sophie in his eyes.

To that, I get confused looks from both, but having already finished closing the crate and snapping back the last seal, I walk away out of the barrier, where I head towards a group of demons. Even if they aren’t from the same group or even the same planet, people are gathering in groups. Selari with selari, vyssari with vyssari, and similar, where they can talk it out. I think many feel a bit more trusting when talking to members of their own race, though everyone here knows it makes no sense.

Of course, some people just gather in random groups, often the ones that met in the beyond already, and such.

The demons are no different, and there are around fifty of them around currently. All of them are from Hell difficulty, with possibly 10 to 20 from Beyond. And unsurprisingly, five or so of them are from the Primordial Knights, as they introduced themselves when they barged in previously as we were unlocking my crate.

“Guildmaster Gwyn,” these five greet me with excited smiles, coming closer, and some of them even tap my shoulders in a friendly manner.

Some others come closer as well, curious about me. There is a lot of probing, and almost all of them measure their hearts against mine, and I let them sense my heartbeats. I even change the rhythm for a slower, but more powerful one, letting more kinetic energy and thermal heat seep out.

There are a few annoying ones I pressure with my mana until they’re the ones who give in.

By passing out.

The entire time, the five from the group chuckle and even trash-talk the ones that step to the side with their tails between their legs.

With this solved, these lunatics gather around, and for some reason, there is Lily as well, standing near me. Her hair is white, her eyes are red, and she even made herself black horns that elegantly grow from her forehead and bend towards the back of her head while going by the sides. Her fake heart now beats almost no differently from the real thing.

"What do we do, Guildmaster Gwyn?" she asks me seriously, with a deeper voice than usual.

I blink and stare at her for a moment before shaking my head. The demons around begin to nod and call out similar things like Lily.

"What do you want from me?" I snort. "The Great Ruler of Diligence is having such a hard time, and you would give him even more work? I would never."

"The armory destroyer?"

"But isn’t this all his fault?"

"I don’t care about some Ruler. Do you think he would fight me if I asked?"

"Who?"

My attention is brought to the muscular demon in the background who asked the last question. In respect, I give him a nod, and he returns one back before whispering to a demon near him and asking what a Ruler is.

He is one of the Beyonders here.

"For now, you will stay put. I don’t want to see you causing too much trouble," I say. "If anything similar to the finding of the crate of talnium happens again, come to me first. And I am willing to spar with the ones with primordial energies outside of the common five if there are any. And no, not to the death. You can find me later."

With that, I turn and leave, with Demon Lily following swiftly by my side. In that same slightly deeper voice, she asks, "You just wanted to tell them that?"

"I kind of had to. Too many of them recognized me, and the five from the guild spread it all over. These lunatics wanted to start doing risky things to show off and prove their worth before trying to challenge me."

"Huh, really?"

"That’s how they work," I shrug and ask, "Did you find any vyssari with a wyvern bloodline?"

"Two of them, though it’s not as pure, but I can use it to purify the blood, I have a tiny bit more. I gave them healing marks for it."

"Won’t they try to sell them to the corporations?"

"I made it so they cannot be moved, and they activate to the owner’s signature only. Then I also got vows from them in exchange for adding a few more marks, so I don’t think they will try to."

"Sounds good. Then, tomorrow we can start with upgrading my Mana Vessel to the second stage."

"Your primary class upgrade will be scary when you get to it," Lily says.

"It better be."

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