Chapter 192. (Patreon)

After resting up a few hours Zac stepped through his private array, arriving at one of the first satellite towns of Port Atwood. Only a brief moment was needed to understand that this was one of the farming-villages that was created to provide the town with a steady supply of grain and vegetables.

Two Valkyries were resting by the gate, but quickly got to their feet when they saw the teleporter activating. Normally there were no guards stationed at the portal, as this place was only accessible through the main teleporter and the traffic was controlled from there.

However, Valkyries and freshly recruited warriors were sent out to all the satellite towns en masse to clean out the islands. There would always be a need for some warriors to safeguard the area from beasts in the future, but the manpower needed would be drastically reduced if all dangerous wildlife was culled first like on the main island.

Zac nodded to the two resting Valkyries before he headed out toward the fields. This personal inspection was something he had decided to do before he left for the Hegemon mission. For one he was still feeling a bit emotionally unsettled from yesterday, and he didn’t want to undergo the trial when he wasn’t in peak mental condition.

But more importantly he felt the need to show his face a bit more, and make sure that everything was running smoothly. Hannah’s words struck a chord with him, reminding him that he couldn’t entrust everything to others.

He generally believed the demons and Abby the eye were working with his best interest in mind, but he also knew that both Abby and Ogras sometimes fudged the truth in order to reach their goals. The only people on the island he felt he could truly trust were Sap Trang and Kenzie, but both were focusing on improving their power.

Showing his face would give the population a reminder who was the true leader of Port Atwood.

The fields were abuzz with activity, where demons and humans worked together to get production going. The fields still looked mostly barren, apart from a few places having sprouts emerging from the soil. Most of the work still consisted of clearing out the area of trees and stone, turning the island into proper arable land.

After looking around he spotted a familiar face. It was the demon who was in charge of Agriculture for clan Azh’Rezak.

“How are things progressing?” Zac asked as he walked up to the demon

He looked over at Zac with some surprise but quickly found his bearings.

“Lord Atwood, I didn’t expect to see you here today,” he said. “Things are progressing just fine. It might not look like much at the moment, but I believe we will have our first harvest within two months. Of course, it’s all mortal-graded seeds we’re planting.”

Mortal-grade was what things below F-Grade ranked was called, and another name for it was unranked. The normal grain and vegetables were all unranked as they didn’t naturally contain any Cosmic Energy.

The thick Cosmic Energy in the atmosphere might imbue the vegetables with some energy, but it was negligible. You would have to eat an insane amount of tomatoes or wheat grown from mortal seeds to gain a power-up.

“Sounds good. Have you procured any spiritual seeds yet?” Zac asked.

“We have bought some, though it might take a few years until production is to a point that it can feed the upper echelon of the island,” the old demonic farmer said with a shrug. “We have planted a few small fields on the main island for those things, and we should start to see results within a year.”

“How come you didn’t plant everything on the main island? God knows we have a lot of free space,” Zac said.

It was true, as his main island was enormous. Even with his speed, it took hours to cross the whole thing, and it would be possible to fill the large empty areas with fields. Currently, 99% of the island was just forest where barghest roamed. That would allow the crops to benefit from the even denser energy in the atmosphere of the main island.

The old farmer’s eyes lit up, but soon he shook his head.

“Actually, farmland absorbs a huge amount of Cosmic Energy, especially Spiritual Herbs. If we planted too much on the main island you’d soon notice that the density of energy in the air would get worse. That’s why forces’ herb farms are in Mystic Realms, as their towns would turn into energy-starved ghettos otherwise,” the demon said.

“It wouldn’t be a problem in the short run as the population is still quite small, but as the citizens grow more numerous and more powerful, the energy consumption will increase. It’s better that we already have a proper infrastructure before reaching that point. And it’s not like it is a problem that these crops take a few weeks longer to grow due to the sparser energy, everyone will be fed,” the farmer continued.

“Understanding the balance between the energy in the heavens and the earth with your farmland is something every farmer needs to understand. If you get too greedy and plant too valuable things, you’ll likely lose the harvest.”  

Zac finally understood why the plan had been to farm on other islands from the start. He completely agreed with the farmer’s sentiment. The Vein beneath the island could only produce so much energy per hour, and it was better that energy went to his citizens and creating more Nexus Crystals first hand.

Besides, since the island was quite close to his own the Cosmic Energy in the area was still pretty dense, making it a great place for farming. Zac stayed on for a bit and talked about the plans for the island with the various farmers, until he bade farewell and moved to the next one.

The next island he visited was a mining encampment, and the foreman to the shaft did not share the farmer’s view on balance. His eyes glistened when he talked about the treasures of the deep, seemingly itching to go down there and hunt for treasures.

The man might as well have been a dwarf going by the greedy gleam in his eyes. It was only after talking with a few of the other miners that Zac found out the foreman didn’t care about the treasures, and only cared about the thrill of the hunt.

This mining encampment was not mining for crystals like the mine at Azh’Rodum, but rather for various metals. It was placed on an island with a mountain with a reddish hue. The foreman explained that while they had only encountered mortal grade metals for now, they might encounter F-Graded materials as they dug deeper.

Zac was a bit disappointed that there were only ordinary resources here, but then again only normal materials were needed to produce all kinds of things for the town. 

Like this Zac went from satellite village to satellite village seeing how things were going. He was happy to see that there weren’t really any problems so far for the Demons and Humans working together. Actually he heard of a few couples having formed already. He’d been afraid the vastly different societies the demons and humans came from would cause some friction, but humans were flexible if anything.

After he was done making rounds he left for his final destination, the mysterious island that held the potential entrance to the Mystic Realm. The scene when he stepped out from the teleporter was quite different from the others.

There was only a guardhouse and a few tents, with four demon guards sitting around a concealed fire having supper. They quickly got to their feet when they noticed Zac’s arrival, but quickly calmed down when they noticed it was only Zac.

“Where’s the Mystic Realm entrance?” Zac asked after greeting the guards.

“It should be a couple of hours of travel north,” one of the guards answered. “The teleporter was placed close to the edge of the island to give us some room in case something happened.”

“Like what?” Zac asked with a frown.

“There’s a risk of the teleporter getting interference from the entrance before its properly stabilized. If it burst some extra amounts of energy everyone would be stuck here until rescue came by boat,” another demon explained. “Also, it’s just too dangerous further in. We can only handle the beasts at the edge.”

“Strong beasts?” Zac mumbled, taking another look around as he left the camp in the direction the demons indicated.

He finally realized that the camp was mostly hidden within a small crevice of some small hill, secluding it from three directions. Furthermore, when he turned around after walking a bit he noticed to his surprise that the camp was completely gone, making him finally realize where his old illusion array had gone.

This was a completely different setup compared to the ones he’d seen on the other islands so far. The Stargazer had mentioned that there were strong beasts on this island, and it seemed that might have been an understatement if the demon guards had to be that careful.

He wanted to have a proper look for himself about what was going on with this island. He was afraid that Abby was downplaying the dangers to his town for the chance of a large payday. He didn’t delude himself that the well-being of the humans in the town was her main priority. Besides, there was something else he wanted to test while he was here.

The forest had a more tropical feeling compared to the one on his own island, though the level of mutation seemed largely the same. As he walked through the woods he concealed his aura tightly, and it didn’t take long until he was accosted by a beast.

[Crazed Lemur – Level 58 – Strength]

The level of the beast made Zac’s brows rise. It was almost the same as his own, and it was just the first thing he met on the island. Zac took out his axe and swung it at the primate, but it deftly dodged as it almost flew into a tree nearby.

Before it even landed it pushed away from the trunk, causing cracks on the tree from the force, instantly rebounding toward Zac with a screech. This time Zac focused properly and swung his axe once again with lightning speed.

A torrent of blood splashed the ground, as the primate lifelessly fell to the ground. Zac frowned as he looked down on the beast, the blood quickly slouching off from his robes. The strength of the animal wasn’t what bothered him, even though it likely was a match for most of the demonic warriors.

It was the fact that the core in his body hadn’t absorbed a smidgeon of Cosmic Energy from the kill. Zac had hoped that he would be able to keep improving his core by using normal kills, where the neutral energy would fill into both sides of it. Since the core had formed he’d only killed the undead, making him unsure of how it worked.

Unfortunately, the core stayed completely inert as a surge of Cosmic Energy entered Zac’s body. He already knew that this was a distinct possibility, as he knew that the Core didn’t care about the energy from normal Nexus Crystals. He did, however, know that the Miasma Crystals were effective since he’d briefly tried it while waiting for Kenzie in Kingsbury.

Zac shook his head as he kept moving deeper into the jungle. It appeared that he would have to visit the Sky Gnome and open his wallet after all. The core hadn’t shown any indication of how much energy it needed to be completed, and feeding it might turn him into a pauper.

While a couple of million nexus coins was quite decent, he knew that in terms of wealth in the multi-verse it was nothing. Zac knew that to simplify things the system actually graded Nexus Coins, just like with crystals.

A thousand Nexus Coins was worth one Nexus Coin (E), which meant that he had roughly 30 Nexus Coins (D). The system hadn’t even bothered to convert the coins to higher tiers since his wealth was just too low to make it worth it.

Still, he’d have to check with Calrin before he started to despair. The mining operations were proceeding smoothly in his crystal mine, and he might be actually able to do a straight trade between Life-Attuned Crystals and neutral ones, not spending a single coin.

Zac instead kept pushing toward the center of the island and noticed that the energy in the atmosphere kept growing. Furthermore, the closer to the core of the island he got, the stronger the animals became. It appeared the island had built a strict hierarchy, where the stronger beasts got to have territories with denser energy.

To his delight, he noticed there was another boon to coming to this island, apart from the Nexus Coins and high-grade meat. The beasts might not have been able to improve his core, but something else was gleefully feeding as the beasts fell one by one. [Verun’s Bite] was turning the excursion into an all-you-can-eat buffet.