Chapter 202 (Patreon)

As soon as Zac touched the crystal he once again found himself in front of the Nexus Hub south of Azh’Rodum. When he looked around he also noticed two boxes neatly placed right in front of him.

He took up the first one and opened it, finding a densely inscribed plaque inside. He picked it up and a stream of information immediately entered his mind. It was the entrance token to the Tower of Eternity, and there was quite a bit of information it provided.

He could use the token at any moment after reaching level 50, so technically he could use it right now if he wanted. Of course, he wouldn't go just yet as he wanted to push as far as possible, reaping the maximum amount of benefits. Therefore he’d first do both the treasure hunt and the first step of the inheritance he ended up choosing before trying the Tower.

He also learned that the token was personal, and could not be sold or traded. Finally, anyone had two shots at the tower, after which they would be eternally looked out of it. However, to take the trial the second time another token had to be earned somehow.

Zac put the token away into his pouch and opened the second box. Inside was a small shimmering vial with a luminescent liquid splashing around inside. Zac sighed a bit in disappointment when he saw the content. The liquid was the Dao Treasure, and Zac knew the method of using it was quite simple.

He simply needed to drink it to obtain its effects. However, he didn’t do so just yet, as a Dao Treasure wasn’t quite as simple as an attribute fruit. The vial would place him in a state of enlightenment, somewhat like his state when he improved his Dao of Heaviness back at the auction, but it wouldn’t guarantee a new Dao Seed or improve one.

As far as Dao Treasures went, it was one of the more mediocre ones. But then again, he already knew it'd only be a F-Ranked treasure. Besides, while it wouldn't give him a completely new seed like some treasures did, it would at least give him a shot at improving a current one.

The best way to utilize this type of Dao Treasure was to first decide on which seed to improve and take the first steps on the type of insight he wanted for it. That would maximize the chance to actually gain something from the vial. Of course, using the vial to improve his Dao of Sharpness would be far easier than his Dao of Trees, since one was still at the low stage, whereas the Dao of Trees was just missing one step to reach its peak.

Zac had some difficulty in choosing which way he should go on the matter. For one he knew that improving the Dao of Trees would bring far more attributes than the others, but at the same time its usefulness in battle was a bit limited.

Conversely, it felt like a bit of a waste to use his treasure on the Dao of Sharpness, as he really should be able to improve it by himself since it still was only on the first stage still. He wasn’t in a hurry since there still were roughly two weeks before the treasure hunt started, but he felt he would have to use it before then, in order to maximize his battle potential.

Having packed away both his treasures he walked north toward the demon town. Azh’Rodum was still somewhat deserted, as many of the demons lived in Port Atwood nowadays. But there were some people walking the streets, humans and demons alike.

The simple reason was the Nexus Crystal mine. Those who worked the mine lived in the town, only sometimes heading to Port Atwood. However, those who lived here had special passes, and normal citizens of his town couldn’t get here unless they managed to pass through the sea of barghest and Gwyllgi to get here.

This was of course to protect the rich resources of the area. There were plans to sooner or later to turn the whole mountain into a restricted zone with the help of Arrays, but such an undertaking would cost over a hundred million Nexus Coins, and wasn’t something he could prioritize at the moment.

Since he was here anyway he couldn’t resist heading over to his hidden cavern and was elated to find that the density of the Cosmic Energy in the air felt slightly sparser compared to before. Zac felt it was good news since that hopefully meant that the seed was absorbing large amounts of energy.

Still, he couldn’t discern any changes to the seed down at the bottom of the calm pond as of yet. He wasn’t surprised at that though since the Lotus was a D-Grade treasure after all. Even with the help of the pond it would likely take a long time for it to grow to the state he saw at the Abbot Everlasting Peace’s monastery.

Since everything seemed to be going according to plan Zac headed back to Port Atwood. He’d only been gone for a day, but he still went over to Calrin’s. The Attuned Nexus Crystals weren’t anything rare, and it shouldn’t take the gnome much time to acquire them.

Zac’s current venues to become stronger were at the moment slightly limited. There was still the island with the Mystic Realm, but even if he battled for two weeks straight he doubted he’d gain more than a level tops, seeing as he just gained level 61. That would barely provide any benefits, and there were better ways to spend his days before the Treasure Hunt.

He felt that he needed to improve himself in other manners. Levels weren’t where he was lacking. That became quite clear from his fight with Average. The teenager had completely dominated him in the fight until Zac turned it around by taking a large risk.

Zac was simply lacking combat proficiency. He had learned some of it from battle, but battle with animals and [Axe Mastery] could only take him so far. He had encountered the same problem with Rydel back in the final fight of the Demon Incursion. A large amount of attributes were worthless unless he couldn't properly utilize them.

While he knew that he couldn’t get as good training as Average received as young, there should be something he could do. Zac didn’t know exactly what level Average was, but he guessed that the youth should actually be level 75, at the stage of gaining as many titles and other advantages as possible before evolving.

Greatest had said that he’d trained his son for almost twenty years, making the youth older than he actually looked. It wasn’t anything surprising, seeing as Average likely reached E-Grade Race long before he turned 16 years old thanks to various treasures.

Since it only took Zac 6 months to reach level 61 he felt that someone close to being 20 years old from such a prestigious background should be max leveled by now, even if they went slow and steady. Gaining the levels were usually the easiest step in evolving, but it was rather other things that hold people back.

From what he understood some spent a decade at the bottleneck before advancing, though he still didn’t know exactly why. Alyn and Ogras had always been a bit diffuse about what happened in E-Grade, only saying that one would become a lot stronger. Until now he hadn’t really cared, but it was quickly becoming more and more relevant.

Resuming his training to improve his battle techniques wasn't the only option. Another way to get stronger was his Dao, and he was planning on spending some time on that. But in the end Zac believed his Core to be the most promising venue to improve. Greatest clearly understood what it was, and mentioned it was a good thing. He quickly wanted to infuse it with more energy in order to complete its construction.

He actually felt he shouldn’t be too far off, as a large part of it was covered with fractals by now. Perhaps a final push was all that was needed before he could start to unravel its mysteries.

After a quick walk he found himself at the Thayer Consortia, sitting down once again with Calrin. The little gnome quickly produced 25 luminous crystals, each emitting dense and refreshing energies.

“Twenty five E-Grade Divine Crystals,” Calrin said.

“Great,” Zac said as he placed them in his pouch. “By the way, have you ever heard of the concept of a ‘Specialty Core’?”

Zac tried asking the Sky Gnome since he might be the most knowledgeable person on the island, apart from the Creators. However, while they came from an extremely powerful faction they were almost fanatical about crafting, caring little about other things. Meanwhile, Calrin did hail from a former C-Grade family after all.

“Specialty core?” the gnome questioned as his face scrunched up. “I’m not sure… Wait! I’ve read about it in some of our old scriptures before we were forced to sell them.”

“Oh, what do you know?” Zac enthusiastically asked.

“Well, not much, to be honest. From what I understand they are quite rare, but they can enable things out of the norm, so to speak?” Calrin hesitantly said.

“Huh?” Zac could only say, not feeling any clearer about what his core was.

“Hmm… Say for example there’s a lightning mage. He is specialized to inflict as much damage as possible, but each strike costs a lot of Cosmic Energy,” Calrin began explaining. “He realizes that a good addition to his skill is the ability to create large clouds that can generate the lightning bolts for him, saving him a lot of energy.”

“Sure,” Zac nodded along.

“But his class is specialized, his pathways doesn’t work with those kinds of skills. So he gets a Specialty Core that is attuned to water and wind. Suddenly he can create the clouds through his Core, and his fighting style has gotten much more versatile.”

Zac felt he understood the concept, though he had some difficulty understanding exactly what it meant for his own core.

“So the Specialty Core adds more elements you can use?” Zac probed.

“Well, no. That was just an example. From what I understand the names comes from the fact that they are created with a specific purpose in mind. Adding an element is just one example,” Calrin explained. “But they are very rare, I’ve never met anyone with one. Perhaps they are more common in the higher planes, I’m not sure.”

By higher planes, Calrin simply meant the sectors with higher tier planets. While there weren’t any strict hierarchy it seemed, planets were generally lumped together with other planets around the same energy, due to being placed in a part of the multiverse with a certain level of ambient Cosmic Energy.

Earth already was in a pretty good spot, seeing as it started out as D-grade, though where on the scale of D-Grade still remained to be seen. But it also meant that there likely weren’t any high tier planets in the close vicinity, apart from perhaps a C-Grade planet being the core of the sector.

Conversely, it was possible that Earth was one of the main planets in a sector with mainly E and F-grade planets. Actually, that felt like an even more likely scenario, seeing as how energy-starved Earth was before the integration.

In the end Zac thanked the gnome for his help and left for his compound. While he still didn’t exactly know what his Core would do, he felt he had a clearer picture of the situation. And perhaps everything would become more apparent the moment his core was finished absorbing energy.

Zac couldn’t wait to try it out and only informed the guards to tell his sister he was back before he went into seclusion to start absorbing the crystals. Soon he sat in his courtyard with the arrays erected with a Divine crystal in his hand.

The Core greedily ate the energy the crystal contained, and it felt the fit was far better than any other life-attuned energy he had given it so far, with the exception of the pure energies contained in the lotus seed. The amount of energy was excellent as well, and it felt like he sat in a spring of life, every cell in his body vibrating with vitality.

After roughly two hours he started to sense some instability in the core due to the life-attuned energies overpowering the other side, and he quickly took out one of his E-Grade Miasma Crystals. Absorbing a Miasma Crystal was, as expected, the opposite of the Divine Crystals, and it felt like he was gripped with a cold hand of death as he absorbed its energies.

 This process kept repeating for a few times until he hesitantly decided to hold one crystal in each hand and started absorbing again. The energies wildly clashed in his body, causing quite a bit of pain, but in the end it was manageable. The important thing was that his rate of absorption had doubled, and Zac didn’t move for day after day.

His mind was completely emptied, and he only focused on the vast amounts of energies that passed through his body on its way to his Specialty Core. After a few days he had absorbed over a hundred times the energy he had available in his body at any given moment, clearly displaying the extreme amounts of power the small core contained.

It was only on the sixth day he felt a change. His core finally seemed satiated.