CHAPTER 13 - Laboratory

Kalen stared incredulously as he watched the man spit on the ground and sit down on the seat in front of him.

He had seen his fair share of eccentric cultivators, but he had never seen someone spit on the floor. Was this man just insane or was he intentionally disrespecting Kalen?

The obese man just stared right back at Kalen. He just kept staring. Kalen again asked him whether he needed anything, but the man kept staring in complete silence, his gaze distant. It was hard to judge exactly what the man was looking at due to his lazy eye.

Eventually, the man broke into laughter and he slapped his massive stomach like a drum.

“Nice to meet ya’ Kalen, ye seem like a nice lad.” The man spoke and spat on the ground.

Kalen winced again.

“Sir, please do not spit on the pristine marble flooring, otherwise I will be forced to remove you.

“Ok.”

The man went silent. Kalen was about to ask the man for the third time what he wanted, but it was at this very moment that the man pulled out a monster core and placed it on the table.

Kalen scoffed. This core seemed to have S rank shape at first glance. But there was far too much transparent spirit around the edges. Cores having transparent spirit wasn’t unusual, but there was a distinct distribution that was highly unlikely except in the case of forgery.

There was a special substance that could be used to ‘round up’ cores. Only fools would fall for such a trick however and Kalen was no fool. He grabbed the core, preparing himself to throw it at the man's face and kick him off the floor, but as he touched it he froze.

This core wasn’t fake.

It was a gold rank core holding a stone manipulation spirit power. It had an S-ranked shape, specifically a seventh-grade S rank. Almost as high as the roundest core that had ever been found.

Kalen fumbled with the core for a bit until he regained his composure. This had suddenly turned into a very serious business meeting indeed. Such a core was ridiculously valuable. Kalen put on a straight face and spoke to the man.

“What would you like to do with this core? I am assuming you have come here to sell it.”

The man’s gaze grew vacant again. Then he spat again, this time spitting on the table. Kalen cringed, but he didn’t want to compromise the deal so he just endured it.

“Ah, lad, I’d love to, but I got a more specific request than that. I’m here to trade the core for some other things I need.”

“Indeed, and what would you like to trade the core for?”

The man proceeded to list an arduously long list of spirit powers, materials, precious herbs, crystals, natural treasures, and so on.

Kalen perked up as he listened to the man list all of the stuff he wanted. This was exactly the sort of thing someone would stock up on if they wanted to start a sect. And judging by the specifics of what the man wanted, he knew what he was talking about.

Not only had he listed very basic spirit powers that would be excellent for younger disciples, but he also seemed to be sticking to large amounts of basic ingredients, rather than exceptionally rare or precious ones.

He had misjudged the man, but the more he thought about it the more it felt like this was what the man had intended from the start. This was an individual with cunning, playing up a distracting persona that would make others look past him.

Kalen gave him a rather generous deal. After all, it would be good to get on good terms with this man as soon as possible.

His job was to get exactly this type of business deal.

***

Neave watched the merchant put all that he had requested into a dimension ring. He took the ring, nodded, and left.

He once again transformed into his young master disguise and headed back to their new sect premises.

Neave was done with the shopping and excitement was burning in his veins. He had gotten his hands on an absolute ton of stuff he wanted to experiment with. What he wanted to do next was set up a place to conduct his experiments.

Once he reached the sect premises, he found that Harel and Gabrias were even more frightened of him than usual. Marven looked at him with concern.

“Ah, don’t worry old man, I was just out shopping. No murder had been done!”

That did not ease the tension one bit.

Neave invited everyone to come outside. There, he unloaded a tremendous amount of high-quality material from a dimension ring.

Gabrias gaped. The price of this material must have been absurd. Neave unloaded gigantic boxes of wood, stone, and metal that would allow them to make a much larger and much sturdier sect hall.

After he was done unloading, he just told them to go crazy while he had another thing planned. Neave transformed into a literal worm and proceeded to dig into the ground. They stared incredulously as he vanished into the soil.

Gabrias chuckled a bit. This was getting so absurd he wondered whether he had completely lost his mind. Harel gaped and Marven cringed as ideas of what Neave could be up to came to mind.

Eventually, Marven declared it was time for them to start building their sect premises in earnest and they began preparing the construction.

***

As Neave dug through the ground, he marveled at the power of his set of spirit powers. Shapeshifting was capable of doing a lot more now that he had evolved it. He still couldn’t transform into other species, but he could morph his body into the shapes of other species.

Integrate was a lot faster than digesting things than absorb. It still put everything he digested directly into his blood, but pure blood, or rather, sacred blood, was very good at keeping harmful substances out of his body.

As for where those substances went, Neave had no clue. They appeared to just vanish into thin air.

This effectively meant that Neave could just get rid of all the dirt and stone in his way by eating through it. Eventually, he judged that he was deep enough underground and decided to start his project.

Neave ate dirt and stone until he carved something roughly in the shape of a room. Then he pulled special stone bricks out of his dimension ring and started lining the walls and floor. He heated the bricks with his fire breath and used the life force tendril to seal the gaps.

Eventually, he created a medium-sized room. The stone bricks were designed to seal a chamber from outside perception and interference and Neave made sure that this place was properly sealed.

This little room would be the humble beginnings of his laboratory!

He pulled out several objects, such as tables, chairs, and crystal lanterns that he used to decorate the room. Once he was done with that, he pulled out a set of fire-proof bricks that he used to construct a furnace.

Neave pulled out a book from his dimension ring. He had bought several books covering basic subjects, but he needed to pay a visit to a local library, preferably one with high-end knowledge.

The book he pulled out talked about the basics of smithing. It covered how to make a furnace as well as the basic processes of weaponsmithing. Neave didn’t care much for the techniques as much as he did for the specific design of the furnace.

One thing that had suddenly become very obvious to him was that this room was completely sealed from the outside. This meant that he had nowhere he could release the smoke.

Luckily, he didn’t need to worry about that since some of the more advanced strategies for smelting didn’t involve any fire but rather used a special type of fire crystal, some of which he had luckily purchased.

Once he was done with the furnace, he pulled out the alchemy station he had purchased as well. Neave liked this one. It had a bunch of fancy pipes and tubes and cauldrons and stuff.

He again noticed the lack of air ventilation but judged it to be fine, probably. He was actually concerned that he may die from suffocation down here. Luckily, he was entirely confident that his set of spirit powers would allow him to survive long enough to see whether or not that would be a problem.

The only other thing he had set up, for now, was a very strange set of interlocking bars that had a lot of strings and ropes tied to it. This was a station designed for golem production, the structure was meant to keep the different limbs in place as they were being assembled.

After he was done with that, rather than starting with any of the experiments for now, he pulled out a set of monster cores.

They were already quite round, but most of them were weak, in the bronze and iron ranges. The powers contained within were direct boosts to strength, speed, endurance, toughness, regeneration, cognitive abilities, perception, and dexterity.

None of them were body-modifying spirit powers, which meant that they just acted as a supernatural boost to their respective aspects.

Neave simply rounded them up, consumed them, and evolved them all until they reached gold rank in power.

He didn’t want to risk any evolutions to platinum rank with these powers, since it could potentially result in a monster capable of reaching the top of the mountain, and he didn’t want to deal with that.

As promised, he defeated the spirit trials by doing little more than just lazing on top of the steel mountain-cone and picking his nose.

Not all of them evolved linearly, which was to be expected from low-rank spirit powers.

The strength boost ended up evolving into willpower of might. His strength was greater at all times, but the effect was influenced by his willpower.

The speed boost evolved linearly to a much stronger speed boost.

The endurance boost evolved into a rather convenient power that increased Neave’s maximum calorie capacity by a tremendous margin. Coupled with his integrate ability, this would come in very handy.

The toughness boost evolved into a very unusual ability. The best way Neave could describe would be as distance from death. It increased the amount of total damage Neave could take before he died. He wondered whether he could survive fully expending his life force now, but he wasn’t willing to give that one a try quite yet.

The regeneration power evolved into a power that could regrow lost body parts.

Are you fucking kidding me?

This was an exceptionally lucky evolution, which was to be expected given how many chances he was taking. Neave cackled as he realized that combined with his troll physique spirit power, this made him even more of a cockroach.

The boost to cognitive abilities evolved linearly. It was a simple power that allowed Neave to think faster. It didn’t make him smarter or anything, if he was stupid he would still be stupid, just faster. This would come in very handy coupled with his ability to boost his perception of time.

The perception power didn’t quite evolve linearly. It expanded. It wasn’t just a quantitative boost to his perception, Neave could now sense things that he wasn’t even aware of before.

The way the air moved, the structure of objects he was looking at, the potential of anything he set his eyes on, the inside of his spirit, and so much more. It felt like an entire layer of reality had been peeled off.

As for the dexterity boost, it evolved fully linearly. But this wasn’t particularly noticeable. Neave was already incredibly dextrous, to the point that it was hard to tell whether much has changed. It would be easier for him to make fine movements now, he supposed, but fighting this power wasn’t going to be a make-or-break advantage.

Neave got off his feet, stretched a bit, and got to work.

There was a lot of experimenting that needed to be done.