Chapter 78: Mighty Glass Shrub

Chapter 78: Mighty Glass Shrub

Dukean and Neave returned to the library after several months of being stuck inside the realm. Once Dukean finally starved, Neave ejected all his blood to widen the pool in the underground chamber and left.

They found themselves face-to-face in the outside world again. Dukean looked quite distraught. He bowed to Neave.

“Thank you, that was a valuable experience. I never thought I would experience death and live to tell the tale.” He shook slightly as he said those words.

Neave didn’t rush him too much; he knew how Dukean must feel. He was a tough kid, but starving for months was an experience one didn’t walk away from unscathed. Once he had given him the few seconds of silence he deserved, he immediately went into speed mode.

“No time, give book and core, now!”

Dukean knew exactly why Neave was in a hurry. Rather than returning to his sect premises, Dukean pulled the book out of his dimension ring.

He had a copy of nearly every book in their library and many interesting, niche books, collecting which was his hobby. That was the only reason he even knew he owned what Neave needed.

Then, they had to move to a slightly secluded part of the library so Neave could privately round his cores up.

Dukean gave him a few cores that held rather interesting spirit powers. All the cores were gold rank, and the monsters Dukean would face in the spirit trial would be a difficult challenge even with rounded cores.

Dukean had no spirit powers. Standard practice in many high-end sects. Young disciples could usually afford to get more powerful before choosing a spirit power, so they could guarantee they would possess at least one platinum-rank ability without evolving and taking a chance.

Neave raised an eyebrow after inspecting the five monster cores Dukean presented him with. The cores were metal, fire, ice, earth, and air manipulation, respectively. The way Dukean picked his powers went against everything Neave believed was optimal practice.

The way Neave built his powers was by aiming at synergy. Dukean seemed to build them by stacking several individually powerful abilities. It wasn’t a terrible way to go about it, but it was pretty antithetical to Neave’s style.

Neave would ask Dukean why he chose those powers but decided it could wait. He was under an unknown time constraint.

Neave returned to the room that held the herbology and alchemy texts, just in case he needed any other knowledge. Overall, remaining within the library was a good idea since he was confident he would need extra knowledge almost every time he returned.

He comfortably seated himself in a chair, quickly read through the book given to him by Dukean, and blacked out.The original appearance of this chapter can be found at Ñøv€lß1n.

Once he appeared back in the nightmare realm, unsurprisingly, he found Astrador waiting for him with a wide grin.

“Why didn’t you bring your friend over again?”

“If he wanted to, he could have tagged along. I would have permitted it. Given that he didn’t even ask, he probably doesn’t want to starve to death again.”

Astrador laughed.

“I’m surprised you can even comprehend his reasoning. I assumed your mind was too far gone to empathize with regular children.”

Neave scoffed and ran off, ignoring Astrador.

Soon enough, Neave found himself back in the experimental cave. The slimes were still going strong. Neave found a secluded section of the caverns and picked a random obsidian plant to start his work with.

Luckily, the process wasn’t very intensive on Neave’s qi or other resources. He was just sitting there, which meant that his vast resources could keep him going for a hundred years if need be. The qi technique required so little qi that he could let his natural qi recovery rate keep him going.

Neave lost himself in the process. Once tens of times turned to hundreds of times, and hundreds of times turned to thousands, time flowed like a calm river, and Neave immersed himself in the temporal tides.

***

Neave wasn’t sure how much time had passed since he started, but he knew it must have been a while.

It was apparent, given that the person he saw reflected in the smooth surface of the crystal dome had clearly aged quite a bit. His hair was long now, draping over his back, and his face looked slightly older. Neave almost resembled his young master form now, although he was still considerably shorter.

Neave never thought that spending time inside this realm would result in him physically aging. He wasn’t sure why that had never crossed his mind. He had experienced his hair growing out before, so physical growth should have been a logical extension of that process.

He had more than enough nutrients to sustain his growth, and if time passed as usual, there would be no reason for him not to.

This was bad. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it did mean that Neave had limited time he could spend in the realm with a body that fully represented the body he had outside.

Naturally, he could use shape-shifting to shrink himself, but that wasn’t optimal. Still, it was a minor setback and something he treated as more of a curiosity than something meaningful.

The important thing, however, was the plant in front of him.

Neave grinned widely. The feeble obsidian plant was no more.

It still looked quite feeble. Actually, it looked even more fragile now than it used to.

The branches had shrunk, and what used to be pitch-black obsidian branches had grown transparent, with only a slight shade of gray within.

Appearances could be deceiving, however.

Neave touched the prickly points with his finger. It was sharp enough that it could cut into even his finger.

Testing the plant by trying to break the branches with his finger resulted in Neave discovering that this plant was harder than any material he had encountered.

Neave wished he had something like this plant outside of this realm. Most weapons that possessed a quasi-spirit were made from metals, given that you had to be able to melt the material first. Glass could serve the purpose, but ordinary glass was trash compared to the mighty branches of this plant.

Neave wanted to break off a bit of the branch to melt some spirit into it.

Neave paused.

Did he have to break the branch off first?

His mind whirled with ideas. There were slimes here. Monsters. He could create a massive monster core.

One he could use to bestow this plant with a spirit power.