Chapter 823 823 Ship Investigation (2)

With wide eyes Marcus nearly lurched back out of the crate he had just entered when he saw what was inside it.

Folded up and layered on top of each other were the skins of numerous different creatures.

Some were beasts, others were monsters, but most disturbingly were the ones that had obviously belonged to people.

Pulling his head out Marcus was beginning to have an inkling as to what the contents of this ship were meant for.

But before he came to any conclusions, he looked through a few more crates and came across another fairly disturbing set of items.

Bags of blood like those one might see when receiving a transfusion were stored in a crate that had been magically enchanted to stay cold.

The next unique item Marcus found was a crate filled with phosphorus, followed by one that contained carbon.

There was now little doubt in Marcus' mind that what was onboard this ship was supplies to make the homunculi that were working as staff at the resort.

Of course, another possibility floated in Marcus' head, and he imagined that all of this stuff could just as easily be used for necromancy as well.

'Perhaps it is even both.' Marcus thought, a grimace on his face.

He then checked on the rest of the ship and found a secondary cargo hold.

Inside this one, instead of things like blood and bone dust, there were all manner of highly valuable items.

Marcus found crates with high quality elemental crystals, a few bars of adamantine, and even a crate filled with processed celestial platinum ingots.

It was honestly a veritable treasure trove of items, some of which Marcus did not even recognize.

'I can guess that this is where a large portion of the revenue generated by the resort goes. No wonder the prices are all so absurdly high. Whoever is running this place needs an immense amount of funds to buy all this stuff.'

Once he had finished searching the vessel's two cargo holds, Marcus began searching for the magic device that allowed it to teleport.

Magic that warped space was rare, and he honestly did not have much knowledge on formations that allowed for teleportation.

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When he found the device thought, he balked at how absurd it was.

Sitting at the heart of the ship was an amethros mana furnace that had all manner of formations etched into it.

It was fairly large considering it used such a rare and precious resource and Marcus imagined that it probably was made out of around the same amount of amethros as all of the gear he and Mrazivý had.

For a few moments Marcus honestly thought about simply stealing the device and abandoning the mission to find the resort's mastermind.

'No, the moment I take it we will be found out. Maybe I can grab it later, but for now I should try and study the formations on it.' Marcus thought.

Yet despite all he knew about magic enchantments he could barely make heads or tails of this device.

He simply did not have that much experience with space magic formations. The only thing he had in his possession that was even related was the spatial disrupter which impeded space magic, but that did not help him to understand what was going on with this amethros mana furnace.

'I will just have to worry about this another time.' Marcus thought before looking over the rest of the vessel.

He was just about finished when Mrazivý informed him that the ship was about to reach the resort, and he decided to leave without checking the last couple rooms.

'Better safe than sorry. I already checked the most pertinent areas. And for all we know the person in charge could be waiting to receive this stuff personally, and I do not want to meet them just yet.'

Phasing through the hull of the ship, Marcus found himself only a couple hundred feet from the resort's wall.

This was closer than he had been hoping to get and he swiftly flew farther away, before heading up into the sky.

Several miles above the resort he met back up with Mrazivý who had been keeping an eye on things from above.

"So, what did you find?" She asked him the moment he reappeared.

"There were a lot of interesting and even a few unsettling things on that ship. But I could not locate the pseudo soul fragments." Marcus said.

He then gave her a list of everything he had discovered being transported and at the end told her about the amethros mana force that was used to teleport the ship around.

Marcus also made sure to tell her about his hypothesis for what most of the items were likely being used for.

"I do not know anything about making homunculi, but if you think that is what all that stuff is for, then I will believe you. Still, what makes you think that?" Mrazivý said, a curious expression on her face.

In all her time knowing Marcus he had never once dabbled in a similar subject, and she wondered where his knowledge on the matter came from.

"It is mostly just a hunch, but back on Earth we had some old myths and a number of fantasy stories detailing how a homunculus is made. A lot of the things on that ship are similar or even exactly the same as what I remember hearing about. Of course, to my knowledge no one ever successfully made an artificially human back on my old world, and it was all just fiction."

Once Marcus had finished relaying everything he had found abord the ship, Mrazivý told Marcus that she had found something herself.

"One of the warehouses on the resort is currently teeming with activity. I imagine that is where all of these items are going to be stored. I believe that once things have cooled down a bit we should investigate and see where everything is being taken after it is stored away.