Capítulo 16: Metal Scrap
Sif looked at the small piece of metal. Binding it had been one of the hardest things he had ever done in his entire life! He had lost track of time, but it had to be at least a couple of months since he first entered the cultivation chamber.
For the first few days, he worked just on carefully removing the imprint left behind by the original owner. It was incredibly strong spirit imprint, that he worked on for several days before it suddenly just started to disappear on its own.
This could only mean that the owner of the Menagerie was dead! At the time, Sif had laughed alone for several minutes. What kind of broken luck was that? Did Leaf's MC plot armor transfer some of his powers to him?
However, right when the youth was thinking that finally, the Heavens had smiled on him for once, he found out that the place where the previous owner had let his spirit energy wasn't casual: there was a small rune in the area, that before had been covered by the imprint.
Sif had never seen something so complicated in his entire life. Not even in his previous life, during the peak of his power, he never encountered anything similar.
After further analysis and lots of trials and errors, he understood that it was a lock. A safety system that didn't allow anyone that the rune didn't recognize to operate the Menagerie.
He also suspected that whoever owned this strange piece of metal before, hadn't truly managed to open it and they had put an imprint on the object only to protect the rune from being discovered.
Naturally, even if another Summoner wasn't able to break the rune, he had Curse power and that was one of the few things that he was good at doing. So he still wanted to give it a try.
His first attempts to break the rune were all miserably fails. He simply didn't have enough energy to rapidly consume something so powerful. He had to use his usual method and slowly grind it down.
He had a lot of it too at the moment, even if he didn't consume all of the spiritual energy imprint left behind by the powerful summoner that owned the Menagerie before him.
In fact, if he used all the Curse Energy he had access to, he could upgrade his Willpower enough that he would be able to directly bind Silver Ranked beast.
Yet, there was a very serious problem: the rune itself didn't have anything that could sustain all that Curse Energy that he had at his fingers. He needed something to quell the hunger of the Curse Energy or it would start to attack his own soul and kill him in the process.
The only solution he could think of was to use his familiar Luna. He had already a Third Level Connection with the white bat. This meat that he could send and obtain energy from her if she was in close range.
What he did was to sent the majority of the curse energy inside of her claws and teeth and commanding the familiar to roam around Fort Iron Gates, killing every single beast it could.
While attacking the wild beast, she would definitely use her claws and fangs to kill them, helping the Curse Energy to get feed on their souls and quelling the hunger of the energy.
She would then come back to his cultivation chamber and he would recover the fed Curse Energy. After another couple of days passed using the black energy to grind down the rune, the moment he felt that the Curse Energy was growing unstable again as it needed to feed soon, he would just rinse and repeat.
The only time he would sleep would be between feeding time, a couple of hours every few days. This lasted for at least three months.
He almost couldn't believe he had finally done it when one day Sif managed to break the rune that protected the treasure. He immediately sent a strand of soul power inside, searching for the operational core of the object.
"Uh?" Almost immediately the young man's face changed. He did find a core, It was a violet sphere that was surrounded by many complex glowing runes. The strange thing was that the runes were written in a way that Sif didn't recognize at all.
He kept observing them for a long time, trying to determine what they did, before noticing a small sign on the violet surface of the core: it was a small broken cogwheel! Sif immediately recognized it.
"Broken Empire"
Sif's eyes narrowed: that was the insignia of the Broken Empire, one of the four Great Great Empires. In the past he had met people from the Broken Lands before: they were obsessed with technology and their cultivation systems were based on controlling powerful machines.
Sif thought about it for a moment and in the end, he still decided to give it a try and refine it. He spent too much valuable time to stop right now. Sighing, he sent an invisible ripple on the violet sphere and started refining the core.
It only took a couple of hours, but he ended up using ten percent of his Willpower to form a solid connection with the core of the treasure.
When he finally activated the core, the object first trembled for a few moments, before slowly flying out of his hand and starting to hover around him. At the same time, he heard a metallic voice in his head.
[Operating System Online]
Now that it was active, the young man started to sense various things. There seemed to be three main areas in the treasure: one was an empty information disc, then there was a complex set of runes that Sif couldn't recognize and finally, there was a spatial pocket.
'Only one?'
He sent his Willpower to investigate, trying to find another spatial pocket, but he couldn't sense anything else. The delusion in his eyes couldn't be masked. All that work for a single spatial room?
"This…"
Menageries that had a single spatial room were good for beginners, he needed one with at least two! A single spacial room could contain only a couple of small or medium-sized familiars.
"Whatever, better than nothing…"
Sif sighted. He had spent all that time to bind a single spatial pocket room. He almost couldn't believe it. Shaking his head in disappointment, he sent his willpower inside the spatial pocket to check it out. Immediately his reddened eyes widened in shock.
"Oh my…"
Enormous. He couldn't even feel it all even pouring all his Willpower inside. This meant that it was at least several hundreds of meters!
[One million] said an echoey robotic voice. [The Noramora Hunting Operator, comes with one spacial-pocket of one million kilometer squares. ] continued the voice, seemingly answering to the surprised youth.
Sif retracted his Willpower, pushed his head behind and started laughing maniacally. One million kilometer squares? It was as good as the Menagerie he had in his previous life!
'Artificial Servant, which kind of Auxiliary Systems do I have access to?'
Sif wasn't surprised by the presence of the metallic voice. That was evidently the Artificial Servant that controlled the various function of the treasure. Medium-high rank Menageries always had one. A treasure coming from the technology-obsessed Broken Empire? It sure had one too!
[Auxialiary System 0025A, Functionality: Library]
[Auxiliary System 000C1, Functionality: Enhanced Genetic Analysis]
The youth sighed again. He had hoped for some powerful array auxiliary system. The library system was something very common, it needed no explanations: it was a collection of things scanned by the treasure.
As for the genetic auxiliary system, Sif though that it should be something similar to a common Menagerie bloodline analysis system, but he couldn't be sure. To prove his theory he had to try it first.
"Activate the Genetic Analysis, target me."
The small treasure moving around the youth stopped in place and started to emanated an invisible wave that easily penetrated Sif's Energy Shield and rapidly passed through his entire body.
He couldn't even tell what kind of energy the operator was using, other than it came from the complex rune formation that he didn't understand.
[Analysis completed. New Data Sheet added to Library] said the robotic voice, retracting the strange energy back.
Sif was surprised: wasn't it just a bit little too fast? Maybe he was wrong after all and this genetic analysis wasn't at all what he thought it was. He immediately sent his consciousness inside the information disc that he already located inside the treasure.
The previous void information disc had now one single page in it. On the top of the page, there was a picture of his body, followed by a little summary about him.
[Name: ???]
[Species: Human]
[Danger: 0]
[Strength: 0.1]
[Resistance: 0.1]
[Velocity: 0.1]
[Reflexes: 0.1]
[Class: Hakeem?? Summoner???]
[Soul: 1]
[Soul Root: Earth, 0.5 - Curse: 0.8 (State: Moderate - No Immanent Danger)]
[Energy: 25 Earth + 15 Curse ( State: Critical - Immanent Danger!) / 50]
[Energy Shield Resistance: 10]
[Soul Root Link Determined]
[Name: ???]
[Species: Bloodshed Bat (Variation)]
[Danger: 1]
[Soul: 1]
[Soul Root: Wind, 0.9 - Curse: 0.1]
[No Further Data]
Right after that, there was a long series of information about him: his blood type, the number of white blood cells in his body, sugar level, etc.
"It's a combination of a universal ranking auxiliary system and an incredibly detailed bloodline auxiliary system…"
Sif was quite pleased with that. The object wasn't bad at all: it could even guess that his cultivating method was a mix between the Hakeem Way, which focused on Willpower, and the Summoner Way which focused on Familiars!
Now that he had a very precise way to determine the powers of the people around him, he felt safer. Sadly, the scanning capability of his Menagerie wasn't like his own Willpower. People would sense it when it examined them, so he had to be careful with that.
[Alert: Reminder that Curse Energy is in Critical State! Imminent Danger!, Required Soul Energy: 1.5 - Time remaining before loss of control: 12 hours]
'Yeah, right... the Curse Energy...'
Sif waved his hand, expelling a small mass of black energy and making it hover around his hand.
Even without the help of the treasure, he knew well that the condition of the curse energy was pretty bad. It had been a couple of days since he last used Luna to send the mass of black power to feed.
'So it can tell me exactly how much time I have before losing control of the Curse Energy… that's interesting…'
He looked at the mass of Curse Energy. His heart hurt a little thinking of just expelling it outside his body and letting it die slowly. It was something he had accumulated in months and months! Such a waste of resources!
'But what can I do with it? I don't have anything to use it on…'
Sif shook his head. Maybe he just needed to let it slowly expire inside the cultivation chamber. With a wave of his hand, he extracted all the Curse Energy from his body and just threw it on the ground of the cultivation chamber. He also made sure on not hitting the array formations on the walls. He didn't want any problem with the owner of the inn.
Having done that, he stood up. A grimace appeared on his lips as his entire body screamed in pain at every movement. In the end, he had been sitting down for months. Barely moving his eyes and arms. It was quite normal that his body felt sore.
Ignoring the pain, he pushed open the door of the cultivating chamber.
The first thing that he saw, when he came out was Luna, sitting before the entrance. She had grown up considerably and now was the size of a large dog.
His Willpower, scanned the room, determining that no one else was there. Stretching his sore arms, the youth moved to the showers and let himself enjoy a long and relaxing moment under a constant flow of warm water.
He then put on a new set of black robes and started to move the few things he kept on the old clothing inside his new pockets. First was a small red book, then a brown skinned purse filled with bronze coins.
Finally, only a ruined silver coin remained between his hands. He could barely feel any radiation coming from the thing.
'Uh, I wonder…'
He pointed at the silver ruined coin and questioned the flying metal scrap. "Which kind of beast was trapped inside?"
[Red Eyed Crow, Danger: 3]
Estado de energía semanal
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