บท 14: Treasure Hunting Down in the Deep Blue Sea
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Ddraig questioned his host, somewhat hesitant with the thought of stealing from another dragon's cave.
"Yeah, why wouldn't it be?" Issei spoke out loud as he quickly stripped down to his underwear.
Unfortunately, he had not been expecting to go for a swim today. Issei naturally did not pack any swimwear for the trip. He momentarily played around with the idea of swimming in the nude, but ultimately decided against it.
He had seen all the discovery channel videos. Swimming naked in open water almost always resulted in a parasite crawling up a man's anus or even worse, the meatus (for those who don't know, that's the part where guys pee from). Those videos never failed to give him nightmares. Although he was confident that his current cultivation would protect him from any infestation, he preferred for his unmentionables to remain unmolested, parasites or otherwise.
That's why he decided to go with the boxers. Going commando for the rest of the day was just a sacrifice that he would have to make.
"You said that Ryujin guy abandoned this place, right?" Issei asked.
"Well, yes. Ryujin was known for his extravagance. He would have kept this place well-maintained and guarded if he actually still cared for it. Looking at the shrine's current state, I can only presume that it has been long abandoned."
"Then it should be fine, then. We'll just go in, take a quick look around, grab anything that looks like it'll be useful, and get out. Quick and simple."
"You make it sound so easy." Ddraig shook his head.
"That's because it really is that easy. Relax Ddraig, it's not like we're still in the Immortal World."
Ddraig let out an exasperated sigh. Issei had always been like this: headstrong, reckless, and prone to tunnel vision. Even in a world where danger lurked around every corner, he often willingly jumped headfirst into trouble.
Despite all of his talks about being careful, it did not really surprise the dragon to see his host still as reckless as ever.
"What happened to being cautious?" Ddraig tried one last time to convince Issei to not go through with this.
"I am being cautious. That's why we're only raiding an abandoned underwater cave and not his heavily guarded underwater palace." Issei stated sensibly.
Ddraig let out one last frustrated groan before he accepted the inevitability of his situation. He knew from experience that by this point, there was no changing Issei's mind.
Well, if you can't beat them…
"Fine, but don't go blaming me if another bounty gets put on your head."
Issei merely nodded before he jumped into the water with nothing but a pair of boxers on.
****
A cultivator could hold their breath for a long time. In Issei's case, he could hold his for up to four hours. This was a good thing, because there was a lot of ocean to cover.
Issei scoured the bottom of the seafloor, searching for anything that might remotely be able to hide a giant water dragon.
At first, he had little success.
He started his search near the shore and steadily expanded outwards. While the ocean underwater was beautiful and teeming with life, after a while, things got pretty monotonous.
Well, that was mostly just Issei. After seeing so many wondrous sights in the immortal world, it was hard to be impressed by an ordinary ocean.
The only interesting thing to happen was when a large shark swam towards him. Fortunately, Issei was able to scare it away by bopping it on the nose.
After more than four hours of searching, he finally found something that looked promising.
It was a giant sinkhole right in the middle of the seafloor. Issei peered into the hole, but even with his enhanced vision, all he could see was inky blackness. Either the hole was very deep, or it was covered in mystical protections in order to protect from curious eyes.
He was leaning towards the former.
Issei did not hesitate and dove right into the sinkhole.
He descended for nearly fifteen minutes before he reached the bottom. There was a tunnel to his right that was just as spacious as the sinkhole. Seeing no other option, he swam into the tunnel.
If the sinkhole had been dark, then this tunnel was completely pitch black.
Issei was forced to summon the Boosted Gear. The emerald gem on the back of the gauntlet's hand emitted a soft glow. It provided just enough light to illuminate everything within a ten-meter radius of the gauntlet.
'I don't appreciate being used as a flashlight.' Ddraig mentally groused.
'Oh, lighten up.' Issei replied back, pun completely intended. 'You didn't mind when I did it back when we were trapped in the Bateran Cave system.'
'That's because our lives were at risk. This is a completely different situation.'
'Same difference.'
Their conversation came to an abrupt end, as after ten minutes of continuous swimming, the tunnel suddenly opened up into a large, dome-shaped space. It was difficult to estimate the size of the hollow with what little light he had available.
'Is this Ryujin's nest?' Issei asked out loud. His instincts, honed from years of lucky encounters, told him that this was the right place.
'Dragons don't have nests!' Ddraig reacted almost immediately. His pride as a fellow dragon demanded no less from him.
'Right, my bad.' Issei chuckled unapologetically. 'Now, help me find some treasure!'
He quickly threw himself into the task at hand.
Barely ten meters past the tunnel entrance and already, Issei stumbled into his first find.
It resembled a tear-shaped piece of sheet metal. The color was a bit difficult to make out, but the surface was smooth, almost like porcelain. Issei instantly recognized the object.
'Dragon scales.' Ddraig mentally stated, echoing the thought in his head.
Issei nodded, excitement visible in his eye. It might not be the treasure that he had been hoping for, but dragon scales were still plenty useful.
Dragons, in any world, were regarded as symbols of strength and power. The scales of a dragon were no doubt valuable. They were especially great as material for a weapon or armor.
He quickly tucked the scale underneath his armpit and continued deeper into the hollow.
It did not take long before he found even more dragon scales scattered all over the place. Some were buried in sand, while others were embedded into the walls. The hollow was practically littered with the little things. A preliminary count put the number of scales at around one hundred, maybe more. He knew that carrying them all by hand would be all but impossible.
Issei quickly swam back up to the surface and returned to the shore.
There, he emptied out his backpack (the one that he had brought specifically for this trip), before he dove back down into the depths of the ocean. He soon reached the sinkhole and quickly found his way back to the hollow.
For the next hour or so, Issei practically excavated the entire hollow in his search for dragon scales. In total, he secured one hundred and eight scales.
The scales were about half as thick as his thumb and were roughly as large as a manilla folder. He managed to cram about forty or so scales into his backpack before it became too full to accommodate anymore. Issei tied the rest of the scales in a bundle using his shoelaces.
There was roughly about 700 pounds worth of dragon scales attached to him right now. For ordinary people, that much weight underwater would have been a death sentence. For Issei, it was merely a mild inconvenience.
Just as he was about to resurface, something else caught his eye. It shimmered in a decrepit corner of the hollow. It was just barely noticeable, even with his enhanced senses. Issei was lucky enough to catch it.
He swam towards it.
The thing was buried underneath a light layer of sand. Issei gingerly picked up the object. To his surprise, it was a cerulean orb roughly the size of a baseball.
'You know what this is, Ddraig?' he questioned.
'Not a clue, partner.'
'... Well, whatever it is, it looks like it might be useful. I might as well keep it.'
With that, he pocketed the orb and swam back to the surface with the rest of his loot.
When he reached the island, he dumped his haul near the rest of his stuff.
"Told you it was that easy." Issei grinned broadly as he ran a hand through his soaking wet hair.
Ddraig did not deign to respond. Instead, he merely rolled his eyes and scoffed.
Issei ignored the sulking red dragon. He grabbed one of the dragon scales and inspected it against the sunlight.
The scale was slightly transparent. Most of it was silverish-blue, although there was a slight discoloration towards the edges, where the color changed into a deeper shade of blue.
"It is a good quality scale," Ddraig stated, eyeing the object appreciatively. "From what I can tell, these scales were a byproduct of Ryujin molting."
Issei raised a curious brow. "Dragons molt?"
"Some do, yes. Usually, only the ones that you would consider Eastern Dragons have a habit of shedding their scales."
Issei nodded. It sort of made sense. Most Eastern Dragons have long, serpentine bodies. Since they so greatly resembled snakes, it only made sense that they also molted.
Unknown to Issei, a dragon's molt was an exceedingly rare, once-in-a-millennium event.
Unique from most other creatures with scales, a dragon's scales do not only regrow, but they also possess the ability to repair and heal.
The process was somewhat similar to how muscle fibers work. Whenever dragons damage or break their scales, the scales simply repair themselves, growing stronger and even more durable than before
Unfortunately, this process is not indefinite.
A dragon only molts when its scales reach a point where they are no longer able to heal. When this occurs, the dragon sheds its old scales and regrows a new set, ready to repeat the process all over again.
Due to how many times they have regrown and repaired themselves, the scales from a dragon's molt are considered to be some of the rarest and toughest materials in the world.
Ddraig explained all this to his partner. Suffice to say, Issei couldn't be any happier.
Considering Ryuujin's power level, his molted scales would make excellent material for weapons and armors. With all the stuff he had found, Issei estimated that he could probably create a Heaven-ranked artifact, maybe even Saint-ranked, depending on the forging technique he used.
On top of his general cultivation techniques, Issei was also in the possession of several specialized auxiliary techniques. He had a forging technique that could transform rusted iron into precious steel. When applied to materials that weren't total junk, the effects were beyond compare.
Issei could not wait to start working on these scales.
After a short celebratory dance, he then shifted his attention over to the other thing from today's haul: the cerulean orb.
Honestly speaking, Issei had no clue what it was. It certainly did not look like any item that he had encountered before.
"Are you sure you don't know what this is?" Issei asked out loud. "It doesn't even look remotely familiar to you?"
"I told you I don't know," Ddraig answered. "Whatever it is, it's most likely related to Ryujin's myth and legend, and I'm not exactly an expert on that."
Issei hummed in thought for a moment before he suddenly fished out his smartphone.
"What are doing?" The old dragon questioned curiously.
"Looking it up." Issei bluntly stated.
"You can't just look up something like this—"
"Found it," Issei smirked as he flipped over the phone towards his gauntleted left arm. It was a Wikipedia page about Ryujin, the dragon who symbolized the power of the ocean. "From what it says here, this thing's probably a tide jewel."
"How do you know it's accurate?" Ddraig questioned, a bit nonplussed about Issei using the power of the internet to fix their problems for them. He couldn't help it. It just felt so… unnatural!
"I don't," Issei freely admitted, "but at least it will point us in the right direction. Now, according to this article, tide jewels come in pairs. There's the Kanju, or the tide-ebbing jewel, and the Manju, or the tide-flowing jewel. Their powers were kind of self-explanatory: one can push back waves, while the other can summon them.
"And you think this orb is one of them?"
"It could be." Issei shrugged his shoulders
"Then, what jewel type do you think it is?"
"I don't know." Issei paused for a moment. "But we can certainly find out."
Before anyone sensible could stop him, Issei funneled a trace of his True Qi into the orb.
Almost immediately, the jewel flashed a dull blue. A moment later, Issei felt this strange sensation in the back of his head. It begged and pawed for attention, much like a needy child or a puppy. Following his instincts, Issei tugged on the sensation.
The water surrounding the beach suddenly receded. Issei let out an appreciative hum. He noticed the range of the jewel was somewhere close to five hundred meters. Not bad, considering the amount of Qi he had injected into the orb was minuscule by comparison.
With a thought, he abruptly disconnected his Qi.
The waves quickly came crashing back down onto the beach.
"Well, there's your answer," Issei stated. "It's clearly a tide-ebbing jewel."
"Lucky guess." The old dragon grumbled.
The transmigrator merely chuckled. "This jewel is certainly a lucky find, but... it honestly doesn't seem all that useful to us."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, unless you want to flood a village, pulling back waves like that has next to zero combat application. It's too slow and noticeable. If I want to truly control the waves, then I'd need to collect the other tidal jewel, which sounds like a completely different hassle that I don't really want to get into right now. Lastly, there aren't even any large bodies of water around Kuoh. This thing is practically useless to me."
If Issei was being brutally honest, everything that this jewel could do, a cultivation technique could do better.
"Now that you've said it, it does sound pretty pointless." Ddraig conceded to his point. "What are you gong to do with it? Throw it back in the ocean?"
"Maybe, but I don't really want to just throw it away, you know? I mean, I spent so much effort trying to find it. I don't want all that effort to go to waste."
"Well, you can think about it later. Partner, it's about time for your breakthrough."
Issei nodded his head. The sun was starting to lower. It was now or never.
He hurriedly put on his clothes (sans the wet underwear), grabbed his loot, and sprinted towards his predetermined breakthrough site.
It was now or never. Issei had a tribulation to conquer.
It was now or never. Issei had a tribulation to conquer.
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Maou09
Maou09 These past few chapters have been a bit of a slog to get through. The pace of the story should pick up after Issei's breakthrough. I've got some good shit planned out.
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