Chapter 274: Final Tally (1/2)

The more he thought about it the likelier it almost felt to Zac. He might not have an AI that guided him in his cultivation, but there had been several instances where he was fine when he should have died by all accounts.

The most notable instances were the time he jumped into the pond of cosmic water and came out unscathed with an improved race afterward. Next, there was the incident where he killed almost a hundred thousand zombies and absorbed a huge amount of miasma.

That incident should have killed him by all accounts, but instead he emerged with the duplicity core. There were also various times that almost anyone should have died, but he just passed out due to excessive wounds and woke up a bit later. He was like an unkillable tank, even though it was only just recently his Endurance started to become monstrous.

Had his mother somehow fiddled with his constitution to make his body able to endure when it would normally fail?

Zac quickly shook his head and closed the journal. There was no way for him to find out unless he met his mother again. But at least he knew the root of his undead race, and it seemed he was mostly in the clear. There was some elder brother to Mahl who also knew of the Draugr-issue, but there shouldn’t be much he could do.

If he was the patriarch of his clan he should be far stronger compared to the Corpse Lord he fought and unable to come here in person. Perhaps he would order some people to find him since Zac killed his brother, but he shouldn’t know anything about him becoming a Draugr.

Mahl himself had thought Zac dead until the moment they ran into each other, and just a minute later he was dead. There shouldn’t be any loose ends, and if he ever ran into Draugr in the future he could just feign ignorance and say he grew up on an unintegrated world or something.

There was the issue of the missing samples though. According to the notes there should be hundreds of samples remaining, but he couldn’t find anything of the sort in the Corpse Lord’s cosmos sack. Perhaps he had kept it hidden at a separate spot, which might spell problem. When he assaulted the Undead Incursion he would have to look for them so that there were no loose ends.

The note left from the big brother also made a poignant point about karmic threads. It truly seemed that one needed to be careful when traversing the multi-verse. One couldn’t take for granted their actions would go unpunished when doing misdeeds.

“Gemidir,” Zac suddenly said as he looked up, drawing the attention of the old Sky Gnome.

“Yes?” he asked when he walked over.

“When you stole things in your youth, weren’t you worried about getting tracked down by karmic threads?” Zac asked.

“Stole? This old man remembers no such things,” Gemidir started, but changed his tune when Zac’s eyes thinned. “Taking treasure I as much knowing which target to hit as taking the right valuables. Find someone who won’t be able to find you. Or just steal things that aren’t valuable enough for them to expend enough resources to track you down.”

“But karma is truly a bane for most thieves, which why the higher-tiered ones all try to find ways to obscure the heavens and hide from the karmic eyes,” Gemidier added.

Zac’s eyes lit up since it felt like he had found another direction that was worth following up on. If they could somehow block the Karmic Link between the Dominators and The Great Redeemer they might even be able to protect their planet even without fighting those monsters.

And a quick discussion with the Sky Gnomes proved that it was actually possible. However, he was dismayed to find that arrays that could block out karmic links were prohibitively expensive, and D-Graded arrays at the lowest.

Zac could neither afford them or even set them up even if he had the money. An adept array master, preferably one with insights into Karma, would be needed to make the array worked. That was why Calrin didn’t even mention the possibility during the meeting.

There were also treasures that had similar effects, though they only worked on individuals, and not a whole planet like they needed. So it seemed to Zac that he would have to stick with the current plan, at least for the moment.

Since he was done looking through the Corpse Lord’s belongings he returned to Kenzie’s side to find the Sky Gnomes all work with sullen expressions.

“What’s going on?” Zac asked with confusion.

“Your little sister must have been an Imperial Adjudicator in a past life,” the old sky gnome said with a hurt look at Kenzie, who only sweetly smiled back at him. “She must have eyes in the back of her head.”

“Turns out I’m pretty good at figuring out when they try to sneak some valuables for themselves,” Kenzie explained with a smile.

Zac was confused for a second before he realized that her AI might be able to help her out in more ways than one.

“Please help out with the rest as well,” Zac said with a smile.

“Fine, but I’m missing a lot of cultivation time. So I’ll take a few goodies for myself,” Kenzie said.

“No problem. Better yet, I’ll show you something good after we’re done,” Zac agreed.

It was time to take her to his cultivation cave. He needed to check up on his seed in any case. Either the seed should have germinated and stabilized by now, or it would have been absorbed by the pond. In either case, it shouldn’t hurt to allow Kenzie to cultivate there by now.