Chapter 355: Baoqui (1/2)

“Young lord… The Tir’Emarel clan would be happy to buy any such crystals you have in your possession,” Tylia said, her eyes not leaving the crystal for a second.

Zac knew he had hit the jackpot when he saw Tylia's reaction. She wasn't even a Beast Master, yet she had such an overblown reaction.

“Those are pretty good things,” Ogras said with a whistle. “Just the normal purity ones are even more valuable than attuned crystals, the high purity ones are treasures.”

“What are they good for?” Zac asked, though he had a pretty good idea already.

“Beasts can’t use Nexus Crystals for leveling for some reason. They can stay in a mine and benefit from the increased density of energies, but they can’t directly absorb the energy from the crystals themselves,” Ogras said. “But they can directly benefit from beast crystals.”

“But I can’t sense any energy in these things?” Zac interjected.

“I don’t really know how it works, but the beasts eat these things like food and slowly digest them. It helps them gain levels while also purifying their bloodline to a certain degree,” the demon continued.

“High purity crystals even helps with the foundations of creating a Beast Crystal in the future,” Tylia added from the side. “Feeding your contracted beast crystals will essentially help it grow faster, and you can still give it other treasures to help it improve. The two don’t clash. Buying beast crystals is a major cost for most Classes working with beasts.”

“So are they rare?” Zac asked.

“Not exceedingly rare, but far more uncommon than normal Nexus Crystals,” Tylia said. “I’d say the crystal in your hand is worth around a million Nexus Coins. Lower purity Crystals are not worth as much though.”

Zac whistled in surprise, knowing that there were almost two hundred such crystals in his cosmos sack. Better yet, there were thousands upon thousands of crystals left in the mine. Even if the worse crystals weren’t worth as much he was sure the value of the mine was multiple billions. It was a true treasure trove.

The Crystals would also come in handy in case his experiment with the newborn Ayr Hivequeen worked out. The former Pet Shop Employee had already gotten a beast-related class, but she hadn’t been able to form a connection with the queen yet. But with the help of the experts among the Tal-Eladar he was sure he’d be able to groom even more beast masters over the coming years. Perhaps he could trade some crystals for knowledge in beast rearing.

Of course, the real price form that cave was likely the [Primordial Breath Amanita], but Zac wasn’t sure if discussing it with a Tal-Eladar was the best idea. He’d wait until he was alone with Calrin or Khar, the golem in charge of the Merit Exchange back in Port Atwood.

Tylia kept trying to find out where Zac got his hands on the crystals or at least buy them from him, but he ignored her attempts as he focused on recuperation. He was still far from fully restored, with multiple bones broken in his body.

Luckily the flying disk was essentially on autopilot after activating it. A connection had formed in his mind, and he didn’t need to keep his hand on the control array. It zapped through the air with great speed, flying at an altitude of a few hundred meters.

Ogras was even worse off than Zac, so the demon had closed his eyes in meditation as soon as he had explained the situation to the others. He had looked mostly fine since returning from the Technocrat Incursion, but Zac had noticed the small tremors in his hands signaling that he was in great pain.

The others simply spent most of their time cultivating. Kenzie switched between cultivating and reading the crystals on formations. She had already finished the first crystal, but after that her progress had slowed to a crawl. This was nothing odd of course. The 8 crystals held the condensed knowledge on the art of Arrays from a D-Grade sect. It wasn’t something that could be digested in a day or two.

Zac wanted to go through the various things he had looted from the Technocrat Incursion together with his sister, but he knew that now was not the time. Not even Ogras was completely clued in to the details of their relationship with the Technocrats, so he could only wait until they were alone.

The days passed in silence as they crossed the vast lands of Pangea. The cost of travel would ruin the average cultivator on Earth, but the expense wasn’t even noticeable for Zac. Since he couldn’t cultivate he instead spent most of his time pondering the Dao. He had been in multiple intense fights lately, and he felt close to improving multiple Daos.

He had gained multiple sources of insight to the Seed of Rot recently, and he felt that he might even push that Dao to the Peak soon enough. The biggest contributor was the skill he gained, but there was also the battle with the roach. Even the final axe from [Deforestation] felt slightly related to his Dao of Rot, though that axe seemed to be based on some higher Dao.

But as four days passed he unfortunately didn’t manage to push any of his remaining Daos to the Peak. He did, however, feel that he made decent progress, and if he just got the opportunity to sit down and meditate in peace for a month or two he’d be able to evolve at least one of them. Of course, getting the chance to sit back and meditate with the current chaos was a distant dream.

The silent cultivation ended as the disk was starting to close in on Baoqui. Everyone looked back and forth across the horizon, hoping to find a glimpse of their people. But even if they were hundreds of meters in the air they could only see so far. They would likely only be able to spot the people if they were a few hours away at the most.

The environment around them was still barren though, with neither their own people or the undead in sight. They had spotted quite a few beasts during the past days though. They were even attacked a few times by flocks of supersized birds, but the disk possessed arrays that rebuffed them without a problem.

The fact that there was nothing to see was both good and bad. Good in the sense that there were no undead forces that had reached all this way so far. Bad in the sense that it started to become increasingly clear that Port Atwood’s army hadn’t gone in their direction after reaching Baoqui.