Chapter 464: An Old Friend (1/2)

“Worst dragon ever,” Zac muttered with disgust as he emerged from the dragon’s den.

He had expected to be met by a veritable sea of treasures upon entering the cave, but the only thing that had waited for him was an enormous mat and a small mountain of raw fire-attuned crystals. Certainly, the mat seemed to have been woven from extraordinary materials to create a soft and luxuriant feeling, but it was a far cry from the dragon’s hoard he had been expecting.

At least there was the actual carcass of the dragon itself. Such a beast was no doubt a living treasure, and he needed to harvest it before moving on. He had already given up on any hope of finding treasure on the 9th floor, so he needed to make the most of this beast.

However, Zac didn’t simply put the whole thing into a cosmos sack, but he rather chose to methodically harvest its body piece by piece. It would be a huge shame if the whole dragon turned to dust the moment he left the tower, and this way he would at least be able to guarantee that some parts would make it.

Zac tried to pry off as many scales as possible, along with its two massive horns. He also dug out what he believed to be a Beast Core from its head, though he was a bit surprised since those things usually only appeared after reaching D-Grade. The dragon was extremely powerful, but Zac truthfully suspected it was still in early E-Grade.

He had heard a bit about dragons from Galau. They were terrifying beasts and among the most naturally endowed creatures in the multiverse. They could grow impossibly large as well, making Zac believe he was only dealing with a youngling or a mixed-blood dragon.

Still, leaving anything behind would be a waste, so he even poured almost all his containers to fill them with dragon blood. Enough blood to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool entered his dozen or so canteens and the magical barrels of liquor he had bought.

He did feed a lot of it to [Verun’s Bite] as well, but not enough to accidentally cause another upgrade. It took hours, sometimes days, for [Verun’s Bite] to absorb treasures, and Zac was about to potentially face an army waiting outside the gates of the tower. The spirit tool was extremely interested in the beast core also, but it would have to wait.

It was a waste, but he could only pray that the Dragon Core would turn out to be real as he might need Verun’s special skills for the upcoming battle. He had somewhat counted on the bronze flash to act as an ace, but there was no way that the remnants were in the position to provide help anytime soon.

He had tried summoning a bronze flash over twenty times while carving up the beast, but nothing happened. The two Fragments entered his reworked fractals just fine, but when they met in the chest they just turned into an impure mix of the two fragments that soon dissipated, just like the failed attempts from before. Something had clearly changed, as he had almost 50% success rate before.

The transformation of the fractals on his shoulders might be causing problems, but he was pretty sure that wasn't it.

An hour had passed since he had woken up by now, and he started to see some patterns of how things might go from here on out. It quickly became clear that the remnants were really capable of some sort of self-restoration. Small motes of energies appeared from within their bodies, even though no Cosmic or Mental energy had entered the cage.

However, it had been a slow grind for a pitiful amount of energy.

Things only went even worse for the remnants from there as the new cage created some sort of suction just moments after the motes of energy formed. The energy was instantly ripped out the Shard and Splinter, leaving only a fraction behind. The rest was purified and funneled out into Zac’s body.

The purified energy from the Splinter made its way to his soul, as usual, subtly strengthening it. However, the energy from the Shard rather went into his body, where it seeped into his cells who greedily gobbled it up in an instant. Zac didn’t feel any difference in his body, but he guessed that it would slowly improve his constitution.

The amount that he got was far lower compared to before though, and he was not even receiving a tenth of the purified energies he got from the Splinter before he entered the tower. That was fine with Zac though, as the gifts from the remnants always came with deadly downsides.

Focusing on just himself for the time being felt a lot more pertinent. It seemed like he had touched upon some of the massive secrets of the multiverse, and he was slowly forming a few theories based on what Jaol had told him about the System and what the four-eyed alien said. But all those things were too grand, too complicated, and not something he wanted to get involved with.

He could mess with the broken peaks of the Boundless Path when he had reached A-Grade and was bored with life. Until then the Chaos Patterns and the skies full of lightning could stay as far away as possible as far as he was concerned. He wasn't even in a mood to start experimenting with the flashes again before he had got his Soul Strengthening Manual up and running.

Actually, it seemed that his mind was agreeing with his reluctance to get involved, as his memory Chaos Pattern he had just witnessed was growing foggier by the minute. He couldn't remember any details any longer, and he wouldn't be surprised if it would completely disappear from his memory in a day or two.

It was a pain to dismember the extremely sturdy dragon, and Zac was quickly running out of time. So he finally ran into the carcass and chopped its insides into massive slabs of meat and threw them into his Cosmos Sack. Finally he threw the mangled remains into the sack as well and called it a day.

There was one more thing Zac wanted to do before he left the floor though, and he took out an inscribed box containing an unknown fruit. It was one of the natural treasures he had found during the climb. He still had no idea what it did, but he figured that his body knew what it was doing as it urged him to eat it.

He was somewhat certain that the items he had pilfered during the Battle of Fates would stay, but the same couldn't be said about these things. He wanted to follow Galau's advice and rather eat them than have them turn back into the System's hands the moment he left.

It was only 30 minutes later that he snapped out of his state of vivid hallucinations and bouts of extreme gastrointestinal distress. His whole body was covered in a film of extremely foul-smelling oil, and he felt weak like he had been afflicted with food poisoning.

The natural treasure hadn't actually been toxic, but it rather looked like the treasure was the kind that helped expel impurities like pill toxicity. The problem was the way of expulsion. Some things needed to be processed into pills before eaten, and that scary fruit was probably one of them. He had less than 30 minutes remaining, but he still spent 10 of those vigorously scrubbing off the foul gunk. The smell was making him nauseated, which was saying something considering he could be covered in blood without noticing it nowadays.

Zac immediately discarded any thought of eating any more of the treasures as he stepped into the teleporter with a tired sigh.