Chapter 492: Heartbeat (1/2)

Zac wasn't sure. Was he willing to bet his and Kenzie's lives on his mother being a friend who wanted the best for them, or should he start looking for ways to actively hide from her just like he was planning to do with the Great Redeemer? Perhaps the two plans could be fused, making sure neither party could find their way to Earth.

The more Zac thought about it, the better the idea seemed. He would try to stop Leandra from finding them, at least until they could protect themselves from whatever she had planned. One piece of good news in that regard was that she was wounded just thirty years ago or so. It might seem like a lifetime to him, but it was just the length of a single round of meditation for high-grade powerhouses.

Getting wounded enough to lose your memories at that level must mean that her enemies, possibly the rulers of Firmament's Edge, were extremely powerful, and healing from such a battle could take centuries. It was just like the Great Redeemer and his nasty scar that radiated terrifying energies. He would probably carry that wound for centuries before he could completely heal.

Leandra might be unable to come back for the time being due to being forced to focus on recuperating. She had been awoken ahead of time, and perhaps there were repercussions for that. The longer he had to prepare, the better he could hide himself and his sister. He would begin with the lantern, but he had a feeling that a Technocrat's tracking wouldn't be based on something like Karmic Threads.

Perhaps there were anti-technocrat arrays that would stop her from finding Jeeves. The orthodox forces had been fighting the Technocrats for millions of years, there should be all kinds of solutions in circulation.

Zac stood up with a grunt and walked out of his courtyard to let his sister know he was fine, but he was surprised to find a drone hovering just a few meters outside. He knew it must have been Kenzie who put it there, and she came running a few seconds later as expected.

“You did it,” Kenzie said with a wide grin, and Zac nodded with a smile, inwardly thankful he had erected his obscuring arrays around his courtyard before he evolved.

Zac knew that he would have to tell her about his visions sooner or later, but now was not the time. However, he couldn’t help but feel a foreboding as he saw the undeniable similarities between Kenzie’s and Leandra’s features.

His mother’s appearance had always been a bit blurry in his mind, but it was refreshed upon seeing her twice in short order. And Kenzie really took after Leandra, no matter if you spoke of the slightly curled hair or their hazel eyes. Her appearance was a stark reminder that Leandra might come to collect at any moment, and it reignited his desire to become stronger.

And the first step toward that end was to open his first Hidden Node.

“I’m fine,” Zac said as he looked around. “I passed the tribulation without any issue. I just wanted to tell you that before I headed inside again.”

“What’s going on?” Kenzie asked. “Do you need to undergo the tribulation twice because of your two races?”

“No, I actually got two tribulations, but they descended at the same time, so it’s dealt with. I have gathered a few things I can finally use now that I’m E-Grade,” Zac explained. “I can use a few of them while heading toward the Dead Zone, but some need to be taken while in seclusion. I’ll be away for a few more hours.”

“Is it dangerous?” Kenzie asked with some worry. “You just passed the tribulations. Don’t you need to stabilize your foundation or something?”

“It should be fine,” Zac said, though he honestly had no idea.

Yrial didn’t explain exactly what would happen when he used the [Eye of Har’Theriam], apart from that it would break open a Hidden Node. If you were lucky and knew to listen well it could also expose more of the Hidden Nodes spread through your body, but only the one node was essentially guaranteed.

However, the Lord of Cycles never divulged if there were any dangers to absorbing the treasure. Taking normal pills to gain a level wasn’t dangerous from what he had gathered though. It mimicked the method used when cultivating, but it sped up the process drastically. It would hurt a bit, but you wouldn’t cripple yourself from opening a node this way.

It was nothing like forcing them open by cramming the nodes full of cosmic Energy.

But opening a Hidden Node was his best shot at getting a direct power spike before setting out to the Dead Zone. He would be able to force a few nodes open as well while traveling, but he had no idea what to do about the skill quests for the time being. He didn’t have any Dao Treasures either, at least not that he was aware.

So the Hidden Node had the highest priority.

“Alright, I’ll keep helping old man Gemidir with the Array,” Kenzie said. “Be careful.”

“Don’t let that old thief scam you,” Zac smiled before he returned to the courtyard.

Zac erected the restrictive arrays once more, and he sat down as he took out the box he bought during the trial, the container that held the [Eye of Har’Theriam]. It was the most valuable item available in the inheritance, except for Yrial’s lock of hair, that is.

He gingerly took it out, and the whole courtyard was suddenly drowned in cascading waves of energy. The fluctuations were extremely exotic as well. They neither felt like Attuned Energies or Dao Energy, but rather something he had never encountered before. Of course, it could simply be a higher-tiered attunement that he was too stupid to recognize.

The so-called [Eye of Har'Theriam] didn’t really look like the eye of a beast, which wasn’t a surprise since it actually wasn’t one. The Pathfinder Eye he recently expended to create [Love’s Bond] was actually part of a slain beast, but this thing was something else entirely. It was rather a natural treasure, a convergence of specific energies that had been given physical form.

It was an object created by chance from some unknown event in a dead universe, something that had proven extremely hard or even impossible to reproduce. It meant that the supply was extremely limited, and not something that normally would appear in the hands of someone like him. The name came from the fact that the crystalline clump had a discoloration in the middle that somewhat looked like an eye.

Zac didn’t eat the treasure, but he rather took off his robe to leave his chest bare before he pushed the item against his navel. Next, he simply started infusing the thing with Cosmic Energy. The small rock was like a bottomless abyss, swallowing everything Zac threw at it. But it was finally satiated after Zac had spent more than half of his reserves, and treasure started to sink into his body.