Reaching the colosseum, Shane entered the elevator which brought him to the basement where the Dimension-spheres were situated.

Showing his identity to the Guardian who was the same Shane had met when he had entered the Dimension-sphere for the first time, he was let through.

After he entered the Dimension-sphere that had been reserved for him, he saw himself once again in the familiar white room that had no furniture.

Only a holographic screen with several dozen skills and techniques popped up in front of him and Shane didn't waste any time to select the [Tier-1 (Bronze)] Concealment skill.

Instead of learning the concealment technique, he thought that the skill would be a better choice to prevent being pressured to do too many things during a fight.

This would inevitably decrease his combat prowess drastically.

As such, Shane chose the concealment skill with which he wouldn't have to think about anything except 'activating' or 'deactivating' the skill.

Its mana consumption was more than thrice the concealment technique, but the benefits outweighed the high mana consumption.

However, Shane had more than enough mana within him, which was due to the Hidden Paradise within him.

More than five hours had passed and not much had changed.

Shane was still reading through the manual that had manifested in front of him and he was trying to experiment with several things he read.

"I think I got it!" He mumbled as he retraced his mana fluctuations, not allowing a single one to escape his grasp as he forced them to stay inside his mana pool.

This was extremely crude but definitely not the wrong way to conceal his mana fluctuations. It might have been a little bit different from what he had read but Shane could tell that he was on the right path.

Releasing and retracing his mana fluctuations, his crude attempts to store every single mana fluctuation inside his mana pool became better at a visible pace.

It only took four more hours before Shane was almost proficient in smoothly releasing and retracing his mana fluctuations without any issues. This caused him to wonder if he even needed the skill if he could conceal his mana pool easily without much effort.

Nevertheless, he was able to learn the [Tier-1 (Bronze)] concealment skill shortly before the 10 hours he had within the Dimension-sphere.

This allowed him to test how efficient the concealment skill was in comparison to the concealment he was doing right now.

He activated and deactivated the skill several times in succession and couldn't help but think that his earlier question had been extremely stupid.

'And I wondered if I needed the concealment technique...YES, I do!!' Cursing himself in his mind, Shane was glad that he continued to give his best in learning the concealment skill even after he had this stupid thought which almost convinced him to stop practicing the skill.

After the 10 hours within the Dimension-sphere elapsed, he left the basement after bidding farewell to the guardian.

Meanwhile, he continued to experiment with his newly attained skill, testing if he would be able to use mana while his mana fluctuations had been concealed and to what extent he was restricted.

According to the understanding he acquired after practicing with the concealment skill for around 10 minutes, Shane could tell that he was unable to release mana outside his body, while it was still possible to use mana inside it.

The usage was restricted and only a small margin of mana was able to circulate through his mana veins in the meantime, but it was better than nothing.

'Maybe a higher quality of the concealment skill would allow me to circulate more mana through my mana veins?' Shane began to wonder, but it was not really important for him.

Now that he had attained the concealment skill his preparations were concluded.

With a double layer in his mana concealment due to the skill and a potion, Shane was confident that the Lesser Starlet Fox wouldn't notice him as long as he operated in stealth.

He walked outside the colosseum again and noticed that it was early in the morning. Nevertheless, he wrote a message to Talia whose contact he had received earlier, saying that she should message him once she and her friends had reached a common consensus.

Shane also added that they could make requests to him if the amount of coins was not enough. Talia convinced him that it was a bad idea to tell anyone that he wanted to invite them to his faction or that he would support them 'to his best capabilities'.

Because that was not how a leader and a businessman should act. Thus, Shane decided to give everyone 500 gold coins a month as long as they worked hard and were loyal to him.

This salary would increase once he had enough money, or ascended into the Intermediate dimension, but once it was time for this, he would have to create a proper list to decide whom he should give more or fewer gold coins to!

Now that he had a little bit of time for himself without being stressed about anything because he had to wait for Talia's message, he approached the Portal hall where he stepped through the Dimension Portal.

Emerging within the Giant Fluare-plains he accelerated his pace to leave the shelter and run further away before Umbra jumped out of the small portal he manifested next to himself.

After that, Shane got on Umbra's back before they distanced themselves further from the shelter in order to prevent attracting too much attention.

Once they were far enough, Umbra stopped and Shane, who had already fully unleashed Hidden Paradise's full mana absorption, stepped down from Umbra's head.

As he lay down on the grassfield that seemed to be alive, the gust of wind that blew through the plains refreshed him and he felt all the accumulated tension subside a little.

Umbra laid down his head next to Shane's body, enjoying the peace as Shane did when a sudden message washed away Shane's drowsiness.

'I'm not even allowed to take a nap?' He thought, annoyed to have his peaceful moment be interrupted. by this thought as he saw that the message he received came from the group chat with his uncles and aunts.

Kia sent a list with all kinds of herbs, plants, ores, and other materials they had stored, to sell them later with the number of items right next to each one.

This caused Shane, who was about to lament only a moment before, to exclaim

"Wow, that's…. A lot of stockpiled goods…."

He had already heard that mankind had stored lots of items to make huge profits and would open them to the market once they found a suitable trading partner.

Nevertheless, based on what he saw, mankind seemed to be better off than he initially expected.

'Is everything planned? If the Elus race needs only one or two of those items, we should be able to awaken Igra's mana heart! After that, we could sell the remaining items and advance almost everything about Igra!'

Not only would the funds be enough to research new technology, but Shane was also aware of the fact that they would finally be able to find out what kind of race inhabited the adjacent stellar system.

That is if the government was of the opinion that a better, mana empowered telescope would be necessary, which it was in Shane's opinion.

You should be aware of who your enemy was in order to prepare against possible attacks.

However, he was not really worried because his confidence in Aunt Kia's intelligence was enough to make him feel like everything would be good.

After the list was sent to Shane, he began to wonder if he should give this list to the Elus merchant.

But before he could even ask what he was supposed to do, Aunt Kia added the message

[These are the current goods and materials mankind has gathered! We will send an ambassador to the Elus race once Shane is ready to depart.]

'Huh? Should I play matchmaker or what?' He asked himself, thinking that he was funny.

Shane knew that he should create an opportunity for the human ambassador to meet someone of the Elus race who had enough permissions to form a treaty and trading agreement with them.

That was if both sides needed something from the other party, otherwise, it would be useless to form a trading agreement.

With that in mind, Shane knew that he had no time to take a nap as he leaned against Umbra's body before writing to his assigned Elus merchant that he wanted to visit the Elus empire again and along with an official human ambassador.

After that, he remembered that he had to write a report about the Elus-races behavior which he quickly did, before sending it to Aunt Kia.

Once that was done, he also wrote that he would enter the Elus-race's basic dimension in order to finish his mission, today!

As such, the human ambassador would accompany Shane, who would then have to make a detour to the Elementals' origin planet in that case.

There was also the possibility that the ambassador would have to wait for several weeks before Shane caught the Lesser Starlet Fox, but he was sure that neither the ambassador nor anyone else would have enough patience left to wait for him.

In the end, more than two hours passed in which Shane, and Aunt Kia started to craft a strategy to help him be prepared for the journey and his mission considering the possible setbacks and obstacles.

His other aunts and uncles threw a few ideas inside the group chat once in a while, but the majority of text messages came from Shane and Kia.

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