Reaching the shore, I once again started walking towards the port city of Sans Reen. I arrived just in time to see a royal carriage leaving through the front gate and used the distraction to enter the city without waiting in line. A guard managed to see me and give chase but a quick disguise change once I was out of view ended his intervention, leaving him confused.

Aiming for the nearest high quality restaurant, I ordered some turtle soup and a glass of wine. Despite the fact it was ordered with the intent of warning my familiar the soup was incredibly tasty so I ordered a few more serves to store for later. Taking my time to enjoy my food I studied the environment. There was a dracon couple having lunch while staring lovingly ate each other and a group of old looking elves were having a party surrendered by young children. The entire place displayed no hint of disruption due to the recent war on the eastern side of the continent. It was like the bloodshed and hatred existed in another world.

Relaxing back into my chair I began to ponder the lack of entertainment on this orbiting rock. Apart from completing my objectives the only things I could do was eat, sleep and fuck. With even the most enjoyable one of those unavailable to me. The world had magic but they never elevated it's culture past the middle ages. A fun night out was going to a bar and listening to a bard, watching a play or visiting a circus. It was not just my motivation driving me forward but the lack of distraction that technology inevitably introduced that allowed me to reach my goals in a limited period of time.

Paying the waiter with a decent tip, I left the building wondering if half the reason I traveled with the princess was for some company. Sure I could not tell her everything but even what I could discuss made it feel like a real connection. Blaming my sombre mood on the alcohol I wandered towards an expensive inn deciding to end the day with a massage and slumber.

It was late at night when I awoke with stars shining through the glass window of my penthouse room. Setting up a gate ritual, I teleported into moon lit forest I could see in the distance. With my emotional event caused by my first real monster fight over I began to inspect my rewards. The corpse was huge and mainly intact with the exception of the mana cores and tail. Weighing about 300000 Kg the behemoth was unmovable after being extracted from storage.

I started disassembly with the shell because unlike a real turtle, this monsters armour was segmented with cartilage. Each individual plate was between two and six meters in diameter consisting of laminated slates covering a honeycomb core. It was easy to tell the creature would normally run force magic through the centre to reinforce their strength and without that boos it was nothing more that chitin. Heating revealed it would become brittle and rendered it useless for anything other than pre-made shields. Even magical inscriptions were ineffective as it seemed to have been naturally attuned to force magic at the expense of others.

Following the shell was the meat. With vast thick chords of muscle stretching in a weave pattern across its frame it was easy to see how its enormous strength was generated. Cooking a section in boiling water proved it to be horrible almost to the point of being inedible, obviously another predator deterrent. After the meat was the bones which unlike the shell had both a metallic and magical property. Acting as the primary conduit of it's mana they were infused with trace amounts of all the creatures elements and seamed to have been reinforced with metals the animal had consumed. These would make for a few great sets of armour.

Lastly was the organs which housed a few irregularities. The monster had three hearts the size of my head and it's womb housed an egg two meters tall. Seeing it had entered a sealed void, I knew the egg was not alive but much to my surprise it was not dead but in stasis. Scanning the egg with a healing spell I discovered it was just an embryo. What I did next might offend some people. I cracked open the top and added the three hearts before using a ritual to fuse them into a single life source. This dark often forbidden magic was a type of sacrificial healing killing one thing to save another, in this case I sacrificed everything to from the embryo into a core.

The creature never really had any chance at life with monsters of the lords size requiring years to gestate. Unless I could create an artificial womb to sustain it the child was going to die anyway. The end result was fusing three hearts which contained an unknown amount of power and the potential of the child into a single pulsating blob the size of my fist. Swallowing it was a hard task as it squirmed on the way down and tasted like a rotten egg mixed with chilli. The results were mixed as the title unlocked two affinities and a skill for the cost of a single heart but they were affinities I already had and the skill was karma kicking me in the nuts.

Some of you are wondering can get the same affinity more than once? Well the truth is yes. Not only is it possible but to make some of the higher grade elements it is a necessity. To gain them you normally have to do whatever was required to unlock them the first time again only with double restrictions. The worst part is copies would do jack shit when it came to boosting your strength, a mage with a single water affinity at 100 was just as powerful as one with 3 copies. In order to reach my ultimate end goal I would need over fifty affinities and some would need to be reacquired five times. Needless to say it's still a work in progress.

Turning back to my predicament I had gained healing and water along with the 'Second Mind' skill. Normally this skill would split you mind into two sections allowing you to literally do two things at once but mine was a mutated bastardisation implanting the unborn child’s mind. With time I could teach it and given its ability to view my central memorise it would grow quickly but I never wanted to add a third person to my body, two was enough.

There were several methods to destroy a skill but why break what you can abuse. Stashing the disassembled corpse back into my storage I headed north east completely ignoring my space gate. My goal was the water spirit kingdoms mythril reserves. The plan was stupid and I was attempting to create something that should be left for a higher layers but beggars can't be choosers.

The storage location of most of the planets mithril was only a short two hour flight from the port given it was a traded commodity. Standing tall in the centre of a vast forest was a tower enchanted with so much magic it appeared like a second sun to my mana detection. Guarded better than the princesses castle due to being smaller, this was a literal impenetrable fort. Fortunately for me I only needed to steal shit not break in.

using the tardigrade to enter through the air ducting set off numerous alarms and released poison and fire. They believed the small bug their scans had detected to be dead but the tough little bastard just ignored it all. Using my farmiliar as a focus I applied earth magic to drill a small hole from the vent into the store room and slowly replaced the mythril with Iron through space magic. This mind and soul based spell ritual was unknown to the lower layers and attempting this kind of thing was akin to suicide on the higher layers. Since it left my body completely undefended, killing the familiar would kill us both and a simple soul purge spell would shatter the connection leaving us both in a vegetative state for several hours.

The escape was the same but in reverse and resulted in the removal of a third of the countries entire wealth. Dashing through the forest to be as far away as possible when the shit hit the fan, I used all the tricks in the book. Eventually, I reached a point where my gate was contactable and consumed the mana contained in a large mana crystal to appear beck in my room as dawn broke through the window. Wandering down to the ground floor I ordered breakfast and began to read the local paper, playing the role of a normal traveller. Enjoying the bacon and eggs, I almost choked when a tiny voice whispered into my mind “papa”