He didn’t explain how he lured the Flare guards away, nor did they keep asking him. This single operation had earned ‘Acumen Asan’ a reputation for being mysterious. It took them a little less than an hour to skirt around a few more Flare patrols and link up with a sewer tunnel that led back to Hollow Phase. After entering the secret base they put their heads together and distributed the ‘spoils of war’. Sage and Spark were each given a Divine Amethyst from the others. They’d gathered enough for each of them to take one, while the two or three extra were going to be turned in to verify their find.

“So when do we go back?”

Sage hadn’t yet learned how these fellows ‘mined’ the Psionic Crystals, so he couldn’t hold back from asking. Some of them shook their heads while Aurora answered him, “We don’t. The contribution is being reported under our names, but we aren’t strong enough to harvest that mine. Our work is done, and we’ll get rewarded more for it later after they collect it and tabulate the gains.”

Sage almost blurted out a few questions, but then he just nodded his head. His face was calm and serene, as if the news didn’t bother him in the least. He put his hand to his shoulder, saluting the others, “It was a pleasure working with you all. If you need help in the future, let me know. For now, I need to rest.”

After he left, the others seemed surprised at how quickly their temporary teammate left. Others they’d worked with were impressed by their teamwork and wanted to stick around. Most people felt safety in numbers and wanted to be part of a larger team, and when they found a capable one they would be hard pressed to leave so easily. Aurora had a concerned look on her face, “It’s probably because he just lost his old team. Maybe we reminded him of the loss.”

Spring stared at Aurora, her admiration for her optimism apparent. Yet, she also didn’t agree, just shaking her head. Not only could she link with another’s aura to enhance them, she could also sense their emotions and she felt no such sadness or loss coming from Acumen. Even so, it didn’t matter to her, so she kept her mouth shut.

The door to a room slid shut.

Sage walked inside and stretched out. Then he changed his clothing without entering the Universe Ring, his Twin Soul quickly gave the room a double check for cameras, listening devices, or other methods of spying.Then he slipped into the bed and took out a Formation Plate. It was an extremely simple one, creating a human sized illusion, a magical decoy. He slotted in a few Spirit Stones, enough to last a week. Then he went into the Universe Ring to review his gains.

He’d carefully collected Flare corpses, but had only ended up with eight of them. They had been moving too fast or had been too close to collect any more as he didn’t wish for the Warp Worm to be discovered by the Flares or the Hexacrats. When he’d used it earlier to distract the Flares guarding the city it had almost been exposed by some fellow who was tearing up the ground like it was made out of playdoh. Too bad for him that the Warp Worm didn’t actually do any burrowing. It was more like it slightly warped space, and refined the materials that entered its mouth. After digging down a dozen or so feet the enemy was slowed down by having to move horizontally. Without any help to reinforce the tunnel, the guy had to just dig out a bigger and bigger hole, so once the Worm stopped purposely making a mess it slipped away quickly.

Inside the ring.

He looked over the bodies and carefully gave them a once over for anything useful. Unfortunately, the Flares didn’t seem equipped with anything interesting like the Hexacrats or Scyzur. Instead, they only carried personal items like lighters, knives, and snacks. Even the snacks were pretty lackluster, Sage only found things that looked like toothpaste tubes and drink boxes, both with weird straws. Ah, right. The gas masks. They can’t really eat anything normally if they’re wearing those things.

Putting that mystery aside, he was about to absorb the Psionic Crystal he got from the team, but then he stopped himself. He was supposed to turn over three quarters of what he collected inside the Hidden Domain to the Thundercloud Sect. Even if found a way to deal with the Memory Seed and hide his activities, he’d still need to turn something over to them. In the worst case scenario he’d need to make sure that he didn’t consume everything, or he’d be in big trouble afterwards. The bodies had been kept in stasis within the Universe Ring just a few minutes after their deaths, so their Spiritual Seas didn’t completely collapse yet. Sage quickly collected Psionic Crystals from the dried up lakes, wondering if the crystals would also be collected so simply from his own mind after his death. He certainly didn’t want to give the Thundercloud Sect a reason to try it out.

The first rate Provincial powers are still out of my league. If they’re anything like the Holy Flame Sect they have at least a half-dozen rank sixes.

Thinking of the enemies back home, Sage felt driven not to let this opportunity pass. After extracting the crystals from their minds, he still felt some energy coming from their bodies and he recalled how Tao Ba had processed the Fisher Punk. That’s right, I can use Blood Refining on these guys!

The more resistance he had against this foreign atmosphere, the less energy he’d have to spend manipulating the laws to fight against it. Wearing a gas mask seemed to help, but it was only a slight improvement. Without any hesitation he activated the Human Seal and returned to his true body. The huge cobra leaned over the bodies and opened its mouth. When he’d been reborn and had the mind of a monster, he’d used Blood Refining after eating other beasts and bugs. After regaining his intelligence, he was not eager to be eating the bodies of humans, even these odd ones from another world. He only needed their blood after all. A stream of red liquid swirled up into the air, like an inverse water hose, arcing upwards, and into the cobra’s mouth.

Each of the bodies required a few minutes for their blood to be collected, but took quite a bit longer for it to be refined. Sage felt his body getting stronger, transforming as it assimilated the properties of the natives of this world.

Thump!

What was that? That’s not how it felt before.

He quickly sent his consciousness into his body to try and identify the problem. Something felt very different than it did every other time he used Blood Refining. It was a technique to filter out only the most powerful parts of blood and then use it to transform his own blood and strengthen his body. It was like digging through a creature’s ancestry to pick out only the best specimens. Only, this time it didn’t seem to be working correctly. It felt like there was something crawling around underneath this skin.

This can’t be good.

That was when he realized the difference between this time and the last. The many orbs of floating essence suddenly came to mind, and Sage realized that this time Tao Ba hadn’t broken the body down into its constituent parts for him. In his haste to make progress he’d missed a detail.