Sage was surprised at how violent and brutal these two groups were with each other. He was no stranger to the visceral, but he was more used to it when it came to fighting with Demonic Beasts or when fighting for his life. Neither of these groups seemed pinned down or trapped. It was possible he missed that part of the conflict and one group or the other was backed into his position. Maybe the knights were too slow to escape? He wasn’t sure, but it seemed less like a battle over resources or a fight for survival. These two groups just seemed intent on killing each other.

Watching the fight so far, Sage didn’t think he’d been discovered so far, but even if he had he wasn’t worried about taking them on. Both groups were filled with those at the peak of the fifth rank, so he could likely fight a large number of them by himself, let alone all the backup he carried with him everywhere. He stayed to watch the battle merely to get a better handle on the strange means of these different types of people. Miraculously, the battle came to an end with neither side the victor. When half of the fighters on each side were grievously injured they stopped fighting. Somehow they had kept a somewhat even level of combat power throughout and decided that continuing the battle would end up without profit.

These guys are way too intense. If they were so evenly matched why wouldn’t they quit earlier?

They must have been gambling with each other, trying riskier and riskier moves to try and earn an advantage. When they realized they couldn’t get an edge, they both gave up. So many of them were bleeding, limbs were missing, and both sides seemed on the verge of losing someone. Remarkably, none of them seemed to die before they fled. Considering that Alchemical Pills were able to heal all these injuries, there was no telling what sort of other miracle cures existed in the Depths. Sage had gathered basic information, and he looked in the other sorts of shops in the Depths, but he had no idea what the majority of things on sale were or how to use them. He did see a few things that seemed straight out of a video game, like red health and blue mana potions, but he wasn’t sure if it was a joke or not.

He stayed in his position until the two groups left the area, only then did he continue his hunt searching through the huge coral mountain for new exotic and unusual sea creatures.

A few weeks later.

Sage was standing in front of a huge snail shell the size of a two story building. The opening was a large archway fitted with a set of wooden doors. Above these doors, a few large characters were fitted to the snail shell and just beneath them were smaller rows of different letters and symbols. The huge characters read: Prosperity Company. The smaller symbols and letters were a translation of the name into the most common languages that were present in the Coral Shallows. He admired the sign outside for a moment before stepping up and opening the door. He walked into a waiting area that had a counter in front and large posters on the side walls. To either side of the counter were padded ropes which could be unhooked to allow someone to pass. Beyond this counter was another counter and two large staircases.

The first counter was set up more like a booth without walls, two long tables with an area between them for workers and with swinging half doors on either side. Over this little booth was a sign hanging from the ceiling with names and times. Past this ticket booth area, the other counter had some strange contraptions for those in this world, but they were merely devices Sage created for cooking and cooling. The stairs on the left had signs for heading up, while those on the right were for coming down. On the second floor there were two rooms filled with many rows of seats and a single large screen.

Sage couldn’t stop himself from dabbling his hand in business once again. He was annoyed at the simplicity of the local information sources, so he took matters into his own hands. Stone Tablets weren’t very expensive, but he was too used to Memory Spheres. Why just read some text and images when he could experience full memories? While compiling proper Memory Spheres to categorize the local sea life he had to hire a bunch of others to gather their memories together. In the process he impressed many of the other types of cultivators with his Memory Spheres. It seems that it was not something popular in the place that many of these peoples came from.

With the support of the Inner World and this encouragement he went a little overboard. He brought out workers from the Prosperity Company on the Inner World and had some of the skilled business managers come out to organize and operate this location. After so many thousands of years this was already a very mature business on the Inner World: a Movie Theater. While his initiatives to improve living conditions in Lionheart Town and the rest of the world were derailed by the attempts upon his life, things had progressed far further on the Inner World. Not only were movie theaters commonplace there was a huge and thriving production business with a rich film industry. Considering that he wasn’t going to stick around this place forever, he couldn’t really keep supplying them with new films from the Inner World. On the other hand, just having hundreds of the greatest hits was probably more than enough for them to build a big business around. All the posters on the wall in the entrance area were the promotional materials from the Inner World for the most popular movies.

Since this place was originally built in order to sell encyclopedia type Memory Spheres there were some craftsmen brought out from the Inner World that could create new Memory Spheres. They would be making the encyclopedias, but they weren’t offering any copies of the films or else they’d be cutting into their repeat customer market. If they were popular enough then the branch here could just expand into more locations. There was also the chance that it grew popular enough that the other types of ‘cultivator’ here would want to bring them back to their hometowns. Among the employees there were some members of the Lang Clan’s spy branch and they would be able to use it as an opportunity to gather information. There was no telling whether or not this would happen, but it was better to be prepared just in case. They would also be useful to have around just to pick up information from the people waiting in line or possibly conducting clandestine meetings in the theater. If the place was unpopular then it would be a decent place to have secret meetings.

They would also continue to bring people in to collect more of their memories about different sea life for their Memory Sphere encyclopedia. At the same time they would also be able to get snippets of those people’s fighting techniques when they were up against those beasts. They wouldn’t be able to steal any techniques without any instruction, but they could analyze their capabilities. Sage hoped to build a different sort of encyclopedia for the Lang Clan to know about all the methods of these other strange groups. He would mainly have to use his own experiences with them, but he hoped the snippets from this theater’s business would be a good supplement.