Unfortunately for them, the Blacksilver Knights weren’t drastically affected by the fire from the Shard Rifles. The crystals punched holes right through their bodies, but without any vital organs to worry about or blood to spill, they continued forward. They were only temporarily slowed down when their joints were struck or their body was hit in the same spot multiple times when it was enough to ruin their ‘muscle’ function. One of the Blacksilver Pawns grabbed a shield and pulled it down, just as it was taking a huge bayonet blade through the eye. The Scyzur squealed with fear when the Blacksilver Pawn just reached up and grabbed the Shard Rifle, keeping it locked in its face while it tackled the ratman and knocked him out.

The other armored rats started to fire while retreating, but then their line suddenly parted and there was a terrifying boom. Three of the Blacksilver Pawns were blasted apart by an immense force. The building itself shook and the wall smashed apart, dust filled the air, a cloud of debris kicked up by the vicious blast. When it finally cleared, three of the floors had been smashed apart, a huge hole created in the wake of the attack. More impressively, another five floors had smaller and smaller holes through them. From the relative safety of the inside of a Chameleon Mantis, Sage identified the source of the attack.

Just as he’d seen in battle with them before, they had a giant cockroach with a huge cannon upon its back. The other nine Blacksilver Pawns sprung into furious action, grouping up into trios and rushing towards the armored Scyzur. They took a lot more hits, but they also started knocking them out much faster. The giant cockroach fired a second time and blasted away another three of the Pawns, giving the nearby Scyzur a few new wounds in the process. When it was preparing for a third shot, a human suddenly appeared next to the cannon’s operators and they stopped moving for a moment before disappearing into thin air.

The last of the Scyzur were a group of women and children, but Sage subdued them quite quickly. Best not to let all those ratmen be without their families, right? Once he was finished with the battle he turned the place upside down. He used his Spiritual Sense to search for valuables and then collected them with the Blacksilver Pawns. To his pleasure, there was quite a large stockpile of Astral Silver as well as Indigo Quartz and Lunarstone. Needless to say they had a huge number of Shard Rifles as well as ammunition for them.

He didn’t find any clues as to the source of all these objects, but that wasn’t a problem as he simply used the Heart’s Tongue to question the Scyzur. His interrogations led him to a half dozen deposits of the three useful materials. While the Chameleon Mantis moved to the next location he was busy studying Ego Forge and slowly unlocking its secrets. The symbols were extremely delicate and intricate. Spirit Power had to be operated in a very specific manner, using the symbol as a blueprint. Once he copied the symbol perfectly, then his Spirit Power would be powering a psychic ability.

Just as before, he had to take out a few guard detachments of the Scyzur at each of the resource sites, but he was rewarded with many tons of material. He didn’t have an immediate use for such large quantities, but in two years when he left it was unlikely he could ever return. As such, he wanted to build up as large of a stockpile as possible. With that thought in mind, he turned his attention upon the huge bodies of purple water and the bluish vegetation around them.

Very carefully, he brought a small portion of the yellow sand on the ground into the Universe Ring. He wanted to remove it from the current environment of the ‘Hidden Domain’ and see if it was still dangerous. After some careful testing it seemed to be quite harmless. He repeated the tests with a portion of the purple water and the blue plant life. The water turned out to be safe as well, but as he’d once thought the blue plants were dangerous. With a few more days of research he learned that the purple water could absorb the toxins and energy from the Hidden Domain’s atmosphere and the blue plants retained that energy when they drank up the purple water. Then the plants kept a portion of the toxins while releasing the rest in a more dangerous form.

He’d guessed the water or plants were dangerous since when he first arrived here he had only been overwhelmed when he moved closer to the plants on the shoreline and the wind shifted towards his direction. Now that he knew a little more, he took his experiments to the next level. He started to subject the plant life to a battery of tests. Before he went to the trouble of trying to grow some of his own, he wanted to see if they were useful to him. If they weren’t that important then he would simply ignore them, but if they were valuable then even if he couldn’t cultivate more of them, he could collect them all before he left.

Of course, he was no fool so he consulted the Flares, Scyzur, Guan Zhenyan, and Tao Ba before putting in too much effort. If they recognized the plants it would be better to save himself the trouble of exhaustive testing.

His choice was correct. The Flares had learned of a method to process the local vegetation after watching the Scyzur using it. They ground them up into a paste using a mortar and pestle made out of Astral Silver. Then they mixed it together with the local yellow sand and let it dry out in the sun. As it dried the sand and paste formed clumps and the resulting mixture could be sifted. The clumps ended up with the consistency of a dough ball and could actually be cooked in a similar fashion to a dough. It could be baked into bread, fried till it browned, or even flattened out and cooked on a griddle.

The Scyzur repeated the same method, but from them Sage learned that the sand sifted out from the mix with plant matter should be reused. Amazingly, after being used in this process the sand should be stored near an Astral Realm Fragment and it would slowly grow into Lunarstone crystals. This was quite interesting, since it meant that Shard Rifles had a renewable form of power.

Tao Ba merely confirmed what Guan Zhenyan said, which was also somewhat interesting. He didn’t know any specific names for the odd blue vegetation, but he said that it was most definitely a byproduct of the Astral Realm influencing the local plantlife. Sage also learned the most important point. When an Astral Realm Fragment left this world, it would also lose the power to create the strange atmosphere and interact with the sand and plants as it did here. So, in this world they would be a source of infinite Psionic Crystals and Lunarstone, but when he went back home they would lose that connection to the Astral Realm that gave them such great power. On the plus side, they also told Sage that they weren’t all that useful on their own unless he had a way to absorb the energy of the Astral Realm.

If Sage had such a method, then he would just use it with the Astral Realm Fragments and gain access to many times more energy than the plants contained. At least now I don’t need to figure out how to make this stuff survive on the Inner World.

He was a little sad not to have gained a new and important resource, but he was also happy not to have to solve the complicated problem of incorporating it into his Inner World. He had no idea if any of his Heavenly Materials would be able to replicate the energy of this planet and he was glad not to have to worry about it any longer. The plants and water of this place were somewhat interesting, but not all that valuable to him. With this information confirmed, he could now focus his efforts on harvesting the four useful resources from this planet without any other distractions.