Chapter 7154: Prospecting Other Dimensions

เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 มี.ค. 2569 17:22

Chapter 7154: Prospecting Other Dimensions Ves, Ketis and Gloriana toured the System Space. They browsed the various goods on offer that could make a difference in the upcoming leadership challenge. Given his modest budget, Ves mainly directed his attention towards pill, potions, elixirs and other consumables that could give him a temporary boost in strength. [Qi Restoration Potion] Price: 80 Ascension Points Ingesting this potion will quickly restore the qi energy state of a cultivator while also generating a temporary state of heightened focus. When the active effects have passed, weaker cultivators will crash and remain exhausted for several days. "I have tried one of these potions out in the past." He told the accompanying women. "It works as advertised. It is truly worth the AP if you use it when you are tired but still have to finish the fight. If it wasn’t so damn expensive, I would have felt tempted to purchase one right away." The Qi Restoration Potion did not interest Gloriana at all considering that she was a pure civilian, but Ketis might have a good use for it in the future. "80 AP is not a small sum." The swordmaster looked almost pained. "I still need to improve my own design skills, and the Dimension Observatory demands its due as well. I have to earn 400 AP to open up another gateway to the Blue Dimension next time. I can’t afford to spend 80 AP on this luxury item, particularly when I am already thinking about diversifying my offerings." Ves turned to Ketis. "What did you just say?" "You heard right." Ketis grinned back at him. "Ever since the Red Three opened up their eyes to the possibility that there are high-quality resources that are ripe for the picking in the higher dimensions, they have offered to help me research and prospect them in order to learn whether they contain materials that can offer comparable benefits to superdimensional matter. Once they have found a few good leads, I will spend a few AP to make use of the Dimension Telescope to take a peek at them. It only costs 5 AP to do so. If I like what I see, I can spend 10 or 50 AP to open a short-lasting portal that can allow us to retrieve samples. Only then will we be able to confirm for certain whether the new dimensions are worth exploiting." That sounded like a sound game plan. Ves particularly liked it that Ketis managed to entice the Red Three to do most of the ground work themselves. Ketis had done her own legwork in order to pin down the Blue Dimension, but this was not a good use of her time. It was much better to let the professionals of the Red Three spend a huge amount of time and manpower on this task. She just needed to save up a bit of AP to confirm whether the research results were accurate before preparing to launch a full mining expedition in the newly discovered dimension. While Ves found this promising, he doubted whether it was worth spending the extra AP on this endeavor. "Hitting the Blue Dimension has already introduced huge advancements in human tech and top-level combat power." He said. "Right now, there isn’t nearly enough mid-grade and high-grade superdimensional matter to go around. In my opinion, it is best to focus on opening up periodic portals into the 365th dimension so that practically every ace mech is upgraded with at least a bit of superdimensional matter." Ketis pursed her lips. "I do not necessarily disagree with you, but given how much we depend on senior ace mechs and god mechs to guarantee the existence of our race, I think it is important to keep finding more super-class materials that work on different principles than superdimensional matter. What if there are much more powerful hyper materials hidden in a higher dimension? If we can discover where we can find these resources, I can open a portal to their location and give red humanity another way to further increase the hard power of their best assets." 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚 It was ultimately a question of quality or quantity. Ves’ argument favored focusing on mining superdimensional matter in order to make it more accessible to red humanity. Letting every ace mech gain access to superdimensional matter would be extremely helpful in stopping the enemy phase leaders and assault fleets from overrunning the contested border regions. As far as Ves was concerned, red humanity urgently needed to stem its short term losses and regain stability in order to prevent its economy and industries from collapsing any further. Ketis on the other hand paid more attention to the future phases of the arms race between red humanity and the native aliens. The phase whales of the Red Cabal were producing as many Saint Piercers and Saint Armors as they could manage. They would eventually become so ubiquitous that every greater phase lord and phase whale made use of superdimensional gear. Even if the material quality of alien-grade superdimensional alloy was not the best, they were still competitive enough to give phase leaders a chance to fight and win the human champions, especially if they enjoyed a numbers advantage. "There is another important reason why Ketis’ new initiative has received so much support, especially from the Red Association." Gloriana said. "Our community is still rife with peak ace pilots that have stalled before they could step onto the road to no return. God pilot candidates such as the Mace of Retaliation lack the confidence to survive the most dangerous breakthroughs of their lives. The introduction of superdimensional matter has given them a small measure of hope as a better machine can help them survive the infamous Mech Body Merger Process. If we can find more super-class materials to upgrade their mechs even further, we can potentially raise the success rate by 5 to 10 percent, which can result in 2 or 3 additional god pilots emerging in the next decade." Though Ves questioned her numbers, he could not argue with her overall logic. She was right. According to Ketis’ increasingly more accepted Heaven Earth Man Trifecta, upgrading the Earth score could indeed help people increase their chances of breaking through. Although god pilots also had to satisfy high standards in the other two criteria, a stronger mech always helped. Ves looked thoughtful. "If that is the case, then I agree with you. Diversifying your high-quality offerings can potentially make a huge difference. We urgently need more god pilots, especially since it appears that they are the only combatants that are capable of completely cleansing a star system of a voribug infestation. One of the most annoying traits of the mutated voribugs was that once they entered a star system, they could never be repelled without investing a disproportionate amount of time and combat assets into sweeping every planet, moon and asteroid belt. Given that most star systems contained an astronomical amount of asteroids, it was simply impractical to fully sweep the latter. Just the asteroids orbiting the star systems past the further planets alone covered a huge amount of space! Just a single voribug could sneak into these distant asteroids and procreate. A swarm of voribugs would emerge in no time and spread themselves across the mostly barren rocks, allowing them to multiply at an exponential rate! Fortunately, their reproduction speed in the outer reaches of a star system was much less dramatic in practice. The energy of the local stars was so much weaker than the voribugs were not able to absorb as much energy from local radiation or from the frozen rocks. That heavily limited their activity levels. Fundamental biological processes such as digestion, growth and reproduction all needed to be fed with energy in order to take place. Unless the asteroids contained resources that could easily be ’burned’ in order to produce energy, the voribugs were not able to bring billions of their numbers to bear against defenders that had already won an earlier incursion. That did not mean that this threat could be neglected either. So long as the star systems had not been fully swept, they would continue to produce periodic outbreaks whenever the dormant voribugs had quietly restored their numbers without interruption. This was one of the reasons why Ves considered the mutated voribugs to be the greater threat. They were difficult to fully eradicate and did not easily let go of their territories. Allow them to take root long enough, and they would definitely extract all of the valuable resources from the natural satellites, leaving nothing useful left to red humanity if they ever managed to recapture the star systems. "Let’s get back to browsing the items on offer." Ves said as he shoved his concerns related to the mutated voribugs to the side. "There has to be something decent available for cheap." If there was, the Divine Bazeer certainly did not make it easy. The consumables on offer that were potent enough to benefit the Dark Apostle during the upcoming duels were all prices out of his meager budget. [Astral Energy Condenser Pill] Price: 100 Ascension Points Ingesting this pill will cause a temporary transformation that allows a cultivator to absorb astral energy at a much greater degree of effectiveness. Astral energy possesses great power at higher quantities and can be used to amplify existing techniques or fuel powerful astral techniques. [Instant Reflex Boost Potion] Price: 60 Ascension Points Ingesting this potion will temporarily amplify the physical reflexes and reaction speed of a cultivator. The duration and performance increase is dependent on the existing strength of the recipient. When the active effects have passed, weaker cultivators will become subject to exhaustion and soreness. "These consumables sound useful, but... I don’t have that much AP to spend." Ves said as he regretfully turned away from the pill and potion. "What about this sharpening stone, Ves?" Gloriana called as she gestured for him to a particular booth. [Hiseen Sharpening Stone] Price: 10 Ascension Points A sharpening stone created and used by the Hiseen, an ancient brotherhood of swordsmen who sought to train themselves into breaking 10,000 laws with their swords. The Hiseen were convinced that the best way to break every enemy and obstacle in their path was to sharpen their swords to the point where they can cut the immaterial as easily as the material. The Hiseen Sharpening Stone is made out of a special combination of exotic and hyper materials that when used with a specific technique, is able to physically sharpen most swords to the point where they gain a monomolecular edge. Ves had already come across this stone when he visited the Divine Bazaar in the past. It was a fairly cheap item all-considered. "It is useless to Ves." Ketis voiced her opinion as she examined the sharpening stone with a critical gaze. "Duels between phase lords always start with trying to deplete the spatial barrier. This is an energy barrier that cannot be pierced with a sharp blade unless it is made out of superdimensional matter. If the rules allow for the use of superdimensional weapons, then this stone might be of use, but since that is not the case, I advise you not to bother. I don’t understand the working principles of this item, but the enhancement is definitely temporary. The blade will dull long before it can be used to pierce through an enemy phase lord’s raiment." Ves shrugged. "That’s what you get for just 10 AP." There was no miracle solution available in the Divine Bazaar. While Ves could still buy a couple of decent enhancements, their effectiveness was questionable. He did not think it was worthwhile for him to squander his limited AP on these minor boosts. Ves and the women began to climb up the steps until they reached the Tree of Possibilities. "Hopefully we can find an affordable enlightenment fruit that is relevant enough to be useful." While most of the good stuff cost at least hundreds of Ascension Points, the Tree of Possibilities always offered a good selection of cheaper enlightenment fruits. Of course, most of them did not impart any combat-related methods, which made them useless to his current situation.

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