Defiance of the Fall

In fact, it almost looked like the waters were refining it. Zac had his suspicions, but he was currently in his human form so he couldn’t be sure. He was trying to use the intuition gained by [Forester’s Constitution] to find herbs, but he swapped over to his Draugr side after some thought as he hid from the stream in a secluded crevasse.

As expected, the moment he trained his abyssal eyes at the bone, he was almost blinded by the immense life-attuned energies it contained. The bone lit up like a beacon in the darkness. It was clear; the bone was somehow storing a bit of the life-attuned energies of the waters that passed while expelling some of the deathly energies.

Over who knows how many years, the bone had become a Treasure Bone of pure life. Zac wanted to immediately head over and pick it up, but he first had to spend the next hour cracking Miasma Crystals and expelling built-up energy. Only then did he set out, but he was surprised to find that the chains of [Love’s Bond] weren’t strong enough to dislodge the thing.

Zac wasn’t deterred though, and he immediately moved to Plan B. The chains of [Love’s Bond] slammed into the mountain wall or wrapped around a few outcroppings before he crawled over, securely fastened. Three small pygmies appeared in the waters behind him, but cracks immediately started to spread across their bones.

The skill would only last a few seconds before the surrounding energies ripped the skeletons apart, but that was enough. One barrier after another appeared to slightly divert the powerful current surrounding the bone, making it slightly easier for Zac to climb over. He saw that the bone had essentially fused with the mountain itself, and it was no wonder the chains had been unable to drag the bone over.

But the strength of nature was nothing in front of the power of Zac’s greed, and he ripped it and a section of the mountain straight out of the crack with a herculean tug, and he quickly dragged himself back with the chains just as [Profane Exponents] crumbled. The bone entered his Spatial Ring, and Zac wasn’t really surprised when he felt the wave of hunger in his mind.

Verun had woken up inside the ring, and it clearly indicated a desire to consume the mysterious bone. This was exactly what Zac had hoped for when snatching the Treasure Bone, but he didn’t let Verun feed on it just yet. The axe wasn’t really needed to solve his current predicament, but he couldn’t let it absorb the bone right now.

Previously when Verun got something good, it had enclosed itself in large crystals to digest it, and this was no time for that.

Instead, he continued, and he managed to find three extremely impressive materials over the next two weeks. One was a metal that emitted intense energy fluctuations, yet wasn’t listed in any of the precious materials missives. It had to be something extremely rare for that to be the case, and rare items were always good to have.

Neither of his Spirit Tools wanted it, but he might be able to use it to trade for something he did need in the future. After all, the absolute rarest items were rarely possible to buy with Nexus Coins alone, and many warriors preferred straight-up trades of similarly exotic materials.

He also found another one of those odd dumpling-like fruits, this one even slightly larger compared to the first. He still wasn’t certain whether it was a Dao Treasure or something else though. His best bet was showing them to Catheya to see if she knew what they were.

The last ones were stalks of reed-like grass swaying in a secluded spot protected from the more powerful currents. Zac had almost been dragged out to the depths when he gazed upon them since their sway had an extremely potent hallucinogenic effect. It was only thanks to his evolved soul he barely managed to regain his sanity and desperately scramble back to the mountain before he was dragged away.

Harvesting them had been a challenge with him being constantly hypnotized, but the closer he came to them, the more he could sense that they would have an amazing effect on nurturing one’s soul. They were his best find so far, and he planned on simply eating them unless he found something looking more promising to help him out.