Leonel woke up, a long yawn pulling at his lips. Though he didn't sleep for as long as he wanted to, it was enough for him to regain some of his energy at the very least.
He stared at the ceiling blankly, wondering what his next course of action should be.
After a while of coming up with nothing, he dragged his body to the pool in the Abode Setting, stripping his clothes and jumping in. Before he realized what was happening, he had already fallen asleep again.
When he woke up once more, he smiled bitterly to himself. It seemed that his thoughts of getting ahead of these matters could be thrown out the window now. He wasn't sure how long he had been asleep, but it was most definitely at least a day, maybe two.
With a sigh, he stood and stretched. One would expect his skin to be a bit prune-like after staying in water for so long. But, it seemed that this water was quite special.
'What to do… What to do…'
Leonel knew he needed to find the source of the Force geyser, but this was easier than it sounded.
Though the Force geyser blew a hole through the hive, if Leonel approached it from the outside, he would only be asking for death.
According to the dictionary, the only way to protect one's self against a Force Eruption was to form what the dictionary called 'Force Skin'. This was apparently a Force manipulation type technique.
Force Skin added a layer of protection to one's body using Force. As long as one created one of high enough concentration, the Force around the Force Eruption wouldn't detect the low Force concentration within your body and would thus not try to enter your Force Nodes.
There were a few problems with this though, the main of which was stamina. It took a lot to create such a high density Force Skin. That meant that it was in their best interest to delay the time they spent in direct contact with the Force geyser as much as possible.
Obviously, if they wanted to do this, they couldn't enter from the top of the hive, or else their Force Skins would give out before they could even get close. Their best option was to take advantage of these network of tunnels to block the brunt of the Force Eruption and only expose themselves when they were already as close as possible.
Unfortunately, this was easier said than done.
Leonel absentmindedly switched the Segmented Cube into its Lab Setting. It was only now he realized that the Force concentration of the Segmented Cube had actually recovered so quickly. In fact, not only had it recovered, it was the highest concentration Leonel had ever seen it at.
'This should probably be enough for me to form my Seventh and Eighth Nodes…'
Though he thought this, Leonel hesitated to do it. Without knowing where his Ninth should go, he felt a bit doubtful of himself. What if he really was taking the wrong path?
'Maybe I should ask the dictionary…'
Leonel threw this to the back of his mind. Now wasn't the time to think about this. Whether he had nine Nodes or six, he would still need to get as close to the Force geyser as possible if he didn't want to die. What was more important now was figuring out how to deal with this situation.
Leonel's gaze swept across the shelves of snowglobes. By now, they were filled with all sorts of creatures, each perfectly preserved. He had already killed well over 200 beasts since he stepped onto this island, so there were definitely quite a number.
Suddenly Leonel's eyes widened when his gaze landed on the snowglobe housing the SS-grade coy fish's Beast Crystal.
Now that he knew that even the spider king was only of the S-grade, albeit of the Elite S-grade, Leonel had a feeling the coy fish was probably just of the Elite S-grade as well. He didn't believe there was a big difference between the two, it was just that the spider king's ability was too troublesome to deal with.
However, this wasn't the reason Leonel reacted like this. The moment his eyes landed on the Beast Crystal, an idea popped into his head.
Hadn't he ignored King of Seas and Pisces' displeasure precisely so that he could use this Beast Crystal to create an escape type treasure? What if instead of using it to escape, he used it to carve a straight line toward the Force geyser instead?!
Leonel's eyes glowed like two bright torches when he thought to this point. He got so excited that he stirred his aching body a bit too much, causing a jolt of pain to knock him back into reality.
'Having the idea is one thing, but executing on it is a completely different matter. I also don't know if I have the necessary materials to make such a treasure…'
Leonel's brow furrowed, but then he suddenly thought of something.
If the dictionary could scan and find Zones, could it scan and find other things? If that was the case, maybe it wasn't even necessary for him to refine this treasure now.
"Are you able to find your way through these tunnels?" Leonel asked expectantly.
[ *Ping* ]
[ Replying to Seed, Father Overlord has not programmed this function into the dictionary. When Seed is skilled enough, it will be possible to upgrade and modify the dictionary himself. ]
Leonel almost couldn't refrain from rolling his eyes. He should have expected that his father would program in a name like that for himself.
"… What kinds of things can you scan for, then?"
[ *Ping* ]
[ Replying to Seed, the dictionary can scan for anything within its database. ]
Leonel shook his head at this response. Clearly this was making things more complicated that it needed to be. Essentially, this dictionary had the technology necessary to scan these mines, but not the programming necessary to turn this into useful information for him. It was either that this was an oversight, or his old man was purposely making things difficult for him.
Taking a deep breath, Leonel threw these things to the back of his mind.
"Scan for ore veins within this network of tunnels for me."
Leonel didn't believe that a hive that hosted a Force Crystal Mine Core didn't have other ores lying in wait for his use. This was the ideal environment for the formation of such treasures.
Since he didn't have the materials he needed, he would just have to mine them on his own.