After leaving the perfect wood sphere locked in space, Daniel approached Leffe with a confident pace.
When he was standing right in front of him, he said "You are free to leave whenever you want, and take your people with you, and your wood treasure. But leaving now might be dangerous.. I suggest you all stay with us until we find a forest large enough to mask the power of the wood sphere."
What Daniel said was the truth. Only humans were capable of using their particular type of mana and spiritual essence to create and use spatial containers. If Leffe were to leave along with the rest of the beast races, he would have to roam a human ruled continent with a permanent beacon of wood essence in his hand.
It is important to point out that, a perfect essence sphere was much more valuable than a normal perfect treasure.. But was also much more detectable. After all, a perfect treasure only contained the pure comprehension of wood while emanating a meager quantity of essence. On the other hand, a perfect wood sphere not only contained a perfect comprehension, but emanated enough essence to turn a small desert into a rainforest.
Leffe looked at the rest of the leaders, and after receiving their nods of approval, he turned back towards Daniel and said "If you are kind enough to offer us shelter, we'll accept. I cannot speak for the other races, but you'll have the support of the wood elementals whenever you'll need it."
Prea stepped out of the Insecta portion of the camp, and said "You'll also have the support of the Insecta tribe."
Nieba, just like Prea, stepped forward and said "And of the forest-dwelling beasts."
The moment the three stopped talking, they opened their mouths in shock.
Edmund, Buriath and the rest already knew the reason, but it still shocked the cultivators that hadn't joined Daniel's group.
Leffe, Nieba, Prea, and the majority of the beast leaders, felt their powers increase by a large amount. What they had experiencing for the first time, was the group effect called 'Karmic Aura".
Daniel closed his eyes, and thought about his group window, which appeared the very next moment.
____________________________
Group of the Karmic System's Wielder.
Name: Group of the Karmic System's Wielder (Provisory)
Number of members (Details): 561
Overall Karma: 24,607,144
Karmic effects:
Karma X Luck (Group)
Karmic Aura Lv.35
Time is Precious Lv.20 (Group)
____________________________
Shared Karmic effects (Details)
Reputation (Details)
____________________________
What Daniel had originally opened the window to look for, was the increase in the number of the group members, which had gone up from 416 to 561. These, were the leaders, and the most powerful members of the three tribes of the 'Garden of Past Times", which by promising their support, had in fact joined Daniel's group.
The reason why the Overall Karma counted twenty-four and a half millions, was simple. When Daniel had made Roley and the spatial ring disappear right under everybody's eyes, other than saving his friends, he had also saved thousands of other lives.
Of course, he wasn't aware of that. After all, this was the first time he had checked the group window ever since he had rescued his friends.
Without thinking about it, he immediately spent twenty million points on upgrading 'Time is Precious' to the fortieth level, but he did not spend anything on 'Karmic Aura'.
When Daniel had upgraded the group feature of the karmic system, he had noticed that the cost of the upgrades after the second level of karmic effects were unlocked, had been doubled along with the max level of each effect.
At first, each level of time is precious costed five hundred thousand points, but since he had reached the twentieth level, the price of each level after that costed a full million.
He had guessed that, if he were to increase 'Karmic Aura' above the fiftieth level, each upgrade after that would start costing two hundred thousand karma points each.
But that wasn't the reason why he did not want to upgrade karmic aura yet. The real reason, was because he didn't want to give people any idea of what his secret powers were. If he were to increase his follower's power by five, ten or twenty percent more on the spot, people would get suspicious.
Instead, he had decided that he would slowly upgrade it, and possibly, thanks to 'Time is Precious', the effect of 'Karmic Aura' would go unnoticed under their sped-up progress in cultivation.
-----
The various heads of the families and powerful cultivators were shaking from excitement.
They had just seen someone master a type of essence and create a perfect sphere in only two days. The shock was such that they had even failed to feel greed towards the completed perfect wood sphere that was casually left on the rocky ground, bound in space.
After finishing his business in the camp, Daniel turned to look at the heads of the various families and other powerful cultivators. He said "I ask nothing of you. No taxes, no obedience of any kind. This is a city in which you live, and that city is in my territory. The only thing I ask, is to respect a few rules. No slavery, No murder, No stealing, and Never test my patience with useless attempts to take control over my house. If any of you needs something to survive peacefully, make a request to the castle. That's all." He then left through a portal that opened and closed the moment he passed through it.
There was a good reason why Daniel had ultimately accepted to let anyone into his pocket dimension. In a city under his control, but not part of his group, he could create a sort of farm of karmic points for his group members to exploit.
His group could help people in need within the city, and at the same time, they would be able to gather overall karmic points as reward. It was similar to the method Daniel used when he was in need of karma points. He would start a mission that required him to help people around the city he was currently in, and accumulate karma points.
Daniel teleported directly into the spiritual section of the library. He wanted to see if there was a way to do a certain thing. He wanted to find a way to create something similar to a 'Ki Flag', but that could signal the position of the ring instead.
Before Daniel could even start reading, he heard a voice from behind him say "Daniel." The voice belonged to Edmund.
"Yes?" Responded Daniel without taking his eyes off the library.
"I wanted to talk to you about something." Said Edmund with a dubious voice. What he wanted to talk about, was of course, the method that Daniel was using to increase their battle prowess, and talent in cultivation.
"If it's about my secret.. Then save yourself some time and just know that it's impossible for me to teach it to anybody. It's just part of me." Responded Daniel while still scrolling through the books with his eyes.
Edmund expected such a response, so, just as Daniel had said, he saved the time and said instead "So.. Where do you want to go?"
For the first time, Daniel turned to look at him. His face turned pensive for a moment, until he finally said "Do you remember the map you've been accused of espionage for?"
"Of course, I have it with me." Responded Edmund while taking a large map of the surroundings of the krehan empire right out of his spatial ring.
"Splendid." Exclaimed Daniel while taking the large map, and opening it on the big table in the middle of the library. He then said "Do you know where we are?"
"Yes.. we are here" Responded Edmund while pointing at a spot opposite to the direction of the Karalis kingdom.
Once again, Daniel found himself lost in his thoughts. He then said after a good minute "We have to reach this place.."
"Nestreia continent? It's pretty far away.. Any particular reason why we want to go there?" Asked Edmund.
"It's my home."
After concluding his conversation with Edmund, Daniel started to plan his next years of travel.
-----
Two months had passed since Daniel had returned to his friends, and had taken control over the pocket dimension.
One thing he had noticed after months spent by peacefully doing whatever he wanted to, was that he had vastly underestimated the speed of his comprehension.
He had spent the past two months practicing with various types of weapons, sparring against various masters, and even Jerigh. It always took a single day or less for him to reach the ability of his sparring partner, and this, had made him extremely famous within the city.
He now had become so famous, that a few of the most impressionable people had started a rumor which said that he was a god which had descended from a higher plain, and that human's methods of cultivation were childsplay for him.
The reason why Daniel hadn't pushed through his level of cultivation yet, was reasonable. He didn't know exactly what kind of event his breakthrough to the third major stage of cultivation would cause.
It was possible that what happened when he had entered the second stage would repeat itself, and therefore, he would cause a vortex of possibly an even bigger devastating power to appear, and absorb all sorts of essence in the area. An effect which, if it happened within the pocket dimension, could cause all of the unranked humans within to die suffocated.
With no other option, Daniel was forced to leave the pocket dimension in order to make his breakthrough.
With this solution, a few more problems came to his mind. First of all, he would need protection in case he would actually create a commotion. Secondly, he would need someone to stay within the pocket dimension and keep things in check.
The only solution to these two problems, was to have the most powerful and problematic people to accompany him, along with the same amount of people from his group.
Due to Daniel's presence, if he were to be attacked during his unconscious state, the cultivators on his side would be able to easily overpower the others thanks to their forty-five percent increase in battle prowess.
Heimart and the rest of his friends, along with Leffe, Nieba, Prea, and Buriath, would keep things in check inside the pocket dimension.
All this would not take long, as after Daniel would reach the eight stage of cultivation, even if someone at the peak of the ninth stage attempted to assassinate him, he was confident that he could repel or even defeat his attacker.
During their three years of travel, Edmund and the rest of the group had received a vast amount of resources from their conflicts with high-level groups, evil sects, or even from the small-scaled war in which they had taken part to.
To help him in his cultivation, Edmund had given him twenty beast cores at the eight rank, and fifty cores at the seventh rank.
The only matter that was left to be taken care of, was to find an appropriate place for Daniel to make his breakthrough in.
The place they had decided on, was an extremely large and odd looking circular mountain range.
This mountain range was just past the northern edge of the map, and only a part of it could be be seen.
When they had arrived on the spot, they saw the immense ring of mountains. Each of these mountains was extremely high, and their width reached at least two kilometers in diameter. They were also tightly pressed between the previous and next one, and they only separated at an height of around ten kilometers.
In the middle of this ring-like mountain range, there was a large expanse of nothingness. Only grey dirt and dust could be seen.
According to Daniel's standards, this place was perfect.
There was nothing that could be pulled in his direction by a vortex he could eventually create, and even if he absorbed the earth essence from the ground and from the mountains, they would not come crashing against him the very next moment.
Daniel had assigned each of the cultivator that had come out to protect him, to a different mountain peak. Their job was to look out for nosy cultivators while they waited him to finish.
After he finished assigning the positions, he flew to the middle of the expanse of dirt, whose diameter was as large as twenty kilometers, and sat down right in the middle.
He took two seventh rank beast cores from his spatial ring, and started to quietly cultivate.