Pleased with his new “guard dog” Kain then turned to the last two rewards from the trial.
The first one was a small green bead the size of a marble that was his reward from the third trial. It seems to be a default trial reward for people that enter the relic, it’s similar to a space ring but specifically able to allow spiritual plants entry while preserving their quality. Your next journey awaits at
With the exception of seeds, since they are in a dormant state that doesn’t require anything like oxygen to survive, most space rings can’t contain other living things.
Therefore, preservation containers, which Kain typically uses to carry spiritual plants are relatively cumbersome to carry compared to space rings while not having particularly large spaces, this green marble was an extremely valuable reward for Kain.
Artifacts similar to this bead are several times more difficult to create than space rings, which is why Kain hadn’t even seen the option to buy something similar until now.
The second reward from the relic was actually the thing that looked the least remarkable at first glance, it was in an ancient language Verdarian, the language of the long extinct city-state Verdaris that existed before the empire was founded.
Kain couldn’t understand any of the words, but as he flipped through the notebook he did see some illustrations: a castle, what appears to be a map, and a seed…
And it just so happens that Kain was the owner of a seed that greatly resembled the one in the drawing, and that same seed happened to be given to him by his former teacher who studied the history of Verdaris.
‘Did it sense that I either had or came into contact with the seed and so rewarded me with this book?’
Kain carefully put away the book and then looked at his last source of income from the day’s events—the unknown egg given to him by Professor Tameridge. However, Kain wasn’t sure if he’d actually categorize the egg as a reward.
Since Professor Sage seemed much more friendly, and the one who’d actually given him the prize had long left, he pressed Sage for more details about the egg, such as where it came from, when it was obtained, and if there were any clues to why exactly it couldn’t hatch?
However, the enthusiasm Kain had for the reward dampened with every question answered.
Professor Sage apparently attained the egg inside of a relic overseas when he was much younger. The value of the things obtained in the relic were extremely rare and valuable, and much of the legend behind the relic was related to the Four Gods of the eastern continent which resembled a Black Tortoise, Azure Dragon, Vermillion Bird, and White Tiger.
Professor Sage at the time had been among the weakest to enter the relic back then, and was essentially recruited into a team as cannon fodder. It had been an intense battle for him to even leave the relic with the one egg, apparently the only egg within the relic, which he’d secretly hidden and left with while everyone was busy fighting over the myriad of other treasures within the relic.
Considering that he’d risked his life to leave with the egg, and it was the only thing he’d managed to leave with from his harrowing journey to the east, it’s understandable that he wasn’t willing to part with it even after decades of it not hatching.
He probably would have been willing to wait for the egg to hatch until his death if he hadn’t finally obtained some information on why it was unable to hatch.
Apparently, it is strongly suspected that the spiritual creature inside of the egg is a mutant. Moreover, it’s one of the few mutants with an unfavorable mutation.
It was determined that spiritual power, which is an omnipresent substance on this planet, was like poison to it and preventing its birth.
Unfortunately, spiritual power is everywhere and in everything. Even before a baby is born in this world they would have been exposed to spiritual power. Every breath taken will have some within the air, every piece of food will have remnant traces of spiritual power.
All ordinary creatures do have spiritual power in them, hence why most ordinary people that never awakened an affinity are able to cultivate to make their first star—what determines whether they can eventually become a beast tamer is if they awaken an affinity.
Similarly, all ordinary creatures possess spiritual power, they just have no way of condensing it or manipulating it to cultivate or develop skills.
It would be practically impossible for there to be any place on the planet without any spiritual power.
‘Sigh…can this even be considered a reward compared to what Serena got? He practically just threw whatever he couldn’t use himself at me.’
‘Hey System! Is there a way to control any of the spiritual power within the System Laboratory to completely remove all spiritual power?’
*The System is an entity that is largely composed of and powered by spiritual power. Doing so would be like preventing blood flow to one of your limbs for a prolonged period of time, the result would be the death of that limb.*
‘So…is that a no?’
*Ding, ding, ding! Gold star to the host for deciphering the obvious.*
‘…You’d been quiet for a while so I thought your annoying personality had improved…’ Kain grumbled.
*And I thought that the host had gotten smarter. Looks like we were both wrong ^_^*
Kain turned his head away from the annoyingly passive-aggressive emoticon, determined to not engage his irritating companion in any more conversation.
‘Whatever… at least I can store it in the laboratory until I figure something out…’
Kain placed his hand on the egg and willed it to go inside of the System.
However, the laboratory within the System remained completely empty, despite the egg disappearing from in front of Kain.
Unfortunately, it would be a long while before Kain noticed the egg’s disappearance.