Chapter 246: X-rank Equivalent Exchange
[As the shattered meteor became whole again, it didn’t continue falling but was fixed in place. After time was rewound, Jade’s time stop was still in effect, and the surrounding drone swarms and the meteor in the sky couldn’t move.]
[Looking at the meteor glowing in purple light in the sky, Astraea commented, "It sure looks pretty. If you don’t mind, I want a spherical chunk of it. I’ll add it to my castle’s collection."]
[Listening to Astraea’s request, you nodded in agreement, "Sure, I don’t mind. I plan to keep this meteor intact. Only a small grain of the talent cosmic spice is enough to be added into my food catalog."]
["The Zenith Train hasn’t really collected a glowing purple meteorite, so I might as well keep most of it. You can have a spherical sample of it, as you had requested."]
[You and Astraea were conversing as if the time stop didn’t affect the two of you.]
[Not only you, Morvane, Scarlet, and Old MacDonald remained unaffected, gazing at the glowing purple meteor in the sky.]
[It wasn’t that Jade’s time stop wasn’t effective, but rather that you had used Bloodline Magic: Absolute Boundary to manipulate the boundary of Jade’s time stop range.]
[You made it so that Jade’s time stop didn’t include you and the Zenith Train Crewmate. Coupled with Jade not forcibly using it on you and the others, you managed to let you and your train crewmates become unaffected by her time stop.]
[Looking at the glowing purple meteor, you immediately used Invisible Force and, with a tugging motion from your hand, it was pulled towards you.]
[As it entered your range, you examined it for a while before storing it in your system inventory.]
["I’ve stored it in my inventory. We can get out of here and let the people behind the drone swarms handle the aftermath."]
[Hearing your words, Jade and the others agreed.]
[As you all headed back inside the Zenith Train, Jade commented, "With my time stop, none of them will be able to detect and trace us. In fact, they might not even know whether the mastermind behind this is someone with a powerful SSS-rank innate talent or from a Train Crew."]
[After you and the others entered the Zenith Train, Jade lifted her time stop effect.]
[The drone swarms soon moved like headless flies, attempting to locate where the glowing purple meteor was.]
[From what the people behind them could see in the drone’s camera, the glowing purple meteor descended like a shooting star. Afterwards, it shattered into countless pieces, becoming a beautiful light shower that bloomed in the sky.]
[Yet, before the shattered meteor could reach ten kilometers near the ground and escape the stratosphere, they suddenly disappeared.]
[It left the people behind the drone swarm confused. But later on, they panicked!]
[After all, only when the drone swarm had reached close proximity with the glowing purple meteor did they discover that the talent cosmic spice within it contained energy fluctuations much greater than their past collection.]
[In other words, the talent cosmic spice within that meteor was greater in quality than the past ones they’ve collected!]
[That discovery alone drove some of them crazy, while others were afraid of being implicated in this mess.]
[However, for you and the rest of the Zenith Train Crew, you all didn’t care about that.]
[In the Vast Training Room Carriage, you’ve used the Plane Core to create a subspace within it, placing the meteor containing the talent cosmic spice inside it.]
[Standing in front of the glowing purple meteor, Jade summoned her Unseen Blade and imbued it with the power of division.]
[Slashing her blade towards the glowing purple meteor, Jade chanted, "Divide!"]
[An energy sword wave passed through the glowing purple meteor, perfectly dividing it at the center.]
[The purple meteor was cleanly cut into two perfect hemispheres, and the center of it revealed a glowing purple crystal-like surface.]
[If you were to describe it, it looked like...]
["Purple salt? Its crystal-like texture and surface seemed to resemble mineral salts."]
[Old MacDonald’s words confirmed what you and the others saw and thought about.]
[Without any hesitation, you boldly used Invisible Force to take a small spherical ball of it, scooping it from the upper hemisphere.]
[Taking that spherical chunk of talent cosmic spice, you opened your mouth and immediately ate it!]
[As soon as it came into contact with the tip of your tongue, you felt an overwhelming spice in your mouth, as if you ate a chili that was ten times more potent than the Carolina Reaper.]
[As if that wasn’t enough, your body soon started to heat up as if you had a furnace inside your body.]
[’This is quite absurd! No wonder some who aren’t compatible with it or couldn’t withstand it have died. And this is only when I’ve eaten a small spherical sample of it!’]
[Thinking of this, you didn’t hesitate to immediately use your multiplication fairy fruit to multiply your spice resistance and your digestion speed by ten thousand times.]
[In just a few seconds, it was finally digested, to which you felt a foreign energy within your soul.]
[The feeling was quite subtle. If not for your Late Titan-grade Spirit attribute and the fact that you possessed a Spirit Avatar, you wouldn’t have noticed the peculiar soul energy within your soul.]
[Because most people couldn’t detect it, the effect of the talent cosmic spice became random to them. However, you could manipulate spirit energy due to possessing a Spirit Avatar.]
[Due to that, you guided the purple cosmic energy within your soul and directed it to the orb in your soul, which represented the SSS-rank Future Diary innate talent.]
[After all the purple cosmic energy nourished the SSS-rank Future Diary innate talent, you felt that its quality improved, but the energy wasn’t enough to bring a true qualitative change to it.]
[’It seems that the talent cosmic spice I ate wasn’t enough to generate enough purple cosmic energy to upgrade an SSS-rank innate talent to X-rank.’]
[Thinking of this, you immediately checked your food catalog. Much to your delight, the talent cosmic spice was not only added to your food catalog, but the Unlimited Food Creation (Gold) talent even generated countless dishes using the talent cosmic spice as an ingredient or seasoning.]
[In other words, you and the others didn’t have to suffer from the outrageously spicy talent cosmic spice.]
[Some of the dishes created by the Unlimited Food Creation talent had even used various ingredients that you’ve acquired from other station worlds to create a dish that not only neutralized the spice, but even ensured that it wouldn’t affect the generation of purple cosmic energy within one’s soul!]
[Without any hesitation, you’ve created cosmic spice chewing candy, which was one of the food recipes created by Unlimited Food Creation.]
[Although this candy hadn’t completely eliminated the spiciness of the talent cosmic spice, it still made it so that the spice wasn’t overwhelming. Combined with the sweet and sour candy taste mixed with the talent cosmic spice’s spiciness, it made a perfect blend of those three flavors.]
[Eating a bunch of cosmic spice chewing candies, you immediately created a bunch of it and gave Jade a huge portion of it, while the rest were for Scarlet and the others.]
[Due to the time that had passed since the Terra World Chat Group was established, those who had fallen victim to your Loan Shark’s Ledger had all their innate talents and lifespan taken by you as collateral for their debts.]
[Because of that, it wasn’t that difficult to find a suitable innate talent for at least each of the train crewmates. So, all of them possessed at least one innate talent.]
[The only problem was that not all of those innate talents were at SSS-rank. Due to that, Morvane and the others barely made use of their innate talents and waited for this day.]
[Now that they’ve obtained resources to upgrade their innate talent’s rank, they not only could skip SSS-rank but even upgrade the innate talent to X-rank!]
[As soon as Scarlet and the others received the cosmic spice chewing candy, they didn’t hesitate to eat it.]
[While Jade was eating hers, she didn’t forget to use Time Rewind to fix the shape of the purple glowing meteor.]
[Due to the use of time rewind, the small spherical chunk you’ve taken from the purple glowing meteor was restored, but it was at the expense of costing Jade more spirit energy.]
[After eating countless cosmic spice chewing candy, all of your innate talents eventually reached X-rank!]
[Not only you, but Jade and the others also had upgraded their innate talents to X-rank.]
[After upgrading her Equivalent Exchange innate talent to X-rank, Jade immediately exclaimed in discovery, "My innate talent can exchange for train cores and train coins now!"]
["However, while innate talent can achieve that, my power rank is still insufficient. It seems that I need to reach Aether rank before I can be qualified to exchange for train cores and train coins."]
