The whale stayed five days in that small world, collecting all the scarce Essentia Crystals from the place. It only took an hour, but he preferred to wait for days to avoid raising suspicions from the families. Although they could use the channel practically at no cost, it was crucial that the families didn’t discover this information. With the amount of crystal available there, they could use the portal a dozen times without arousing suspicions, but soon they would have to find work in the families to continue deceiving them and buying time.
’They’ll give us tedious tasks with minimal rewards. We have to push things a bit... I think it’s time to pick a fight with a young master,’ Bruno commented thoughtfully.
Alm snorted dryly. ’We won’t have to wait long.’
He said that and fell silent, leaving Bruno intrigued. Amidst these thoughts, the spatial channel stabilized and they crossed back to the city.
Everyone awaited them eagerly; the whale gathered them and reassured them by sharing their future plans. He received a hundred spatial rings and quickly began to analyze them; they were all treasures from the Skyward Forest that the demons had collected.
There were dozens of somewhat rare herbs, not exceptional, but rich in Yang, resulting in strange mutations. Alm took everything and set off to prepare pills with them. There was also wood and many high-level Yang materials, but in the Yang world, previously ruled by Coltia, everything was a thousand times better.
Ruri took everything from that place by the whale’s orders. It would be extremely important for her to sell and trade her belongings, to obtain resources and influence easily; in addition to studying it together with the other Yin rune. They were very concerned about her, so they preferred to lose that to feel more relieved. Then, when Coltia finally hatched from the egg, the Yang of the place would also be essential.
While analyzing everything in minutes, the whale felt a fixed gaze on him. An android with the head of a beautiful elf couldn’t contain her eagerness; she looked like a mortal starving for days without food. Rehvka just smiled subtly, while Thea swallowed hard, with an almost pleading look for just a bit of that.
Bruno finished looking at everything and turned to the android. Thea wasn’t known for her communication skills or for enjoying people’s company. To others, her face was always completely blank and emotionless—her robotic nature made it hard for anyone to tell what she was thinking or feeling. But Alm and Bruno could sense it through her fluctuations. She didn’t feel secure enough to say what she truly wanted.
The whale didn’t disappoint her expectations; Thea hoped to receive a bit of that treasure, but the whale simply transferred all the rings to her and spoke softly: "Take your time eating everything; we’ll get more later. We need you to become as strong as possible."
Thea couldn’t consume the plants and resources from the forest or the city because they wouldn’t grow back, and she would deplete everything. Therefore, to increase her power, this android depended on the whale to nourish her.
Everyone went out to make their final preparations; the group planned to leave in fifteen days. During this period, Loeus returned every two days and Vuard weekly. They were the only direct communication they had with the families and the other two members of the group.
The four could easily communicate with each other by exchanging messages; there was a mechanism for this among the families, and the cost was low. The situation seemed to flow naturally. Vuard worked tirelessly at the forge day and night, receiving many unique materials; while the three were considered as gods among the same generation of cultivators.
The families placed them in the generation above, among those who were one step away from the divine realms. It was a way to put pressure on them and encourage them to improve their skills.
It was then that Bruno understood what Alm meant earlier. The news about Ruri came like thunder. She was like a celestial and irresistible beacon; being beautiful and talented brought great problems, as men surrounded her hungrily like flies.
In no time, she almost killed an important "young master" from the upper generation; he tried to approach and touch her. For him, harassing a mortal woman seemed insignificant, and the result was him knocking on death’s door. Ruri only didn’t kill him because her master, Kaiyka, stopped her at the last moment, almost in despair.
Bruno sighed upon hearing that information. That was her personality, and it was independent of age. Ruri didn’t tolerate anything like that; she had witnessed harassment many times before her eyes when she was a child. She saw it with the Divinestone clan maids, people from her own tribe, and on many other occasions. She witnessed these harassments and must have felt immense fear and terror; she knew she was spared only because she was very young at the time. But still, there were those who looked at her strangely... Denil was one of them.
Now she had the power to protect herself and help others. With age, she learned to keep calm and certainly tried to make it clear so that no one dared to cross the line. However, when an idiot ignored her warnings, her reaction was explosive. Ruri certainly received punishment from the family, but Loeus couldn’t know what it was. Probably something mild, but if this continued to happen, things could get complicated.
Alm just asked Loeus to send her a message. "Whenever something similar happens, she should mention my name and say that she was my woman. Tell her not to hold back and make it clear: if they want, they can try to be better than us. If she curses them enough as inferior and mediocre, their masculinity will be wounded, and that should solve it."
Bruno understood his intentions and smirked maliciously. Ruri would certainly mess with all the single men in her family and others. This would make them the target of everyone. When they asked for jobs or on other occasions, many profit opportunities would arise because of it.
’Thankfully, our girl’s charm was terrifying. Dealing with young bastards this will be useful, especially when they needed to steal... I mean, get resources.’
Bruno spoke excitedly, imagining the idiots who knocked on their door. However, neither of them realized they were giving Ruri carte blanche to say whatever she wanted. The divine whale’s spicy tales, with divine members and such a fertile imagination, would spread like wildfire among the four families.
Even the hottest women would blush to hear her stories, and mothers covered their daughters’ ears, fearing that even the most innocent of tales with the "divine whale" could lead their virtues into unknown and forbidden territory.
But that was for the future...
Loeus nodded in understanding and left that morning with a completely lifeless and tired expression. Langrum didn’t let him free all night; he barely had time to see his kids, but she bid him farewell with a radiant expression.
Thea took longer than planned to prepare. She consumed so many resources that she fell into a deep coma for a week. When she woke up, her soul gem seemed to have undergone a drastic change. Several strange runes appeared inside it; neither she nor the whale had any idea what it was or what it could do. But it seemed to be something positive, and with time she would find out.
Exactly a month after the four went to the families, the group finally prepared to depart. The whale opened the channel to the separate world, and everyone entered slowly.
The three saw the place for the first time and felt the divine QI excitedly. Alm was especially excited because the pills he would make would amplify that divine QI by thousands of times. Now, they just needed to acquire the resources in that place everyone would call the secret continent; thus, they would reap the rewards.
In a few minutes, another channel was opened, and everyone prepared eagerly as the laws stabilized. The whale didn’t open the portal directly to the continent, but rather a few hundred kilometers away, on the high seas.
Everyone jumped and fell from the skies. There, the suppression was much less, but the level was already so superior that their spiritual roots were completely disconnected from the laws. Thea was already prepared in advance and pulled out a vessel, on which everyone landed. They soon began to sail slowly towards the distant continent.
With every kilometer traveled, everyone felt the pressure intensify on their bodies. Sailing there was extremely safe; there were no sea beasts in the sea because they couldn’t stand living near the place and formed their cities close to the main continent.
After covering half the distance, everyone felt the QI within their bodies forcefully expelled. Everything in their meridians and core was lost, and shortly after even the laws in their internal runes were drained.
Alm and Bruno, anticipating this, quickly tested something and were slightly excited about the result. The power of their three runes was stored in the spatial inventory and was not lost. They couldn’t replenish their energies, and without QI, the effectiveness of the laws of the earth and Yin rune would be drastically reduced; but they had this emergency card to use.
The three on the vessel gripped their weapons tightly and looked seriously at the distant continent. Now, they felt unprotected and insecure, reverting to simple mortals and losing everything they had cultivated for centuries. Fortunately, the weapon the whale made for them could still be used on a smaller scale; that was one of their main strengths in that place.
Rehvka and Thea stood on either side of the whale, very close and almost touching him; it was as if he was their safety tower. All of this was intentionally done by the whale; the group gradually approached more and more and became accustomed to the suppression little by little. Until, after a few hours, they finally arrived.
After viewing the continent from above for just three seconds, Alm and Bruno were able to memorize its image clearly. They analyzed everything they saw in their memories. There were standout points in that place; one of them was a gigantic forest reasonably close to the sea.
There were other locations with a forest, but they were not one-third the size of this one. In the center of it, they saw a monumental volcano that seemed to have been inactive for millions of years. The land around volcanoes was always extremely fertile, which was the reason the forest had grown and expanded so much there.
Combined with the influence of the behemoth nearby, somewhere on the continent, infinite treasures must have been born over millions of years. This place was definitely the richest and most fertile point in the secret continent; at the same time, the highest-level beasts in the entire continent would be there.
This forest was the most dangerous place, but at the same time, the safest. It was in the nature of beasts to always divide themselves into their territories. They cultivated themselves with the resources of their territories and, from time to time, tried to invade another and expand their domains in a wild battle.
Inside the place, there was only one danger to worry about, which was the beast that owned the place. If they could hide from its senses, everything would be extremely safe.
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Alm had concealment pills, but they were difficult to make and very few. Added to this, they had a flaw: if the beast was a hundred meters away, it could sense them; the pills couldn’t be relied on.
Therefore, Rehvka was their main weapon in this situation. She had to be able to hide with her Dao, and the beasts not sense her even when she was by their side. With that, they could set up an ambush against the beasts and have a chance to defeat them easily.
But, unfortunately, Rehvka always used her QI, and all her Dao was shaped with that fuel. She still couldn’t do that at all.