Testing the Limits

The more he thought about it, the more feasible the plan seemed. Not only could he survive, but he could also gain a super-expert as a bodyguard in a short time.

The problem was how to make the plan succeed and how to avoid exposure.

Qianwei wiped the tears from her face with her hand. Clenching her teeth, he reaffirmed his determination to live, then quickly reined in his crumbling emotions and began to think.

At the very least, although the awakened ability wasn’t what he had wanted, a support-type functional ability meant greater room for maneuver and more application scenarios. Even if its use was strange, it was still a superpower.

‘Energy or matter remanufacturing… let’s try it first… right, and that soul crystal.’

With a thought, she took the black crystal from the ring space and held it in her hand. Qianwei closed her eyes, sensing the energy flowing within her body. He manipulated and drove it—it was a bit more difficult than expected, but after a few attempts, she managed to guide it out of her body relatively easily, enveloping the crystal.

‘It should be like this…’

According to that damn woman’s explanation, once she successfully awakened and could control the energy in her body, she no longer needed to absorb items through her body directly; using energy to assimilate and absorb was much more convenient and faster. As she became more adept at continuously channeling energy, Qianwei could clearly feel the power in her body being rapidly drained, then just as quickly replenished.

This was something no other ability awakener could do—it was the special effect of absorbing the Holy Spirit Core: nearly inexhaustible blue energy. At this moment, Qianwei didn’t fully understand just how powerful this effect was. After concentrating and outputting energy for about ten minutes, the black rhombus crystal in her palm completely shrank and disappeared.

With the ability manifested, he roughly grasped the essence of the skill called “Blue Hole.”

‘Such an evil ability… too bad it’s useless against Qiuyue Han.’

Muttering softly while feeling the effect of the ability, her cheeks flushing slightly, Qianwei mobilized her energy again, focused his mind on his eyes, and looked at the luminous ore on the wall beside her.

Soon, information about the ore was parsed. She kept turning her gaze to receive information, then took out various odds and ends from the ring that the bad woman hadn’t bothered to identify. She examined each one, but soon he felt dizzy. Compared to energy consumption, mental consumption was greater—he would need to get used to it slowly.

‘Whoosh~ This ability is pretty good. I can also use it with Devour to select materials for ability activation… Let me try this first.’

Among the pile of odds and ends in the ring was a luminous crystal gem, only the size of a fingernail. The parsed information indicated it was a high-purity natural energy crystal, similar to the luminous ore on the wall, but much higher in purity and value. It was a good thing that could be directly absorbed by the body to replenish power.

After a slight hesitation, Qianwei put it into her mouth and swallowed it. Since the crystal was small, she didn’t feel any strange sensation. But the moment the ability was activated, her belly instantly felt bloated, visibly swelling into a round shape, as if she had eaten too much at once.

‘Ugh~ Damn it, this is too weird.’

He couldn’t help complaining softly. After several attempts, Qianwei discovered that when the ability was activated, she could pause and save the state at any time. However, if she retrieved the intermediate state before the nature of the inserted object completely changed, it would cause a certain degree of damage.

When the ability was fully completed and the object was expelled, it would be wrapped in a faint film, similar to an eggshell. The degree to which the created item could change was also heavily dependent on the nature of the input material. For a pure energy crystal, its essential function was quite difficult to alter; its shape, however, could be molded at will.

Qianwei stared blankly at the several eggshells in her hand, varying greatly in shape and size, momentarily at a loss for words. He kind of wanted to die…

‘Wuwuwu, damn it, I have to survive!’

With tears in her eyes, she tossed the eggshells aside, then looked at the small tools she had taken out from the eggshells, and began another round of testing and exhaustive attempts.

Experiments to directly manufacture powerful weapons failed. Even making bomb-like items from high-quality energy crystals yielded unsatisfactory results. Qianwei guessed the problem was the lack of variety in the materials, but unfortunately, after parsing, the items in the ring had nothing suitable for combination.

The plan to sneak away from the giant monster’s perception using a concealing aura item also failed. It seemed to work when she was farther away, but when she approached the cave entrance, she was discovered. Terrified, she scrambled back on all fours, dirtying her clothes. Forced to do so with disdain and shame, she took a dress belonging to the bad woman from the ring and put it on…

On the sixth day after his ability awakened, after several days of preparation and experimentation, and after hatching the “egg items” over a hundred times, his understanding of the ability and control over internal energy had deepened.

Food and water were almost running out. Qianwei made up his mind to begin implementing the plan. But before that, he needed to make one last special item.

She picked up a white hair she had found when feeding water earlier and placed it into a large medicine bottle about five centimeters in diameter as a primer. Then, gathering his courage, she swallowed the bottle along with the potion inside…

Struggling to suppress the strange sensation, after some processing, she finally transformed the strange potion into a strange elongated egg. With excitement, Qianwei picked up the egg from the bed mat, cracked it on the edge of a stone, and took out the item inside.

Two smoke grenades—made from a large bottle of high-efficiency anesthetic potion, several small bottles of high-grade mental resistance reduction potions, several high-level energy crystals, and a strand of Qiuyue Han’s hair.

‘Special item against Qiuyue Han successfully created~ Hehe… Ugh, sure enough, the bottle’s size was a bit excessive. So painful.’

He flashed a sinister smile, but to maximize the smoke grenades’ capacity, he had increased the size of the elongated egg, resulting in a minor injury after the successful formation.

Clutching the two grenades, she lay down on the simple bed. Qianwei decided to rest for a while, so she fell into a deep slumber, exhausted. Essentially everything that could be prepared was ready. Multiple contingencies were in place, several plans had been thought out. The rest—success or failure—depended entirely on fate.

However, while sleeping, Qianwei had a nightmare again. He dreamed that the plan failed, and he was killed outright by the furious Qiuyue Han, who had escaped the seal… his corpse was even fed to the giant monster outside the cave. Then that damn bad woman suddenly appeared and mocked him…

Despair and anger intertwined. He suddenly woke up, gasping for air. After calming down, he couldn’t help but cover his face and weep softly.

****

At the seal site in the stone hall, the entire pyramid-shaped seal framework had shrunk by nearly half, and the energy chains extending from the four corners had dimmed considerably. The seal’s disintegration, after these days of effort, would be resolved earlier than expected.

Yet there was no hint of joy on Qiuyue Han’s face.