The two left Murasaki Ayame’s room after her indirect refusal. Shion wasn’t too expectant of Ayame joining her ‘Absolute Duo’ team since her primary goal was to get a look at her descendant. It was best if Ayame could join, but it wouldn’t be a problem in the grand scheme of things if she didn’t. Now that her curiosity is satisfied, she won’t bother too much with her path.
Though, if she’s in danger, Shion wouldn’t hesitate to help her.
As the two slowly walked towards Shion’s room, Kenji became increasingly expectant of what his captain’s rooms looked like. Usually, one’s personal room layout will showcase their personality, traits, or secrets. In the past, an infamous wisdom-path cultivator managed to deduct a mage’s combat style and spells after seeing a picture of their room, so Kenji wanted to know what kind of room his captain would have.
Murasaki Ayame wasn’t worried that others would deduct her combat style because everyone knew her clansmen relied on artifacts. Even so, it’s hard to form a countermeasure for her because she isn’t retarded.
Shion soon led Kenji into a room on the 3rd floor, but she stopped at the door before busying herself in her tablet once more.
“Boss, is this your room?” Kenji couldn’t help but ask.
“Silence.”
Kenji scratched his head and shrugged his shoulders. Without distraction to occupy his mind, he soon became bored so she started peeking at Shion’s calm expression. He began liking her more because her face wasn’t the type that was extremely beautiful at first glance. Instead, her charm was the type that got you interested the more you saw her.
Soon, a group of couriers arrived while carrying a large amount of materials. “Good, you’re all here. Please put them inside.” Shion unlocked her door, letting the couriers deliver the goods. Kenji was told to help by his captain so he can only follow her commands.
After the pile of materials have been delivered, Kenji finally takes a closer look at Shion’s room. “My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined!”
Shion’s room wasn’t decorated to her personal preferences at all. There was literally nothing there except a bed for her to sleep on. Even the bedding and blanket was the standard default given by the academy as a set. In fact, it seems like the room wasn’t used at all since there’s not even a tinge of body hair or skin falloffs in the floor or beddings.
“Were you expecting used undergarments left lying in my room?” Shion said as she busied herself in arranging out the various materials that the courier delivered.
“That wasn’t the first thing on my mind, but yes!” Kenji shamelessly admits his lecherous thoughts.
Shion giggled, “I never wore one.”
“!!!!” Kenji’s face flushed red, he suddenly became excited as if he was injected with chicken blood, “BOSS, ARE YOU FOR REAL?” He instinctively used his strongest investigative method to verify the truth of her words, but he immediately became frustrated since Shion was immune to detections. She’s visible to the naked eyes but cannot be detected by other means.
“DAMN IT! This piece of thin clothing! Why is the world always against me!” Kenji stared at Shion with bloodshot eyes, trying his best to penetrate her anti-detection methods, but it was for naught. “Damn it all! I am THIS close to enlightenment! Those thin clothing are literally just cheap fabric, they aren’t engraved with antidetection runes, yet WHY am I not capable of seeing through it?” He grabs his hair in frustration.
Shion giggled at his serious effort, this dumb pervert is so simple. “I need your help in assembling this.” She asked him while handing out a handful of papers.
Kenji sighed in defeat, his bloodshot eyes lost its previous hype. “This is?”
“Instruction manual. Even a retard can do it.”
Kenji’s gaze traveled back and forth at the various metal objects scattered all over the room and the paper in front of him. “Isn’t this pearl a piece of Voidstar Meteorite used to create low-grade dimensional storage rings? And isn’t that Blue Current Gold used for lightning-path energy amplifiers? Boss, these things look expensive, how did you purchase them?”
“Contribution points?” She answered as if she was stating the obvious.
“I meant, how can you afford all of these? You just transferred a few days ago, there was no record of you taking a mission at all.” Kenji asked casually as he tried to figure out which thing is which according to the instruction manual.
“I’ve recently caught a big fish worth 19.000 contribution points.” Shion admits.
“Whoa, nice!” Kenji praised, but paused all activity as he suddenly noticed the tablet Shion held. “Boss… isn’t that… mine?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Shion feigned ignorance.
“Boss…” his face darkens. “Please tell me it’s a coincidence that I also have 19.000 contribution points.”
“Nope, you’re not. It says here that your contribution is 171 points. Do you need something?”
“BOSS!” Kenji gripped the instruction manual in his hand so hard that it almost turned into shredded paper. Pure wrath was literally visible from his face.
“Oh, while you were recovering, I took a bath and took a few pictures. Do you want to see it?” Shion calmly said as she casually handed over the tablet in her hands. She does not register his anger at all.
“!!!” Kenji swiftly snatched that tablet and began browsing the files inside. “BOSS, IF YOU’RE LYING, THEN I WILL… DAMN IT SHE’S NOT LYING!” Kenji’s wrath turned into pure joy. “These pictures… holy shit, how did she come up with these angles… It’s too bad that I can’t see her nipples or her puss-… Whoa, she was shaved clean! Come one, a little more and it’ll be visible…” He muttered silently as he swiftly browsed the gallery filled with 1928 steamy pictures of Shion taking a bath.
“Oh no, I can’t take high resolution pictures of myself anymore… I guess I’ll have to do it with my own tablet then… Should I purchase a new one with a high-resolution camera?” Shion sighed as she seriously considered the feasibility of her plan. “Too bad I don’t have that many contribution points left…”
Although Kenji’s total concentration was occupied somewhere, his sharp hearing did not miss that. There seems to be a moral conflict within his heart, but his desire eventually won.
He grits his teeth as he fakes a cough, “There’s no need! Boss, you can always use mine, it has a 72 Megapixel camera. Even if you took a picture from 10 meters away, you can still see each strand of hair on your face clearly!” He offered his tablet back, “But, you’ll have to let me use my tablet once in a while, especially after you took a bath!”
“Well… That’s a better alternative than buying a new one.” Shion giggled but didn’t take the tablet, “You keep it for now, there’s a file that I want you to open later. For now, let’s finish assembling this machine.”
Kenji delightfully kept his tablet, “Yes, boss!”
…
After 3 hours of work, Shion allows Kenji to leave her room to find other things to do.
It’s not that Kenji was lazy, but there are simply too many small parts related to machinery that they assembled. After the first delivery, eleven more groups of couriers delivered large amounts of small parts, chemicals, and other raw materials, the sheer amount of work made Kenji frustrated. The two were like factory workers who had nothing related to hunting.
Of course, Shion wasn’t too bothered. She expected his departure sooner or later and thus allowed him to leave.
That being said, her goal of inviting him to her room and assembling the machine was a cover to inform Kenji regarding her use of his points. The dude saved three thousand contribution points, gained six thousand during the hunting festival and the remaining ten thousand as a reward for being the first, yet the greatest beneficiary was Shion.
He planned to save six thousand more in addition to those nineteen thousand contribution points to purchase a powerful bloodline, but Shion thought it would be a shame to waste that amount of contribution points for that. She knew bloodline was what Kenji desperately wanted, but didn't let him take it.
At least not now.
Kenji was worried about his future, Shion was aware of it, but taking his points away wasn’t a method to circumvent his future path.
Although Kenji was dominating his peers, it wouldn’t be for long because the existence of bloodline powers will allow those fools he pushed around to soar into the clouds in a single leap. After reaching a certain level of cultivation (e.g.: rank 1), some bloodline power will awaken which will increase one’s capability further.
An example of this was Sakuya of Akane clan. Her clan harbors roughly 285 bloodline powers which allows her to awaken one as long as her cultivation base reaches rank 1. From those options, the majority of them would be weak and useless but there are certain methods for her clansmen to increase the odds of awakening the desired bloodline powers.
Of course, developing her own bloodline powers weren’t impossible either. In fact, those 285 bloodline powers were left behind and recorded by her ancestors for future generations. As long as the bloodline of Akane isn’t severed, their clansmen might have a chance to awaken those bloodline powers.
Then, what could be considered as bloodline powers?
There is no absolute way to answer this question, because bloodline powers vary from one another. It might manifest in the form of pure talent, elemental particle attraction, biological mutation, martial skill, inherent magic spell (passive magic spell), magic eyes, or many others. In fact, it wasn’t impossible for bloodline powers to manifest in the form of mutated mana pools with special properties.
Bloodline powers are simply the ability of a cultivator being passed down towards their descendant, this concept was developed by a refinement-path expert back in the Second Hero’s era.
Originally, it was the supreme method of one of the 2nd Generation Brave to obtain and inseminate the dragon race’s dogshit racial talent such as [Dragon Might], [Dragon Breath], [Dragon Intuition], [Dragon Eye], and many others in an attempt to create mixed blood dragon beast cannon fodders. But now, it has become the core concept of nobility clans.
In a sense, bloodline powers could be considered as a type of True Inheritance. The oldest nobility clans with bloodline powers were developed during the Second Hero’s era, roughly over six thousand years ago.
According to Shion’s early deduction, Sakuya should have awakened her first bloodline power even though she was a rank 0. Indeed, that strange fire-burning radiation of hers was an awakened bloodline power! Her strange ability allows her to become a hard-counter for all fire-path mages and allowing her to construct a queer personal combat style of using DoT (damage overtime) spells before finishing them in one fell swoop.
When her cultivation base reached rank 1, her body would evolve further, allowing another bloodline power to be unlocked. This benefit would stack additionally as her cultivation base progresses, turning powerful clans with strange and arcane bloodline powers to be above others.
But where there are merits, there will always be demerits. The stronger the bloodline powers are, the harder they are to unlock. A simple bloodline power might require 1 year of constant cultivation but another might take 10 years or 100 years to unlock. Even if certain bloodline rituals are used to weaken the bloodline ‘lock’, it would take significantly more resources.
Since Kenji wasn’t a part of nobility, he has no bloodline inheritance to speak of. If there are, it should be related to farming since both of his parents are mere farmers. For Kenji to gain bloodline powers, he had to become a progenitor of his own bloodline by at least having rank 1 cultivation foundation, or to merge his bloodline with another.
Obviously, he lacks the fundamental cultivation base to naturally develop his own supernatural ability and he lacks the necessary blood-path attainment to steal the bloodline of others, thus the only option would be injecting foreign blood into his body through a life-alteration surgery.
Of course, this was expensive, far more than purchasing body runes.
Injecting beast blood (or other extradimensional lifeform’s blood) to one’s body to gain their bloodline power or racial talent have a great chance of failure. There’s no purpose in taking weaker lifeform’s blood, therefore bloodline injection usually means inserting a stronger lifeform’s blood into your own body. Some lifeforms have little control upon their blood, but those with strong bloodline power would have greater control on theirs.
That being the case, it wouldn’t be strange if your body mutates so that it could accommodate parent’s blood and therefore makes one susceptible to domination through mental or biological means. Demon races typically use their descendants as backup bodies or clones, and demons aren’t the only one who possessed this method.
In fact, Shion’s former self, the Great Archmage, also possessed a method similar to this. Unfortunately, even his descendant was compromised. The backup bodies he prepared were killed by the Hero and his Braves, forcing him to use another method.
Back to the topic at hand, imagine if a rank 0 like Kenji wanted to have the bloodline or racial talent of a rank 3 beast. Then, would it be possible for Kenji to smoothly inherit the beast’s racial talent?
The answer is no, the chances are too low to even consider. The difference of cultivation rank meant more than just martial prowess, it also meant a higher form of life.
Thus, to ensure success of the life-alteration surgery meant hiring a professional life-alteration surgeon who knows their stuff.
Since Kenji had planned for his future path, it was easy for Shion to deduct his desire. He wanted to inject the bloodline of a rank 2 strength-path beast called Bandit Monkeylord, known for their great physical resilience and extremely powerful arm strength. He wanted to incorporate the Monkeylord’s racial talent with his beast strength method to develop his own bloodline powers.
‘Despite his dumb appearance, he was surprisingly very intelligent.’ was Shion’s appraisal of him.
She might’ve plundered his contribution points, but he was intelligent enough to think of it as an investment. The tacit understanding between the two can only happen thanks to his wit. After all, great strength alone couldn’t make him the number one amongst the first year students, there are far more things that scheme could accomplish than pure brute strength.
At least on his current level of playing field.
He immediately understood that Shion requires a large amount of contribution points as capital to prepare for the big mission. In the future, she’ll be responsible to pay him back with more resources. This sudden ‘trust’ might not happen if Shion didn’t tell him how she had defeated him so easily. Through that simple showcase of sportsmanship, he understood a bit of Shion’s personality.
In his point of view, Shion has a deep understanding of cultivation and didn’t consider rank 0s as her opponents. Perhaps, it was the necessary mindset for antimages to overestimate their enemies but it simply worked well even if her opponents are non-mages.
If Shion only wanted Kenji’s contribution points, it would be easy to just dump him but she told him how she defeated him in a duel. The significance of this couldn’t be underestimated as it includes her secrets.
Thanks to the existence of wisdom-path, nobody wanted to reveal too much of their methods because that would allow others to form a countermeasure for it. Defeating Kenji and revealing how he was defeated granted him a chance to do better, which was indirectly teaching him of her own weakness.
In fact, Kenji must’ve already formed a countermeasure for Shion’s [Triple Extreme Sound: Bell Palm], it wouldn’t be effective towards him in the future.
With more time, there would be additional chances for more exchanges like these when the trust between the two grows, thus he wasn’t too worried about being scammed.
That being the case, Shion was not planning to scam him either. She needed a powerful helper who wasn’t a part of nobility, and Kenji simply fit her requirement.
All those things aside, Shion finished the machine she assembled after a day of non-stop construction. To reduce the actual cost, Shion purchased the parts from multiple sources. She commissioned those poor refinement-path students who asked for meager contribution points as rewards. Those raw materials were refined into mechanical parts such as bolts, springs, gears, thermal-insulation plates or other useless objects if they are alone but would work greatly in a large machine.
For high-value material such as the Voidstar Meteorite and Blue Current Gold, they were pre-refined so that Shion could hide her refinement-path attainment. She’ll be doing the finishing touches, but the credits would be given to the refinement-path ‘master’ who refined the materials. She just assembled the machine like how someone would assemble furniture.
“The first stage of the mobile furnace is complete. Now, I can refine other mechanical organs.” Shion smiled as she stared at the coffin-shaped furnace. Mobile Furnaces are not uncommon, there are various designs available on the academy’s contribution market.
Although hers was relatively small compared to other mobile furnaces, it was compact and possessed sufficient production capability. Even if she wasn’t content with its default performance, she could customize it in the future, away from the prying eyes of the academy professors.
She prioritizes constructing a mobile furnace because most of the two weeks’ grace period after Nyx disconnected from her soul connection was filled with inaction. This wasn’t due to Shion being bored, but because of her lack of energy which forced her to enter energy-saving mode. Her current energy reserve merely allows her to be active for a couple more days.
Now that the mobile furnace has been assembled, completing her body becomes a possibility. Her first priority was to refine [Core Reactor], a heart-like mechanical organ responsible for the generation of energy. Without it, her only method of recharging energy reserves would be direct energy transfer from Kasumi (her liquid metal slime split soul).
According to her memory, the most efficient energy reactor in all of Morgen World was Mise Energy Core which was currently being used to power the floating fortress Alistair. Coupled with [Mordred’s Energy Loop System], the two suppressed the non-combat operational cost of Alistair to a few ten thousand mana crystal coins a day, despite being a rank 6 magic machinery product.
Since thinking of having it was unrealistic, then most cost-effective Core Reactor below rank 4 is Nuclear Reactor, which requires a rank 3 poison-path resource known as Uranium as its power source. Getting some uranium is difficult, it couldn’t be found easily on the market and its enrichment process is also quite complicated. In fact, most poison-path resources are so due to obvious reasons.
Then, the next best thing to a Nuclear Reactor is a Blue Lotus-pattern Mana Reactor which could act as a mobile mana spring. It would grant her the ability to freely generate water and lightning elemental particles in addition to the near endless amount of mana for hundreds of years nonstop before being depleted.
The location of the primary material, which was a Blue Lotus Heavenly Mana Spring, was already known; it was well hidden underneath an isolated mineral pocket within Thunderpeak mountain.
Unfortunately, it was closely guarded by myriad rank 2 beasts and Shion also lacked the industrial capacity to refine it into a mana reactor.
That being the case, Shion will have to do with the materials at hand which was sufficient to refine a rank 0 Electrochemical Reactor. It uses fuel cells refined from lightning-path resources or even directly uses lightning elemental particles to generate electric power. The Electrochemical Reactor’s primary material was the Blue Current Gold, which was supposed to be the mobile furnace’s power source.
The truth was, the Blue Current Gold and other supporting materials that she purchased are sufficient to refine three sets of Electrochemical Reactors. She was planning to refine one for the mobile furnace while the other two for herself. Still, having more reactors isn’t necessarily a good thing. The fuel cells expenditure would double, but that’s a price Shion is willing to take. In the future, the dual-reactor rig in her body would be useful as a trump card.
“Kasumi, you will be responsible for these parts…” She ordered her split soul as she began busying herself.
During energy-saving mode, Kasumi stores her slime mass within Shion’s hollow abdominal cavity. After she slither out of her hiding space, the liquid metal slowly transformed into Shion’s silver-colored, naked carbon copy. “Affirmative.” She replied as her fingers cracked in lightning current.
The two left Murasaki Ayame’s room after her indirect refusal. Shion wasn’t too expectant of Ayame joining her ‘Absolute Duo’ team since her primary goal was to get a look at her descendant. It was best if Ayame could join, but it wouldn’t be a problem in the grand scheme of things if she didn’t. Now that her curiosity is satisfied, she won’t bother too much with her path.
Though, if she’s in danger, Shion wouldn’t hesitate to help her.
As the two slowly walked towards Shion’s room, Kenji became increasingly expectant of what his captain’s rooms looked like. Usually, one’s personal room layout will showcase their personality, traits, or secrets. In the past, an infamous wisdom-path cultivator managed to deduct a mage’s combat style and spells after seeing a picture of their room, so Kenji wanted to know what kind of room his captain would have.
Murasaki Ayame wasn’t worried that others would deduct her combat style because everyone knew her clansmen relied on artifacts. Even so, it’s hard to form a countermeasure for her because she isn’t retarded.
Shion soon led Kenji into a room on the 3rd floor, but she stopped at the door before busying herself in her tablet once more.
“Boss, is this your room?” Kenji couldn’t help but ask.
“Silence.”
Kenji scratched his head and shrugged his shoulders. Without distraction to occupy his mind, he soon became bored so she started peeking at Shion’s calm expression. He began liking her more because her face wasn’t the type that was extremely beautiful at first glance. Instead, her charm was the type that got you interested the more you saw her.
Soon, a group of couriers arrived while carrying a large amount of materials. “Good, you’re all here. Please put them inside.” Shion unlocked her door, letting the couriers deliver the goods. Kenji was told to help by his captain so he can only follow her commands.
After the pile of materials have been delivered, Kenji finally takes a closer look at Shion’s room. “My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined!”
Shion’s room wasn’t decorated to her personal preferences at all. There was literally nothing there except a bed for her to sleep on. Even the bedding and blanket was the standard default given by the academy as a set. In fact, it seems like the room wasn’t used at all since there’s not even a tinge of body hair or skin falloffs in the floor or beddings.
“Were you expecting used undergarments left lying in my room?” Shion said as she busied herself in arranging out the various materials that the courier delivered.
“That wasn’t the first thing on my mind, but yes!” Kenji shamelessly admits his lecherous thoughts.
Shion giggled, “I never wore one.”
“!!!!” Kenji’s face flushed red, he suddenly became excited as if he was injected with chicken blood, “BOSS, ARE YOU FOR REAL?” He instinctively used his strongest investigative method to verify the truth of her words, but he immediately became frustrated since Shion was immune to detections. She’s visible to the naked eyes but cannot be detected by other means.
“DAMN IT! This piece of thin clothing! Why is the world always against me!” Kenji stared at Shion with bloodshot eyes, trying his best to penetrate her anti-detection methods, but it was for naught. “Damn it all! I am THIS close to enlightenment! Those thin clothing are literally just cheap fabric, they aren’t engraved with antidetection runes, yet WHY am I not capable of seeing through it?” He grabs his hair in frustration.
Shion giggled at his serious effort, this dumb pervert is so simple. “I need your help in assembling this.” She asked him while handing out a handful of papers.
Kenji sighed in defeat, his bloodshot eyes lost its previous hype. “This is?”
“Instruction manual. Even a retard can do it.”
Kenji’s gaze traveled back and forth at the various metal objects scattered all over the room and the paper in front of him. “Isn’t this pearl a piece of Voidstar Meteorite used to create low-grade dimensional storage rings? And isn’t that Blue Current Gold used for lightning-path energy amplifiers? Boss, these things look expensive, how did you purchase them?”
“Contribution points?” She answered as if she was stating the obvious.
“I meant, how can you afford all of these? You just transferred a few days ago, there was no record of you taking a mission at all.” Kenji asked casually as he tried to figure out which thing is which according to the instruction manual.
“I’ve recently caught a big fish worth 19.000 contribution points.” Shion admits.
“Whoa, nice!” Kenji praised, but paused all activity as he suddenly noticed the tablet Shion held. “Boss… isn’t that… mine?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Shion feigned ignorance.
“Boss…” his face darkens. “Please tell me it’s a coincidence that I also have 19.000 contribution points.”
“Nope, you’re not. It says here that your contribution is 171 points. Do you need something?”
“BOSS!” Kenji gripped the instruction manual in his hand so hard that it almost turned into shredded paper. Pure wrath was literally visible from his face.
“Oh, while you were recovering, I took a bath and took a few pictures. Do you want to see it?” Shion calmly said as she casually handed over the tablet in her hands. She does not register his anger at all.
“!!!” Kenji swiftly snatched that tablet and began browsing the files inside. “BOSS, IF YOU’RE LYING, THEN I WILL… DAMN IT SHE’S NOT LYING!” Kenji’s wrath turned into pure joy. “These pictures… holy shit, how did she come up with these angles… It’s too bad that I can’t see her nipples or her puss-… Whoa, she was shaved clean! Come one, a little more and it’ll be visible…” He muttered silently as he swiftly browsed the gallery filled with 1928 steamy pictures of Shion taking a bath.
“Oh no, I can’t take high resolution pictures of myself anymore… I guess I’ll have to do it with my own tablet then… Should I purchase a new one with a high-resolution camera?” Shion sighed as she seriously considered the feasibility of her plan. “Too bad I don’t have that many contribution points left…”
Although Kenji’s total concentration was occupied somewhere, his sharp hearing did not miss that. There seems to be a moral conflict within his heart, but his desire eventually won.
He grits his teeth as he fakes a cough, “There’s no need! Boss, you can always use mine, it has a 72 Megapixel camera. Even if you took a picture from 10 meters away, you can still see each strand of hair on your face clearly!” He offered his tablet back, “But, you’ll have to let me use my tablet once in a while, especially after you took a bath!”
“Well… That’s a better alternative than buying a new one.” Shion giggled but didn’t take the tablet, “You keep it for now, there’s a file that I want you to open later. For now, let’s finish assembling this machine.”
Kenji delightfully kept his tablet, “Yes, boss!”
…
After 3 hours of work, Shion allows Kenji to leave her room to find other things to do.
It’s not that Kenji was lazy, but there are simply too many small parts related to machinery that they assembled. After the first delivery, eleven more groups of couriers delivered large amounts of small parts, chemicals, and other raw materials, the sheer amount of work made Kenji frustrated. The two were like factory workers who had nothing related to hunting.
Of course, Shion wasn’t too bothered. She expected his departure sooner or later and thus allowed him to leave.
That being said, her goal of inviting him to her room and assembling the machine was a cover to inform Kenji regarding her use of his points. The dude saved three thousand contribution points, gained six thousand during the hunting festival and the remaining ten thousand as a reward for being the first, yet the greatest beneficiary was Shion.
He planned to save six thousand more in addition to those nineteen thousand contribution points to purchase a powerful bloodline, but Shion thought it would be a shame to waste that amount of contribution points for that. She knew bloodline was what Kenji desperately wanted, but didn't let him take it.
At least not now.
Kenji was worried about his future, Shion was aware of it, but taking his points away wasn’t a method to circumvent his future path.
Although Kenji was dominating his peers, it wouldn’t be for long because the existence of bloodline powers will allow those fools he pushed around to soar into the clouds in a single leap. After reaching a certain level of cultivation (e.g.: rank 1), some bloodline power will awaken which will increase one’s capability further.
An example of this was Sakuya of Akane clan. Her clan harbors roughly 285 bloodline powers which allows her to awaken one as long as her cultivation base reaches rank 1. From those options, the majority of them would be weak and useless but there are certain methods for her clansmen to increase the odds of awakening the desired bloodline powers.
Of course, developing her own bloodline powers weren’t impossible either. In fact, those 285 bloodline powers were left behind and recorded by her ancestors for future generations. As long as the bloodline of Akane isn’t severed, their clansmen might have a chance to awaken those bloodline powers.
Then, what could be considered as bloodline powers?
There is no absolute way to answer this question, because bloodline powers vary from one another. It might manifest in the form of pure talent, elemental particle attraction, biological mutation, martial skill, inherent magic spell (passive magic spell), magic eyes, or many others. In fact, it wasn’t impossible for bloodline powers to manifest in the form of mutated mana pools with special properties.
Bloodline powers are simply the ability of a cultivator being passed down towards their descendant, this concept was developed by a refinement-path expert back in the Second Hero’s era.
Originally, it was the supreme method of one of the 2nd Generation Brave to obtain and inseminate the dragon race’s dogshit racial talent such as [Dragon Might], [Dragon Breath], [Dragon Intuition], [Dragon Eye], and many others in an attempt to create mixed blood dragon beast cannon fodders. But now, it has become the core concept of nobility clans.
In a sense, bloodline powers could be considered as a type of True Inheritance. The oldest nobility clans with bloodline powers were developed during the Second Hero’s era, roughly over six thousand years ago.
According to Shion’s early deduction, Sakuya should have awakened her first bloodline power even though she was a rank 0. Indeed, that strange fire-burning radiation of hers was an awakened bloodline power! Her strange ability allows her to become a hard-counter for all fire-path mages and allowing her to construct a queer personal combat style of using DoT (damage overtime) spells before finishing them in one fell swoop.
When her cultivation base reached rank 1, her body would evolve further, allowing another bloodline power to be unlocked. This benefit would stack additionally as her cultivation base progresses, turning powerful clans with strange and arcane bloodline powers to be above others.
But where there are merits, there will always be demerits. The stronger the bloodline powers are, the harder they are to unlock. A simple bloodline power might require 1 year of constant cultivation but another might take 10 years or 100 years to unlock. Even if certain bloodline rituals are used to weaken the bloodline ‘lock’, it would take significantly more resources.
Since Kenji wasn’t a part of nobility, he has no bloodline inheritance to speak of. If there are, it should be related to farming since both of his parents are mere farmers. For Kenji to gain bloodline powers, he had to become a progenitor of his own bloodline by at least having rank 1 cultivation foundation, or to merge his bloodline with another.
Obviously, he lacks the fundamental cultivation base to naturally develop his own supernatural ability and he lacks the necessary blood-path attainment to steal the bloodline of others, thus the only option would be injecting foreign blood into his body through a life-alteration surgery.
Of course, this was expensive, far more than purchasing body runes.
Injecting beast blood (or other extradimensional lifeform’s blood) to one’s body to gain their bloodline power or racial talent have a great chance of failure. There’s no purpose in taking weaker lifeform’s blood, therefore bloodline injection usually means inserting a stronger lifeform’s blood into your own body. Some lifeforms have little control upon their blood, but those with strong bloodline power would have greater control on theirs.
That being the case, it wouldn’t be strange if your body mutates so that it could accommodate parent’s blood and therefore makes one susceptible to domination through mental or biological means. Demon races typically use their descendants as backup bodies or clones, and demons aren’t the only one who possessed this method.
In fact, Shion’s former self, the Great Archmage, also possessed a method similar to this. Unfortunately, even his descendant was compromised. The backup bodies he prepared were killed by the Hero and his Braves, forcing him to use another method.
Back to the topic at hand, imagine if a rank 0 like Kenji wanted to have the bloodline or racial talent of a rank 3 beast. Then, would it be possible for Kenji to smoothly inherit the beast’s racial talent?
The answer is no, the chances are too low to even consider. The difference of cultivation rank meant more than just martial prowess, it also meant a higher form of life.
Thus, to ensure success of the life-alteration surgery meant hiring a professional life-alteration surgeon who knows their stuff.
Since Kenji had planned for his future path, it was easy for Shion to deduct his desire. He wanted to inject the bloodline of a rank 2 strength-path beast called Bandit Monkeylord, known for their great physical resilience and extremely powerful arm strength. He wanted to incorporate the Monkeylord’s racial talent with his beast strength method to develop his own bloodline powers.
‘Despite his dumb appearance, he was surprisingly very intelligent.’ was Shion’s appraisal of him.
She might’ve plundered his contribution points, but he was intelligent enough to think of it as an investment. The tacit understanding between the two can only happen thanks to his wit. After all, great strength alone couldn’t make him the number one amongst the first year students, there are far more things that scheme could accomplish than pure brute strength.
At least on his current level of playing field.
He immediately understood that Shion requires a large amount of contribution points as capital to prepare for the big mission. In the future, she’ll be responsible to pay him back with more resources. This sudden ‘trust’ might not happen if Shion didn’t tell him how she had defeated him so easily. Through that simple showcase of sportsmanship, he understood a bit of Shion’s personality.
In his point of view, Shion has a deep understanding of cultivation and didn’t consider rank 0s as her opponents. Perhaps, it was the necessary mindset for antimages to overestimate their enemies but it simply worked well even if her opponents are non-mages.
If Shion only wanted Kenji’s contribution points, it would be easy to just dump him but she told him how she defeated him in a duel. The significance of this couldn’t be underestimated as it includes her secrets.
Thanks to the existence of wisdom-path, nobody wanted to reveal too much of their methods because that would allow others to form a countermeasure for it. Defeating Kenji and revealing how he was defeated granted him a chance to do better, which was indirectly teaching him of her own weakness.
In fact, Kenji must’ve already formed a countermeasure for Shion’s [Triple Extreme Sound: Bell Palm], it wouldn’t be effective towards him in the future.
With more time, there would be additional chances for more exchanges like these when the trust between the two grows, thus he wasn’t too worried about being scammed.
That being the case, Shion was not planning to scam him either. She needed a powerful helper who wasn’t a part of nobility, and Kenji simply fit her requirement.
All those things aside, Shion finished the machine she assembled after a day of non-stop construction. To reduce the actual cost, Shion purchased the parts from multiple sources. She commissioned those poor refinement-path students who asked for meager contribution points as rewards. Those raw materials were refined into mechanical parts such as bolts, springs, gears, thermal-insulation plates or other useless objects if they are alone but would work greatly in a large machine.
For high-value material such as the Voidstar Meteorite and Blue Current Gold, they were pre-refined so that Shion could hide her refinement-path attainment. She’ll be doing the finishing touches, but the credits would be given to the refinement-path ‘master’ who refined the materials. She just assembled the machine like how someone would assemble furniture.
“The first stage of the mobile furnace is complete. Now, I can refine other mechanical organs.” Shion smiled as she stared at the coffin-shaped furnace. Mobile Furnaces are not uncommon, there are various designs available on the academy’s contribution market.
Although hers was relatively small compared to other mobile furnaces, it was compact and possessed sufficient production capability. Even if she wasn’t content with its default performance, she could customize it in the future, away from the prying eyes of the academy professors.
She prioritizes constructing a mobile furnace because most of the two weeks’ grace period after Nyx disconnected from her soul connection was filled with inaction. This wasn’t due to Shion being bored, but because of her lack of energy which forced her to enter energy-saving mode. Her current energy reserve merely allows her to be active for a couple more days.
Now that the mobile furnace has been assembled, completing her body becomes a possibility. Her first priority was to refine [Core Reactor], a heart-like mechanical organ responsible for the generation of energy. Without it, her only method of recharging energy reserves would be direct energy transfer from Kasumi (her liquid metal slime split soul).
According to her memory, the most efficient energy reactor in all of Morgen World was Mise Energy Core which was currently being used to power the floating fortress Alistair. Coupled with [Mordred’s Energy Loop System], the two suppressed the non-combat operational cost of Alistair to a few ten thousand mana crystal coins a day, despite being a rank 6 magic machinery product.
Since thinking of having it was unrealistic, then most cost-effective Core Reactor below rank 4 is Nuclear Reactor, which requires a rank 3 poison-path resource known as Uranium as its power source. Getting some uranium is difficult, it couldn’t be found easily on the market and its enrichment process is also quite complicated. In fact, most poison-path resources are so due to obvious reasons.
Then, the next best thing to a Nuclear Reactor is a Blue Lotus-pattern Mana Reactor which could act as a mobile mana spring. It would grant her the ability to freely generate water and lightning elemental particles in addition to the near endless amount of mana for hundreds of years nonstop before being depleted.
The location of the primary material, which was a Blue Lotus Heavenly Mana Spring, was already known; it was well hidden underneath an isolated mineral pocket within Thunderpeak mountain.
Unfortunately, it was closely guarded by myriad rank 2 beasts and Shion also lacked the industrial capacity to refine it into a mana reactor.
That being the case, Shion will have to do with the materials at hand which was sufficient to refine a rank 0 Electrochemical Reactor. It uses fuel cells refined from lightning-path resources or even directly uses lightning elemental particles to generate electric power. The Electrochemical Reactor’s primary material was the Blue Current Gold, which was supposed to be the mobile furnace’s power source.
The truth was, the Blue Current Gold and other supporting materials that she purchased are sufficient to refine three sets of Electrochemical Reactors. She was planning to refine one for the mobile furnace while the other two for herself. Still, having more reactors isn’t necessarily a good thing. The fuel cells expenditure would double, but that’s a price Shion is willing to take. In the future, the dual-reactor rig in her body would be useful as a trump card.
“Kasumi, you will be responsible for these parts…” She ordered her split soul as she began busying herself.
During energy-saving mode, Kasumi stores her slime mass within Shion’s hollow abdominal cavity. After she slither out of her hiding space, the liquid metal slowly transformed into Shion’s silver-colored, naked carbon copy. “Affirmative.” She replied as her fingers cracked in lightning current.
