The amazing part about Calming Lake was that the mental energy you wasted here could be replenished by fighting off and absorbing the streams of consciousnesses around you. This was the secret to how the Crystal Dragons were one of the very rare cases of species that could replenish their own mental energy without sleep or rest.
However, the issue was obvious. Continuously battling and absorbing these streams was incredibly taxing. Many wasted more mental energy than they received in trying, which was why not many lasted long.
But, even though Dyon hadn't moved anywhere near as far as they did, he was still holding on and pushing forward.
It seemed their only option was to wait and trust Dyon… Hoping that he wouldn't lose his mind in this place.
...
The forest erupted into battle of chaos and madness.
The skin of what Dyon called the pink gorilla was incredibly sturdy to the point where even the bronzed's strong claws only left white marks on it. At the same time, its balance was impeccable, not only because of its strong and massive trunk-like arms, but also because of the stabilizer that was its rattling tail.
In the end, Ace was forced to take action. Dyon coordinated the actions of the four siblings, concentrating on the pink gorilla's trunk arms. Its hind legs were too short and uncoordinated, so Dyon immediately pointed them out as a weakness to exploit.
With Ace's involvement, those mere white marks soon became streaks of red, and even fibers of muscle, before finally giving way to white bone.
The fact the bronzed were unintelligent might be a negative most of the time, but in combat, it was a massive plus. There was no latency between them receiving Dyon's commands and them acting on it because they hardly had thoughts of their own. This meant that Dyon didn't need to train them separately like he had been forced to do with Biibi, Linlin, Shere and Sen.
Dyon also noticed that what he asked of them seem to become ingrained within their muscle memory. Their intelligence was low, but it seemed their talent for combat and their instincts were incredibly high.
The pink gorilla soon fell, but Dyon took care to ensure that none of their attacks fell on its pink belly. The answer why was revealed the moment Dyon commanded Ace to tear its stomach open.
Six creatures cocooned in transparent egg-like sacks fell out one after another. They seemed to be in a deep sleep as well. If Dyon was correct, it wouldn't have been more than a few days before the pink gorilla gave birth. And that meant…
Dyon turned his head toward an underground cave not too far away. However, he was quickly disappointed.
'As expected… The route the bull-bird took wasn't normal. She went an extra length others didn't usually go through.'
The bull-bird had compressed her energies for 10 years. Though the end result was gross, the process itself was commendable. Dyon could imagine the level of pain and agony it required to suffer through such a thing for so long.
Despite being stronger than the bull-bird, the pink gorilla didn't have the same resolve. It had compressed its energy for far less time before relieving itself of its compressed energy. As a result, its energies weren't on the level of the bull-bird's and were still categorized as being of the essence grade. But…
'If I use it all, it should be enough. This is clearly a higher class of essence grade than what can be found within this area's underground caves.'
Dyon sent his Presence fused divine sense forward. He understood that in this world, since the body was most important, Presence should be very effective as well. By emitting his Presence, he was able to rein in qi far better. And, considering that this qi was meant to be ingested by the pink gorilla's children, it was easier to control to begin with.
Dyon's right arm began to tingle, separating out the holy type qi and restructuring itself.
After a few hours of meditation, Dyon could finally clutch his own arm once more.
'The energy wasn't enough to reconstruct my arm to its previous strength and form my meridians…'
The good news was that Dyon's arm had the same strength it had before he lost it. The bad news was that the holy type qi here wasn't enough to reconstruct his True Deity grade meridians, something that should probably have been expected. Still, it was a great boon nonetheless. If he could find another nurturing pile – something he felt far better calling it to distract himself from the fact it was actually a pile of dung – of this caliber, he could begin to construct his meridians once more.
By Dyon's estimates, about 3-5 would be enough to reconstruct his 9 missing meridians.
Once he completed that task, Dyon turned to the six sacks.
The babies, despite their tranquil sleep, had quite an off-putting appearance as well. Much like the bronzed, they had features their mother didn't have, either because they came from their father, or because there were some dormant genes that were catalyzed to awaken due to the union of their mother and father.
They had a tail, like their mother, but it was instead curved into the pointed edge of a scorpion. In fact, its pointed end looked more like a blade than something that should be on a living organism.
They shared the same wrinkled face of their mother as well, but their flat noses protruded outward, giving them a distinct pig-like appearance emphasized even more by their floppy ears.
Their bodies were about the only characteristic of their mother that still remained – being pink – well, that and their body-builder-like arms. However, their hind legs were replaced by six insect or arachnid-like legs, giving them 8 total limbs and a single tail.
Dyon thought about cutting them out, but then he realized there was a better method. In this state, the babies were primed for the absorption of energy. If he began to feed them holy type energy in this state, they would likely evolve far quicker than the bronzed had. Instead of waiting years, maybe only a few weeks would be enough for them to transcend their current level.
After thinking this far, Dyon immediately acted on his instinct, giving the scorpion-gorilla babies a place on Ace's ever extending trolly of wagons.
