While Damien sat back and relaxed as if nothing in the world bothered him, the girls went on a quest for resources.
They were like true adventurers, exploring the lands at high speeds and grabbing any treasures they found along the way.
Of course, each of them had their own measures for avoiding the layer's dangers, but they weren't completely safe. Each of them encountered the perils of the realm in their own ways.
Rose met an illusion beast that was disguising itself as a precious herb, Ruyue fell into a trap that caged her in the area and tried to consume her, Elena found a cluster of light-attributed materials, but later learned that they were extremely poisonous plants, and Zara found…well, the constant struggle between beasts to determine superiority.
For a second, Damien felt like he was being a useless soft rice-eating husband, but he disregarded that thought.
The girls didn't want his help.
They knew he could support them and they had trust that he'd be there when they needed that support, but they didn't want to hug his thighs and act like common women who were only there to leech on him.
They hadn't really gone on an adventure all together before, and now that they were doing exactly that, none of them were willing to be baggage.
Therefore, Damien's help would only be counterintuitive.
'Either way, I have a constant source of elixirs at my disposal, so there's no need to worry.'
Damien's spatial storage was connected to the Sanctuary, which gave him essentially unlimited storage space, but as he found while he was fighting, he was still able to access it, bypassing the Severed World's restrictions.
In reality, his spatial storage was a separate dimension that used the Sanctuary as a base, and in a certain sense, could be considered a middle ground between it and the Real Plane. If Damien allowed others to access this space…
'Elvira is really the greatest helper a man could wish for. I should give her an appreciation gift or ten when we get out of here.'
Elvira deposited medicines in the spatial storage, which Damien could then retrieve. This was the simple yet totally broken method Damien found himself capable of abusing.
And when it came to the Sanctuary's ability to produce these medicines, there was nothing to be said.
From the very start, Elvira had been raising Alchemists who could support Theavel, and the amount of elixirs they had in stock was monstrous.
'It's hard to grasp it, since I created that planet, but it really is a thriving world now. Actually, now that I think about it, have they started populating that second world yet?'
Damien created it and turned it into a specialized environment for Astoria's training, but he'd cleaned it up by the time they left. Those special environments were still present, but they had their own places on the planet now instead of defining the nature of the planet itself.
'I can't wait to see how the Sanctuary evolves in the future.'
That place was Damien's proudest and greatest achievement.
He–
"Hm?"
His senses were suddenly pricked by the sound of leaves rustling.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
Heavy footsteps approached rapidly. The sound of foliage being broken and pushed aside filled the air.
ROAR!
The angered roar of a beast made the trees tremble, and Damien, without another choice, stood up with annoyance painted on his face.
"Dammit. There goes the mood," he muttered to himself, exiting through the leaf door of the resting area and gazing into the wilds.
He could see it approaching. It was a huge panther with tight muscles that bulged with every step.
However, its attention wasn't on him.
Rah!
A barely audible panicked roar entered Damien's ears, turning his curious eyes downward just in time to see a creature breaking through the tall plants in front of him.
Before he could make a move, that creature rushed up to him and curled itself around his leg.
ROAR!
The panther broke through the grass not even a second later, screeching to a stop when it noticed Damien.
Grrrr!
It warily walked his periphery, growling and hissing as it assessed the threat he posed.
"Tch, so it was something like this?" Damien frowned.
This place was resembling the First Dungeon more and more, wasn't it?
This scene reminded him of his meeting with Zara, which, frankly, annoyed him more.
"Dammit, I'm too weak to kids."
He opened his mouth and took a deep breath.
He looked the panther directly in his eyes and flared his killing intent, creating an illusory storm of blood.
And…
[Breath]
ROOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAR!
He let out the roar of a dragon, shooting a beam of terrifying mana light into the air.
Empowered by the pure dragon bloodline present in Damien's current body, the roar had far more power than anything he could unleash in the past. The atmosphere was razed and the surrounding trees were cracked as collateral damage.
The panther immediately jumped back and scurried away, its survival instinct telling it that survival was a complete impossibility!
Several beasts hidden in the surroundings who had been watching Damien for the past few hours, regarding him as prey, also bolted.
In a single move, Damien established himself as one of this rainforest's apex predators, abusing bloodline suppression to establish prestige that'd guarantee he wouldn't be bothered again.
Once they were all out of sight, Damien finally turned to the little beast that was still wrapped around his leg.
It looked up at him, shivering with regret.
"Pfft…! Hahahaha!"
He couldn't help but laugh. It seemed this little guy thought he was about to get eaten!
Damien grabbed it by its nape, lifted it up in front of his face, and smiled at it.
"Relax, brat. I'm not going to eat you," he said as he brought it into his little shelter and set it down on the bed.
"Here, take it as a peace offering."
He took a random beast corpse out of storage and tossed it at the creature, who approached it carefully and sniffed it a few times before devouring it without reservation.
When it came to beast corpses, Damien probably had a few tens of thousands of them frozen in time in his inventory, but that was beside the point.
It was definitely a curious little thing. It was a white tiger cub, but it was cute enough to be considered a kitten.
'There's no such thing as a cuddly beast in the wild. Plus, if a much stronger entity was chasing it with such fervor…'
Zara was chased by the 40th-floor Wyvern because it wanted to consume her bloodline, and this cub was likely also something special enough to be desired by the beasts in this ecosystem.
'I don't really have the time to raise a kid right now, but it'd be stupid to reject something like this when it happens in a true land of opportunity, right?"
He looked at the cub with an evil smile.
"Little buddy, how would you like to come with this uncle?"
It looked up at him warily.
Whatever this strange-looking dragon wanted…
…definitely wasn't a good thing!
