Chapter 97
Collecting the Materials

Chu Shen flew in the clouds high above the ground. He held the mineral scanner in his hand. Lucas’ voice came out of the jetpack. “Nope, can’t detect it here either.”

Chu Shen sighed. They had searched for two days now and collected a small amount but they still needed more. It was tiring to search for such a long time with no rest.

“Hey wait, I detected something in the mountain over there. I’m circling back around so be ready.” Lucas informed Chu Shen.

“Alright.” The jetpack banked, turning around. The mountain in question was fairly large, one of the biggest mountains within a hundred miles. After a couple minutes of circling the mountain, Lucas spoke up.

“It’s definitely down there. Let’s get down there.” Suddenly, a loud screech echoed out. SCREEECH! Simultaneously, there was a large shockwave that hit Chu Shen and Lucas, throwing them backwards. The jetpack became destabilized from the blow.

“Hold on, I can’t keep it steady! We’re going down!” Lucas yelled at him. The jetpack started spinning, gently at first before spinning faster and faster. Chu Shen was becoming disoriented.

Chu Shen caught glimpses of the ground. It was closing fast. The jetpack wouldn’t let him slow down in time. He activated his body shield in anticipation of the impact. Waiting until the last minute so that the impact would not be so great, Chu Shen hit the ground, creating a huge crater in the ground.

Getting up, Chu Shen shook his head. “Man, what hit me? That must be some beast.” SCREEECH. Suddenly, a bird swooped down at him, catching him a glancing blow to his shoulder with it’s claws.

Chu Shen was thrown backwards, flying through the air until he hit the mountain, making a crater in the rock. The bird flew back upwards, escaping into the sky. It wheeled back around while Chu Shen was just getting back to his feet.

The portion of his body shield that covered his shoulder had cracks in it. The eagle opened it’s mouth. When it did, it spat out a blade of wind that streaked towards Chu Shen.

The wind blade was almost invisible. There was a faint blur that told where it was. Chu Shen smiled at that. His body shield may not have been good at blocking physical attacks, but energy attacks were perfect.

Chu Shen lifted his arm and blocked the wind blade. When it hit his arm, the wind blade, unexpectedly, was not absorbed by it. The windblade only seemed to have been weakened severely, striking Chu Shen’s body shield. His arm wavered slightly while Chu Shen was bewildered at not being able to absorb the attack.

Recognizing the danger he was in though, Chu Shen immediately started running away from the Screecher Eagle, as the primordial beast was called. The eagle let out a loud SCREECH and flew after Chu Shen.

Multiple wind blades flew towards Chu Shen from the eagles open mouth. Chu Shen started dodging frantically, avoiding the blurry wind blades. But after a couple hits, Chu Shen realized something.

The wind blades was actual wind that was charged with Qi. The Qi accelerated the wind into a deadly blade with the Qi supporting the attack. Chu Shen smiled when he came to this conclusion.

While the Qi charged blades were deadly to others, to him they were merely a nuisance. It removed a worry he had that these blades could ignore his null Qi. It was actually a physical attack! That was why the wind blades had an effect on him, though since he absorbed the Qi that supported, it the damage was decreased by over 70%.

With this, Chu Shen realized he was no longer in any real danger. But with this conclusion, he would only take minor damage and with the influx of Qi from the absorbed attacks, he would be able to handle it with ease. However, this new information on how Qi could be used to manipulate the physical elements like that was concerning.

The eagle continued shooting wind blades. But now, Chu Shen turned around and let the wind blades hit him at will. The eagle SCREEECHED at the fact that it’s attacks were ineffective. The eagle swooped downwards, extending its claws towards Chu Shen.

Chu Shen waited until the last second before jumping into the air and hitting the eagle in the head with his hammer. The eagle was smashed into the ground, creating a large crater. Falling, Chu Shen leapt into the crater and hit the eagle upside the head again.

The blow to the eagles head had left it disoriented. The second blow knocked the eagle out. Chu Shen looked at the unconscious eagle for a moment. Finally, he waved his hand. “Bah, I’m not hunting. So long as it learns not to mess with me, it’s best to let it be.”

Chu Shen leapt out of the crater and into the air. Withdrawing the mineral scanner, he resumed his hunt for the resources he needed. He also took Lucas out since he needed him to operate the scanner. He put Lucas inside the holo-drone since the camouflage system seemed to work well.

“Whoa! What’s with that eagle? It’s wingspan is over ten foot! That’s enormous!”

“Well it was the beast that attacked us, so I had to fight against it for a bit. Luckily it’s a class 5 beast so there was no real threat.”

“Nice! But why is it still alive? We could trade the beast core and corpse for money you know.”

“Yeah but we can earn money through forging. No need to kill if we don’t have to. Now come on, we have to collect that plastic.”

“Fine. Wait! I’m detecting the movement up here! Come on!” Lucas floated through the air as the holo-drone took off up the slope. Chu Shen sighed and ran behind him.

When they reached the top, Chu Shen was shocked. Surprisingly there was a nest! A nest of the Screecher Eagle! Upon seeing it, Chu Shen nodded. Apparently the eagle was only protecting it’s young. Sighing, he turned around.

“Come on Lucas, we still need that plastic. Let’s go.” Chu Shen smiled, feeling glad for not killing the eagle. It would still need to raise it’s young after all. Unknown to him was the much larger, Class 7 Black Hawk that was staring at him from the clouds above.

It’s great sight had caught Chu Shen coming closer to it’s nest and it was prepared to swoop down and kill him instantly. The only reason it didn’t was because it saw Chu Shen spare it’s mate, though it was confused by the flying sphere and human that appeared out of nowhere.

Humans were often greedy, killing without hesitation over a couple gold pieces. As the saying goes, beasts die for food and humans die for money. The Black Hawk had experienced this and killed many greedy humans who had attacked it’s family. But these humans were not so greedy.

The Black Hawk watched the humans climb to the base of the mountain and start digging. After a while they did a weird jig. One of them took out a black box out of the sphere thing and then into a metal object that appeared as well. Then they flew off, just like a bird.

Swooping down to his mate, he picked up here limp body and placed her inside his nest. The Black Hawk stared at the quickly dwindling image of the human. No one could tell what it was thinking.

Meanwhile, The Black Rose Guild Branch Manager just dismissed the life slip servant. Leaning back in his chair, the fat man sighed. He was just going to have to give up the mission.

The forger Lai Den and did not have the money required to raise the missions difficulty. If that was the only issue than he would have helped out to foster closer relations but there was an additional issue. There was no higher squad available to a small branch like him.

It seems as though he would have to give up and hope Lai Den did not get too upset.

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