1126: Leaving

Leaving

Abel managed to understand why the spirit was able to exist today. From the records, it was called a nurturing spirit, something that was born to plant.2

It all had to do with how unique the portable nurture base was. It needed something special, something like a sun to provide light. Because of that, outside of the base, there had been many mana gathering circles that were supposed to supply energy to the very top. On the top, apart from illuminating the plant with light, another thing the sphere did was that it could attack with the energy that was compiled. Once everything inside was expended, it would then try to survive on its own.

Since the management and illumination belonged to two completely independent systems, more rare ingredients were needed to draw the mana gathering circle outside the base. One set was for powering up the light sphere since magic gemstones were not enough, while the energy slot was just for the spirit. This would be a good model in most cases, but this garden had been operating for who-knows-how-long.

One surprising thing was that the light sphere was still operating after all these years. If it weren't for the nurture spirit adding another energy passageway a long time ago, none of this would be operating.

After getting permission from the nurture spirit, Abel went ahead to place a top-level gemstone on the energy slot. He could see that all 2000 slots were full. When he saw that the energy was refilled, he could see that energy was sent over.

"The nurture spirit is here to serve you, Master."

Abel commanded, "Self check on the base. Report to me about any missing resources."

"Ten nurture puppets and two maintenance puppets are available. Master, 190 nurture puppets and 38 maintenance puppets are waiting to be fixed. The lighting system is normal. Energy supply is regular. Apart from the seeds for the mana resistance potion that are surviving, the rest are all dead. Currently, what is missing is 1000 standard steel ingots, 5 standard portions of mithrils, 5 regular portions of regular gold…"

The nurture spirit managed to tell Abel about all the things that he knew or didn't know. All of them were absolute essentials. The names of the ancient ingredients might not be the same as their modern counterparts. Luckily, they just weren't all that special. Abel managed to find most of them in his huge collection. As for the number, ever since he obtained the portal bags from the Nation of God, he's never had to worry about the number in the mine. The only thing he was to worry about was overproduction, actually.

To make things easier, the two maintenance puppets that could still move started moving and examined each other. They were not completely switched off during all this time, despite that they didn't move most of the time. They did have mana gathering circles drawn on them, so as long as there was no energy, there would still be enough to transfer the energy over.

Ever since the maintenance puppets walked into the control room, two top-level gemstones were taken out and placed into the energy slot. When the maintenance puppets received this boost, they started moving a lot faster than before. In fact, they were resuming to work at twice the speed of a normal human. They were starting to use the fire circles, and all kinds of ingredients were changed into different shapes as they worked on it. Circles were distributed on their entire bodies. The circle would hold all kinds of functions that were completely meant for fixing.

Abel made an estimate. If he didn't have the top-level gemstones with him, he wouldn't have been able to use these circles. As a matter of fact, the low energy level was really the only cause of the huge waste of puppets. The problem was in the missing ingredients because even if there wasn't enough, the maintenance puppets could always break the damaged ones to repair the other ones.

Now that there was enough energy, the two maintenance puppets started working at full speed. They began by fixing the puppets that were not as severely injured. In just a few tens of minutes, some of the broken ones were getting back to work to join the fixing procedure. In this underground space, the whole place started operating again like a factory.

Wizard Golan watched the nurture base, "Havenoticed something different about this garden, Dolan?"

They realized that the rest was helping them restore some stamina. While they were waiting for Abel, Wizard Golan sensed that some change was happening to the moving nurture base.

Wizard Dolan affirmed, "The herb garden is coming back!"

While the herb garden didn't seem so different from the one before, it did not possess the ability to move at high precision. Now that there was enough energy to support their cognitive function, their way of operating was starting to look completely different.

Wizard Doran was very confused, "What did Master Bennett do, exactly? Why do I feel like he's already had a lot of knowledge about this garden?"

That seemed reasonable. Master Bennett should have no prior knowledge about this herb garden before coming here. However, he found the operation room before any of them. Given the current state of the garden, Master Bennett must've done something to the spirit to make everything work so much faster now.

Wizard Dolan laughed, "This is good, Doran! The herb garden is better in Master Bennett's hands than any of ours. We don't brew potions, so let's just have him make as many as he can!"

Wizard Doran was watching, "Let me see how he's going to process this."

During this time, two nurture puppets walked out of the entrance that Abel walked in. They were going towards the ten nurture spirits that were still working. The three legendary wizards understood immediately when they saw this. Master Bennett really had full control of this garden.

On the night of that day, Abel was feeling quite good. He took out a standard nobleman's long wooden table and a set of silver cutleries. As for the chef, it was Wizard Dolan since the job was to unfreeze the dishes he made. As easy as it was to heat these dishes, they managed to have a fantastic meal when they were all the way out here.

Abel held the juice cup in his hands, "Let's rest here for another night and return tomorrow."

Wizard Golan smiled and held his cup, "Master Bennett seemed to be collecting much more than us!"

Abel laughed and said in reassurance, "Once you're back, Wizard Golan, as long as you're willing to give out the ingredients, you'll be able to find me."

Wizard Doran smiled, "Make sure that offer isn't just for Golan."

Abel nodded once more, "To the three of you, naturally."

He's been quite busy when he was out doing missions with the three legendary wizards, but the reward he was receiving far outweighed his cost of coming here. The three legendary wizards didn't know that he could bring the entire nurture base with him. More importantly, Abel had ownership over the nurture spirit, which contained a massive collection of recipes for collecting herbs.

Now, although the herbs other than the ones for the mana resistance potion had all died, there ought to be more locations than this one for them to keep going. Abel just needed to plant the herbs he got inside the base. Naturally, under the care of the nurture spirit, he could plant more and more if he wanted to. As for bringing the whole base back, it wouldn't be a tedious task for him at all since he had an entire super-sized teleportation circle on his own.

An entire night passed by pretty quickly. The number of nurture puppets had increased to 50. The herb garden was really returning to normal. Although they hadn't reached the 10-day restriction yet, Abel was still planning on leaving on this day, the ninth. He's used up all the ingredients for the mana resistance potion, so there really wasn't a point in staying. 

Before leaving the ancient garden, Wizard Dolan threw another look at it. Of course, now that all the ripe herbs were used, he's got no idea about how Master Bennett would process what's left. When he touched the portal bag on him again, however, he smiled very quickly. It wouldn't matter what Master Bennett was doing with the base, because as far as he was concerned, the 9000 mana resistance potions that were here would change the war between the wizards and the knights completely.

Wizard Golan looked at Abel and laughed, "I'll bring you to leave, Master Bennett!"

Having said that, he placed his hand on Abel's shoulder and nodded to the other two legendary wizards. Abel activated the command card, and under white light, they started vanishing from the portable nurture base. Before they left, however, Abel extended his power of the Will and connected it to the nurture spirit. Following that, the whole thing started moving on its own and went inside the portal bag. As quick as this process was, Abel couldn't get the three legendary wizards to miss it. He knew that, but since he's already told them to stay quiet in exchange for many, many favors, there was not much that needed to be said here.

Once the portable base was moved, they appeared at a location about 5 meters away from the ocean. Wizard Dolan was bringing the other three to a fixed spot. Underneath them, the eye of the demon was collapsing very quickly. The portable nurture base seemed to be what was supporting it before. Abel was the only one that understood the exact theory about how the energy-gathering circle was the one that was the cause behind all this.

Wizard Doran laughed at Abel, "I'm starting to feel like we're at a loss this time, Master Bennett!"

Wizard Doran agreed, "Yeah! Can I just have another two bottles of the red wine we had yesterday, Master Bennett. You know, just to even things out. We didn't know that you could just have an entire ancient ruin in your portal bag!"

The two legendary wizards were doing what they could to be friendly to Abel and seeing what he was capable of doing. To satisfy their needs, Abel took out a few bottles of his red wine and the water spirit fruit juice to them.

Abel spoke to Wizard Dolan, the captain of this mission, "So how should we head back, Wizard Dolan?"

The ancient submarine was here. If needed, Abel might have it out.

Wizard Dolan wanted to be as fast as he could, "Let's go for a flight first. If we don't see any trouble ahead, let's just go back like this."

If it was just a few hundred bottles of the mana resistance potion, Wizard Dolan might have wanted to slow things down a bit more. However, this was a total of 9000 bottles. These would greatly change the course of the upcoming battles. Plus, once Master Bennett had the ancient herb garden up and running, the potions would just be harvested after a new wave.

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