Chapter 322: New Resource
Adyr noted how his authority was settling in more each day and allowed himself a small smile. "Alright then. Tell her to send at least 1 Practitioner to the Velari territory. I am in a location where I have no contact with the researchers I brought there, and I don’t know when I will be able to return. In my absence, someone needs to assist them."
Without proper equipment, Isolde and Dr. Veyla could not begin the excavation to extract the crystal ore. Having a Practitioner on-site who could transfer the equipment they requested from Earth would speed everything up, especially since he would soon need a large amount of energy crystals inside the Legacy Domain to level his talents and to subdue new Sparks.
"That’s an order she will accept with open arms. I have no doubt about that," Rhys said, looking pleased.
Across the Outer Region, Players were slowly gathering, organizing, and forming small units to cover one another. Adyr’s choice to remain alone unsettled many people, Selina most of all.
Sending someone who could watch his back and assist when needed would be a real relief for everyone. As a figure already seen as the architect of the new world order, Adyr’s well-being stood at the top of priorities for statesmen and Players alike.
After a few more lines of light conversation, Adyr took his leave.
Before going to the Virtual Reality room, where he would begin leveling his talents, he called Henry Bates to convey his latest plans.
He asked for the current situation outside the Shelter Cities, the overall status, and any movement, especially from first-generation mutants. He pressed for confirmation on whether the Overlords in the nearby regions were preparing a new offensive.
Ever since the mutant blockade of Shelter City 8, things had been quiet for a while, and the silence did not look like a good sign.
What Adyr wanted from Henry was directly tied to that concern. He asked him to speed up their research into the other Overlords’ bases outside the cities and to focus especially on Spark activities.
His plan was no longer limited to finding Sparks and energy crystals. He now intended to identify capable first-generation mutants and to open new departments that would give them enough education to be used as field workers inside the Players’ Sanctuary.
When Henry first heard his thoughts and his request, he was taken aback. Even if those mutants were criminals, human rights still applied, and using them like slaves would be a violation of those rights. But Adyr’s words pushed him to reconsider.
"Mr. Bates, we are in an era where old rules and old logic can’t move us forward. If we want to be rulers in that new world, we have to think like rulers from now on."
For the greater vision, there would be situations that required sacrifice. Adyr made that clear, and his certainty pressed Henry to accept the ideology even though he was not naturally open to it.
Adyr did not care about Henry’s opinion; only the actions he would take and the results he would deliver mattered. Nor was he concerned with the public’s reaction when the news spread. What they thought would not change his path.
"They call me Hellcraft, so I should live up to that name from this moment on, right?" He chuckled and walked on, his footsteps echoing through the long corridors.
—
After looting, or more accurately harvesting, the islet, Adyr took to the air. He beat his wings and climbed, heading toward the 2nd islet on the route he had mapped in his mind.
As he neared his next target, a floating islet came into view, aflame from end to end, smaller than the previous one at roughly 200–300 square meters. Heat shimmered above its surface in wavering sheets.
"The flames do not feel that hot," he murmured, continuing forward.
He drove himself through the fire with a hard snap of his wings and let the blaze swallow him as he dropped onto the islet’s carbon-coated crust.
His high stats carried him. Ordinary flames could not do much more than lay an uncomfortable heat across his skin. His tactical uniform held up as well; the outer layers were barely singed.
The problem was different. He could not draw a full breath, and his vision narrowed inside the steady, head-high fire. The smoke was clean but thick enough to blur depth and edges.
He pumped his wings once and rose above the crown of flame, hovering for a clearer look.
"Alright. Finding what I am looking for will be a little difficult in this environment." His eyes swept every quadrant, searching for the source that kept the fire burning with that never-dying character.
This was why he had come. He needed a reliable fire source for the Emberdart Minnow Sparks living in Twilight Land
.To give them a natural habitat, he had buried a cremation cabinet in the soil and kept the flames alive by feeding it combustible gas at intervals. It worked, but it was expensive and tedious to maintain.
If he could replace that setup with a self-renewing source, he could build stable ecosystems for Sparks that preferred blazing, high-temperature environments. The benefit would compound over time, and it would cut both cost and labor.
The Emberdart Minnows were worth the effort. Their passive effect raised his [Will] by 10% each. With 3 of them, the total 30% was something he had no intention of giving up. That was why he had come here, and that was why he would solve their habitat problem permanently.
"The source of the flames looks like it’s coming from the soil itself... or from under the soil?"
Pinpointing the origin was difficult; his knowledge of this specific geology was limited. He had read many books in his spare hours about resource types in this world and had memorized long lists, but there were too many entries to trust a guess without proof.
It could be a soil type with a built-in reactivity, one that burns nonstop so long as it keeps drawing oxygen from the air, a bed that will never fully die while oxygen is present. Or it could be a species of burrowing insect living beneath the surface, a creature that feeds on mineral veins and triggers a slow, continuous combustion as it breaks the ore down.
These were only 2 examples from the hundreds of resource types he had studied in the books he obtained from Liora and the others. The heat shimmer above the ground and the faint, bitter scent of carbon told him there was a mechanism here—he just needed to match what he saw to the right line on that memorized list.
Looking at the trajectory of the flames... the lean repeats at fixed intervals. Not wind. Vents. The tallest tongues form a broken ring, each column rising where the ground exhales. The heat is steady, not pulsed. That means something living or cyclical underneath.
Adyr paused, dropped into the fire again, and closed his eyes, listening for the faint clue his mind had begun to shape.
A soft hiss travels sideways, not up. The sound crawls, then returns to the same point like a loop. Roots do that. Stone does not.
He beat his wings once, rose above the blaze, and drew long, deliberate breaths.
Not mineral. A sweet, resin-bitten note under the carbon. The gaps match the root spread, not a vein. The ash curves as if pressed from below by fingers.
His mind reached the answer; his eyes hunted to confirm. Then he saw it.