Molting the Mortal Coil

Chapter 860: Payment

Sage walked out of the arena and entered a world of glimmering darkness. The smaller buildings were made of stacked stones while the larger ones were formed of giant bones with leathery fish hides stretched over them. The streets were coated in darkness and only lit by bioluminescent snails that clung to the doorframes of every building and in nest-like corals on every street corner. He was no longer in the Coral Shallows, this was a city called Dark Reach and it was perpetually locked in darkness. These glowing snails were the only source of light in the city and they were ubiquitous, extremely common on the streets and also indoors. Their shells were somewhat translucent and worked like a lantern, boosting the low glow of their bodies to diffuse over a large area.

After collecting everything that interested him at the Coral Shallows, Sage had moved on to the next city. Dark Reach was located in a part of the sea that only knew night. It was quite disorienting, as Sage had grown very used to relying upon Foresight. Without his vision he felt very vulnerable. Any source of light became a beacon that drew predators towards him and the more he illuminated his surroundings in order to use Foresight the more of a target he became. After some experimentation he was able to use Foresight in conjunction with the power of the Sea Locusts eyes. It took some effort to create an ultraviolet light source, modifying the most basic Magic Tool, the Spirit Torch into a different type of light. The ultraviolet light was not seen by all creatures which meant that he still attracted attention, but was no longer a shining beacon to everything around him. At the same time it was also nowhere near as effective as normal light, since different creatures had different amounts of fluorescence.

Fighting at the bottom of the sea was somewhat more dangerous because of his loss of vision, but he compensated by relying more upon his Spiritual Sense. If the choice was being blind or alerting others that he was nearby, he chose the latter. It was somewhat similar to carrying a bright light, except with a range that he could completely control. He also had a safety net, if he upset a creature that was too powerful with his Spirit Sense he could immediately activate the Cerulean Cloud technique, that ability he received from the Twin Ringed Soul Serpent so long ago. Once he was spotted from examining something too intently with Spirit Sense, then the offended party would likely use their own Spirit Sense to try to find him in return. At that point as long as he withdrew his Spirit Sense and activated Cerulean Cloud fast enough he would be able to buy himself a good lead to escape.

After experiencing a few battles around Dark Reach he focused on gathering more information and stumbled upon a very interesting offer. A certain person was offering an extremely rare and obscure creature, the Cardinal Protoherring. The Protoherring is a Demonic Fish the size of a forearm, covered in silvery scales with a darker blue color upon its back. It was essentially a very large herring with a set of tusk-like teeth and more exaggerated size and body features. On its own, the Protoherring wasnt really that special, in fact it was extremely basic. While it could reach the 5th tier later in its life, the Protoherring was still the weakest among the majority of things at the 5th tier. Being 5th tier with such a small body was somewhat impressive, but that wasnt what made it interesting. The reason the Protoherring was well known was because they traveled in huge schools. The majority of them were only in the 4th tier, but when they moved together they were powerful enough to tear even Nascent Souls to shreds.

The Cardinal Protoherring is the source of the Protoherrings special quality. They were the leaders of the other Protoherring, controlling the school and imparting Law energy upon them. It was the reason that these schools of herring were so fearsome. It was well known that as long as the Cardinal Protoherring was taken down, a Protoherring school would lose its guidance and lose the ability to jump ranks. A loose collection of 4th tier along with a few 5th tier Demonic Beasts with fish-like intelligence was far easier to deal with than a school with the power of a 6th tier acting as a single entity. The problem is that they travel in such large schools that it becomes extremely difficult to identify the Cardinal Protoherring. This is especially true when their only distinguishing characteristic is the reddish hue to the dark scales on their backs.

With such vast armies at his command, Sage was very interested in learning how the Cardinal Protoherring controlled such large schools and imbued them with Law power. The problem was they were very rare, most who ran into Protoherring schools were lucky to escape and those that hunted them would take out the Cardinal Protoherring as soon as they spotted it. Those who could catch one were few and far between. Thats why when Sage heard there was one up for offer as the reward for a task he jumped at the opportunity. He had to enter an arena and battle against others in a race to snatch treasures from that giant guardian crab. Competing with a bunch of other Nascent Souls was stressful, but Foresight had helped make the crab somewhat trivial. He just had to survive those shockwave attacks caused by the crabs pincers.

Afterwards he didnt even look in the seaweed style Storage Bags so that there would be no chance of there being any foul play. After all that work to get them, he didnt want Sir Thele to decide that hed tampered with or skimmed off the top. He also didnt want to be tempted to enter the arena again and those fish people really tested his patience before he finally got the tank containing a Cardinal Protoherring along with some normal Protoherring. At this moment researchers on the Inner World were already breeding them to try and get more Cardinal Protoherring and also figure out how their powers worked and whether or not it could be used by them for other purposes.

When breeding the normal Protoherring, not a single one turned into a Cardinal Protoherring unless they brought them more than a hundred miles or so apart from the first one. It took them quite a few tries to figure this out, but it showed Sage that the Cardinal was something of a mutation and not a separate species on its own. This was confirmed when they tried to use the Cardinal Protoherring as a source for the Insect Immortal Indexs Mutate technique to directly fertilize an egg. The resultant fish that hatched from it was not a Cardinal Protoherring, but a normal Protoherring. They didnt learn what they wanted until one of the researchers of the Lang Clan merged with one of the Cardinal Protoherrings. It even took a few mutation attempts before they could find the proper ancestral memories to unlock the powers they were looking for.

The researcher suddenly broke through, becoming a Nascent Soul as soon as she finished the metamorphosis. It turns out that the Ancestral Memories contained the knowledge of a special type of Law power related to amalgamation. They were able to use their Law power to not just empower the others of their race, but also to guide and command them. It only worked with those who were willing, but it was an astounding discovery and they set to work on figuring out the best ways to use it.

A guaranteed way to get a Law, is this for real?