Even many years later, Elias could still clearly remember that distant afternoon.
When Jack Soren cautiously showed him the items inside his secret chest, Elias fell into a long silence.
“Are you sure...”
“...you are just an illegitimate son?”
Only after a long while did Elias speak, his voice incredibly dry.
At this moment, no one could have imagined that in this underground space on a reef far from the mainland, there lay a pile of supernatural materials sufficient to throw an entire arcane black market into chaos.
Although Elias was indeed short of money right now, one shouldn't forget that inside his Gluttonous Stomach, there still lay a substantial inheritance he had acquired from Ghost John, completely untouched.
This inheritance also contained a vast amount of supernatural materials.
Unfortunately, compared to the promotion recipe he urgently needed right now, the inventory in his stomach bag could not be said to be entirely unrelated; it was simply worlds apart.
Those unknown ores that looked like dried octopus tentacles or glowed with an eerie green light might come in handy at some point in the future.
But at least for now, facing the promotion threshold of Scale Two or Scale Three, they could only obediently lie in the corner of his stomach bag and gather dust.
Of course, besides these raw materials, there were also many practical gadgets in his stomach bag.
A few crudely made but heavy alchemical bombs, and a stack of charms belonging to the Raging Sea pathway.
For instance, the "cloud and mist charm" that could create fog, and the "wave-breaking charm" that could part the wind and waves.
These were all treasures he had dug out while rummaging through his stomach bag this morning.
Elias had always held high expectations for these purloined munitions. He hoped that after being steeped in his own spirituality within the stomach bag, these things would be of greater use in the future.
Aside from these, what left Elias most speechless was the pile of spirit restoration potions.
To this day, he still did not know just how afraid John had been of losing control and turning into a madman during his lifetime.
Three large cardboard boxes were neatly stacked inside the storage space of his stomach bag, stuffed to the brim with spirit restoration potions.
To Elias, the greatest value of this pile of potions was that they took up inventory space.
He was even planning to find some black market to sell off two boxes once he returned to the mainland, just to get some pocket money. After all, he barely had any use for them himself.
Keeping these potions in his hands was a pure waste of their efficacy.
Finally, there were the various spell scrolls left behind by John.
Unfortunately, the life-saving trump card among them had already been used up during his battle with the mountain of flesh a while ago.
Using it for the person who had collected these things wasn't considered a waste.
Thus, what remained in his stomach bag now were mostly scattered Scale One and Scale Two spell scrolls.
They belonged to all sorts of faith pathways, as messy as a platter of mixed appetizers.
The most valuable things he could find among them were merely three Scale Three spell scrolls.
But the sheer value of this illegitimate son's gift pack that Jack had laid out on the table was on an entirely different dimension.
Elias's eyelids twitched wildly.
No wonder this kid managed to escape from Landon!
Thinking back to that poor kid Aaron, who the hell was actually the illegitimate son here?!
The foresight put into these escape supplies was simply astounding.
On the very top layer, three high-level Scale Four spell scrolls quietly lay, radiating a faint, dark golden shimmer!
The Halo scroll.
The Mind Shield scroll.
And the Spell Reversal scroll.
None of them had any offensive capabilities; they were all absolute, top-tier defensive skills for life-saving, protection, and resisting illusions.
Looking further down, there was a stack of over ten Scale Three spell scrolls of various schools!
They almost perfectly covered movement, defense, offense, utility, and control.
As for the lower-level Scale One and Scale Two scrolls, they lined the very bottom of the chest, as numerous as worthless flyers.
If these scrolls only made Elias feel the gap between social classes, then the precious supernatural materials piled in the corner of the chest were what truly opened his eyes.
Amidst a pile of shimmering magical materials, a heavy, small bottle carefully sealed in a brown crystal vial instantly caught Elias's attention.
A yellowed label was pasted on the bottle, with a line of explanation written in elegant Landon copperplate script.
What was contained inside turned out to be exactly what he was worrying about—"moon silver powder scraped from an old teleportation array"!
And judging by the amount, this kid Jack had actually managed to get quite a lot of it!
According to the materials section of 《Introduction to Mysticism》, this kind of moon silver could only be produced in trace amounts in mountainous mineral regions with abundant moonlight.
The production and yield were outrageously scarce.
The total annual yield of the entire Kingdom of Velen was, at most, only about three tons.
On the strategic materials list, this stuff was typically a hard currency monopolized by the royal family and the major churches.
Fortunately, however, this substance was not a one-time consumable that burned up completely when setting up supernatural arrays.
It was widely used in teleportation arrays between major cities and towers.
Its main purpose was to stabilize the connection between the teleportation passage and the Origin Web.
Every time a teleportation array was activated, the moon silver powder would be burned once by the high-level spirituality of the Moon Lord's "passage" aspect.
Yet, there was a counterintuitive theorem here.
Moon silver powder that had been repeatedly burned by the authority of the Moon Lord's existence level, far from being ruined, would instead be tainted with the residual coordinates of the divine. This made its effect in stabilizing the teleportation passage connection even better and more refined the next time.
Until it reached its final connection limit, high-level arrays only needed a tiny amount of this aged moon silver mixed in during setup to achieve perfect spatial stabilization.
As a result, this often led some money-grubbing, death-defying mystics to specifically risk being shot dead by the Seventh Agency just to illegally harvest and scrape this moon silver powder from teleportation arrays and sell it on the black market.
In the market, this stuff was a highly sought-after commodity that money couldn't easily buy.
Elias stared at the brown glass bottle in his hand.
He had only one thought in his mind.
This kid had basically delivered exactly what he needed right when he needed it, throwing a lifeline straight to his jugular.
He took a deep breath, forcing down the corners of his mouth.
Using two fingers, he carefully pinched the small bottle of moon silver powder and gave it a gentle shake in front of his eyes.
Then, he slowly turned his head to look at Jack, who was sitting opposite him with a tense expression.
Within a tenth of a second, Elias's expression seamlessly switched from "cold foreman" to "kind elder."
“Hey, Jack.”
His voice was as gentle as a spring breeze brushing across a wheat field.
“I think... I admit that the way I spoke earlier was indeed a bit too loud.”
Jack shrank back slightly, blinking his eyes in bewilderment.
“As for that tiny misunderstanding when you first arrived on the island and tried to threaten me with a flintlock pistol...”
Elias waved his hand with immense generosity, casually slipping the small bottle of moon silver into the deep pocket of his trench coat.
“...as your senior keeper, I will let bygones be bygones and won't hold it against you.”
Hearing this, Jack's eyes instantly lit up, and he nearly jumped off his stool in excitement.
“Then do you mean, as long as you can guarantee my safety...”
The young man rubbed his hands together excitedly, his voice trembling.
“...I can give you this bottle of moon silver powder unconditionally!”
Jack said happily.
Though his body language expressed obedience, he was secretly grumbling in his heart.
Wait, why does this Mr. Rockland still remember that petty grudge of drawing a gun when we first met?!
But as long as this black-hearted gentleman was willing to accept his tribute, none of that mattered to Jack!
Besides, he had absolutely no use for this moon silver powder himself.
These things were purely items he had grabbed at random from the shelves in a panic just to gather enough travel expenses when he fled his family's underground library.
Now, being able to use it to exchange for the protection of the Seventh Agency and this mysterious transcendent was an absolute steal.
“Deal!”
Elias agreed with absolute promptness and generosity.
He slapped Jack on the shoulder with a heavy thud, making the young man grimace in pain.
“But then again, having said that...”
The seemingly kind Mr. Rockland pointed toward the door.
“You still have to do the work you're supposed to do.”
Jack: "..."
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