Twenty nautical miles away, the lighthouse island reef remained as quiet as if it belonged to a completely different world from Hastings Port.
The tide had just receded.
Seaweed, broken shells, and a few stranded small fish lay scattered across the wet, pebbly beach.
The sea breeze, carrying a salty, fishy scent, whipped against Elias's seawater-soaked trouser legs.
A moment later, a slightly cracked shout echoed from the beach.
“Finally!!”
The voice startled a crab nibbling on a dead fish behind a reef.
The creature paused for a moment before decisively dragging its food into a crevice between the rocks.
It clearly had no desire to provoke this human, who had spent several consecutive days turning over stones in the mudflats.
Elias stood in an ankle-deep puddle, carefully cradling a semi-transparent marine creature in his hands.
It had no distinct skeleton or shell.
Its entire body resembled a soft membrane, its edges gently undulating with the sea breeze.
Had the sunlight not hit it at just the right angle, and had its body not emitted a faint glow, it would have vanished from sight the instant it was thrown back into the sea.
A pure aura of spirituality slowly radiated outward.
The outlines of several wet reefs nearby began to blur with a slight double-image effect.
A sea mirage.
After searching for so many days, he had finally caught it!
Elias stared down at the creature in his hands, the corners of his mouth curling upward uncontrollably.
Days of beachcombing. Days of pretending to be an expert.
Every day, he had walked past Jack carrying a bag of silver-rimmed caps, wearing a solemn expression as if preparing some incredibly potent secret medicine.
Now, he finally didn't have to fake it anymore—or at least, he didn't have to feel so guilty about it.
At the thought of those shells, the joy on Elias's face stiffened slightly.
To back up his lie that the silver-rimmed caps were an important ingredient, he had gathered an entire bag of them.
Throwing them away felt like a waste. Keeping them was useless. Cooking and eating them was out of the question.
They were such a pathetic excuse for seafood that even sea gulls couldn't be bothered to include them in their food chain.
Elias pondered for two seconds and quickly came up with a solution.
He would just dump them back into the sea when he sent Jack away to do chores.
No one would ever know. That was the plan!
As for why Jack would never see him collect silver-rimmed caps again...
Does a senior transcendent need to explain to his apprentice why he stopped a line of research?
Not at all.
Elias quickly convinced himself.
He checked the sea mirage's condition, making sure it hadn't lost its vitality from being out of the water too long, before carefully storing it in the Gluttonous Stomach.
A sea mirage membrane couldn't be forcibly torn from a living specimen; he had to wait for it to shed naturally.
This particular sea mirage was still small and needed to be raised for a while longer.
Fortunately, the creature was in his possession. From here on, it was just a matter of waiting.
The island lacked almost everything, but time was the one thing it had in abundance.
Elias walked ashore carrying the empty bag, mentally reviewing the recipe for the Scale One potion.
The sea mirage membrane was as good as secured.
As for the glow-amber powder, he already had some.
There was still plenty left from the stash he had plundered from Mester's stores.
Obtaining spirit-element wine wouldn't be difficult either.
Jack had a few bottles stored in his cellar room.
The recipe only required three ounces. Just three ounces.
Jack ate his food, lived under his roof, and used the island's lamp oil and supplies. Asking him for three ounces of spirit-element wine was hardly unreasonable, right?
Elias thought about it seriously. It wasn't just reasonable; it was practically employee benefits.
Spirit-element wine was made by adding naturally precipitated spirit-elements to alcohol.
In areas with rich spirituality, tiny spirit-elements would gradually condense on the surfaces of certain minerals, plants, or even ancient buildings.
Once purified and added to strong liquor, it became the most basic spirit-element wine.
Of course, its restorative effects were far inferior to proper potions.
But it could actually make transcendents feel drunk.
Ordinary alcohol became less and less effective on high-Scale transcendents. If they drank half a barrel, they wouldn't get drunk, but their bladders would enter combat mode first.
Spirit-element wine solved this problem.
Over time, as more recipes emerged, it evolved from a cheap restorative into a liquor exclusive to transcendents.
Now, only two ingredients were truly missing from the recipe.
Dream lotus dew and mist-pattern moth wing powder.
There was no need to explain the dream lotus. It was an old friend.
Except this old friend had unilaterally refused to meet him.
As for the mist-pattern moth, Elias had recently come across it in the 《Velen Supernatural Encyclopedia》.
It was a low-grade supernatural insect.
They were commonly found in old cemeteries, abandoned chapels, damp attics, and long-haunted old houses.
Essentially, wherever it was gloomy, drafty, or left uncleaned for years, that was where they liked to nest.
Physically, they were grayish-white moths.
Their wings were covered in fine lines that resembled swirling mist.
When close to firelight, the patterns on their left and right wings would briefly align to form an eye-like design.
Anyone faint of heart who caught a sudden glimpse of them in the dark might contribute a new ghost story on the spot.
Their abilities were also very basic.
A single mist-pattern moth was practically harmless.
But once they appeared in swarms, the subtle spiritual resonance produced by their fluttering wings would disrupt an ordinary person's spiritual stability, causing brief hallucinations.
Their function was somewhat similar to that of the sea mirage.
One was responsible for deceiving ships at sea.
The other was responsible for scaring people in old houses.
Neither was particularly strong.
But both were quite mischievous.
Elias had already discussed how to acquire these two materials with Jack.
This included the even harder-to-find Scale Three potion ingredients, which could be obtained through the same method.
Go to the Hastings Port black market.
Then, take on commissions through the Society of Freemen to earn some gold crowns.
Searching for everything himself was simply too inefficient.
But if they had the Society of Freemen provide leads, and then selected tasks related to their target materials, they could save a lot of time.
The problem was, how were they going to get to Hastings Port?
Fortunately, they already had a rather bold plan.
Charging up the Waning Moon Key.
Using Elias alone.
Jack had been somewhat hesitant when Elias first proposed this idea.
But in the end, he was won over by Mr. Rockland's silver tongue.
First of all, the Waning Moon Key was not a completely empty relic.
Starting from some point in Jack's maternal ancestry, it had been continuously absorbing its holder's spirituality.
Generation after generation.
It had been accumulating for decades, to say the least.
Activating the Scale Eight spell, 【Moon Gate】, required at least a Scale Six level of spirituality.
Since Jack could already feel the 【Moon Gate】 gradually restoring itself, it meant the Waning Moon Key might not be as far from its first official activation as they thought.
They just had to fill in whatever was missing.
An ordinary transcendent certainly couldn't achieve this.
But Elias was no ordinary person.
Especially on nights with a full moon.
As long as the moonlight continuously bathed him, his consumed spirituality would recover rapidly.
The Waning Moon Key would handle the draining.
The moonlight would handle the replenishing.
And he would be stuck in the middle.
Serving as the spiritual conduit.
No one on the island was rushing them.
If one day wasn't enough, they would take two.
If two days weren't enough, they would take half a month.
As long as the relic didn't burst on the spot, he would dare to keep pouring it in.
Even if the total spirituality required by the 【Moon Gate】 exceeded expectations, there were still other ways.
Lest they forget, Elias still had a large stash of spirit restoration potions left behind by John.
Those potions had originally been prepared by John for himself.
That thief had spent years risking his life with various containment objects. He might not have had much of anything else, but he had stockpiled plenty of spirit-replenishing medicine.
At worst, Elias could just drink potions while injecting his spirituality.
Drink to recover.
Recover and repeat.
He would act as a literal spiritual repeater.
Once they could open the 【Moon Gate】, they could bypass the ports, stations, and city gates.
They could go to Hastings Port whenever they wanted.
They could return to the island whenever they pleased.
They wouldn't even need to buy tickets.
At this thought, Elias's steps grew significantly lighter.
Spatial teleportation!
In his past life, whenever he squeezed through the morning rush hour, he had desperately wished he could teleport.
Now that he actually had the chance to go wherever he wanted, what did a little hard work matter?
The elite experience always started with never having to pay for transit.
Of course.
That was assuming the Waning Moon Key didn't drain him into a shriveled corpse.
Elias returned to the lighthouse cottage.
The faint fragrance of the burning Sacred Candle from last night still lingered in the room, and the frying pan by the table had already been tucked away into the deepest corner of the cabinet.
Out of sight, out of mind—and the bump on his head seemed to hurt less because of it.
First, he checked the Gluttonous Stomach.
Confirming that the sea mirage still maintained a stable spiritual response, he began to take stock of the other supernatural items on his person.
The Roaring Cane.
The Sacred Candle.
The remaining potions.
A few scrolls.
And the Soul Pendulum that he still hadn't fully figured out.
None of these items were easy to manage.
But in critical moments, they had indeed saved his life.
Footsteps sounded outside the door.
Jack pushed open the cottage door and walked in, still holding the brass wrench he had used to inspect the buoys.
“Mr. Rockland.”
“The spiritual circuits on the eastern buoy have been refastened.”
“We haven't found any...”
Before he could finish his sentence, he saw Elias pull another item out of the Gluttonous Stomach.
The elemental revolver.
Or rather.
That black sea cucumber with a walnut grip and a cylinder mechanism.
As Elias held it in his hand, its barrel still drooped limply.
At first glance, there was no sign of recovery.
Elias frowned and squeezed the gun's body.
It was still soft.
But the moment he looked away.
The eyes of the owl carved on the grip suddenly lit up with two faint glimmers of light.
One red.
One green.
The light was very dim.
Yet it caused the surrounding spirituality to shift rapidly.
Jack's own spirituality had been drained by the Waning Moon Key for years, making him far more sensitive to the precursors of spiritual absorption than ordinary transcendents.
His expression shifted.
“Sir!!”
“It wants to absorb your spirituality!”
Elias was taken aback.
In the next instant, a familiar suction pulled from his palm.
The spirituality within his body seemed to find an outlet, rapidly surging into the long-dormant sea-cucumber gun.
Jack instinctively moved forward to stop it.
But Elias's eyes lit up.
Not with panic.
But with delight.
This crappy gun was finally responding!
“It's fine!”
He stopped Jack with a hand.
Feeling his spirituality being continuously drained, the smile on his face only grew wider.
“Is there any shortage of things eating and drinking my resources in this room?”
“One more mouth to feed won't hurt!”
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