Abbot Harkkon watched Lorcan return from his window on the uppermost floor of the monastery. He turned to the monk next to him: “You watched him fight?”
“Yes, abbot. I watched him from hiding during the whole fight.”
“How long did he last?”
“Almost three days of constant fighting.”
“How good is he?”
“His footwork is barely acceptable. His mastery skill for his spear is still at about middle proficiency. His unarmed combat technique made a huge leap in the middle of his fight. It was a marvelous thing to watch. The only reason he survived this ordeal, is stubbornness and above normal attributes. He doesn’t tell us his exact stats, but from observation, they seem to be at least fifty percent above average.”
“Then how could he last so long? Steel-stabbing-Wasps are mid F-grade monsters. They’re fast and hard to hit. And there must have been what? A hundred?”
“More like three hundred. Plus, two Brskr that tried to attack him, when he became tired. He shouldn’t have lasted more than six hours. But then he started to use pills and treasures from his Cosmos Sack.”
“Soldier pills for three days straight? He should be dead twice over. And his foundations will now be so full of impurities, he’d need ten years to cleanse himself. What a waste.”
“Unless he used the most expensive pills and natural treasures. Or had some evolved bloodline or race.”
The abbot stared down until he could no longer see him. He turned away from the window: “He is not the most diligent student we ever had, but he is hard working. He studies his techniques. He contemplates the Dao. His aura grows much faster than it should.”
“We think he has an unknown benefactor. He uses consumables worth a fortune. It makes no sense. Any powerful force could place him at a cultivation heaven.”
Abbot Harkkon contemplated for a minute. “He did not grow up as a prodigy or member of a powerful sect. He never complains about food or accommodations. He has something, very rarely found with cultivators. Complacency. He wants to grow stronger, but it isn’t the destructive fire that fuels the souls of so many on the road of cultivation. I like him.”
The monk took a suddenly vibrating crystal out of his robe and infused Cosmic Energy in it. “Abbot, the security array hat detected a potentially dangerous foreign object. Must be the chest he found. I couldn’t yet get a good look at it. According to the array, it contains tremendous amounts of Cosmic Energy.”
The abbot wasted no time and teleported directly to the monastery entrance. There he stopped Lorcan with commanding gesture.
Stolen story; please report.
Lorcan felt a spatial disturbance, then the abbot stood before him. He was startled, but his friendly smile quickly calmed him down. “Abbot Harkkon, what an unexpected welcome.”
“You carry something containing a huge amount of Cosmic Energy, a potential danger to the monastery. Let us go to one of the outbuildings to check it.”
He followed the abbot to a small building a kilometer from the main monastery. There he took out the strange box he found. The abbot thoroughly read the fractal inscription, then used several skills to analyze its content. “It is not trapped, at least not in the common sense. It is no danger to analysis. Do you want to try for yourself? You found it.”
Lorcan nodded eagerly and read the inscription. It was too complex to fully understand, but it did seem to redirect an internal energy source to the surrounding area. Which was odd, since he could not feel any such energy. When looking for some time with his sense skill, he did detect an energy field around the whole area. He blinked. How did he not feel that? He probed deeper and felt… still nothing. There was a great amount of Energy flooding an area of more than three hundred meters around him. But it did not interact with him or anything else. He delved into the inside of the chest. There was a spatial compartment inside. Bigger than a standard issue Cosmic Sack. With some difficulty, he unfolded space enough to get a feel for the content. It was some sort of Cosmic Crystal. But with some unknown affinity. He reported his findings and earned an approving nod from the abbot: “Very good. Now, what do you make of this?”
Lorcan was unsure: “It seems, it aroused the wasps. Maybe this kind of energy reacts to beasts? Or beasts react to this kind of energy?”
“Quite good. The chest contains a spatial container full of Beast Crystals. The energy those crystals emit can only be used by beasts. It refines their bloodline and levels them up. Had you not found this chest by accident, the wasp swarm would have evolved to E-rank. Since the monastery is the only source of E-rank and higher energy in this area, they would surely have attacked. An expensive, but potentially very effective method to sabotage or maybe even destroy our monastery. And almost impossible to trace back, since no one would have even searched for such a chest. And it was well hidden and shielded in the first place. We will look into this, but the list of our enemies is not small.”
“Why did you say it wasn’t trapped in the common sense?”
“It infuses the monsters around it. As soon as you tried to take it, they should have gone berserk instantly. I wonder why…”
“Probably because I put it in my Cosmos Sack, where they could no longer detect it. They just followed me, because I had been fighting them.”
The abbot took back the box and turned it around. He gestured toward one of the fractal inscriptions: “There is a spatial lock on it. You shouldn’t have been able to put it in a spatial container. Strictly speaking, you shouldn’t be able to put one spatial container inside another at all.”
“My Cosmos Sack is a quest reward. It is meant as another tool for me to contemplate the Dao of Space and quite evolved. It can be used to store minor containers, as long as their combined content doesn’t exceed the volume limit of my own Sack. The chest got it right to the limit, but still fit.”
The abbot nodded in understanding. "An intriguing capability indeed. It seems your Cosmos Sack has its own set of unique properties. We will have to delve deeper into this matter. But for now, we must ensure the safety of the monastery."
With a solemn expression, Abbot Harkkon carefully sealed the chest once more. "This chest must be safeguarded. Its inscriptions may still contain a significant threat in the wrong hands. We will keep it under lock and key within the monastery's most secure vault. You will of course be given a finder’s fee in accordance to the monastery’s rule.