Vector cut across the field and drove his frost along the ground, there was a herd of deer, several hundred in total that ran along the rocks. They gave off the same aura, meaning they were all of the same blood. A herd of deer was a target that the group could not ignore. Flying ahead of them, the ice was driven as thick as he could get it.
When their hooves crashed against the Ice, they slipped and dashed against the rocks, tumbling down into the kill zone that Kuzunoha had set up.
Vira was standing in close proximity to the area that they would fall, keeping the pace and making sure to gather as many materials as they could, she made sure to cleave the antlers and several legs from their bodies. Obtaining materials was much more difficult in the Ultinian Heavens.
Once Vector had finished laying the ice along their route, more than seventy of the herd had fallen victim to the groups exploitation. Driven into the kill zone like cattle, the group could take their time killing them. High walls kept the deer from retreating and the Ice beneath their hooves kept them still or piled up for heat.
"This is a lot. Lets not waste such a good chance. I. want. MEAT!" Vector yelled out with a grin. He cackled at his brilliance and enclosed the area as best he could. It was his job to keep them docile and contained, Vira was doing the cleaning and Kuzunoha made sure any that escaped were turned to Spirit Stones. Everyone collected what they could and when all the deer had been dealt with, their haul was much greater than expected.
"Do we keep going?" Vira wanted to keep fighting hunting, they were actually starting to get rather good at it.
"No." Kuzunoha stopped them all. "I want meat too. Besides, Vector doesn't seem like he's going to give up on the idea of steak."
"Steaks.." Vector drooled. It had been a long time since he had eaten Meat. On their vacation, he had tried to consume regular food but it did nothing to satiate his hunger. He ate the whole Cow, it did nothing.
"Meat it is.." Kuzunoha laughed, they had quite a bit of it. Each deer had four legs and of the seventy that had died by their hands, more than 50 had their legs taken before they were dead.
Vira threw her hands up. "Well, I can't argue with you there. That was a lot of work, its just that we were doing so well."
"There will be other times like this, I'm sure." Vector swiped the drool away from his face with his forearm and went to take a look at the spoils. Seventy spirit stones, more than 200 legs and almost 80 antlers. They had tried to skin one of the deer before it died but by the time they were nearly done, the poor thing had lost all life and turned to spirit stone. Spreading his wings, he led the group back to the Pagoda.
֍ꟷꟷꟷꟷ֍
Misozi was floating outside and Honey was lounging on the deck.
"I thought you were going to stay with Mursayade until she was comfortable." Vector assumed that something had gone wrong.
"She's fine. She threw me out but she's busy and has asked to be left alone." Honey scolded her afterward but it did no good. Explaining it made Honey relive it, "She's working to understand her ability. Leave her alone for now. Wu Hai is in the Pagoda, can you take us in?"
Mike nodded and led the others into the ship. It shrank to the size of his palm, he didn't dare store it away but he walked through the pagoda shields and then released it into the lobby. It expanded and took up a great portion of the left wing. Misozi walked out wearing a puppet, she saw the inside of the Pagoda for the first time.
"Mursayade is in seclusion, you're already familiar with Honey." Vector made his way to Wu Hai's side. It was many floors above him but he had been there a few times before. The Core room entrance was a maze, it didn't take long for Vector to make his way into the depths of its interior but he did manage to get turned around a few times. "Wu Hai?"
Wu Hai nodded and kept running around the room to various apparatus. "I have to stabilize the Core first, only then can I do the unthinkable."
"Unthinkable? I don't get it.. what do you mean?"
"I have to halve the core to save them both. I can't do it alone either but I've been preparing everything I need for the process and after.. I think that with this method I have about a forty percent chance of success but Its better than trying to produce a spirit item, I'm just not that talented at forging." Wu Hai said his part while he worked, several liquids were transferred into distillers and vessels.
A Drip fed to a tray atop an ingot of frosted metal.
As the crystal tray filled with a violet fluid that sparkled.
"So what is all this?"
"I'm condensing soul fluids. Remember those fragments of Spirit stones? Well, if I add them to soil essence there's a change, whoever made the Pagoda used a mysterious method to craft Qu's core. There are no methods of repair but Qu's core has the ability to regenerate after a long period of time, which means.." He slowed down and heaved a sigh. "If I give it enough concentrated soul energy, it can repair a lot faster. Problem is, Qingchi's soul is extremely strong. To repair her soul core half, I have to more than double what Qu requires."
"I still don't get it, anything I can do to help?" Vector pulled out some spirit stones. "If its for Qingchi, We can sacrifice a little. Here's my extra share of our hunt, minus the one to absorb.." He put them down, there were eleven in total.
"Thank you, I'm sure those will help." Wu Hai grabbed them and tossed them onto the extraction pad.
"You have a formation to take the energy from spirit stones?" Vector's curiosity was no less than the Emperor, both of them had been student's of Gefést.
Turning his head from side to side, Wu Hai signaled no. "I can take energy from any object thrown into the formation, the efficiency is poor for some things but for this I'm also distilling it a few times, increasing its potency." A crystal rod was driven into one of the solutions that was being kept separated. As he swirled its contents slightly, he checked for inconsistencies and probed it.
"Waking up in a bottle. It must be torture." Vector frowned.
"Qu's the one being tortured, Qingchi's just afraid and trapped." There was quiet afterward, Wu Hai kept managing the extractions and each time, when there was a full vial, he dripped it slowly onto the core. It wasn't until he saw progress that his mind fell at ease, without two halves, he could not make two cores and he knew of no other way to give her isolation. To lose either of them would be an incredible loss, to lose them both would just be tragic.
An Hour later Wu Hai shouted, "FINALLY!"
The full distillation of the first spirit stone had made its way to the tray. Some of it was white and some of it was pearl, it swallowed the shadows around it, brightening the workspace. The Vial was wildly shaken in his hands, he stared at it. Such rich spiritual energy, it was dripping into another container as the second stone began to condense.
"Now the real test.." There was finally a soul concentrate in Wu Hai's hands, it was something he had great interest in for himself but its intended use was the repair of Qu's core. If it was successful, he could move to stage three, halving the Core.
Qingchi's radiance wasn't the cause or even a contributor to the damage of Qu's Core. All the damage was well within expectations of Qu having used 'Protocol Nine.' If the Core could be repaired at a faster rate, he could even enlarge the core overtime, strengthening them both.
"Bring me the Centrifuge formation plate." Wu Hai had Vector bring it over, he was busy looking for the best application point on the Core. The brief interruptions that he spent conversing with Qu and Qingchi did little to change his search. They could hear and see each other but neither were happy and Qu was eroding from the pressure.
The Core would never exist for long with them both inside, One would overtake the other in time, presumably consumed.
"Its not that fun to think about, is it?" Vector asked.
The centrifuge helped separate some crystal like elements from the distillation. They seemed to naturally accumulate after the distillation process, Wu Hai thought maybe they were crystallized soul but there was simply very little to work with. Collecting it was the best that he could manage.
He was looking at them through a microscope and it was projected across the wall.
"None of this is fun, a bit exciting because of the intellectual part but yes, it no fun at all." Wu Hai had a pipette, it helped to drop the solution in the proper places, he was unwilling to break the connection between the Core and the Pagoda until it was time. Turning to the Core, he handled the pipette with grace until the last crack began to seal.
Preparations had to be made, if Vector assisted in the process, the chances of success were still less than 50%. Fixing the core had bought them some time but very little, eventually, no matter the amount of patching will help keep them from coming to odds.
"To cleave it in two I have to be precise but I'm nervous. That's my niece." Wu Hai paced. He was doing his best to figure out a solution and there was still little time to try many things.
They had to commit to the plan.
֍ꟷꟷꟷꟷ֍
The sharpest of the tools available to the group was the Broken tooth, but it was not flat. He had considered trying to use blackfire to cut the Core in half but the blackfire also had a corroding effect. In the end, he was forced to use his own hands and the elemental blades from the white spot. According to the text in the library concerning the creation of Qu's Core, If more than half of the Core is separated then the core would immediately cease to function and crumble to dust.
That meant Wu Hai had less than a one percent margin for error. He wanted a mechanical and precise cut but getting Misozi to do the work was problematic. Even if he had tasked a puppet to do the job, there was still about a three percent chance it would fail and cause the procedure to fail.
He took a deep breath and measured himself accordingly. The Core was surrounded by puppets, each of them ready to perform their own action. Wu Hai gathered his strength, extended the whitefire blades to a razor thinness and began to raise his hand.
'The Hammer Falls.' It was a deadblow, straight down and consistent. There was no error or variance of his swing, it was perfected through hundreds of thousands of swings. The whitefire blade came crashing down, cleaving the core into two in that instant.
The puppets that was standing nearby whirred into action and caught the two halves. Qingchi and Qu had been on opposite sides of the Core, waiting. When the core was halved, there was a clear sign of degradation but once separated, the puppets had begun to move.
Both halves were taken away from each other, the tower lost power.
Qingchi's core was placed on its own pedestal and Qu's half was re-centered. Drowned in the soul fluids to keep the cores from dissipating, the repairs were visible to the naked eye.
Qingchi's spirit pulsed and the Core began to warp, its exterior changed significantly and the rate in which it drew in the soul energy increased dramatically.
Qu's core was moving and after a few minutes it had begun to fuse over and reshape itself. The Core was never a perfect sphere, in fact, it was covered with imperfections. The expansion of the Core from the cracks and Qingchi's flames had done a number on both of the Cores, Qu was even able to see some residual energies had accumulated in his core, giving him access.
Both cores burned with fire, Qu's only burned with three types of fire while Qingchi's seven colored flames threatened to destroy the puppets during every flare.
"Qingchi?" Wu Hai could feel his Niece's energy levels from a distance. He was focusing on Qu's core, it was the most damaged side. Almost a tragedy, his hand had not stopped fast enough and the whiteflame blade had nearly cut into the Core's controller.