Nicola ran to a place he was sure Belladonna wouldn't dare enter. A beast's territory at the gold level. To tell the truth, even he was apprehensive about this decision, but to keep the treasures he had gained, it was the only way available now. He didn't dare to go deep into that territory, nor to hide his space artifact in the trees, after all as part of the plant people she could sense his location very easily.
Nicola used his best disguise skills until he found a nearby river that ran towards the Avec Kingdom, there, among the large rocks was where he planned to hide his space artifact. But he couldn't leave traces of earth magic, so he used one of his tails to make a deep hole in the rock and get sucked into the artifact, it would be like looking for a drop in the ocean, or rather a river.
He had to be very careful about hiding here, as beasts that reached the gold level would allow small low-level animals to live in their territory to maintain the ecosystem or as lackeys, but would never allow a silver level cultivator to enter, specially one so close to reaching the gold level, after all a cultivator at the gold level is very different from a silver level.
At first, beasts rely on their powerful bodies for protection and attack, but this only works with stupid enemies who stay in open spaces. Their size is nothing but an annoyance when the fight moves inside a city or underground. Then, upon reaching the gold cultivation level, they gain the ability to shape-shift into a humanoid form.
Not to mention that bestial forms are unsuitable for practicing any kind of craft or forge master. Upon reaching the silver level they gain sentience and corporal modification skills, and upon reaching the gold level there comes a time when you can practice shape-shifting in order to hold weapons and tools.
That's how in the Avec Kingdom were formed the great bestial tribes, many ancestors were beasts that copulated with humanoid races after they reached the level of gold and their descendants gathered in tribes.
Races that have naturally humanoid forms or special cases like the fungus emperors, Kin and Gin, that have this genetic trait of being able to transform into humanoid form early on in their journey would not receive this system-provided shape-shifting ability, but plant people, fungi and beasts possessed this ability naturally upon reaching the gold level.
With this sudden attack, he would change his plans to go to fairyland first and decided to pay a visit to the land of beasts, he had some business to resolve there.
Hours turned into days, and days into weeks inside the space artifact. His team had a lot of work to do cataloging and taking advantage of the items they had found, all this battle and cultivation yielded a level for Tuatha and Nicola, who had reached level 41. It was increasingly difficult and dangerous to increase their power.
Of all the items cataloged in that room, Nicola was impressed by the small fire lotus that now swirled in her hand, floating as it was fueled by red and blue flames generated by him using fire mana and his fox fire skill. The system ranked him as a very important thing to Nicola, he was really starting to believe that fate was pulling the strings and bringing these things to him.
In his hands was a seed of Fire Heavenly Essence. This lotus-shaped seed could someday turn into a complete essence, if nurtured correctly. Thousands of years absorbing mana in that place made her maintain herself but not enough to evolve into her final form, Nicola began to feed it with his own flames, using this tactic to bond with the essence even before making her become part of your body.
According to the system, nurturing it with his own energy and mana signature would allow absorption to take place without stress to the body.
In the meantime, the three AIs had woken up, their recovery process wasn't over yet, but it had advanced enough that she could spend another part of their mental processing on other things.
In the center of the tower, Nicola had created a new pillar, embedding the three cracked jewels in it, along with a few gold-level cores so they could absorb that energy and heal faster.
"Midori, Aka and Kiiro, top priority, inscribe masquerade matrices throughout the artifact so that no one notices our presence in this territory. Second, maintenance and upgrade of Antoniette and Beatrice puppets. Third, tower upgrade, number of floors: 12, authorization to use materials from the old tower granted. Keep all experiments in proper condition, store and seal all important artifacts to prevent energy leakage."