Dungeon of Pride, Laplace

Really what kind of beating did they have to go through to become so docile?

Simon teleported from the floor and arrived at the workshop next to smelt the ores. A couple of hours later, he arrived at the forest spring spirit village again.

"Did you bring over the materials that I needed?" Irene asked after he approached the area where the Obsidian energy exuders were.

"Yeah" Simon passed her the space rings that contained the smelted ores and the blood of the two disaster class beasts.

"What about the herbs… do you have all of them?" he asked.

"Elder Fennel and some of the Forest Spring Spirits are gathering that as we speak. They will be bringing it soon".

Simon nodded at Irene's reply. The forest Spring Spirits were a race that was closest to the nature, it wasn't surprising that they had information about every plant.

"By the way, do you really believe that a danger would befall Cecilia or on the forest spring spirits?" as they were waiting, Simon asked all of a sudden.

"What do you mean?" Irene's crystal blue eyes trembled ever so slightly.

"The look of surprise you had when Cecilia mentioned the words that the spirit tree said and your sudden interest to lay a protective around their town. Are you telling me that you want me to believe nothing is going on?".

Although Irene hid it well at that time, Simon still noticed Irene's unusual behaviour at that time.

"What are you hiding?" Simon asked without masking any words.

Irene fell silent… this lasted for a while before she finally opened her lips to speak—"Do you remember what I mentioned to you when the spirit tree first appeared on this floor?" Irene glanced straight at Simon.

The latter recalled his memories before nodding his head. She had told him that the spirit tree was an incredible treasure and that he had lucked out incredibly to have one of them grow in his dungeon.

She also mentioned how it had many functions one of which could even communicate with the spirits.

"At that time I said that I only knew one of its abilities, but that was not the case. I indeed did know of another one of its abilities but seeing that the spirituality of the shirt tree was just at the infant stage, I felt like it was too soon to even mention it. Thus I did not tell you about it. Another ability of the spirit tree besides communicating with the spirits is to see the future".

See the future? Simmon's eyes immediately went wide. What kind of ridiculous concept was that? If the other ability of the spirit tree was that, then wouldn't it make the tree quite broken?

Nonetheless, what intrigued Simon was why Irene was telling him about this ability now when she thought it was too soon to reveal it before.

Could it be that the words said by the spirit tree weren't just some dream but what it had seen in the future?

The moment Simon realised that, he immediately understood why Irene was so eager to set up an array here. However, the term danger was a very vague word, they needed a little more context to better understand the nature of this danger.

"Can't we just ask the spirit tree what it saw when it wakes up?" Simon suggested, instead of just fumbling around, he thought that it would be much better to ask the spirit tree directly about its dream.

Nonetheless, Irene shook her head—"The Spirit tree is still a child, do you think a child remembers what it saw in its dream? Probably it has already forgotten about the events that it saw. We can only wait for it to grow up and develop its ability".

So that was the case, indeed she was right. While Irene and Simon were discussing countermeasures as to how to better tackle the danger, Fennel and the group arrived. In their hands was a basket with many different types of plants with unusual shapes and colours.

After they arrived with the plants, they all became busy extracting the plant's essence into a bowl and mixing it in different ratios as per Irene's instructions.

One might think that it was easy but it was not the case, these simple processes required extreme precision and the ability to control one's mana. A human alchemist would need years of practice and knowledge to even begin something as complex as mixing different essences together and even then they wouldn't be able to achieve the perfect ratio.

As could be seen by looking at Simon, he had no prior knowledge of herbs and alchemy and thus was a huge hindrance in their work. Many a time, he burned the entire plant to get the extract, other times he mixed them in the wrong ratios.

From his failure, Simon at least learnt that he was not suited for alchemy. The realisation was not very painful for him to accept, after all, looking at the ones beside him who were the best of the best in this field, even he couldn't help but marvel at their work.

"Hehe… big brother does not need to be so upset, our forest spirit tribe are born with this gift" The last nail on his coffin was the consoling words from Cecilia.

Pffttt… from the corner of his eyes, he saw Irene, Fay and Maya covering their mouth and smiling, it seemed that they enjoyed his suffering and struggle as he arrived at that realisation.

"Don't worry you might get better at it if you practice" Irene said.

What was that? Was this ice cold beauty who was ever so emotionless, was cracking a joke? Simon didn't know if he should laugh or cry.

Since alchemy was not his forte Simon tried his hand at making the structure for the array. This was much easier for him as all he needed to do was mould the smelted ores using the diagram that Irene had provided him.

The other forest spring spirits helped him and soon a unique looking structure more than five meters big, was formed.

After the structure was formed, fennel and the other brought over the mixture that was to be used as ink. Next, Irene took out something from the gap between the space.

Looking carefully, Simon noticed that it was a silver coloured pen which she used to dip it in the ink and draw mysterious runes on the structure. It has to be mentioned that the structure was made of many different types of ores amongst which Mythril was also in the mix.

It wouldn't be wrong to say that the structure was incredibly hard and sturdy so much so that it would even be able to withstand his AOE intermediate magic. For Irene's pen to easily carve runes into it, it was definitely not an ordinary item.

And he was right... "This pen is very precious to me. It is made with the coldest and hardest of ice that could be found in this universe. Even adamantium doesn't stand a chance in front of it" Irene explained.

No wonder it was able to carve runes in a structure made of Mythril. Irene drew one complex rune after another, she kept on at it for several hours. During that time, the Valkyries, [Helpers] and the other forest spring spirits visited them.

"Master… I have brought over the mana crystals that we just finished mining" Annette who was tasked to ask Wisp to mine some mana crystals from the quandary using the Andromedas came over with the space ring.

Simon nodded his head and checked the contents of the space ring with his senses only to feel a little shocked inwardly. There were tonnes of them inside releasing waves of pure mystical energy. Most of the crystals were grade [1] with a few grade [2] in the mix.

Since Irene said that the durability of the barrier of the grand protection array depends on the quality of the material used, Simon did not spare using the grade [2] mana crystals too. Even though his heart bled a little, knowing that what the spirit tree had referred to was not a dream but a future, he still put all the grade [2] mana crystals into use for the array.

A grade [2] mana crystal was a precious item that many people in this wouldn't dare to splurge like that. However, if it could ensure the safety of the forest spring spirits, Simon felt like it was worth it.

Time passed by swiftly, one day… two days, on the third day, Irene who had been at it non-stop finally slowed down her pen.

"Huff… it's finally done" Irene said tucking he bangs behind her ears.

"Thanks for your hard work" Simon encouraged walking beside her.

"But I have to say, I didn't expect it would take this long to create an array". It took almost three days just to complete the structure of the array. One had to wonder how long it would take to create the whole thing.

"What are you saying, this one is just the most basic of the protection array. If you were to lay out more advanced and powerful ones it would take a few months to a year at the very least".

Hearing what she had to say, Simon was at a loss for a word.

"Anyways, we are almost done with this array. After I use the mana crystal to solidify the ink to make it one whole thing and link it at the end with the Obsidian Energy Exuders, the array would be completed. After that, it would slowly absorb the mana shockwaves from the obsidian energy exuders and grow strong".

Irene explained amazing everyone with her knowledge. Now that everyone knew what else was to be done, all who were present there at that moment got to work and pitched in to complete the array.