The last time he absorbed the Great Earth Essence Liquid, it took him around six hours or so, this time, he did it within four hours. His absorption speed when it came to cultivating had increased significantly with the increase in his strength, as well as elements.

‘At this rate, if I were to enter the trial land again and focus fully on cultivating, I shouldn’t have a problem with getting to the Overlord Plane within six months.’ Grey thought while rubbing his chin, ‘*Sigh* Unfortunately, that’s impossible.’

He entered the Chaos Space to see what grade his darkness element got to, he expected it to be around the purple grade at least, and he wasn’t disappointed. Now of his six elements, the fire element was cyan, the lightning and wind elements were blue, the earth, water, and darkness elements were purple.

The only disappointing thing about the increase in his darkness elemental grade was that he still didn’t break through to the Sixth stage of the Origin Plane, but he could sense he wasn’t far from it.

Three days later.

Grey walked out of the decayed-looking shack while stretching his body, it was finally time for them to leave this place, and he couldn’t be happier. He brought out three disk-like wooden objects, and lightly tapped on the middle of each of them. A hologram appeared above them, and four lights could be seen, all very close to each other.

It was just as Grey planned, they were all only linked to each other, so they couldn’t track the ones he got from Quinn, only his own could do that. He kept them in his storage ring, before taking out his crude-looking own, after tapping on the middle, a hologram appeared.

“This should be either Alice or Reynolds, Klaus is most likely the one who is farther away,” Grey muttered as he looked at the hologram.

Two were not that far from his location, and two were quite far. It wasn’t hard to differentiate between which one belonged to Klaus and the people who made it, one had a single light source, and the other had multiple light sources around the same area.

The one Grey felt belonged to Klaus had moved a significant distance compared to the last time he saw it, and since Klaus was the only one he knew who was on the move amongst the three, he felt his guess was right.

‘Where are you?’ Grey asked Void through their mind links.

He rarely ever sees Void in the valley whenever he comes out. Either he was in the city or the Academy.

‘Academy, why?’ asked Void.

‘Did you take the books I told you about?’ Grey asked.

‘Yes, I took them, I took them all…’ Void said in a dramatic manner, making Grey chuckle lightly.

Before he went back into his seclusion-like training, he gave Void a task. He told Void to go to the Academy’s library, and get him books that he could find that touched on forgemastery, he didn’t tell him an exact number, so hearing that he took all of them amused him.

‘Well, it’s not like I have any goodwill towards the current Academy anyway, but taking all the books on forgemastery seems a little too overboard,’ Grey said.

‘So… should I return some?’ asked Void.

‘No, there’s no need. Come let’s get going before they notice the books are gone.’ Grey said with a grin.

He would return them after he was done studying them, he wasn’t stealing them anyway, just borrowing.

‘Great! We’re finally leaving!’ Void exclaimed excitedly before hurrying back to the forest.

Although the Academy had stopped searching for him in the valley, Grey wouldn’t carelessly come out without Void first telling him if the area was safe. Void soon got to the valley, and after going around the place, he gave Grey the go-ahead to leave the place.

Grey wore a long black hooded robe that covered parts of his face, while also putting a disguise on. He didn’t want to make any mistakes, getting caught wasn’t something he wanted to happen.

‘So where are we headed?’ asked Void.

‘Well, I don’t really know the exact location, all I know is that it’s in that direction.’ Grey pointed in the direction of the south while staring at the wooden object in his hands.

He didn’t know which of his friends was there, but he didn’t really bother about it since he would find out when he got there.

Grey and Void towards their destination, they didn’t know where they were going, so Grey planned to get a map once they got to the next city, that way he would be able to at least guess their destination. That would also give him a rough idea of who he was going to see.

______

One month ago.

Two days after the trial land closed.

In Quinn’s family compound. In his father’s office, a man could currently be seen kneeling with his head bowed, afraid to look at the enraged eyes of Quinn’s father.

“You’re saying none of them made it out alive?” Quinn’s father asked with an infuriated and sad look.

“Yes my lord, the arrays had already disappeared, but there were no signs of them.” The man kneeling replied with his head still bowed in fear.

Boom!

The table in the office was smashed into smithereens by Quinn’s enraged father, his son whom he had high hopes for was dead, of course, he would be annoyed.

“My… my lord,” The kneeling man called out, trying to calm Quinn’s father.

“What?!” roared Quinn’s father.

“According to reports, they seemed to have found the treasure,” The kneeling man said.

“What?! Where is it?” Quinn’s father asked agitatedly.

If Quinn was able to find it before his death, that means that his death was worth it, the only thing now is that he was not able to personally bring it home.

“The treasure is actually the Great Earth Essence Liquid, I believe my lord has heard of it,” The man said, only managing to raise his head now.

“The Great Earth Essence Liquid? Where… where is it?” Quinn’s father asked, stuttering.

“They found it, but couldn’t take it, rather, it was stolen by a group.”