“I was unaware that treasures grew in strength the longer they were on their own,” Tony said as he thought through history to find examples of it.

“It’s not something that’s easy to figure out,” Ning said. “After all, what would you compare it to? Unless you have the same two treasures, you can’t compare them two. And since a treasure is always unique until destroyed, you have no method of learning how they differ, so you don’t know.”

“How do you know about all of this?” Tony asked. “Are you a historian? You knew about the corals too.”

“I am… going to answer that question of yours sometime in the future,” Ning said. “For now, just listen to my words and know that they are true.”

“Sir Ning,” Tim spoke up. “What does it mean for a treasure to be stronger? A treasure can only do one thing, so does it become better at doing that?”

“Hmm,” Ning thought for a moment and said. “Do you remember using the Umbrella back in Golden Scales? You saw how the second in command to Captain Dorius couldn’t use his umbrella more than a few times before he fainted, didn’t you?”

Tim nodded. “What about it?” he asked.

“If that umbrella had somehow been created much earlier and didn’t have anyone bonding it for a longer period of time, the man using it would not have been so easily strained by using the umbrella.”

“Or, maybe that wouldn’t happen. Maybe instead of using up his stamina, he could defend against more force using lesser stamina.”

“In the same way, if Tony hadn’t bonded with his watch for a longer period of time, then maybe instead of notifying him of just 2 minutes in the future, it could’ve shown him 3 minutes. Or 5 minutes.”

“All those sorts of changes depend on how long it has remained untouched,” Ning explained.

Tony quickly found his pile of clothes brought out a small notebook and started jotting down what Ning told him.

“Question, why do these treasures stop becoming stronger when we’ve bonded them?” Tony asked.

“For that, you will have to first ask how a treasure even gets its powers in the first place,” Ning said. “Do any of you have any idea how these treasures gain their powers?”

Tim and Jasmine shook their head, but Tony spoke up. “I don’t know if I’m wrong, but I have a hunch,” he said. “It has something to do with the mists that gather around these treasures, doesn’t it?”

Ning smiled. “Precisely correct,” he said. “It does in fact have everything to do with the mists for the mists are in essence what powers the treasures entirely.”

Tony wrote it down quickly and looked back up. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“When these treasures form somewhat randomly, they have very limited power in them. To become stronger, they must absorb the energy that is freely available in the world.”

“When you leave these treasures out for a long time, they start gathering this very energy toward itself to steal from it the power to become stronger. This energy manifests in the form of mists that appear regardless of whether it is day or night.”

“These mists or energy interact with the treasures in 2 ways. If it is not bonded, they get attracted to the treasures. At some distance away from it, the treasures suck in the energy, clearing an area around it.”

“Similarly, these same mists when they come close to a treasure that is bonded with a human, end up getting repelled instead. So when you get close to the mists, they mists start clearing up.”

“To you, it appears as though treasures altogether do the same task of clearing an area of the mist, but the truth of it really is that one clears it by taking it in, and the other clears it by repelling it away.”

Tony wrote it down quickly while Tim took every word to heart, trying to learn everything.

“This is incredible knowledge,” Tony said. “I can’t believe such simple matters were something we never learned about. We never even thought to look through these.”

Ning smiled. “I have a feeling people have learned about this before,” he said. “But such discoveries are actively discouraged so that a certain someone can always take credit for everything as his doing.”

Tim and Jasmine pretty much understood what Ning was talking about, and it did not take Tony more than a second to understand exactly what he meant.

“Zurinus, huh?” he said. “He truly put his name into everything that didn’t need it.”

“And to things that didn’t belong to him,” Ning said, wondering where the hell he could be. Was he an Inventor now, or was he the owner of the largest trading company in the world? Saʀch* Th NovelFull.net website on Ggl to access chapters of nvels early and in the highest quality.

Or… was he someone else entirely?

“So, a treasure can get powerful if not bonded for a long time,” Jasmine said. “And the one we are going to must have been there forever now. How strong is what we are going to find out there?”

“I do not know,” Ning said. “We will know after we find it, but that was only part of the reason why I told you guys about how treasures get strong. There is another reason entirely that I haven’t talked about yet.”

All 3 of them got curious. “What more is there to know?” Tony asked.

“Did you know that if you put a lot of energy into a single place, that thing starts to become smart?” Ning asked. “It gains intelligence.”

Tony gave a frown. “What?” he asked.

“That’s right,” Ning said. “Give a lot of energy and an object gains intelligence. Now that intelligence isn’t enough to get it to start talking or thinking or something, but it does give objects basic instincts.”

“For example, an object with enough energy will gain enough intelligence to learn that it needs to protect itself from getting found by others.”

“And that is when it starts taking defensive measures,” Ning said. “And that is where these guardian monsters come from, the ones you call Zurin Monsters.”

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