CHAPTER 203: INEFFICIENT CONVERSION

CH203 Inefficient Conversion

***

To the left of the portal lay the Bonsai grove, where arguably the most important guest of the Sanctuary Portal had rooted itself.

The leaves of the Heartwood Tree—simply called Bonsai by Alex—were as lush as ever.

Upon closer inspection, one could spot, at the crown of the tree and surrounded by its thickest, healthiest leaves, a nest woven from the Bonsai’s own vines and twigs.

Resting in that nest were the Egg of the Nightmare Eagle and the Voidheart Core—both prizes Alex had brought back from his trip to the Dankrot Forest.

Alex walked up to the Bonsai Tree and placed his palm against its trunk in his usual greeting. The leaves rustled in response, and a lower-hanging branch brushed against his shoulder—an unexpected gesture.

It seemed the tree was growing more responsive the more he interacted with it.

That brief exchange over, Alex lifted his gaze to the top of the tree, excitement glinting in his eyes.

Sensing the emotions of its caretaker—as it was attuned to the desires and needs of his heart—the Bonsai lowered the nest with one of its branches.

In Alex’s Spirit Sight, the Voidheart Core resembled a great whale, continuously sucking in vast amounts of mana, only to exhale faint, almost imperceptible motes of an energy unlike anything he was accustomed to seeing in his spectra-like vision.

It was a special kind of energy—one he had only ever observed in the presence of a few scant powerful beings such as Norton Stormwind—the avaricious Lightning Mage who served as one of Earl Drake’s hounds—Zilbris, the Legendary Silver-Coloured Dragon, and of course... Merlin himself.

Spatial Energy.

The Voidheart Core’s energy conversion was indeed as inefficient as Zilbris had warned—perhaps even more so.

It absorbed more than ten times the mana Alex could draw in per second, yet produced less Spatial Energy than the mana he needed to cast a mere Class 0 spell like Clean.

That was a disparity far worse than a thousandfold difference.

Still, it was a price worth paying to obtain Spatial Energy.

For a fleeting moment, Alex felt grateful that the Heartwood Tree had evolved into an Energy-Fixing Tree rather than remaining the Comprehension-Boosting Tree it once was.

But the thought lasted only a heartbeat before he crushed it. No matter what the tree claimed, he would always value Comprehension enhancement above all else.

With the initial thrill fading, Alex found himself staring down several glaring drawbacks of the Voidheart Core—flaws he would need to address before he could fully exploit such a resource-generating marvel.

’First—and most obvious—is the low conversion efficiency. It’s drawing in far too much energy compared to what it’s producing.’

Its absorption was so overwhelming that it nearly prevented any other entity in the vicinity from drawing in energy. Comparing it to a dying, desperate whale gasping for water would not be far from the truth.

Alex might have worried for the Nightmare Eagle Egg the Heartwood had placed alongside the Voidheart Core in the nest... if not for the fact that he had already formed a contract with the unborn eagle and channelled the bulk—if not all—of the energy it needed to grow and hatch at its fullest potential.

What did concern him, however, was that most of the motes produced by the Voidheart Core were flowing directly into the egg. And the greedy little creature was hoarding the energy instead of letting any escape.

Still, all vital signs were normal, so Alex kept his concern in check.

Beasts might not match humans in intellect—generally—but they were beloved by Mother Nature, endowed with instincts that would immediately warn them of danger. If the motes had been harmful, the egg would have raised the alarm through their bond, demanding separation from the Voidheart Core, not actively absorbing the energy.

Alex leaned back against the trunk of the Bonsai, the nest resting across his lap, and fell deep into thought. He needed a lasting solution to the efficiency problem.

"Zilbris said the energy conversion efficiency isn’t based purely on quantity exchange, but rather on a conceptual quality exchange.

"The closer the absorbed energy is to Spatial Energy in conceptual quality, the higher the efficiency of conversion—and vice versa."

He glanced up at the Bonsai’s canopy.

"By chance, can you specifically target and draw in high-quality conceptual energies?"

The leaves rustled faintly, almost as if asking, ’Are you sure you want me to?’

Alex immediately shook his head. "You know what? Don’t. I’d rather handle it myself. I still haven’t accepted you turning into an energy-fixing tree, and I don’t want you hanging that over my head."

A low-hanging branch brushed the top of his head, the gesture oddly reminiscent of an adult placating a restless child. It drew a wry chuckle from him.

Setting aside his refusal to accept the Bonsai’s chosen nature, the main reason he wanted to solve the problem himself was because it was, in his eyes, a challenge worth tackling.

He rubbed his chin. "Is it possible for me to raise the quality of ambient mana?"

His first thought was Astral Energy. Astral Energy could ’degrade’ into any form of mana—so surely that meant it was a higher conceptual energy, right?

Alex shook his head.

He wasn’t entirely sure about that.

Merlin—Uthvaazgol, rather—had spent an untold span of time developing a cultivation method to absorb Astral Energy from the void of the cultivation space. Could it really be possible that he hadn’t tried to create a gathering circle for it in all that time?

’It’s unlikely... right?’ Alex mused.

While he could simply call and ask, he didn’t want to. Not yet.

If it were possible for someone to create a gathering for Astral Energy, there was no reason he couldn’t at least try to cobble together something similar himself.

’Thankfully, I have the natural energy-gathering formation. I can use that as my base.’

Alex’s consciousness sank into his mindspace, where he prompted OmniRune to activate its simulation function.

In an instant, a projection of the energy-gathering formation—one he had comprehended from the Mana Stone Mine within the Pangea Realm’s Subspace Sanctuary—manifested before him.

He began a meticulous scan, locating the components responsible for directing the formation to attract and gather ambient mana toward a single focal point.

In doing so, Alex noted that his current gathering formation leaned heavily towards absorbing the main elemental mana—Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Wood, Ice...

The rarer elemental energies—Light, Darkness, Poison, Lightning, and so forth—were conspicuously absent.

Recalling the original gathering formation he had once seen in the Dragon Lair Mine, Alex remembered how much more complex it had been, and how it attracted a broader, more balanced spectrum of mana.

Thinking it through, this made sense. His own simplified version was ill-suited for drawing in those rarer elemental energies.

After all, because these energies were scarce, the requirements and environmental conditions for attracting them were extremely demanding.

It wasn’t without reason that mana-rich areas attuned to such elements were extraordinarily rare—and that finding mana stones aligned with them was almost impossible.

The components in the natural gathering formation that enabled this feat were so complex that Alex still couldn’t fully decipher them. That limitation was why his simplified version neither targeted nor could target those rare elemental mana types.

This detail proved important, as it made him quickly realise just how difficult it would be to create a gathering formation for Astral Energy.

Astral Energy was far more elusive and scarce than any rare elemental mana. In fact, it existed almost exclusively within the Cultivation Space. Once brought into true space, it degraded into the native energy of the system the cultivator belonged to.

To test this, Alex swapped the components of his formation—those designed to seek ambient mana—with replacements that should, in theory, direct it to seek Astral Energy instead.

BOOM!

Even in the Simulation Space, the result was catastrophic. The formation shattered instantly, erupting into a massive explosion. His consciousness was blasted out of the simulated space and hurled back into the physical realm.

Alex swallowed hard at the sight.

The Simulation Space tempered all outcomes by a factor of tens—if not hundreds. If the blast here was this large, the explosion in the real world would have been disastrous.

’Thankfully, OmniRune created this simulation space. Without it, I’d never dare attempt something like this,’ he thought, wiping non-existent sweat from his forehead.

"Okay... that confirms it. Astral Energy is a no-go... for now," Alex muttered. "So... what other approaches are possible?"

He paused.

"Wait... in the first place, what exactly defines ’conceptual quality’?"

He realised he had been making assumptions without truly understanding the term.

"The most intuitive answer," he reasoned, "would relate to the strength of the Laws and Concepts the energy governs. If that’s true, then since Time, Space, Life, Death, and Destiny are the highest Supreme Laws, their respective energies should hold the highest conceptual quality.

"So energies conceptually equal to Spatial Energy would be... Time, Death, Life, and Destiny energies."

Alex’s brows furrowed.

"None of those are any easier to obtain than Spatial Energy..."

***