Chapter 99 Rejuvenated
After spending some more time combing through his surroundings, Dilan noticed that it was already afternoon by the time he returned to the Rian mountainside hospital.
He had come across a few clues, but the entire city was way too quiet for him to find out more.
It was quite weird because Dilan had expected to encounter several human groups.
There were commotions in different areas on Rian’s outskirts, but even in the other districts one could occasionally see powerful monsters, and spot a few possible locations of shelters.
But even then, he didn’t think of approaching the survivors directly.
If they chose to leave their group alone it was for the best because he was pretty sure that not many were able to increase their strength as quickly as he did.
Of course, that didn’t mean Dilan was overconfident in his capabilities.
He knew when to attack, and when to retreat. This was what differentiated a warrior from a mindless killer.
After returning to the cafeteria, Dilan took his backpack off his shoulder before emptying it on the table where the ores and Lumina crystals were lying.
The sound of more than a hundred Essence crystals rolling over the table attracted everyone’s attention.
Seeing that Dilan was standing beside the table and was patiently sorting the crystals, nobody moved but they had their gazes fixated on what he was doing.
“Old Jeff, Sarah can you guys come over?” He suddenly asked, while still looking at the Essence crystals.
He segregated them into ordinary Essence crystals at Level 5 or slightly above, higher leveled ordinary crystals, and Bronze Essence crystals.
Sarah and Jeff approached Dilan with slight hesitation, unsure of what to do.-.
“Eh…Dilan, what do you want from us?” Sarah asked quite bluntly.
She knew that it was not necessary to speak formally with Dilan, which was why she went straight to the point.
But even after she asked, Sarah didn’t receive an answer from Dilan.
Instead, Dilan was rummaging in his backpack where he pulled out an old piece of parchment.
“If you have some free time, please use this! You can take the low-leveled Essence crystals, some water, and the few Lumina crystals which I brought back from the Krendel’s Underground Valley.
There should be test tubes, a gas burner, a grinder and other things in the hospital. You can ask some of the Survivors to help you if you were to need their support.”
Dilan didn’t trust many people in their group. At least not to the extent that he would give them the recipe for the mana replenishment potion!
As such, there were only a handful of people he trusted which were Kathrine, Oliver, Pierre, Ailee, Sarah, and Bianne.
Unfortunately, all of them were either overly busy or occupied with something else.
Sarah wanted to look after Pierre, which meant that she wouldn’t leave the cafeteria to go out hunting for several hours a day.
Dilan took this into consideration before giving her the recipe and the necessary ingredients to concoct the potions.
With the first step of his mission solved, he handed her a handful of Bronze Essence crystals, telling her to absorb them before he looked at Old Jeff.
He seemed somewhat uncomfortable because there was no reason for Dilan to call him to the front.
Old Jeff didn’t like attention and was unhappy to see that more than a dozen pairs of eyes stared straight at him.
Dilan saw his weird expressions but instead of commenting on it, he pushed the Essence crystals toward Old Jeff.
“Absorb them…all of them!”
“Huh?” Old Jeff blurted out in confusion. Meanwhile, everyone else looked at Dilan and Old Jeff with surprise.
Not long ago, Dilan told them that everyone should work for their own Essence crystals.
However, right now he provided Old Jeff with more than 50 Essence crystals of high-leveled monsters, just like that! There were even 15+ Bronze Essence crystals among them.”
“Why??” That was the question on everyone’s mind. Even Kathrine and the others were unable to understand what Dilan was planning.
“I have several reasons, but the most important is that I want to know if your condition will get even better if you absorb more Essence!
After all, I want you to become our first blacksmith. I saw two rather large workshops on Rian’s outskirts that you could make use of. There will probably be a smithy as well, right?”
Smiling lightly, Dilan asked the old man who was still unsure of what to answer next. He wanted to figure out the value of Essence crystals in terms of extending the lifespan as well as the improvement of one’s condition.
Both he and Yvonne were healed of something that should have killed them during the Primordial Ascension. It was a miracle, to put it simply.
However, extending one’s lifespan didn’t seem weird when looking at the events that had occurred during the last 10 days!
In the end, the Essence crystals he procured by hunting would only provide a small fraction of Essence in comparison to what one would usually gain by hunting monsters on their own.
But even then, the Essence one could absorb was quite useful as one could level up, and gain 5 status points for each level.
After reaching level 10 one had 5.0 Status points to distribute. If assigned properly, Old Jeff might even be able to hunt monsters all by himself in order to make up for the status points he didn’t obtain yet.
Yet, this was not the reason for Dilan’s ‘act of generosity’. He wanted to have a Blacksmith in his group, who knew what he was doing.
Someone with several decades of experience and a passion for his job was everything he required.
As such, Dilan pointed at the Essence crystals once again with a gentle smile on his face.
”If everything works out, we can start mining ores, improve our equipment, and then go out hunting in large groups!”
Clearing the entire hospital for his team of Ascenders would be possible even without his help. Leveling up would be much easier as well, and everyone’s condition would improve.
What Dilan had lacked the most in the beginning, and possibly even now were good armaments such as weapons that could cut through everything.
Even now he was severely restricted owing to his weapons!
This was already more than enough reason for him to provide Old Jeff with dozens of Essence crystals.
However, there was one more important reason, which one could only find out by paying attention to Old Jeff before, while, and after he absorbed the Essence crystals.
When Old Jeff grasped the first Essence crystal, it crumbled in his hand. Vigor gleamed in his eyes and a faint smile emerged on his face as he mumbled,
“So potent…”
Barely two minutes passed in which Old Jeff absorbed one Essence crystal after another until his small mountain of Essence crystals had been emptied.
His eyes gleamed brightly in vigor as he looked at Dilan with a grateful expression.
“I think…I’m ready to enter a smithy again? How is that even possible?”
Clenching his hands, Old Jeff couldn’t believe the current state of his body and the energy thrumming in his veins.
He felt as if his body had aged backward to his 30s.
It was ridiculous, even more so because he had yet to use the 4.0 Status points he received from leveling up to level 8!
Dilan just smiled before he answered,
“The more Essence you absorb the stronger you will feel.
You didn’t receive any additional stats from the Essences I hunted, so you should be able to imagine how much of a difference it would be once you kill on your own and start receiving the Essence of a monster, and their status points!”
Just a quick glance through the cafeteria told Dilan that he had attracted everyone’s attention with the small show he had initiated.
Old Jeff was one of the oldest Survivors in their group, but even his voice seemed to have grown younger and energetic in contrast to what his old and feeble body would allow him.
Through him, Dilan wanted to impress upon many Survivors subconsciously that they had to become stronger as well.
This was the final push everyone required to feel like going out of the cafeteria, and doing more things to procure Essences!
After all, longevity was quite enticing, even more so if the average age of humans on Milarn was around 75 years before the Primordial Ascension!
Slowly, Dilan felt as if the group was moving towards one particular goal- to become stronger.
He felt that this was great because it made things much easier as the period in which he would have to continually keep coaxing and persuading the others to go and hunt seemed to have been crossed successfully!
Though the thought made Dilan smile brightly, Kathrine appeared behind him with a deep frown on her face.
She leaned toward him just to start whispering,
“It is great that you motivate everyone to become stronger, but it’s useless to allow the Survivors that didn’t even receive the most basic training to go out hunting…alone!”
Even though her voice was low, Kathrine seemed to be in a quite bad mood.
Dilan thought that she wanted to talk about the report on the Krendel’s Underground Valley.
As such, he didn’t expect her to hear this.
And by looking through the rows of Survivors, Dilan noticed that three to four young Survivors were missing.
Even if Kathrine didn’t say anything else, it was not difficult for him to comprehend what happened.
“Who died?”