Sam tried all kinds of experiments with that stone. But no matter what he didn't touch it at all.
After some experiments, he realized that this flame has a decaying effect. But it is not like the one his decaying green flame he had. It is more like it is accelerating the lifetime of the object to make it decay.
After trying its effect on many objects, he started emitting light elemental energy and used the healing techniques against it.
All of a sudden, the grey stone which was surrounded by the eerie smoke completely disappeared as if it was never there.
It turned into an ordinary stone. Sam was surprised a bit and once again threw some grass. Nothing happened.
He was extremely surprised.
He has a feeling on why they didn't attack at night now.
He came out of the divine dimension and went to the backyard of the house. He waved his hand and the grey stone flew out and fell in the grass. But it is just like any other ordinary stone. There is nothing wrong with it.
Sam once again threw it inside the divine dimension and placed it in the corner. The grey stone once again started showing the grey smoke.
Sam activated partial fusion and tried to experiment a bit. His hand turned into a golden mass of light particles as he held the stone. But his other hand was ready to chop this hand off if it was really infected with the grey flame.
But his worries are unfounded. His hand was able to hold the stone, and it didn't turn into normal stone completely when he held the fingertips. It is not completely invulnerable against the vitality.
While Sam is being fascinated by this weird stone, someone else is also talking about it.
The three non-humans that are activating these weird stones gathered sometime later after the sunrise within a forest.
"Why is the sun so bright in this stupid place?"
One of them who is the only woman of the three-spoke in a grumbling tone.
"We are here for something important. Stop your nonsense."
The man whom Sam clashed with spoke harshly and continued.
"One of the Undying volcanic stones disappeared?"
"What do you mean disappeared?" The remaining two spoke in unison and they had horrified expressions on their faces.
"A guy who is flying around on a board took it. It is clearly not on his body and his spatial ring should have already exploded if it was in and he also didn't catch the grey flame on. I don't know where it went, but it disappeared."
"Are you kidding me? Even though it is of a low-grade stone, it is extremely valuable. Those people are celebrating because they thought they destroyed the catapults, but only we know what the true threat is. We could just place the stone in another catapult or similar machine. But without those stones, there is nothing much we can do."
The woman said with a bit of anxiety.
"I don't know how he kept it, but it should definitely be with him. But he is strong. His body alone is strong enough to trade blows directly with a Minotaur of the same level and he might even be the winner of that exchange.
His muscles and blood are full of vitality to the point he is like a delicious meal waiting for me to take.
But you know our first lesson. The more delicious the meal and the more it felt like it is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, the more we have to be wary of it. That is why I didn't make a move. But the minotaurs are too dumb to stop him. He came out and went in as if he owned the place."
"So, what should we do? If he can escape that easily, it would be extremely easy for him to escape even after we take down the town."
"That is why we have to catch him off guard."
"Off guard? You better be not talking about attacking. You do know what will happen right. Even the catapults and the few half-servants we brought are simply merged with the troops is use treading on a thin line.
If we attack him in the town, there is a high chance that our identities would be released and the dwarves will just send a Consummate realm cultivator and worse an even higher stage cultivator to kill us all. They can even use this chance to massacre all our members left in the southwest.
The foundations we have built all these years would be gone."
The lady said calmly. But she is extremely panicky at the moment.
"But the same thing might happen if they found out about the rack in his hands,. Even though it can only be used against the Pre-transcendent stage cultivators and a lower grade one, it can easily be identified as an object from the undead realm once they see it.
If not for the cooperation between us and orcs, we would have already got suspicious and more people would have come to investigate. We would have been unable to hide it anyway. The only thing we can do is take this on as fast as we can.
Luckily all four towns are being attacked and even the dwarves city of the council is also going to face the war. If we don't hurry up now and take advantage of this situation, the news of that stone will eventually spread. If that guy really managed to figure out something we will be done for."
The three of them stayed silent for a while. They are stuck in a rock and a hard place.
The man who clashed with Sam broke the silence first.
"I will go there alone."
"What? No, you said he is strong. What is if the strength difference is a lot? You can't do that. Why don't we wait for a while and plan a trap for him? He wouldn't be able to use the stone for now anyway, since he couldn't touch it."
"No, I noticed that he has many elements and I also heard that there is a necromancer who used the undead to disrupt the first attack on the town. If that necromancer is related to him much worse if he is him, we would be in trouble. We cannot lose it."
"Then let us go together." The third man who was silent for a while spoke. When he saw their silence, he continued.
"It would be a problem if he stayed alive, all we have to do is kill him while the rest of the town is busy. We would just finish unlocking the rest of the catapults today and attack tomorrow night."
They agreed to this and left the place.
Meanwhile, inside the divine dimension, Sam is still experimenting with the stone. Currently, there are few hands laying on the floor as Sam held the reaper in his left hand.
He has been experimenting with various fusion methods and except for the light element being completely okay and the lightning element being slightly resistant, all the elements are catching on to the grey flame. Now, only the last element remained and that is his dark element or more precisely shadow element.
He started fusion into the shadow element and held it.
To his surprise the whole stone remaining just like that, emitting grey smokes. Even the place Sam held didn't have any change.
Sam placed the sword away and used light element on the stone and it returned to being a normal dull stone, but the spot where his shadow hand was still in contact was still emitting faint smoke.
Sam thought for a while and wanted to see what would happen if he used death energy. He kept the shadow fusion and activated death energy through that.
The stone emitted smoke with much more vigor and even the light element couldn't affect it.
But when he increased the intensity of light far more than the death, it started having some effect.
Sam was delighted. He came out still holding the stone in his hand as he used the death energy right under the bright sun.
The stone is functioning normally. The grass, rocks, metals, everything is working the same. But he didn't dare to try a living thing. Even though he has many beasts that are mere livestock, he couldn't bring himself to do that.
After some thought, he decided to use one of the enemies as a test subject.
He went to the wall and jumped into the enemy lines and kidnapped a Minotaur whose level is lower than him.
Even though it is a bit despicable, everything is fair in war. All he is doing is using an enemy weaker than him as a test subject.
He brought the mInotaur before the enemies could react. Due to the overnight battle, both sides are exhausted and they are relaxing, so they didn't notice the disappearance of a soldier.
Sam brought him back to the backyard and extended his hand holding the stone.
He created death energy to release the energy and used the same technique as creating a spiritual energy beam.
A grey energy beam shot towards the Minotaur and he started burning. Sam watched intently as he turned into undead and couldn't help but smile.
This weird stone gave the results he wanted faster than he thought. But he couldn't just use it like this. He has to figure out a way to use it without making it obvious.
