Han Sen thought for a while. He brought a few pieces of fruit out of Destiny’s Tower to give to the Crocodile God.
“This little Crocodile God is just a baby. It should be an easy thing to please. All I need to do is keep it happy, then I can do anything I want. I wonder if it is a vegetarian? I don’t have much meat stockpiled at the moment.” Ever since Han Sen started collecting King xenogeneic genes, he hadn’t been eating anything else. The fruit was something he had saved for Bao’er.
But ever since Bao’er had found that purple ginseng, she hadn’t shown interest in anything else. No other type of fruit enticed her, so Han Sen had been keeping them inside Destiny’s Tower the whole time.
If someone wanted their body to evolve, the process would take a lot more than just practicing various geno arts. The higher class a person was, the more energy their body would require. And the food they consumed had to be of greater quality. That was the only way to deliver the extra needed energy. Every creature in the universe had to eat; the only differences were in how and what they ate.
High-class elites could go without food for a long time, but the price they paid for that was the consumption of their energy. If that went on for a long time, their bodies would be damaged quite severely.
When people said they didn’t need to eat while practicing, it was a load of rubbish. In real life, you would die if you didn’t eat. The starvation process just took a little longer for strong people than for the weak.
This didn’t just apply to warriors with ordinary levels of power. In Han Sen’s experience, even guys that called themselves “God” had to eat, too. But instead of eating flesh, they ate the lifespan of the people that came to them to make wishes.
The little Crocodile God had to eat, too, but it didn’t show any interest in the fruit Han Sen had given it. It used its tail to sweep all the pieces of fruit away.
“It looks like it doesn’t eat fruit or veggies. In that case, what kind of food does it eat?” Han Sen tried to guess, but he had no meat to share. Then again, Han Sen doubted that the creature wanted to eat meat, either. If it had, Han Sen, Li Keer, and Exquisite would’ve already become crocodile chow.
The little God Crocodile growled at Han Sen. This was the second time, and it was clearly rushing Han Sen to get to work. And so he did, clearing the shattered crystals all around him.
The little Crocodile God had assumed the role of the inspector. It commanded Han Sen to do things, like throwing the shattered crystals out of the fortress and into the lava sea that was held at bay outside.
Han Sen wasn’t in a rush, and neither was he annoyed. He just stuck to his tasks of sweeping and cleaning up, hoping to find something useful as he went.
The small God Crocodile was pleased with Han Sen’s work ethic. The little Crocodile God seemed born to be a supervisor, and it seemed very pleased to be doing this sort of work.
But Han Sen failed to find anything interesting as he went. And when the little God Crocodile eventually grew bored, it brought Han Sen back to the swimming pool with it.
When Han Sen arrived back at the swimming pool, he found Li Keer and Exquisite giving the big Crocodile God a head massage. They were using a brush to scrub its body, too.
Li Keer and Exquisite looked like a perfect picture of misery. They had never dreamed of being forced to do something this demeaning.
They had been taught that as members of the Very High, their futures held incredible potential. They had dreamed of doing many things, but never of working as a crocodile’s maids. Especially with someone like Dollar around to see their humiliation.
The big Crocodile God was a harsh taskmaster, but Li Keer and Exquisite were eventually allowed a break.
“Did you find anything around here?” Exquisite asked Han Sen, as the two of them approached.
“Just more shattered crystal. There doesn’t seem to be a single thing of interest, otherwise.” Han Sen had already stuffed the arm bones into his Destiny’s Tower. He didn’t plan on informing the girls about his discovery.
“What about you two?” Han Sen asked.
“What could we find? All we’ve been doing is sweeping up crap all day. I have no idea how these two eat so much. They piss wherever they like, too,” Li Keer said, her expression morose.
Han Sen’s heart leaped. He quickly asked, “Can you tell me what they’ve been eating?”
“How the hell should I know what they eat? Their dung is like firm orbs. It looks just like the materials that make up the planet itself,” Li Keer said.
“In that case, maybe they are eating material that comes from the planet,” Han Sen said after a moment of thought.
“What is the point of knowing what they eat?” Li Keer asked.
“It would let us rest easy in the knowledge that they don’t want to eat us, at least. If that’s the case, we are quite lucky,” Han Sen said with a shrug of his shoulders.
“If I’m going to be trapped in here for the rest of my life, I think I would rather die.” Li Keer didn’t agree with Han Sen’s line of thinking.
“We aren’t carrying much food ourselves. We need to find a way to get out of here,” Exquisite said.
“Do you know a way out of here?” Han Sen asked.
“Not right now.” Exquisite shook her head.
“Then there’s no point in talking about it,” Han Sen said gloomily.
The three of them rested for a while. The little Crocodile God soon came over, hurrying them back to work.
Out of the three, Han Sen had the best chance of working outside the pool area. The two girls were worse off, as they were stuck serving the Crocodile God on the beach. They swept up crap or massaged the crocodile’s scales. They were just like maids.
It was likely that the crocodiles were the only beings in the universe using two of the Very High as maids, but god only knew how long they would enjoy this service.
Han Sen was outside, setting toppled pieces of equipment upright or cleaning up devices that had been completely destroyed. In the beginning, the little Crocodile God was really interested in ordering him around. But after a while, it became too lazy and stopped.
Once he was free of his miniature overlord, Han Sen could walk around the fortress. While looking through a random plaza, he finally found something.
Crystal was a technological product. It wasn’t normally used to create things like tablets, but in that plaza, Han Sen found a crystal wall with text on it.
Because the crystal wall was broken, it took Han Sen almost three days to collect all of the fragments and piece the wall back together. Then, he was able to read the text in full.
“Crystal Furnace skill… This seems to be a geno art, but the name is very weird. I wonder what it does?” Han Sen began reading through the content a little more closely.
After all, the geno arts of the crystallizers were usually quite suitable for humans to practice. But Han Sen wasn’t very hopeful for the potential of a crystallizer geno art, because the crystallizers weren’t very famous for their geno arts. Their skills were rarely exceptional.
But after Han Sen read about the Crystal Furnace, he was given a fright.
This wasn’t exactly a geno art. It was a godly skill for people who loved to eat.
The Crystal Furnace was a way to reinforce one’s stomach. It was different from Consume, which focused on the ability to digest food. By contrast, the Crystal Furnace turned one’s stomach into a nuclear reactor. It quickly released the energy of food, and the energy released would be immediately absorbed. The waste would come out quickly.
“No wonder the crystallizers have such a reputation for research and development. Even their geno arts are scientific.” Han Sen loved it. He wouldn’t turn down a new geno art that aided his digestion.
But when Han Sen reached the end of the text for Crystal Furnace, he saw an additional note.
“The public version of Crystal Furnace is only suitable for kids below sixteen. For those who are above sixteen, please practice Crystal Core Reactor.”
“This is the kids’ version?” Han Sen was annoyed by that, but he couldn’t find the adult version of Crystal Furnace, so he had to learn the kids’ version first.
