Vera felt a slight vibration from the floor beneath her feet. Heavy objects then fell like rain behind Ham. Once she saw them clearly, Vera nearly stopped breathing.
"High-purity Elemental Crystal, rare Magic materials, and Ancient Steel."
"So much."
The final gray-white metal block took up the most space, and Vera recognized it at a glance. She almost screamed, her eyes shining brightly. That was a super-rare material she had saved for ages, scanning the market countless times just to collect a tiny amount.
Now there was a massive lump of it placed right in front of her. By a conservative estimate, it weighed at least a thousand tons. With this quantity, not even the national treasury might be able to produce so much.
"Where did you get these materials."
Vera excitedly shook Ham by the shoulders. Ham almost blurted out that she had picked them up as trash, which was not far from the truth, especially for that Ancient Steel. After some careful thought, she put on a serious expression instead.
"This is part of the treasure my Dragonkin accumulated over a thousand years. I am just borrowing a little. That item is very useful to us, so I was willing to give this much."
"Is that so. Dragonkin really are wealthy."
Vera accepted the explanation, since it made sense. Dragonkin lived long lives, and even without deliberate collecting, their accumulated wealth would be considerable. However, she soon realized that while the System technology tree could directly use Rapid Fabrication, it consumed materials to replace the intermediate processes.
Since the requested item was a technology project she could not even see yet, the materials consumed in between would be massive. That meant the pile in front of her would be eaten away. The thought alone made her heart ache.
"Don't worry. The replacement materials will come from this pile. Everything left over is yours."
Ham said this, but Vera suddenly bent over and clutched her chest. It hurt too much. So many rare materials, not only could she not use them freely, she had to dump them into the bottomless pit of the System.
"My Ancient Steel. Mine, all mine. So much of it, all gone to replacement."
She even let out a sob. Ham hesitated and tried to comfort her.
"You can also use some of your own materials for replacement. Maybe some will be left over."
"I will come back for it in about three days. I will take the thing then. Can you let go now."
If her clothes were not made from nanobot mimicry, Ham felt they might have been torn apart by Vera's enhanced strength. Knowing her personality well, it was better not to disturb her further. She quickly performed a spatial jump and left, trusting that Vera would keep her word.
After Ham left, Vera stood there for a long time staring at the pile of materials. Her gaze lingered especially on that huge block of Ancient Steel. Finally, with a determined look, she used her communicator to dial a secret signal.
"Hello, big brother. I have a big deal here. Yes, check what we still have in the treasury."
On the other end was clearly Vera's second brother. With materials at the level of Ancient Steel, there was no way family would not be tempted. Saving even a little was better than nothing.
No matter what, she had to secure as much of the Ancient Steel as possible. Every bit saved would become a screw on her future dream machine. After handling that, Vera checked the pile of goods stored in her Spatial Ring. There was no better time than now, trading trash for treasure was absolutely worth it.
She then contacted her usual suppliers and asked them to send over more materials that met the minimum replacement threshold. Sitting down beside the violet-colored machine, Vera let herself calm down. With reason taking over again, she began to recall Ham from earlier.
That presence was clearly not simple. Whether it was the casual use of spatial Teleportation or her instinctive feeling, and even the ability to affect the small built-in advantage she had since birth, none of it was ordinary. This anomaly had gone unnoticed for years under the noses of experts at the Ascendant Hall level within the Empire.
Even those closest to her had only treated it as some kind of innate Magic. Yet Ham seemed to know from the start what it was, and even understood parts of its mechanism. It was possible she knew more about it than Vera herself.
"How did Ham do it, and where did that technology come from."
"Ancient civilizations. I have been paying attention to that for a long time, but aside from meaningless ruins and Ancient Steel, there is almost nothing to find."
Calmly, Vera analyzed the situation. From Ham's attitude and a few scattered words, she could infer many things. The other party seemed to understand her very well.
Three days passed.
"You are saying this is something you suddenly remembered in a dream yesterday, and then dug out from a trash heap in the old dragon bone ruins."
"Yes, that's right."
Bella looked at the head-sized object Ham handed over, clearly a high-tech item. It was obviously made of nanobots, and under Bella's observation, its surface showed complex patterns and moving components.
"It looks very new, so new it feels like it was just made and activated for the first time."
"Does it. I thought so too, haha."
Cold sweat poured down Ham's back as Bella continued examining it closely. Then Bella suddenly looked up, and Ham straightened up and widened her eyes.
"Well, nanomachines have self-repair functions, so being new is fine. I see now. Ham, you should sleep more and dream up more things like this."
Bella believed it and left happily with the item. After connecting to its data and functions, Bella understood why it could help Belial.
"I did not expect such a small thing to simulate soul-like fluctuations. With this, it really could attract some not-so-bright Abyssal Gods."
Ham knew this well. In a tense situation where hunters watched closely for prey, the moment any sign appeared, they would quietly move closer. As for whether it was a trap, only another of the same kind, another Crimson God, could release such crimson soul-like fluctuations.
Ordinary souls had long been devoured, so who else could fake it. In the past, when they were still clear-headed, they might have seen through the fake. But in their current state, that was uncertain.
The soul of another of their kind was a powerful temptation to any Crimson God. Even if they did not take the bait, they would approach to see what was going on. Once tempted, they would move deeper and deeper, until they entered Belial's hunting net.
Once inside this forest, there was only one predator whose senses ruled the entire area.
Bella quickly sent the little thing over, and it did not actually take much time. All she needed was to tell Belial on the other side, and that guy could just fly over to pick up the delivery himself. After a round of explanation, Belial more or less understood what it was, oh, so it was just high-tech fishing bait, in that case there was no problem, it was simply for him to do cyber fishing with it.
"Then you have him stuff in a tiny bit of whatever was left from last time, any leftover crimson soul or bits of body Shard fragments, just throw in anything," she said. "After that, you burn it, and it will form a similar kind of soul fluctuation, so anything impatient will definitely bite."
The parts that originally belonged to Crimson God would be consumed inside it, then faintly disguised as a strange signal. It was basically shouting that there was a badly beaten, almost dead but not quite dead, easy target holy body here, come and squeeze it. Once this was spread out, even something blind, deaf, and half-crippled could sense it, and Ham vaguely remembered that mass-produced models of this kind of thing used to be scattered everywhere.
Back then, they only used stolen scraps or pure simulated signals, and even then it was not always effective. Staying in a shelter and still getting wiped out by some unknown large-scale area attack was normal in those days. But this one was an improved version after Ham's own understanding, and what was stuffed inside was not a simulated signal but the real thing, truly shattered crimson souls, no lies there.
Even if some old relic consciousnesses struggling with dead memories noticed it, there was a high chance they could not tell the difference. Stuffing an actual real thing inside was something they had truly never seen in their entire existence. The idea alone went beyond experience.
"So this is enough, right."
He did not need to put in much effort himself, since the last Hedorah had torn itself apart quite thoroughly. He took a tiny leftover piece that was not even enough to fill a gap between teeth and stuffed it into the small device. Soon after, a soul-like fluctuation spread out, further concealed and diffused through the bait Belial had arranged and Crystal Domain.