Ringo was running quickly in one direction, or rather, Ringo's third clone, Black Spider, Trax and Rick had stayed behind long ago, acting as if they were searching for Maktru in the wild. The clone, on the other hand, was advancing through the dense vegetation with an excited smile on his face.
As soon as he began to move, he began to see future possibilities and what he saw surprised him, the people of the Bloodshed Land. But the reason for his joy was what they carried with them.
A large amount of Maktru.
His first vision led him to encounter them days later, more precisely, he discovered the furious people of a local tribe, who attacked them on sight. After discovering the reason for their anger, he found out that a statue of their god had been stolen, a statue filled with Maktru. After finding a target, he quickly began using his Future Vision to find the metal thieves.
Carroll, the leader of this mission, took the statue and hid to extract the Maktru from it. He succeeded, he would have escaped successfully unnoticed if it weren't for himself.
As soon as he discovered the whole event, his thought was not to help the poor local tribe recover the statue and win their friendship that way, although that was possible.
No, his intention was to acquire the Maktru itself, after all, he didn't steal it, he was just... making better use of something that no longer belonged to anyone, yes.
The amount of Maktru was sufficient for Ringo's objective, if he wanted, he could even leave afterward, but knowing the value of the metal, he wouldn't leave so soon.
As for the reason Ames' former subordinate is here, it's obvious, Maktru. Ringo initially only wanted to kill Carroll and relieve Ames' anger, she probably would have liked that, but it would have led to problems with the Tyrant.
So, he thought ahead, rob the thief without leaving a trace.
If Carroll were a magician or a psychic, this might be difficult, but as a mechanic, being robbed by a nightmare is very easy.
Thus, he was running directly to Carroll's current location, a portable base in a distant valley that he had prepared well before the heist, already equipped to separate the metal.
It took him almost two hours of constant running, but in the end he reached the valley.
His body had already changed to resemble the locals, so even if he were discovered, it would only lead people to believe it was retaliation from the Tribe, the possibility of him being discovered is low, but he likes to take precautions.
Outside the valley, Ringo transformed into his nightmare form and activated Hidden Nightmare.
The next moment, he began to teleport, using his nightmare sense, he quickly entered the base without leaving a trace.
Wandering through the buried base, which was hundreds of meters deep, he quickly found his prize.
In Carroll's room, he was using a series of machines to separate the alloy back into pure Maktru, something far more difficult than melting the metal.
Fortunately, the natives' technology was not comparable to space technology, or it would have been nearly impossible to separate materials after they had been transformed into alloys.
Carroll had a satisfied smile the whole time, oblivious to Ringo watching from behind him.
Killing Carroll at that moment would have been very easy, the weakness of the mechanics being evident at that point, a Grade S mechanic would be much more difficult to deal with, with all sorts of machines that could detect Ringo as soon as he entered, perhaps even with the Hidden Nightmare active, but he didn't do it, instead, he waited.
These machines were very expensive and Ringo had no easy way of obtaining parts for them, some may even have been customized by Carroll.
Taking the machines from a mechanic was a terrible idea, Ringo didn't have a good solution for getting rid of things like trackers or artificial intelligence, so waiting for Carroll to finish was a better solution.
After finding the base, keeping an eye on Carroll was the easy part, now he just needed to monitor him.
Time passed and Carroll didn't sleep for the next few days, instead he focused completely on extracting the metal, breaking the statue into pieces and slowly extracting it. Over time, a dark silvery metal was quickly harvested and the volume only grew.
The other materials of the statue weren't bad, at least 40% of it was usable, so Carroll also separated those metals, making the process take even longer.
He didn't think the natives would be able to find him, so he remained very calm. The only downside was that the machines couldn't operate automatically or it would take too long, he had to use his artificial intelligence to speed up the process. Even so, he still sometimes wasted time testing alloys with Maktru, researching something to use for himself.
It took three days for the extraction process to be completed, the final product was nine 10-kilogram bars and one smaller 3-kilogram bar. The metal was heavy, so the bars weren't very large, but this still greatly excited Carroll and Ringo.
The moment the process was complete, Carroll was ready to leave, but as he was about to seal the material in a storage device, he felt his mind go blank for a moment. His eyes widened in shock as he rapidly channeled his Super energy through his body, trying to stay awake.
But when he finally came to, the material was gone! All the Maktru, as well as the other metals he had spent the last few days sorting, had vanished.
Staring at the empty counter with a shocked expression, he couldn't believe what he was seeing.
-Damn it! Where are my things?!- The angry shout followed immediately.
Ringo knew nothing of this, after making Carroll pass out for a moment, he grabbed his things and fled quickly. He put everything in the Black Spider space bag he had brought and teleported through the nightmare mark.
It took only a moment, as quick as a fraction of a second, and the next moment he was back on Aquamarine.
Ringo could only think that if he wanted to be a thief, he would be very good at it.
He quickly stored the metals, several hundred kilograms of high-quality metal, feeling very satisfied. Soon after, he returned to Black Spider and gave back the space bag.
It was a worthwhile adventure.