Chapter 133 – Rejected

Luna and Iris watched in awe as all the enchantments and materials moved fluidly between the bots. And at some point, Riddick and Selene had also come out to watch. 

"Boy? What is all this?"

"These are all the bots that construct things and mine my resources, as well as the ones who enhance the resources. After this is done, I'll be able to mine faster, build stronger machines, and enhance materials rapidly. I'll also be building more miners, enhancing the searching drones, and building more recon drones, allowing them to detect mana. I'll make some scout bots as well for the demons."

"Wait, did you say enhancing resources?"

Selene suddenly blurted out. Dream could hear the surprise and speculation in her voice.

"I did. Why?"

"...What do you mean specifically by enhance?"

"I mean raising the grade of a material. Do you know about it?"

"I know that enhancing materials is a myth according to the general populous. But in actuality, it's an extremely secret technique known only by a select few people throughout the most powerful Empires across the world. Even I've only heard about the possibility of it being real. But you're saying that you know the technique? Where did you find it?"

"I didn't. I just figured it out. At first it was difficult, but I was eventually able to build some robots to enhance materials for me."

"...How?"

"When you explode a material by overloading it with mana, there's a certain energy released. I call this energy flux. Flux is the energy that allows mana to affect the properties of matter without actually affecting the material physics. The more flux you have in a material, the more mana it can store, and therefore the stronger it will be. So I overload materials and transfer the flux, allowing me to raise the grade."

"So you overload the materials? Doesn't that waste it?"

"Yup. But in exchange, I get stronger materials. And given all the resources I'm collecting, wasting a bunch is no problem for me."

"...But the materials get stronger, taking more mana to explode."

"Then I gather more mana."

"It's not that simple. I definitely know that high-grade materials would take several times your mana pool to explode. It's why hunters look for materials that can handle at least twice their mana pool, so the mana never gets unstable and it never explodes. So how are you supposed to explode things like grade 10 mithril?"

"...By gathering more mana?"

"So you gather and control mana amounts several times your own pool?"

"Yea."

"...How is that possible?"

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"Because for a normal person, even emptying their mana once results in lots of fatigue, and it takes a day for it to regenerate. Doing what you say would put huge amounts of strain on your very soul, something very dangerous to do."

"I mean, it's not that dangerous. Passing out for a bit usually recovers you completely."

"So you've done that?!"

"I told you he's a monster."

Riddick sighed seeing her shock. He remembers feeling the same thing on multiple occasions. 

Selene stared at Dream for a bit. He just sat there looking naive to his apparently outrageous actions.

"...I can't accept it."

"I can show you if you want."

"How would you do that?"

"Hmm, well I need to make some liquid mana anyway, so I'll do that."

"Wait, liquid?"

"Never heard of it?"

"Of course I've heard of it! But how is a level 220 supposed to create it?"

"Sacrificing some materials works for me. Watch."

Saying that, Dream waved his hand. The next moment, everyone perked up after feeling the mana all around them begin moving.

With Dream as the center, mana began to fluctuate to and from him in waves. Everyone could feel his influence extend out up to 140 meters. It was within these 140 meters that the center of a cyclone was being created, and the cyclone began affecting all the mana within 1000 meters of them. Soon, they were all in the middle of a mana vortex, and all of the accumulating mana was being funneled straight to Dream.

At the same time, a container was brought out to contain the liquid mana, and Sophia started bringing over materials for sacrifice. By the time everything was set, the area around them was already filled with a dense but transparent mana fog.

Dream breathed in and out, and with each breath, more mana was condensed and ejected into the space. Not long after, a ball was created in front of him that consisted of the densest fog. He brought the materials over to this ball and exploded them.

*Boom*

The bar of steel exploded, and flux was released into the fog ball. As per usual, the flux began binding to the mana. Though this time, Dream actively tried to assist, using his skill in an attempt to expand his powers. 

"...Seriously?"

Selene muttered after seeing drops of liquid being formed and dropped into the container rapidly. And it never stopped. Dream kept exploding metals and condensing mana. And in only 10 minutes, the container was filled. 

After it was filled, Dream connected a string to it and began transporting the liquid over to the various bots in the fleet. Using those drops, all the cores of the bots were enhanced, giving them greater magical strength on top of the upgraded enchantments.

Everyone watched everything for nearly 3 hours before Dream began calming the mana down. The vortex slowed and all the thousands of strings flowing through the air disappeared. Everyone looked to Dream, surprised.

"I'm done."

He smiled as he looked over all the robots. His construction, resource gathering, and enhancing processes were all boosted greatly, triple according to Sophia's estimates. All the miner bots, scanner drones, and scout troops were also made.

For the scout troops, Dream had made one type. Going off of the designs of Aegis and his suits, he made 50 bots that were comprised of many small cells. These cells were bigger than Aegis' particles but still smaller than light wavelengths, making them utterly invisible. 

When used, these bots would infiltrate areas like a kingdom, outpost, or stronghold and disperse into large gaseous clusters. They would then be totally unhindered in data collection and all they had to avoid was getting too close to a class 4. This would make counting enemies and power estimation extremely easy since they could just fly around and scan everything.

With this, Dream would have a very easy time collecting data.

"Alright. Since I'm done, go back to work. I had to halt operations for this."

With that, all the bots began either packing into their ships or flying off. The family watched as all the metal machines began leaving through a hole in the dome.

"...I still can't believe you were able to build all that."

Selene spoke, still shocked from everything Dream had told and shown her. 

"It's nothing much. Once you understand the concepts, building things out of it is pretty easy."

"You underestimate how difficult it is to understand those concepts."

Riddick chimed in. He had all the physics knowledge and engineering concepts in the tablet he frequently used. But he was never able to make much sense of it all.

"Oh well. I don't have anything else to do, so we can relax until we get news from the Spire about my recruitment."

Saying so, Dream stood the girls up and put away the couch, heading back into the cabin.

............

......

Over the next two days everyone enjoyed their little paradise. 

Selene, no matter what was going on, never left Riddick's side. She was glued to him and he was more than okay with that. 

The same scene played out for Dream as well. Neither of the girls wanted to do anything without him. So in order to not be bored, he tried to come up with things to do. One of which was to spend some time on the lake.

Dream definitely wanted to see the girls in bikinis, so while Riddick took Selene to the Spire and even Enchanted Mountain for sightseeing, he got them in bikinis.

When they had first come out after dressing, Dream was stunned. They were just absolutely gorgeous. Luna dressed in a Hawaiian style two-piece while Iris dressed in a more covering but still revealing one piece. Both looked like they were modeling the suits with how perfect they looked.

Though being in such a revealing and sexy piece of clothing had got Luna going, and it was only after Dream pacified her, and by extension Iris, a few times that they were finally able to make their way to the lake.

Here, they did two things. One was a water battle between Luna and Dream. Luna had wanted to showcase some skills of hers and what better way to do it than through competition. This led to massive waves and a battle between mana control and influence strength. And surprisingly, Luna was able to hold her own in terms of controlling her mana against Dream's. Though he could crush her with sheer maximum mana should he get serious, one had to note that she was still a support type.

The second thing they did was hang out in the sun. Despite the roof of leaves and branches, plenty of sun still got through and Dream taught them the art of laying down under it. 

Though just laying there would get boring, so the three decided to work on their connections while sunbathing.

Dream's connection with Luna was through her class as well as the skill she received for it. But he also had a connection with Iris. This one was actually created through Luna, and because of this, the trio had a small network between them and only them. Although Luna had tried to create connections with Riddick and Selene, Riddick didn't let her create one between them for her protection and Selene had a connection between them as mother and daughter. 

So her main skill was only aimed at Dream, Iris, and between them. And what they wanted to do was not only strengthen the connections between them, but also experiment as to what they could share over these connections. 

As they had experienced before their separation, the three were actually able to partially share skills between each other through Sophia's help. Sophia would use the connection generated from Luna and share herself as well as magical abilities by sending it through the connection. While Sophia could only display her full capabilities with Dream, she was able to provide extremely helpful services to the girls in not only magic control but also processing power and fluid communication between the three. 

Other than Sophia though, Dream found that Luna was actually capable of boosting his stats and power through this connection. Upon calculation, Sophia found that the boost was about 15%, which was rather significant. But since Dream and Iris were her only connections, she was splitting the power between the two. Though since Iris was more closely connected, she was getting more than he was, but it's not like he minded, nor was there any way for Luna to change that.

Along with the power boost was also her healing ability which granted Dream a strong passive regeneration. Though it wasn't incredibly useful for him, so he recommended she keep the power aimed at Iris, who apparently used it quite a bit.

So they tested different abilities while laying there in the sun. This happened until the sun began to set where they got up and went back to the cabin.

Interesting thing was, neither of the girls tanned at all. Dream had been confused, but Sophia cleared it up for him.

Apparently, because of their power, the UV rays from the sun wouldn't be able to damage their cells and DNA, which is what caused melanin to be released and cause the skin to tan. This made Dream a little disappointed. He wouldn't get to see them with sexy copper tone bodies. Not that they weren't still perfect the way they were, but still.

After settling down in comfy clothes for the night, Dream decided to put on a movie. This was when Riddick and Selene had made it home, and they also settled in and watched the movie with them.

Entranced by modern entertainment, nobody ever pulled away from the screen. And when the end had come, they were all disappointed. Not in the movie, but in the fact that the movie ended. They had gotten so hooked and wished there was more.

And luckily there was. How could Dream possibly run out of movies? So he put on another, and then another. Eventually, it turned into a movie marathon, and they only stopped when breakfast time came in the morning. But even when that ended, they went right back to the couch, wanting more movies.

Seeing this, Dream had to wonder whether it was okay to have shown them this entertainment. Hopefully they wouldn't get addicted to it.

But since he had started, he wasn't going to be able to stop. So for the entire day, everyone stayed in and munched on snacks while watching movies and shows.

.............

Come night, Dream got a message from Idona.

The reason why was because his recruitment had been decided on. Unfortunately though, it was rejected. The Empires felt his demands were too high and would rather send their own troops which would not only cost less but also allow the soldiers to gain experience. Plus, they didn't believe that Dream was capable of doing was he was offering, so ultimately, they sided with the predictable and cheaper route.

This didn't really come as a surprise to Dream. What he was offering was indeed pretty bold and unbelievable. Plus, the demands weren't cheap. And knowing the people deciding on his offer, just the fact that it was him offering may have created a negative bias. 

So hearing this, Dream just shrugged. Riddick also got the news, and while he was surprised, he could also understand. It was Selene though that got a little mad.

"How could they be so cheap as to not even give you a chance? While I can understand their disbelief, if you turned out to do exactly as you said, you would have saved tens of thousands of lives that will definitely be lost in the battle, if not more. How is that not worth some materials? I say you make their rejection public. I'll bet the people would hate to see that."

"We don't need to do that. Something like that will cause division, and that wouldn't be good since we just got started with war efforts. Just let them shoot themselves in the foot. It may teach them a lesson faster that way."

"I thought you'd be more disappointed?"

"I am a little, but I'm also on vacation. No need to stress about things right now. There will be plenty of that in the future."

Dream relaxed back with his two lovely ladies as he said that. Selene just huffed, annoyed at all the politics.