Location- Sky Blossom City, Dungeon Highway, Barren Lands, Blood Rock Cave Gate Dungeon
Going through Van's report, I have confirmed that Anna and Luna were not lying to me. The rumors about Silver milk powder capabilities being fraudulent were spreading like wildfire. Anna has also been labeled as a fraud in some of the rumors. I did not expect people who dared to call the Southern Emperor fraud to spare me, and they did not. But how I wish they had.
Another noteworthy thing to speak of related to this news was regarding my distant relatives, the Duskborn Family. These greedy bastards were coveting my royalty of silver milk powder. They went so far as to send two card emperors to apologize and bring me back into their family. I am not saying they did a lot. I know they could have done a better job bending over. Considering how snobbish these people are, it must have hurt their ego a lot to apologize to a high schooler.
Despite all that, not only could they not gain my favor, but they got to know maybe all of the trouble they went through to get on my good side could be for nothing. Me rejecting their courting wounded their ego, and blinded by that, the Duskborn family bought into the rumors about the silver milk powder and announced to the world that there is no connection between them and the alleged fraudster Dalton Wyatt.
Yes, the damned greedy hyenas that were circling me to see if they could prey on me left knowing that there is no meat here even to fill teeth. When things went south, those two-faced bastards did not hesitate to jump and abandon the ship. It will be interesting to see the look on their face when the world realizes that rumors are not valid. I would buy front row tickets to that. I bet their guts would churn in regrets.
Apart from the Duskborn family, Van reported about Elliott too. One of his siblings has launched a coup seeing Elliott's father was sick. So, Elliott had to return in a hurry back without a goodbye. It was relieving to know that Elliott was busy with the coup and not purposefully avoiding me, buying into the rumors.
Done with outside news, Van revealed that together the calamity daughter gems brought 4000 liters of fresh Monster's blood for Bloodette, which she devoured at a moment's notice. Because of the injury from the dungeon seal's backlash, Bloodette did not even bother to refine them into blood candies and directly swallowed all of the monster's blood to recover from her wounds. And she seems to have ordered the same quantity for tomorrow too. If this continues, the monster's blood will become a rare commodity in the sky blossom city. It seems I will have to find an alternative soon
I also checked on my blood ego elemental Blood Swordsman that I had left in the gate dungeon to repair its primary broken rune. The poor thing barely survived Bloodette's hunger and never got the time to act on the purpose it was left behind in the dungeon for. If not for the calamity daughter gem shell protecting the Blood Swordsman's broken rune, Bloodette would have damaged the broken rune unconsciously in her hunger. For the few hours spent in the Blood Rock Cave dungeon, Blood Swordsman had been turned into Blood Livestock by Bloodette. In the end, to make up for the suffering it has been through, I gave it 100 Blood rule pills and asked it to use them sparingly.
Then I turned my attention to each of the Calamity daughter gems and personally checked changes brought in each of their stats after they upgraded from calamity daughter core to calamity daughter gem. All the stats were basically the same for all of them, so I focused on the synchronization rate of each of them, surprisingly all the young Calamity daughter gems had forged an excellent grade synchronization rate. And rest also managed to get a synchronization rate above average grade.
From this observation, I started to wonder if the card apprentices forge their ego gem at a young age, they have a possibility of forging a good and above grade ego gems. This was another research I could look into but proving that forging ego gems at a young age may get good results might not be enough. I have to go one step further and find a way for young card apprentices to forge their ego gem faster. So many areas that require my presence. If I have the right environment, then I may get to address all these topics. I was looking forward to my quiet university life.
After noting down the changes in each of the Calamity daughter gems, I used the Hive AI to pass all my understanding and experience on rule comprehension and rune formation to the calamity daughter gem. And also gave 50 blood pills to each of them so that they could comprehend a rare meaning with area of expertise in combat or production. I would prefer them not comprehending meanings like vampirism or Blood memory etc.
It did not matter if most of them comprehended similar blood rule meanings because the perception and understanding of everyone are different, just like how the same Black Smith can forge a refined iron into a Sword, Spear, Butcher's blade, Kitchen knife, shield similarly even if most of them had chosen same blood rule meaning each of them can forge a different and variety of runes depending on their opinions and understanding of its rule and its meanings as long as one keeps an open mind and explores every possibility then they can gain something unique even in something common.
Following my instructions, all of the Calamity daughter gems took a spot to their convenience in the Blood Rock cave and, taking a Blood pill, entered the one with the world state. I have done everything I can to help them comprehend the blood rule. Now rest is up to them. I don't expect much from them, but I hope they become strong enough to participate in the war against the Circle Sun Blossom Branch.