Half an hour later, Strong came back with the results: “Lord City Master, if that’s the case, then we must use stone to build the houses. There are no stonemasons in your territory, so this will be a huge expense. Plus the cost of materials, just an advanced adventurer supply camp alone will require six hundred gold coins.”

“Whew!” Anderson drew in a sharp breath.

Gaia nodded. “Alright, I’ll leave this matter to you. Go take care of it right away.” He tossed over a money pouch. “Here’s one hundred gold coins as start-up funds. Come to me whenever you need more.”

“At your command!” Strong faithfully carried out the order without asking any further questions.

Aside from the advanced adventurer supply camp, Gaia had a few other ideas, but there really weren’t many usable people in Greenland. For now, Gaia couldn’t find anyone else to help him get things done.

Back in his own room, Gaia took out the alchemical injector he’d bought in Mordo, and opened a wooden box by his bedside. Inside was a leaf from the Bloodthirsty Nightmare Orchid. Even though several days had passed, the leaf still hadn’t withered, and it continued to emit a faint, alluring starlight.

Gaia thought for a moment, then fetched a stone pestle used for mashing potatoes, cut the leaf into pieces, and tossed them into a bowl—once separated from the main plant, the leaf became extremely fragile. Gaia carefully mashed the leaf into a paste, diluted it with water, and filtered it through gauze, producing a bottle of green liquid that shimmered faintly with starlight.

Gaia filled the alchemical injector with the liquid, closed his eyes, and said a prayer.

Although everyone in the Abyss of Magic used the bodily fluids of magical beasts to make mana mediums, Gaia currently had no way to capture powerful magical beasts, and the mana mediums from weaker beasts were completely ineffective. The day he picked up this leaf, he’d already decided to take a gamble.

Since he was now an Infinite Devourer, according to Hoganberg, he should be able to accept any foreign element, so using a plant to make a mana medium didn’t seem unreasonable.

The harsh conditions in Greenland made him desperate to grow stronger; the feeling of being unable to protect himself was simply too miserable. He couldn’t allow himself to go on like this.

The alchemical injector pierced the vein in his left arm, and the pale green mana medium slowly entered his bloodstream. As the liquid flowed, his veins turned dark green. Gaia was in agony; ever since the mana medium entered his veins, he felt them constantly contracting, pulling at his muscles and tendons as if they were being torn apart.

The mana medium spread throughout his body with his blood, and a faint green hue appeared beneath his skin, making him look extremely strange. Then his veins began to wither; Gaia could even hear his veins crackling like dried tree branches!

He opened his mouth to scream, but instead bit down hard on his pillow, tearing out the stuffing—he couldn’t let Anderson outside worry.

Despite the excruciating pain, Gaia had to suppress his reactions. For a while, he truly thought he couldn’t hold on, because all the veins in his body had withered, blood was seeping from ruptured vessels, his skin turned a terrifying purplish-blue, and the blood vessels in his lungs burst as well, filling his alveoli with clotted blood—he couldn’t even breathe.

Just as Gaia’s vision blurred and his consciousness was about to sink into darkness, a warm energy suddenly surged within him. He didn’t know where it came from, but it felt incredibly soothing. After circulating through his body a few times, his damaged body quickly began to recover. Not only that, but the mana medium had already penetrated every cell, and these cells were absorbing certain properties from the medium, constantly strengthening themselves.

The illness he’d carried since birth was being gradually erased, bit by bit.

“Whew…” It was finally over. For more than ten minutes after his body finished merging with the mana medium, Gaia was so exhausted he couldn’t move at all. When he finally caught his breath, he opened his mouth and spat out a mouthful of pillow stuffing.

His clothes were completely soaked, a testament to the pain he’d just endured.

Gaia moved his arms a bit, but didn’t feel anything unusual. His heart sank—had he failed?

With extreme anxiety, Gaia leapt up from the bed and took the magic meter from the drawer by his bedside.

He cupped the magic meter in both hands. With a soft click, a string of numbers appeared.

Bone Quality: 670, Muscle Quality: 980, Battle Aura: 9286.

Gaia stared at the magic meter in a daze, then was overjoyed—he’d finally succeeded! Although his battle aura index had already been astonishing before, without a correspondingly strong body, he simply couldn’t make use of it.

And only at this moment could he be sure that his “Infinite Devourer” body could indeed provide him with a path to continuously strengthen himself. The road ahead finally shone bright before his eyes…

At this moment, even after experiencing the vicissitudes of two lifetimes, he couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed with emotion, his eyes stinging, almost to the point of tears.

After the excitement passed, he remembered there was still the matter of magical attributes. He casually turned the magic meter to the other side, where the panel for magical attributes also displayed a set of numbers: