Chapter 352: Bracelet and Key

Once the little squirrels and Little Little Bangde and Cui Qian had scattered off together, Rod opened up that pile of greeting gifts.

He took out the two items that had the guiding threads of 【Treasure Affinity】.

An iron bracelet covered in dark-red rust.

A brown wooden key.

【Treasure Seeking Guidance Ended】

【Treasure: Rusted Ring】

【Treasure Property: Rust】

【Details: The bracelet possesses powerful rusting power, used through the wearer's direct contact, and has strong countering effect against metallic and magical-metallic items.】

【Treasure: Phase Key (Fixed)】

【Treasure Property: Plane Crossing】

【Details: The holder only needs to gently turn the key, and through the phase anchor can open a phase gate leading to other planes.

Note!

This item lacks a phase anchor!

The destination plane is unknown and has been fixed!】

Rod rubbed his chin.

【Rusted Ring】 is not bad, has practical combat meaning.

But 【Phase Key】 here is a bit of a pity.

Before finding a phase anchor, being able to only travel to an unknown plane can be said to be extremely deadly and useless.

Just those four words 'unknown plane' alone can scare off more than half of the arcane mages who specialize in exploring other-dimensional spaces.

In the chaotic yet boundless other-dimensional space, it would be no surprise if some plane beyond cognition, utterly mad, were to appear.

Even though Rod's mental resistance was quite decent, he still wouldn't court death by recklessly touching this thing.

No point.

"Hm? Phase Key?"

Lady Kali said in surprise.

Rod didn't hide it from others to look at it himself; he directly used 【Treasure Affinity】 to lift the seal on the treasure.

After all, everyone present was someone he could trust.

He handed the key over to the elf without worry, and put the 【Rusted Ring】 in her hand as well.

Two items?

The elf couldn't help but be surprised again, not yet having had time to examine them.

Suddenly realizing something, she stared at Rod seriously.

"Human, I must tell you, whether spell treasures or naturally formed spiritual treasures are all quite scarce and precious; you shouldn't just simply expose them before others like this, and casually hand them over to someone else like this. Do you know how skilled bards and thieves are at that trick of 【switching the beam for the pillar】?"

"There's no one else here."

Lady Kali had originally seen him shrug, looking rather dismissive, and had wanted to say more.

Then she caught sight of that face—handsome without losing its ruggedness, far more manly than the elf males' pretty-boy looks—turning toward her.

"Besides, isn't this just handing them to you? With our relationship, giving them to you outright would be no problem."

She only felt a warm, tingling sensation in her heart, and even an itchy feeling in her palms.

She couldn't help wanting to curve a smile on her face, but absolutely didn't want this dog of a man to get smug.

She could only clench her teeth hard, forcibly putting on a cold face.

"Hmph, I... don't need external objects."

She began examining the two treasures.

【Rusted Ring】 naturally had no issues, a very straightforward treasure.

The key point was the 【Phase Key】.

Lady Kali's warning was the same as the item details, no need to elaborate.

"I do know how to make a phase anchor, but it involves several rather rare materials, and they haven't appeared in the past ten years. I suspect the creatures and plants in those materials from the crafting method have gone extinct."

She couldn't put the wooden key down, clearly very interested in its structure and spellcraft.

But extinct, huh?

That would be a bit troublesome.

"Har—"

Tally, leaning her back against his shoulder, breathed a puff of hot air toward Rod's ear.

"Master, have you forgotten the cat fairy's ability~~"

Rod's eyes lit up.

The cat fairy's unique spiritual art: Materialization.

Previously it could even produce the dragon-body materials of the Grudge Dragon Naolin, let alone a few simple materials!

Mm.

Anyway, in a while he was going to take cuttings of the jade tree's branches to the 【Cat Fairy Paradise】, so he might as well have the witch cat make this at the same time.

Lady Kali also had a cat fairy friend—the druid cat fairy Little Orange who had come to help with the rat-extermination squad before.

She frowned and cast a barrier that forbade eavesdropping:

"You mean Little Orange? How would you know that cat fairies can materialize? Even if she's willing to help, with only one cat fairy, the materialization ability is very limited."

Rod didn't spell it out either.

Smiling, he told her to look forward to it; later he would take her along to see it for herself.

In the afternoon.

Rod went to Selina's experiment hut.

Today was the day a new batch of magic rings came out of the furnace, and he needed to take them over to the market district of the Magic Control Union to sell.

Gao Fang Mo Fa rings were estimated to be made by only a very small number of people across the entire continent, and the Heavenly Court Flower Kingdom maintained extremely strict control over them, so on the market district side he used an anonymous shop, and even specially bought a magic puppet to handle reception.

Creak—

Rod pushed open the door.

He saw the zombie Selina being squeezed into a corner by Watching Yuna, whose spider body was slightly larger, expressionlessly lighting a ball of flame to process the black solution in the beaker.

She only glanced at Rod once, then continued the work in her hands.

The hut was narrow, and Watching Yuna laboriously turned to bow to him.

"How's the new experiment site coming along?"

The experiment hut was too small, and not being secretive enough was a big problem.

So Rod began to relocate.

He quickly settled on a location — a cave not far from here.

When he had previously been looking for a place for the mushroom-person Scarlett to settle down, he had scouted the forest's pits and holes; he hadn't expected it to come in handy here.

The soil acting as insulation was a natural barrier, an excellent choice for a secret room.

"Reporting to Master, the new experiment hut has already been tidied up. Once Young Lady Selina finishes wrapping things up here, we can move over."

Rod nodded.

He walked over and patted the zombie Young Lady on the head.

Her body remained at the twelve-year-old age when she had been turned into a zombie, short in stature, her feet dangling off the chair when she sat — still fairly cute, he supposed.

"Selina, where's this month's goods... no wait, the hair care cream I bought you — you haven't been using it? Your hair's all dry and split-ended."

【Dust-Cleaning Art】 is convenient, sure.

But it's a rather rough method of cleaning, not very friendly to hair quality or skin, generally only used in emergencies.

Quite a few beauty-loving female mages insist on the old-fashioned way of washing up.

Take Pan Ni for example — the ghoul Young Lady's room is piled with skincare products, and Rod suspected all her pocket money went there.

"I have to stay slovenly, to avoid being taken a fancy to by a certain someone, and then dragged onto the bed because of it."

Selina said expressionlessly.

"Then you're most likely overthinking it, because that certain someone doesn't like scrawny little zombie girls, hahahaha—"

Crack—

The glass test tube in the zombie Young Lady's hand was crushed, shards falling all over the floor.

Rod laughed and brushed the shards from her hand:

"Just kidding. You've become quite cute lately too — in a while, maybe I'll even take the initiative to invite you."

That wasn't a lie, actually.

The scars on Selina's face had long since healed, and wrapped in a mage's robe with only a delicate face showing, she really was a cute, cool-and-distant girl.

But clearly, the other party didn't care about that at all.

She let out a few cold laughs, too lazy to chat more with the lecher.

She reached over and pulled a neatly arranged drawer of magic rings from a wooden box in the corner of the table, dazzling in every color.

(End of chapter)