Chapter 1564 – Working Dangerously

As it turned out, it was possible to work with a native, undamaged core from the fifth. It was just a massive pain in the backside for all involved. Led by the fearless Formo, Bella and Ellie worked hard with the battalions fighting on the platform to secure what they needed.

Namely, a monster core that had never touched the cleansed mana.

As it turned out, they were already feeding Biomass from defeated monsters into the intakes on the platforms, allowing the food to be sucked away along with the mana and fed to the wuffers. This practice had led to an unexpected consequence of certain channels getting clogged with food. That didn’t stop the mana from flowing, but it did threaten to break the enchantments and necessitated a fix.

It stood to reason that the battalions could feed a core into the channels as well. They had mechanisms and specially crafted tools to reach out and grab things beyond the safe zone, so why not? It would be difficult, and dangerous, since they were doing it in the middle of an ongoing battle, but it was possible.

Then they needed to speak to Cobalt and Tungstant about creating some sort of catch mechanism to get ahold of the cores before they were whipped away to the wuffers. This was another pain in the carapace, but the two carvers were eventually able to figure out something they thought would work.

Once it was in place, all the core shapers needed then was a place they could work on the cores. After all, the cores could never touch cleansed mana, which meant they needed a work space with tightly contained native energy. Once that was done, they could work on the cores, and then somehow raise the monsters in a containment zone.

Then and only then, would their new pets be ready to fight outside the fortress!

“An awful lot of work, I SAY!” Formo exclaimed. “But perhaps it will prove worth it. We can’t say either way just yet.”

“It’s just a shame that none of it is being done by us,” Bella said regretfully, watching the carvers work at building the spaces that they needed.

“No need to worry. We will have a SMASHING amount of work to deal with soon enough! Have no fears about that!”

And he wasn’t wrong. With the catchment facilities in place, it didn’t take long until the first cores trickled into the waiting bay. Once the workshop was done, an intricately controlled space containing pockets of fifth stratum mana, the cores were dropped into the separate workstations, ready to be manipulated.

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Since it was necessary to touch a core to obtain the best results, they required specially produced, heavily enchanted gear that would allow them to carefully extend an appendage into the foulness in order to work on the cores.