Chapter 934: Coinage Moonstone Investigation I

CH934 Coinage Moonstone Investigation I

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A year ago...

Undisclosed Location

In order to unravel the secrets of the Coinage Moonstone Interspatial Ring, the major powers of the world came together in an unprecedented cooperative agreement.

Taking the lead was the alliance between the Alchemy, Forgesmithing, and Runesmithing Associations. They were supported with logistics and personnel by the larger Craftsmanship Association and even the Continental Mage Association.

The task of ensuring the different parties remained in line and played according to the agreement fell to the pan-national governing body of warriors, the Order of Valour, while the Arun Continent Merchant Union ensured the research initiative did not lack any material resources.

This way, all major powers of the Arun Continent were represented in the cooperative, which spanned about fifty people.

In the secret research base established to decipher the secrets hidden inside this 50 Top-Grade Mana Stone (2.5 billion gold) investment shared between the major powers, the item in question floated atop a podium in clear view of everyone.

This levitated shield platform not only acted as a scanner to help peer into the structure of the ring, but it was also a security apparatus—one that actively protected the ring while displaying it for all to see, passively protecting it from anyone who might attempt to approach it.

Even though these major powers were intertwined with one another, each of them made sure to send at least two Grandmaster artisans—usually a Forgesmith, Alchemist, or Runesmith—to participate in the research.

As a result, this secret base held about twenty Grandmasters at a time.

If such news were to leak, it would rock anywhere on the continent of Arun.

Grandmasters held a similar honour to Legends—in fact, a good number of them were Legends themselves, and thus a Grandmaster could situationally hold even greater honour than most Legends.

To have twenty such individuals in the same place... it spoke volumes about the importance the major powers placed on the Coinage Moonstone Interspatial Ring.

As long as they could crack the secret it held, it could open a new technological age that could affect everything from transport to, of course, war and Interplanar conquest.

In the eyes of the major powers, the profit such a technological boom would bring would pale in comparison to the cost.

Alas, even after months of research, the twenty Grandmasters couldn’t achieve any more results than they already had.

The rim of the Coinage Moonstone was made from a special alloy combining the purest Mithril, Orichalcum, Adamantium, and Refined Gold.

As for the gemstone, which was the true core of the Interspatial Ring, no one could tell with confidence what it was.

It was not because the Grandmasters were incompetent, but rather because none of them wanted to take the risk of destroying a 2.5-billion-gold item.

All twenty of them combined could most likely not fork out that many gold coins, so of course, no one wanted to take the risk.

They had carried out all the non-invasive tests they could think of, but none of them had yielded any results. The gemstone was simply too stable and impervious to all their probes.

The options they could think of that remained to them were all intrusive ones that could potentially harm the crystal or the formation it held within, none of which would likely bode well for the item.

In order to make progress, as well as squeeze more benefits from the major powers, the different Grandmasters proposed different side projects which they claimed could potentially unlock the secrets of the ring.

So, the major powers forked out more resources.

There were some bold Grandmasters who diverted some of these resources to their own private research projects. However, the major powers turned a blind eye to this for now.

Then again, only a handful of the Grandmasters dared to do this. The great majority spent the resources on fanciful but related research they genuinely believed would help the project.

One such project was aimed at helping lower-tier artisans with useful or potentially useful Artisan Philosophies to advance—and potentially become useful to the project.

This leveraged a belief—previously left unproven—that the Natural Order viewed cultivation progression and artisan or lifestyle advancements as independent of one another.

The general belief was that, since a Tier IV Artisan qualification was dependent on possessing a Conceptual Domain, one needed to first become a Saint, which was required to birth a Domain on the cultivation track.

However, multiple advancements of Saints to the Tier V Grandmaster level, who birthed Law Domains unrelated to their cultivation class, had long since put this belief into dispute. However, no one was willing to prove it.

Not because they couldn’t, but due to how expensive it was.

The materials needed to help a below-Saint Artisan birth a Conceptual Domain for their Tier IV advancement could potentially help a peak Saint—on the cusp of progressing to Legend—break through to the Legendary Realm.

Plus, since there were many Tier IV Master Artisans in existence, there was no need to prove the method.

However, in the eyes of the researchers at the Moonstone Base, that had changed. They needed specific lower-tier Artisans to rank up so that they could become useful.

And in retrospect, their decision proved correct. Two individuals who underwent forced advancements in their tiers proved to be the keys that broke through the stalemate in the project.

One such lucky candidate was a little-known Sphinx, Tier III Expert Space Mage by the name of Sahira Nefaru.

Sahira was not a well-known figure in the grand scheme of things. However, she had a strong reputation amongst her fellow Space Mages.

Her controversial but revolutionary theory of the Geometrical and Energetic Equilibrium of Space had enlightened many Space Mages—even those of a higher tier—leading to breakthroughs in the discipline that were not necessarily tied to the paper.

Thanks to this, she was brought into the Moonstone Base, where she underwent her forced advancement to Tier IV.

The advancement was not without its risks. However, for a Sphinx with inherently poor talent, it was unlikely that she would progress to Sainthood anyway, so Tier IV would have been out of her reach if she had followed the normal route. Thus, the risk was worth it to her.

And a month or so after she was forcibly pushed to Tier IV, now a Master, Sahira delivered.

Master Sahira had an epiphany.

According to her own theory on the equilibrium nature of Space, it didn’t make sense for an Interspatial phenomenon not to release decay or instability.

Naturally occurring interspatial items such as the Null Core Orb displayed such decay, as they were essentially fragments of incompletely formed spaces.

The Coinage Moonstone, however, was different. It was a gemstone that was almost perfectly impervious to any interaction aside from the command to open or close its internal space to access the items within.

That caused her to realise that the Interspatial phenomenon within the Coinage Moonstone was a fully confined one.

However, it was a well-known fact that space could not be confined by a material medium. This caused her to realise that the Coinage Moonstone gemstone was most likely not a natural material, but a material condensed from energy—Spatial Energy.

After all, only space, or Spatial Energy, could contain Spatial Energy.

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