The merchants were very helpful in adding their addresses and all the necessary information about their shops to the lists they handed out; even though they hadn’t visited the shops themselves, in the future they would know exactly where to find these people and who to speak with if they weren’t there at the time.
Although they didn’t trust that group yet, after all, it was only the first time they’d met, Lohan and Lisa knew that trust would be built over time, and if they did anything to break the trust they were placing in them, perhaps not now, but in the future, when Astralis was more powerful and influential in Thalendor, they could retaliate.
With everything in Thalendor settled, they decided to return to the Guild headquarters so Lohan could test his powers.
Although they had plenty of money with them and numerous opportunities to spend it, both for the Guild and to enhance their personal combat power, they weren’t too concerned about that right now.
Lohan was very curious to conduct tests with Lisa and Pip, and if they proved successful, to extend this to the other Players and Elle, since this could be a game-changer for them.
The trip back to the guild headquarters was quick. Thanks to Lisa’s level 11 upgrade, her movement speed meant that what had once been a long walk now took only a few minutes of running.
As they approached the gigantic fossilized tree, Lohan spotted Pip’s small figure from afar.
The warrior fairy stood at the entrance like a small glass statue, holding her short sword with cute seriousness. He tapped his chest with his fist as Lisa leaped to the base of the tree, a gesture of respect that Lohan returned by forming a small blue hand and waving.
But what really caught Lohan’s attention was Elle’s work.
The little painter fairy was flying around the colossal trunk.
Where before they had seen only lifeless, gray fossilized wood, now vibrant veins of color emerged that seemed to pulse with life.
Elle wasn’t just using paint; Lohan realized, through his Instinctive Perception, that she was channeling traces of mana into the surrounding plants.
The flowers at the base of the tree, which had previously been wilted, now displayed radiant petals and exuded a sweet scent that Lohan could identify with his Chemosensory Aptitude.
The guild tree looked like a living organism coming back to life.
"Elle is doing an incredible job, Lisa. This place is starting to feel like a real home." Lohan transmitted through the mental link.
Lisa slowed to a stop in the main hall, panting from the effort of running, but with a satisfied look. "Yes, she has a rare talent. Having Elysium beings in the guild was our best decision."
Lohan rolled off her back, returning to his spherical form. Now that they were safe, he could no longer contain his curiosity. He wanted to understand how his ability, the Weaving Mother, could be optimized for the guild’s future.
"Lisa, first and foremost, I want to conduct the tests we discussed. I need to gauge how well your body absorbs the biomass I inject. If we’re going to use this on other Players, or worse, on people from this world like Pip and Elle, I need to know how effective I can be with them." Lohan proposed.
Lisa nodded, sitting back relaxed on the revitalized wood of the hall. "All right, Halon. Just... try not to be as rough as last time. That discharge, even though it completely energized me, was so intense it almost fried my nerves," she recalled with a slight tremor.
The adrenaline of battle had largely overshadowed that sensation, but thinking about it now with a clear head, she realized that the process wasn’t entirely pleasant.
Lohan approached and extended thin filaments of Magical Weaving that gently wrapped around Lisa’s neck and paws. Activating the Parallel Processing Core, he opened three analysis channels: one to monitor his own biomass reservoir, another to sense Lisa’s mana pulse, and a third to control the injection flow.
He started with a very low rate: 0.1 Bio/s.
Considering that they had already tested less than that and felt little difference in the past, and that more than that had caused her discomfort, Lohan decided to test the equivalent of 100 Biomass per second from before his evolution.
Feeling the energy within her, Lisa closed her eyes and explained to Lohan what she was feeling. "I feel a slight warmth... it’s almost imperceptible, but pleasant."
Lohan gradually increased the rate to 0.5 Bio/s.
He observed through his senses as the refined biomass entered her system.
Unlike when he injected large amounts at once, where Lisa’s body went into shock trying to process the excess, this lower rate seemed to be assimilated much faster by her cells, although even at this rate of 0.5 Biomass he had already begun to notice some excesses and bottlenecks that she couldn’t digest accumulating.
’Wait... so if I inject too much, her system forces itself to absorb it even though it can’t, not only causing the pain and discomfort she complained of, but also generating a lot of waste from the injected biomass.’ Lohan analyzed internally.
He continued the test for about thirty minutes, alternating the intensities.
He noticed that when he injected 1.0 Bio/s or more, Lisa began to show even more intense signs of metabolic fatigue. However, by maintaining the injection at a constant flow of 0.3 to 0.5 Bio/s, he was able to keep Lisa in the "peak" state indefinitely, without her feeling any discomfort.
"That’s exactly what I needed!" Lohan exclaimed excitedly, releasing the wires. "Lisa, I’ve discovered that injecting a small amount over a long period is infinitely better than injecting a large amount all at once."
Lisa opened her eyes, looking more rested than when she arrived. "Really, Halon. With this constant injection, I feel like my stamina doesn’t drop even 1% during the race. It’s as if I were permanently under the effect of a high-level regeneration potion."
"Exactly..." Lohan replied. "The secret is cellular absorption. If I give you the ’nourishment’ at a rate your body can digest, there’s zero waste. I use less biomass from my stock, and you get stronger in a healthy way. Sure, for emergency healing I’ll still have to crank up the flow, but for the daily grind, I can turn you into a perpetual machine. Now we just have to observe what the permanent changes in you will be with an injection like this over an extended period, and how different this will be for the physiology of Lower Race creatures."
Lohan looked at his own reservoir. With his digestion rate of 5.9 Bio/h with the Hemolymphatic Tissue active, maintaining an injection of 0.3 Bio/s for Lisa was still a heavy burden for him, so knowing that a weaker injection over a long period would be best, he decided to lower it and see the results in a few days.
Unbeknownst to him, at that moment there was another group dealing with this as well, but while he digested monsters and transferred that biomass directly to his allies, the other group was doing so in a far more macabre way.