While this was going on, Skarg was moving on with the plan he had for his son Slav. His plan is to increase Slav’s value, so he made Slav a vice leader of his society and established a business in Slav’s name.
Slav also took on grade 3 merit missions to earn merit points despite being a rank 1 cultivator. Fortunately for him, his dad sent people to help him complete the missions. This put him on the fast track to acquire a status.
Slav also advanced to rank 2 a few days later. This, combined with the fact that one of his brothers just advanced to rank 3, means that it has become more likely for him to reach rank 5 in the future.
The people who investigated Slav came to the conclusion that it was a forgone conclusion that Slav would advance to rank 3. They also concluded that the possibility of Slav advancing to rank 5 was very high, as many rank 5 cultivators didn’t have the kind of background and connections he had before they rose into power, so the value of his shares began to rise.
Many people began making offers for his shares. They offered up to 5 energy stones for one share, which was initially valued at 1 energy stone. So they were willing to pay up to 5 times the initial price of the shares.
At this point, Slav is being valued at 50 million energy stones. It is not the limit of what he can reach according to Skarg’s estimates and plan, but Loki was already satisfied with this.
While Skarg thought that it was a good idea to wait and see, Loki quickly accepted the highest offers and sold his two million shares for 5 energy stones each. This made him earn 10 million energy stones, which caused his good mood to persist.
He had spent 1.1 million energy stones on the rank 4 Crystal Worm Metac, 4 million energy stones on the 5 kilograms of Living Metal, and 60,000 energy stones on the rank 3 cultivator for a total of 5,160,000 energy stones.
This reduced the 10,012,746 energy stones in his account to 4,852,746. He spent 2 million more on Slav’s shares and earned an extra 8 million through the shares, so the money in the bid account skyrocketed to 12,852,746.
This sight of this much money made him say to himself, "If the Crystal Worm Metac that comes is the real deal, I will spend all of this money on increasing my talent. In the meantime, I have a Life Ability to forge."
The 5kg of Living Metal material that he bought came two days after he sold his shares, so he became busy trying to forge his Life Ability. He was still paying attention to the progress of Slav’s shares, though. After all, he wasn’t done milking it for all that it’s worth.
The Life Ability he wants to forge is called the Armored Shell Ability. It is a Life Ability that creates a strong mech armor around his body.
This mech armor will be a complete mechanical armor, strong and large enough to be mounted with heavy guns. But it will behave like an exoskeleton because it will be controlled by his body and mind, not by switches and levers.
Unlike other mechs and exoskeleton armor, which need time to wear and use, the Armored Shell Ability can be deactivated or activated with ease.
All he needs to activate and deactivate it will be a thought. And since the ability will be baked into his Core Metac, he will be able to carry the Armored Shell around everywhere.
This helps to remove the weakness of combat armor, which is their difficulty in use and their being cumbersome to carry. The Armored Shell will also be easy to repair and maintain. But it will raise the energy consumption through the roof.
The core of this ability is the Iron Skin Metac of the pathway of forging. This is a Branch Metac that converts the skin into an exoskeleton.
For normal Forgers, they convert the Iron Skin Metac itself into the Iron Shell Metac, which is just a small exoskeleton armor around the user. They forge this with regular steel, so it is not capable of growth.
But he decided to take things further and create the Armored Shell Metac, which is more like a mech suit than an exoskeleton armor. And since he is forging it with the expensive Living Metal material, it is capable of growing stronger.
The upgrade from Iron Shell to Armored Shell Life Ability meant that he had to add the Liquid Metal Metac in order to create a bigger, stronger shell around his body. This, combined with the Living Metal, will make it more expensive and more difficult to forge.
If he had stopped there, other Forgers would only call him ambitious. But as usual, he didn’t think it was a good idea to be satisfied with just that.
So he decided to add a force field to the Armored Shell using the Force Shield Metac. Then he also added the Angel Wings Metac, which is a series of blades arranged like wings that allow cultivators to fly without being at rank 3.
For offensive potential, he added the Gatling Gun Metac, the Railgun Metac, and the Knife Box. This made a total of 7 Metacs that he has to forge together with the Living Metal material.
At this point, other Forgers will call him crazy, wasteful, and crazy many times over. This is because the final product will be crazy, crazy difficult to forge, crazy expensive to make, crazy expensive to use in terms of energy, and wasteful in terms of both energy and money.
To be fair, this wasn’t his original plan. The original plan was just to create the Armored Shell that was stronger and more powerful than normal Iron shells.