Then Money Body turned to Loki and Ant Hill and said, "As for you two, I have no faith in you whatsoever. This is why my requirements of you are so low."
Ant Hill wanted to speak up to defend herself, but Money Body raised a finger to silence her. When she saw that single finger and the stern look in his eyes, she decided not to say anything, even though it would be easy to do so through the divine constellation.
After making sure that she wouldn’t interrupt him, he said, "My expectation for you is that you try and manage to stay alive. That’s all I want from you. As long as you can manage that, we can secure victory."
Money Body knew that she was unconvinced, so he said, "I could be wrong, and you’re free to prove me wrong. But I won’t let you jeopardize our mission, so you have to stay near Nether Flame so that he can rescue you when something goes wrong."
Then he looked at Loki and shook his head as he said, "My expectations for you are even lower. You only have one Divine Metac and haven’t had time to master it. So I am sure that you will die during this mission."
"What I want is for you to stay alive as long as possible. I don’t want you to die early because the dragon king might think that I’ve been weakened by your death and choose to attack before we can weaken him too much."
"So what I want from you is to hold out until your presence is no longer needed. As long as you wait until we’ve killed three dragons, you are free to die."
When Loki heard this, he didn’t know what to say. He could only nod his head in understanding.
Apparently, simply nodding his head was good enough for Money Body because the rank 8 money cultivator nodded and said in satisfaction, "It is good that you know your limits. You are unlike some stubborn people who are willing to risk their lives to prove a point."
He glanced at Ant Hill when he said that last statement. His glance was a fleeting and brief one, but no one missed it, and no one was ignorant of what he was implying.
Ant Hill was now frowning, but Money Body didn’t pay her any attention. He continued to say to Loki, "It seems you have a good temperament and the potential to grow. No wonder you managed to become the new Gold Body. With this kind of temperament, I believe that I can give you more responsibilities."
Loki quickly bowed and said, "I am willing to do more for the success of our mission."
His response made Money Body smile and say, "That’s the spirit. Now here is what I have in mind."
"Initially, I wanted to keep you close to me so that you won’t run away to die early. But now that I see that you’re not conceited, I’ve decided that you can be more useful to us. So I want to use you as bait."
Loki thought that he had misheard, so he asked, saying, "Come again."
Money Body explained, saying, "I think you’re weak, and I believe that the dragons can tell this too. After all, your Life Fire is not potent."
"The fact that you only have one Divine Position is clear to both the dragons and us. Since that is the case, I believe that they will like to pick you off if they can. So if I give them an opportunity to do so, they should be willing to do it."
Loki immediately became humble and said, "You know I am weak, so I’m afraid that I won’t be able to survive being used as bait."
Money Body waved his worries aside and said, "Don’t worry. I’ve already said that I don’t want you to die early. So I won’t make you do something that will kill you."
Loki still didn’t relax, but Money Body didn’t seem to care about what he thought. Instead, he went ahead to describe the plan to Loki and the other two.
After describing his plan, Money Body said, "That’s all for planning for now. What we should do is set up the outpost core."
Nether Flame said, "By the look of things, this island will soon be underwater. What will we do when that happens?"
Money Body just shrugged and said, "We will take things as they come. That’s all we can do."
Then he clapped and said, "Now, let’s get to work."
His eyes were locked onto Loki as he said, "Will you do us the honors?"
Loki nodded and took out the outpost core from his Cave Heaven. Next, he went over to the center of the island and planted the outpost core into the ground.
He didn’t want to use his own copy of the outpost core this early, as it felt like using up his cards when the mission had only just begun. But there was nothing much to complain about since everyone else had used their copy of the shield breaker earlier when they wanted to gain entry into the world.
If the others could give up their copies earlier, he should be able to give up his copy now. Besides, the copies didn’t belong to them.
The outpost core is meant to be used to complete their mission. So even if they didn’t use his copy now, he wouldn’t be able to keep the outpost core.
All of these thoughts went through his mind as he dropped the outpost core to the ground. Then he pushed the core deep into the ground.
The outpost core was a large cube made of metal. When it was dropped to the ground and activated with life energy, cracks appeared on its surface.
The cracks spread throughout the metal cube and began to widen. As the cracks widened, the metal cube was forced to unfurl.