A Light Within Darkness.

I even discussed with Elesmere the paths of cultivation I should undertake, and she gave me some rather potent advice that basically went along the lines of. "If you can make yourself impervious to all weapons, why do you need extremely potent weapons? If anything, you could always just get some grenades or something."

She was honestly right as in this universe for the vast majority of foes I could simply beat them to death with my cultivator-enhanced strength whereas later on once I get past the Nascent Stage of Cultivation and reach the True Realm where cultivation truly flourishes, I can branch out into sword arts, if need be, or I can switch to becoming a spell caster and focus on arrays and artifacts.

Either way, I will need to dip into spell arts as I refuse to be a cultivator pleb without a space ring.

So, looking at all my body cultivation arts I decided to go big with a Cultivation art that would give me the equivalent of a divine physique. The Nine Yang Star technique that would allow me to form nine suns within my body and would make me all but immune to heat-based weaponry and attacks.

While also allowing me to control extremely powerful flames that I could coat my body and send off at opponents with punches

and such.

Once that technique was mastered, I would be able to create the Astral Sky Body allowing me to condense basically unlimited stars within myself and use the weight of the stars along with their heat to attack.

Punching Khorne in the face with a literal galaxy was a possibility in the future.

But to start the technique I needed 'tinder' to start my suns. Either a special flame or extremely dense metal to serve as a core to the sun were needed for all nine of the suns I was going to create with this technique. So, I decided to get going to the city

While I went into the city again, I had Elesmere go hunting in the spider domain using her own Kasaya Beads to rope in and kill her victims inside our tunnel to be put into the biomass compressor.

Once I reached the city, I almost went towards the slave area again, but I changed my mind and decided to chance my luck at the casino district as that area was the highest scale and likely had what I needed.

Seeing as the only special 'magical flames' I knew of in Warhammer 40k belonged to Pyskers and demons themselves, I realized that for at least my first sun I needed to do a solid core which would grant me more strength and durability but not even a tenth of the fire control powers I would have with a fire core sun.

But here in the Imperium especially here in a Hive city, I could although not all that easily I could come across ultra-dense special metals such as Adamantium and although it won't be all that great, I could also use Wraith Bone by having Elesmere make it. But that would be a last choice due to how the material simply wasn't dense enough to act as a core.

However, the self-regenerating properties of Wraith Bone did give me the idea that if used as a suns core, I could use it to regenerate my body giving me a bootleg Pheonix bloodline in exchange for not providing much if any durability/strength or a strong sun to throw around.

Feeling the weight of all the credits in my armored jacket I walked into the main casino and once the bouncers/enforcers of the casino approached me literally armed with las rifles I stared them down with my cultivation weighing down upon their mortal bodies. Although my rank seven cultivation wasn't much but just the wait of my stare drew the men up short.

They probably thought I was some sort of Pysker or something and thus didn't want to chance me making their heads explode with a blink.

"Attempt to keep my belongings and that will be the last thing you do..." Now with my Diamond Body although I was wary of those las guns I knew I could dash around and kill them with all the fancy decorations in the casino to block the las fire.

After handing over my Commissar Sword and allowing them to check that I wasn't carrying any explosives in particular I was allowed freely into the casino with directions to the back store that got people of power down here in the Underhive luxuries no one could find normally. But obviously, such a service came at a great cost.

The man running an empty till seeing me walk into the backroom waved me over and he respectfully spoke. "Hello good sir, how may I be of service"

The man working in probably one of the most well-to-do establishments here in the Underhive actually didn't smell like mold and despair surprisingly and was well dressed in a sort of old-school western suit and tie.

"I am here to get samples of ultra-dense metals whether they originated from human or xeno hands makes no difference to me," I ordered and the man frowned in thought.

"Excuse me good sir this request is rather unusual... How much are you willing to spend to acquire these samples?" He asked as he was obviously considering how much of these metals I was planning to buy.

"I simply want the densest metal or material you have on hand," I said simply.

The man played around with his tablet for a few minutes as he seemingly did some research before making a noise of wonder. "Aha. Good Sir, we have a chunk of matter taken from the core of a neutron star and is currently being held within time-locked stasis, so it doesn't degenerate... We can't do anything with it as although we know what it is, we know that messing with a piece of a neutron star with how much radiation it has, along with the heat it will output through the stasis field should it be interrupted could be catastrophic for this casino."

Thinking about his words I realized it wasn't like they actually had put an entire half-dead star into a time-locked box, no they basically had a spoon scoop worth of the material locked away probably for research, so even if it should break out, at worst it could render a couple of miles worth of terrain into glass as the whole Hive City was extremely durable with how it was made of Plasteel and Rockreet.

Such a material, however, would be perfect for my first sun as the sympathetic properties of being naturally from a sun would give me a potent head start in creating my first sun. So long as it wasn't too expensive anyway.

"That will do. How much for it?"

The man smiled and I realized this asshole was going to attempt to take me for all I was worth. "We have a buyout price of ten thousand credits worth of materials for it"

I froze a moment at the cost and realized I literally had only a fifth of that damned amount so tried to haggle. "I will give you a thousand credits right now for it."

The man simply chuckled and shook his head. "I am sorry sir but down here in the Underhive for such a priceless good that we salvaged from the Sump below us at great cost in loyal lives, credits simply don't match its value."

Frowning I did the math and realized I needed to bring and sell four of my barrels worth of pure clean water in order to get it and I knew that such a thing would be too great of a target typically.

"Got a way I can sell you guys four hundred gallons of pure water, without every single inhabitant of the city attempting to kill me for it?" The thing was that clean water was the greatest luxury down here as even with literally the city being built into a water refinery plant, the cities other three water recycling cites were in various states of disrepair with the Spider Domain literally killing any decent-sized force that attempted to take it back as supposedly the monsters within had kept looters from destroying the machinery over the centuries and has been working at minimal efficiency, but should it be cleared out.

The Hive city's water supply would more than double.

The man looked at me in confusion for a moment as he asked me in confusion. "How in the world will you have four hundred gallons of pure water? You can only get that much in the Upper Hive?"

I didnt respond simply giving him a pointed look making him fluster before he spoke. "I apologize please allow me to communicate with my superiors."

"Make sure to tell them it's for the materials I asked for... If the method, you guys come up with doesn't result in me being shot at repeatedly I will come back to trade more water for more special materials." I said offering an olive branch not to just screw me over for the water when I could be a golden goose who can consistently bring in a much-needed resource.

Funny thing about living in a Hive City the most common resource was the geothermal power in the center of the hive but using such power to boil water would be a massive waste in efficiency and most people would prefer to drink dirty water than spending their hard weeks' paycheck to drink a couple tablespoons of clean water.

Most people down here literally drank wine and other spirits almost exclusively as it would be safe to drink with how it killed the germs even with a low alcohol content.

"Alright sir, we have a heavily guarded side tunnel that should you bring your water into, we will escort you here." He explained showing a map to me that I was vaguely able to recognize the details towards and where I would go from my tunnel to the meet-up point.

"I will have the water ready at the drop point in six hours then. Make sure to have my piece of a neutron star." I said before I stood up and left the room.

Thankfully I wasn't accosted by anyone on the way back so once I arrived back I couldn't help but deadpan as I saw Elesmere had decided to put a number of defenses in the tunnel.

At least for now she seemed to have not armed the traps.

After knocking on the vault door with an odd series of clanging noise to get her attention she then opened the door and giggled as she saw my stressed look because, for the last several minutes of going through the tunnel, I was terrified one these traps were going to slam a spiked ball or something into me as I walked through.

"Not funny at all... Actually, how in the hell did you make so many traps while I was only gone for like half an hour?"

The Eldar proudly huffed and pretended to clean out some dirt from her already immaculate nails as she said. "When an Eldar sets their mind to a task little can stand in our way. Plus, setting up such simple traps was literally child's play."

I gave her a bland look that clearly displayed how little I cared for her little prideful display. "Right... So how many of the nutrient cubes did you collect."

"Hehe, I made forty of them!"

As I was collecting the four barrels, I was going to need in order to collect all the water I heard her words and whirled on her in surprise. "You spent all the time making those damn traps, didn't you... You do recall we go through those things like one every hour for each of us while cultivating." I gave her a look of disappointment as I sighed. "I sent this arrogant disciple on a quest, and she comes back with not even enough resources for a single day's worth of training..."

Elesmere's face twitched and was then reminded how I in the same amount of time brought more than a hundred cubes of the biomass that we had been using up until we ran out today.

"Fine! I will go get more... I just hate fighting massive insects. Isn't that the definition of a man's task anyway!?" She demanded putting her hands on her hips.

I gave her another look of disappointment as I sighed and put upon a wizened tone that I had learnt really really irritated Elesmere for sounding patronizing. "Hmm as a warrior and even more so as a cultivator, you must understand that there is no difference in treatment for men or women, if a woman can cut you down with a sword from a mile away what difference does it matter if a man can do the exact same."

I clapped my hands as Elesmere's face twitched in irritation. "Thus, with men and women being equal. women have the same ability and responsibility to kill massive, mutated spiders that want to possibly lay eggs within our paralyzed bodies for their tens of thousands of newborn children to eat their way out of once they are born."

Needless to say, I got kicked in the shin for that bit of nightmare fuel.

"So why do you need so much more credits?" Elesmere asked as she helped make the cart, I was going to pull all the water barrels back with me.

I had been considering how she was getting close to mastering the Diamond Body Technique on what technique I should give her to her and eventually I came to the realization that she should go the same path as me, furthering her body cultivation but instead of my Nine Yang Stars Technique, I knew of a technique that was practically a counterpart to the technique for women called The Solitary Yin Moon technique.

It built a singular Yin Attributed Moon within the body that would eventually be able to give her a special Yin body when she converted the powerful moon within herself into a weird frozen White Dwarf Star.

"I need to buy a chunk of a star held in stasis in order for me to get into my next technique. In order to do that I need to gather up and purify about four hundred gallons of water as this Hive city only has one main working water purification plant and of the other three only the Spider Domain over there is working at a lowered capacity while the other two have been stripped for parts and don't work at all." I said pointing in the direction of the Spider Domain in question.

Elesmere shook her head obviously in wonder at humanity's stupidity and her words confirmed my suspicions of her thoughts. "Why don't the humans simply fix the other two stations and simply block off the Spider Domain and purge it with chemicals and a lot of fire?"

Oh, that's a good question honestly and I didn't know the exact reasons but I had a couple of suspicions. "Well for one, those pumps reach the Sump below this Underhive and as bad as the Underhive is with that Spider Domain. The Sump is far worse as it's so hostile to life with its filth and mutants that it can literally host some weak demons with how violent and disease-ridden it is. Being that Knorne and Nurgle demons can call it home."

Hence why it was obvious why normal people couldn't go simply fix any pumps down in the Sump as they would almost certainly die before they even reached the pumps. And the Hivecity governor wouldn't want to waste trained Imperial Guardsmen on such a task until it began to threaten the Upperhive's livelihood.

"You seriously plan on just eating a chunk of a star?" She asked dryly as we navigated her traps towards the Spider Domain with her leading us past our vault, she had actually armed the traps going in that direction.

"Of course! Hell for your next technique, you are going to eat a chunk of a moon!" I said cheerfully making the normally so agile Eldar literally stumble before she whirled on me in confusion at how serious I sounded.

"Uhmm Jake. Not to be the bearer of bad news but Eldar can't eat rocks..." She said dryly.

I simply patted her on her perky backside making her jump as I passed her, leaving her frozen form with an inspiration quote to ponder as I began throwing the barrels into the cistern below to fill up with water. "As a Cultivator, the only thing stopping you from cutting a planet in half with your sword is your laziness. If you can't absorb a single piece of a moon into your body, then you certainly need more training."

 

 

 

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