Chapter 85: The Stomach Sac

Though the Gold-Devouring Eagle reacted fast, its movements were greatly slowed by the electric shock and freezing effect. As it did this, with his free claw, Zheng Yichen felt around in the bag hanging from his neck and pulled out a large revolver that suited his size. Aiming at the Gold-Devouring Eagle’s chest, he fired a shot. The bullet, which was comparable to a cannonball, left a deep dent in its chest. The Gold-Devouring Eagle let out a mournful shriek as it plummeted toward the ground from the sky.

Even after suffering such a heavy blow, it did not die. During its fall, it struggled continuously, trying to shake off the lingering numbness from the electric current and regain its normal flying ability to escape. Zheng Yichen certainly would not give it that chance. As the Gold-Devouring Eagle was falling, he had already prepared and gathered a second lightning ball, which he slapped squarely against the Gold-Devouring Eagle’s head once again. The eagle’s piercing, sharp cry abruptly stopped.

“Hmm… the meat… forget it, I’ll take it back to taste it. The feathers… I really want to keep them for myself.” Holding a single plucked, longest tail feather, Zheng Yichen tried lightly dragging it across one of his own scales. As a result, a mark was immediately left on the pitch-black Dragon Scale. Tsk, and that was just a light stroke. If he had been truly caught by that claw of the Gold-Devouring Eagle not long ago, he probably would have suffered some injury to his chest too.

No wonder the difficulty of completing quests for this kind of Magical Beast was always so high, even though it couldn’t use Magic. Just its attack power alone was a problem. If you couldn’t quickly crush the Gold-Devouring Eagle, combined with its defense and flight advantage, even a well-equipped team could be wiped out. No one could withstand the Gold-Devouring Eagle’s armor-piercing attacks.

Looking at the other feathers, even the second-longest one was at least a third weaker in power compared to the longest one. It really was worthy of being called the essence feather. After some thought, he suppressed the idea of breaking the Contract, as using it here would be a real waste.

Carefully checking the sorted materials, Zheng Yichen basically separated what could be used from what couldn’t.

“He actually completed it?” The people at the Mercenary Guild in Kaja City looked at Zheng Yichen, who had returned, with some surprise. After the Gold-Devouring Eagle quest was accepted, some people had learned about it. Given he was alone at the time, many Mercenaries thought this guy was overestimating himself. But now, on the very next day, he was back. Wasn’t his efficiency a bit too high?

It was worth noting that this Quest had been accepted by quite a few people before, and without exception, they had all failed. One Mercenary team was even wiped out. Other Mercenary teams either suffered heavy losses or, after losing a few members, realized the situation was hopeless and wisely chose to give up.

“Maybe he failed?”

Some people didn’t believe Zheng Yichen could complete the Quest.

Ignoring the Mercenaries’ open and undisguised conversations, Zheng Yichen controlled his Alchemical Body and went straight to the front counter. He took out a long cloth strip containing the longest tail feather. This feather was nearly 1.5 meters long, very lengthy. You could use it like a sharp sword just by holding the base!

Needless to say, in the hands of a skilled Blacksmith, this thing could directly serve as a base material for crafting a formidable weapon.

The feathers of the Gold-Devouring Eagle had a very distinctive color. With relevant knowledge, one could easily identify them. The front desk staff responsible for quest exchanges could verify it. After confirming the item was genuine, the front desk employee handed over the reward money the quest client had deposited to Zheng Yichen.

After receiving the reward, Zheng Yichen did not linger. He immediately left the Mercenary Guild. On the way back, some people inevitably tried to inquire about information regarding the remaining tail feathers of the Gold-Devouring Eagle. Even though they weren’t the longest one, the other feathers were still quite powerful. Weapons made from such materials, even if not Magic weapons, could possess power not inferior to Magic weapons.

Regarding these people, Zheng Yichen kept as far away as possible. They wanted the remaining feathers, as if he himself didn’t need them. As for those who came inquiring and trying to recruit him, Zheng Yichen directly refused. What a joke, asking him to join their team? During future outings, did they plan to watch a dragon go fight?

In the Workshop, Zheng Yichen had finished completely sorting those tail feathers. The Gold-Devouring Eagle’s bones were also kept. The spot previously hit by the hand-cannon revolver he had made still showed a dent, but the bone did not have cracks. Instead, it was bent out of shape, just like real metal!

Tsk tsk, truly a Magical Beast that treated metal as food. Its bones had undergone such a qualitative change. As for the Gold-Devouring Eagle’s stomach sac, Zheng Yichen performed subsequent modifications according to an Alchemy formula, preserving its inherent properties. The stomach sac was the organ the Gold-Devouring Eagle used to digest metal. Therefore, after processing, the stomach sac became a special item.

When the Gold-Devouring Eagle digested metal for absorption, the modified stomach sac transformed this digestive ability into another kind of purification effect. After all, this was just a stomach sac; even if it digested metal, it wouldn’t be absorbed by anything. The changed property allowed its digestive ability to achieve a special cycle.

The metal essence extracted from digesting metal through the stomach sac would be gathered in a cycle, forming metal crystals. As for the digested metal, it essentially became unusable waste slag. Testing the effect of this stomach sac, Zheng Yichen suddenly thought: why not take on some commissions at the Mercenary Guild, specifically to locate Gold-Devouring Eagles? If he collected eighty to a hundred of these stomach sacs… just set them up on a rack and harvest metal crystals periodically. Why bother with assembly line machines and tools?

Looking down at an irregular, translucent-colored metal lump, this was the metal crystal produced by the stomach sac’s digestion process. This thing not only had excellent hardness and toughness, but even though it wasn’t Enchanted Material, its resistance to Mana Erosion far exceeded that of ordinary metal. If he used Enchanted Material for purification, then the quality of the resulting metal crystal would surely be better.

Good, good. Hanging this stomach sac on a prepared rack, he gave an order to an Alchemical Puppet performing maintenance work there, instructing it to pay attention to the stomach sac’s operation. As soon as the metal inside was fully digested, it must immediately fill the sac with new metal. In short, the stomach sac must not be left idle.

Anyway, after modification, this thing operated on Mana. Whether idle or not made no difference.

As for the Gold-Devouring Eagle’s bones, how to put it, these were probably the most useless items. Besides having good hardness and toughness, they had no other characteristics… Well, perhaps being lightweight enough was also a characteristic. For handling these bones, Zheng Yichen directly stuffed them all into the digestive stomach sac to see what kind of crystals could be refined.

As for the tail feathers, Zheng Yichen planned to use them as raw material for subsequent enhancement and crafting, fully utilizing even the small, less powerful feathers. He couldn’t just let them go to waste.