'I should use the Devour skill to convert the same quality and quality of forging metal into energy points as I previously did with Red gem alone to accurately determine the level of improvement.' Alex thought, standing in his hotel room.

After making a simple plan, Alex opened the player auction forum and started buying the same forging metal he had bought last time, and within five minutes, he was done with the purchase and was ready for the experiment.

'Now that the quality of the Gem is much higher, it should have improved its skill, so let's check the Devour skill details first before using it.' Alex thought as he clicked on the skill to check its details.

'This looks much better.' Alex thought, looking at the skill's new details.

✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦

Name: Devour

Grade: Mortal Rank

Effect: Consume materials [Living and Nonliving] of the same quality as the artifact in a fifty-foot radius, which will then be converted into energy points.

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[Important note: Materials that could be consumed and turned into energy points.]

[Living Organic Materials = [ Rank (Same as the Artifact) Quality up to Rare Epic]

[Nonliving Materials [Forging Metals / Ingredients etc.] = [ Rank (Same as the Artifact) Quality up to Rare]

✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦

'The Living carcass of the beasts the Devour skill could consume are capped at the Rare Epic quality while the materials are capped at the Rare Quality.'

'This doesn't look bad, but only doing tests will tell how much energy point the materials of higher quality will provide.' Alex thought, seeing the changes to the skill.

'Let's test the skill on the common material and see the difference.' Alex poured exactly four hundred and seventy-two forging metal ores on the floor and used the Devour skill.

A system window appeared in front of Alex with the list of all the available items in the fifty-foot radius that could be consumed and turned into energy points, and not so surprisingly, it included everything thing in the room, but he just selected the forging metal oars.

After Alex confirmed his choice, the Red gem shone brightly and released a dark red mist that covered the oars lying on the floor in a thick blanket of red energy.

After two minutes, all the red mist was absorbed back into the gem, leaving no trace of the hundreds of metal oars.

'This time, the gem converted the same quality and quantity of materials to 6.25 energy points which are around 30% more than the previous 4.8 energy points.' Alex thought, checking the results.

'I don't know how different this result is compared to the real Ancient Artifact, but at least it is better than using the Red gem alone.' Alex thought with a smile as he reopened the auction forums.'I have forty-five million gold coins, so let's go crazy.' Alex thought as he started buying every material that could be used and turned into energy.

After one hour of buying materials of any available quality, he closed the auction forum not because he was spending too much money but because his inventory was completely full.

'I never thought I would be able to fill the Hundred thousand item capacity of the inventory.' Alex thought, proud of his achievement.

'I should rent a big secured chamber to turn these items into energy points as a chamber will have a lot of space, which will help me spread all the items at once and then quickly turn them into energy, making me save a lot of time.' Alex thought and quickly left his hotel room.

---------------

'This place is nice.' Alex thought, standing in a large empty room around a hundred meters long and thirty meters wide.

'Let's spread all the items in piles and quickly turn them into energy points.' Alex thought with a smile.

After one hour of hard labor, Alex was done spreading the hundred thousand items in the room, and now the whole room looked like a landfill of garbage.

After Alex was done, the room was filled with metal oars of different sizes with mangled bodies of monsters and many unique plants in the mix, making the whole room smell anything but pleasant.

'Let's get done with this, but before that, let's first test on a few items of each quality from each category to get an estimate of how much energy each material will provide.' Alex thought as he started using walking to the nearest pile of materials.

After five minutes, Alex was done testing both the living and non-living categories of materials and the results were very satisfactory.

[Nonliving Materials [Forging Metals / Ingredients etc.]

Quality: = Energy Points

•1: Common = (0.013)

•2: Uncommon = (0.7 to 1.4)

•3: Rare = (70 to 110)

[Living Materials [Monster Carcasses]]

•1: Common = (0.018)

•2: Elite = (1.5 to 2.1)

•3: Rare Elite = (13 to 29)

•4:Epic = (80 to 130)•5:Rare Epic = (100 to 230)

'The results are very good, seeing as all these materials were of Mortal Rank,' Alex thought, happy with the number of energy points.

'Let's quickly finish these materials.' Alex thought as he started the laborious task of using the Devour.

-----------------

After two hours, the room was completely clean from all the materials, and Alex could be seen lying on the floor, facing the sealing with dead tired eyes and an exhausted look.

'I forget that the skill will consume mana at every use.' Alex thought with a self-mocking smile at his stupidity in making such a beginner mistake.

After using the skill on half the available materials that required him to just use the skill eight times, Alex's mana fell critically low, making him realize his mistake, and even though he had mana potion, they weren't of any help because of their low quality.

Alex didn't ask for help from his shadow guardians but instead paid a premium price to buy high-grade mana potions from the player auction forum and pretended that he didn't make any mistakes.

'At least I gained enough points to unlock a few of the skills of the artifact.' Alex thought, looking at the energy points.

Stored Energy: [462-K (462,145.05) / 1-Million]

"Domain Ruler, I hope you learned something from your mistake," Darrien said as he appeared next to Alex.

"It is a nice ability to get things with the help of Watcher, but in a battle of life and death, a single second could decide the result, so it will be better if you keep that in mind," Darrien said in his emotionless voice.

'This is different.' Alex thought, feeling like Darrien sounded annoyed.

"Domain Ruler, I believe you are wasting time on this incomplete artifact when you could unlock its seals in a much shorter time after reaching a higher Rank of strength," Darrien said.

'He has a point that I should be training to get stronger and not waste time, but he doesn't know about the abilities of this incomplete artifact.' Alex thought as he took the ring with the records of the Ancient Artifact.

Alex understood that Darrien wanted him to get stronger and become a permanent Domain Ruler while working hard to increase his Ruler authority Rank and get the cure for domain inhabitants as quickly as possible.

Alex only had twenty-one months to clear three domain promotion missions because if he couldn't, his status as the Ruler would be revoked, and the hope of the Malefis Domain would be erased, so wasting time on something useless was not an option if he doesn't want to fail.

"Elder Darrien, I am doing what is best for the Domain inhabitants," Alex said as he handed Darrien the space ring.

"Please read the records inside," Alex said, seeing Darrien giving him a blank look.

Darrien took the ring and emptied all the contents of the ring, which was a few books bound in leather, and in seconds, he flipped through all the pages of each book using telekinesis, and in the whole period, the surprise Alex expected didn't appear.

"Domain Ruler, I believe you know that the Devourer Curse is a Curse ability and not a disease, so knowing that Do you think we haven't already tried every available option in the search for a cure?" Darrien asked, not sounding annoyed.

'I will need their help to get the Archaic Ring from the demon prince, so telling them now or later wouldn't matter.' Alex thought as he decided to tell his guardian

"Elder Darrien, I understand what you are implying, but what if I tell you that this Ancient Artifact can cure the Curse with a guarantee."

"I am not saying it because I blindly believe it, but I believe it because this information is given to me by Watcher, and you should know that I am not lying," Alex replied with a smile.

"You are not lying." Lady Margaret said with apparent disbelief as she appeared next to Alex.

'This is unexpected.' Alex thought, seeing Lady Margaret's eyes getting wet as tears rolled down her cheeks while Darrien stood with a frozen expression.