Cave Refuge-Chapter 842 - 542 Battleship~Battleship

When Dong Tianyu fed the Blood-Colored Mysterious Core to his Companion Spiritual Treasure, it was uncertain whether the Companion Spiritual Treasure was bound to enhance the material of the ship’s body by devouring the Blood-Colored Mysterious Core, or if the core that Dong Tianyu fed this time was noticeably larger.

In any case, after the Companion Spiritual Treasure devoured the Blood-Colored Mysterious Core, the material of the ship’s body was upgraded again, perhaps because Dong Tianyu had already upgraded the jade material once, so this time there was no option to change the material.

This upgrade of the ship body’s material endowed the Companion Spiritual Treasure with a new entry for energy absorption.

Unlike Energy Gathering, which passively collects surrounding unstructured energy, Energy Absorption could actively absorb energy attacks, energy shields, enhancement buffs, debuff buffs, and other sustained curses released or controlled by others.

From this upgrade effect, the jade material of the ship’s body, as compared to wooden and metal materials, should have a superior resistance to energy.

Dong Tianyu had long harbored the idea of inscribing formations on the Companion Spiritual Treasure, making it like the Wave Rider, equipped to handle various situations with formations.

Unfortunately, Dong Tianyu had attempted several times to inscribe formations on the Companion Spiritual Treasure, but when he retracted the Companion Spiritual Treasure back into the Sea of Consciousness, the inscribed formations could not return with it.

Beyond that, even if Dong Tianyu did not retract the Companion Spiritual Treasure into the Sea of Consciousness, since the Companion Spiritual Treasure possessed slow self-healing features, inscribing formations that damaged the ship body would gradually heal over time, causing naturally occurring damage to these inscribed formations as a result of their restoration.

For this reason, the fundamental problem with Dong Tianyu’s original choice of jade material for the ship’s body arose.

Although initially choosing the jade material for the ship’s body did not provide any enhancement effect to the Companion Spiritual Treasure, now after devouring the Dark Green Mysterious Core and acquiring additional instrumentation onboard,

Dong Tianyu realized that the energy gathered from the air, obtained when transforming the ship’s body into jade material, could indeed sustain the basic operation of those onboard instruments.

Seeing this situation, Dong Tianyu felt that the jade material of the ship’s body was somewhat akin to those solar-powered power banks, especially now that it had been upgraded to actively absorb other forms of energy, making it more similar to pre-catastrophe power banks.

It remained a mystery how those ships with wooden and metal bodies managed to acquire energy to sustain the operation of their equipment after obtaining instrumentation.

However, Dong Tianyu speculated, based on the remote weapon ammunition replenishment method on his own Companion Spiritual Treasure, that those ships likely also maintained normal operation by consuming Dark Green Mysterious Cores.

With the ship body upgraded again and after upgrading the Demon Path’s Three Flags, Dong Tianyu delved back into the deep water region, continuing to hunt the Mysterious Ships there, aiming to acquire more Mysterious Cores for upgrading the instruments within his Companion Spiritual Treasure.

When Dong Tianyu surfaced again to relax, nearly half a year had passed. With the help of the Three Flags, Dong Tianyu’s underwater hunting operation was far more efficient than the last.

However, because the onboard equipment had already been upgraded once, the quantity of Dark Green Mysterious Cores needed for another upgrade far exceeded the past, hence Dong Tianyu stayed underwater several months longer than the previous time.

Just as Dong Tianyu was controlling the Companion Spiritual Treasure to emerge from the water, a shell grazed the top and struck directly in the water next to the side of the Companion Spiritual Treasure.

Realizing this, Dong Tianyu immediately controlled the Companion Spiritual Treasure to submerge again.

The laxness in Dong Tianyu’s vigilance had indeed been his own fault; perhaps because he had been underwater for too long, he was eager to see the sun again, and given that he had been actively attacking the Mysterious Ships underwater, his mindset was still stuck in a time when other ships lacked long-range weaponry, which caused him to overlook the battle taking place on the surface.

After the Companion Spiritual Treasure re-entered the safe zone underwater, Dong Tianyu cautiously used his Divine Sense to scope out the situation on the surface.

Whether it was because Dong Tianyu had spent too much time submerged or because the Imperial Court had obtained a great amount of resources, the battle occurring between the two warships on the surface involved cannonfire typical of the Age of Great Voyages, although neither of the warships used missiles, only shells.

In truth, whether it was missiles or shells, even though the advancement of the weapons was significant, given the pre-catastrophe accumulations, it wouldn’t have been odd for Dong Tianyu if the weapons had been somewhat more advanced.

Yet, due to the rising water levels from the flood, the materials needed for manufacturing ammunition became increasingly scarce, including not just the gunpowder required for explosions but even the metal casings needed for making the ammunition, which had become very difficult to procure.

After all, the majority of resources were now beneath deep water, where different depths harbored various dangers, so under normal circumstances, acquiring metals and similar materials was indeed challenging.

Yet the two warships on the surface that were recklessly engaging in a shootout seemed to indicate that at this time, ammunition was not considered a scarce resource.

After all, if ordinary metals had become very precious, then under the same circumstances, people would prefer to use precious metals to manufacture technologically sophisticated, powerful missiles rather than simply producing average strength shells as they were doing now.