Chapter 173: The Tiny Space of the Divine Space Ring

Kei rapidly jotted down everything he had just figured out into his notebook.

The Tree of Life required natural energy to recover. That energy couldn’t simply stem from a single, isolated living organism. She needed a sustained supply harvested from a diverse multitude of living entities.

Kei paused his pen, staring fixedly at those two lines of text.

"A multitude of living entities..."

He circled the phrase, adding a fresh note underneath:

Natural energy is not magic power.

At the very least, the Tree of Life had proven incapable of recovering purely by absorbing the ambient mana swirling inside the Dungeon. Had magic power sufficed, she likely wouldn’t have withered to such a desperate extreme.

Thus, whatever she truly required was an alternate energy source, something manifesting exclusively when countless life forms coexisted, flourished, and sustained their existences side by side.

Yet where did it originate? From the soil? From the woodland canopy? Or from the living fauna dwelling deep within the forest?

Kei leaned back against his chair, lifting a hand to massage the bridge of his nose. The harder he strained his thoughts, the more mountainous the unanswered questions piled up.

He peered inward once more, inspecting the interior of his Divine Space Ring.

The sprawling expanse of terrain within was nearly blanketed by the flora he had cultivated with his own hands. Ranging from delicate medicinal herbs to massive thickets, every single specimen thrived vigorously under his meticulous tending.

Yet regardless of how vast that internal space might appear, it remained fundamentally insufficient to house a colossal Tree of Life.

The single greatest bottleneck plaguing the Divine Space Ring right now was its painfully restricted surface area!

Not to mention, simply plopping the Tree of Life inside wouldn’t magically resolve her predicament. If she demanded energy harvested from an eclectic array of living organisms, a patch of land dense with plant life might prove helpful, but would it truly suffice? Would it necessitate fauna, as well? Microorganisms? An entirely self-sustaining ecosystem?

Kei furrowed his brow slightly.

He hadn’t even figured out where to source natural energy yet, and here he was, already fretting over constructing a habitat capable of generating it.

Even so, if the Divine Space Ring genuinely preserved Dungeon flora, he couldn’t afford to discard this possibility out of hand. It might very well represent the sole sanctuary capable of rescuing the Tree of Life from the brutal laws chaining her down.

The sole catch being...

This space needed to be expanded!

Kei stared out at the lush canopies stretching toward the horizon, though the boundaries of this pocket dimension remained clearly visible in the distance, shrouded beneath layers of dense gray fog. For the longest time, he had perceived this space as vast enough to border on the infinite. Right now, for the very first time, it felt uncomfortably cramped.

How on earth could one possibly expand the internal space of the Divine Space Ring?

He had no ready answer.

Kei gazed at the patch of greenery a moment longer before finally snapping his notebook shut. Merely sitting here brooding wasn’t going to magically conjure a solution out of thin air. He required supplemental intel, demanding the insights of someone well-versed in item crafting and spatial manipulation to troubleshoot alongside him.

"Kei, dinner’s ready!"

Sora’s voice drifted up from downstairs.

Kei stowed his notebook away in the drawer and rose to his feet.

He still lacked an explicit answer, but at the very least, he now knew who he needed to consult. When the opportunity presented itself, he would head over to seek out Thunder. If anyone understood spatial ring architecture better than a rookie Craftsman like him, it had to be an A-rank blacksmith.

*Without a doubt, a method capable of expanding the internal volume of a Space Ring had to exist!*

He headed downstairs. Sora had already laid out dinner, two bowls of hot soup resting side by side upon the dining table.

"What on earth are you spacing out about?" Sora remarked the instant she sat down, catching the absent-minded expression clouding his face. "Ever since I called you down, you looked like your mind was wandering miles away."

Kei picked up his spoon, though he didn’t immediately dive into eating.

He had originally intended to wait a little longer before spilling the details. Yet the events transpiring inside the Dungeon still circled restlessly within his head, weighing down upon him with a gravity so suffocating he loathed keeping them bottled up entirely alone.

"I ran into an old acquaintance from my old world inside the Dungeon."

Sora paused her movements, listening with undivided attention.

Kei recounted the tale of the forest hailing from his old world, the Tree of Life whose vitality was bleeding dry, and Julius, the man still protected deep within the colossal trunk who happened to be his father.

He omitted excessive speculation regarding matters he couldn’t verify. He stuck strictly to what he had witnessed with his own eyes, alongside what the Tree of Life had personally disclosed to him. From time to time, he would halt mid-sentence, as though requiring a brief beat to mentally organize the memories flooding back in waves.

Sora listened in silence all the way through.

Barely hours earlier, Kei had stepped out of the shop merely to venture into a Dungeon. And yet upon returning, he had reconnected with figures from his old world, discovered that his father was still in existence, and immediately been confronted with the reality that the Tree of Life was dying.

That sequence of revelations was undeniably heavy.

"Kei..." Sora reached out to pat him gently on the back, offering a soft, soothing expression. "You’ve been through so much; first of all, let’s sit down and enjoy a nice, warm meal."

Kei lowered his head with a faint smile, the warmth radiating from Sora’s hand easing the tight knot in his chest just a fraction. He was just about to voice his gratitude when the front door chime rang out sharply across the shop.