Chapter 296: Caracas Flower

[Planet #14722]

Emery returned to the savage planet. This time, he went past the portal by himself.

When he walked out of the swirling portal, he saw the recognizable small tavern and smiled a little, reminiscing of the time he and his friend went and had fun there.

After watching the tavern, which was completely filled with people, Emery quickly rushed towards one particular hill, the one where he went to mine titanium.

Several Skygazers can be seen swirling in the sky as soon as he came out of the forest. Emery also saw a few of those black rocks that had the familiar silvery glands. Unfortunately, he did not pick up any of them because today, none of them were his target.

Emery proceeded to run up the hill and started to search for the familiar hole that should be located between the cracks on the dry hill land. After scouring through dozens of meters, he finally found it. Without further due, Emery immediately slid into it.

While he was sliding through the narrow channel that headed downwards, Emery was further confirming the target of his destination in his mind. After a while, he finally touched the ground again and immediately looked around.

At the moment, he was in a place with several tunnels spreading around him.

Emery tried to remember if this was the same place he and his friends fell into the last time by comparing what he saw around him with his memories. 

As he threw his gaze around, he noticed the familiar red light from one of the tunnels, which quickly confirmed this place was the one where they previously were.

Emery then carefully walked towards the tunnel where dozens of flowers had gathered. Unfortunately, just like the last time, there were almost a hundred Duma around the area.

The last time he was here, Emery was only a Rank 5 acolyte. Not only did he not have any good weapons, he also did not have any good spell in his repertoire. Hence, this time, his hands were itching to test all of his new spells and skills against the green gooey creatures.

However, he still needed to keep his eyes on the target first, the bright light plant that shone in the dark, the Caracas Plant. After all, the last thing he wanted was for the plant to be destroyed during his rounds of skills and spells experiments.

Before going at it, Emery suddenly realized no one knew he was here. His friends, his master or anyone else, they were all in the dark about his whereabouts. 

Did this mean if anything happened to him here, no one would ever find him?

The thought sent shivers down to Emery's back. He probably should have left a note or something. 

Anyway, before the dark thought could dive deeper into his mind, Emery tried to think more positively, as he analyzed the creature once again.

[Duma]

[Level 5 - Beast]

[Battle Power 50]

There were at least one hundred such monsters in this place. As for the flowers, there were a few dozen of them, but they were spreaded apart.

Emery knew these monsters were pretty slow, but their enormous number was the problem. It could be troublesome if he got pinned and trapped between them. If that happened, he could only accept his fate getting pummeled. Therefore, it was better to approach it carefully, without making rush decisions.

Emery quickly casted his [Shadow Mist] spell and blinked over to the nearest flower. While the mist slowly encompassed the area, he picked the flower carefully and stored it in his storage ring.

Smiling because of his successful harvest, Emery was about to go to the second flower when some of the Duma had already awakened. Therefore, he sped up his actions in order to pick up a few more.

While Emery was doing his best to harvest the flowers as fast as he could, all the hundreds of Dumas had noticed his presence. And the bad news was, they were not fooled by the [Shadow Mist] spell.

Looking at those Dumas who were beginning to approach him en masse, Emery could not help but curse, "Dammit. This is harder than I thought."

All it took would be one wrong step for Emery. Just a touch from one creature and it would be game over for him. Therefore, Emery kept casting [Blink], appearing and disappearing around the area for several minutes as he tried to dodge those gooey creatures. 

He kept doing that until he realized that, sooner or later, there would be no more space for him to blink into. Hence, it was time for a new tactic.

Emery casted [Shadow Root] and [Mudwall] simultaneously to create an opening space for him. While the [Shadow Root] bounded those near him, earthen walls rose from the ground, dividing the area into several sectors, which would limit the Dumas' movement.

Now that the situation was somewhat stabilized, Emery just had to be really, really careful.

"Just several more..."

A few minutes later, Emery finally managed to clean out all the flowers in this place. He was celebrating in his heart and was about to return back when he realized his way out was covered by dozens of those gooey creatures.

Not wanting to waste any time, since he had already accomplished his goal here, Emery took a no-nonsense approach, as he casted his strongest spell [Dark Matter]. Channeling the spirit energy into swirling black energy on his hand, he immediately fired the spell towards the clump of creatures blocking the way.

KABOOM!!!

Emery was blown away by strong gusts that resulted from the spell. Because of this, he accidentally came into contact with one of the Dumas. The parts of his body touched by the Duma were instantly scorched by its acid.

The moment his brain registered the stinging pain on his shoulder, Emery immediately casted [Blink], escaping from the Duma.

He then turned his eyes towards the entrance hoping that the path was clear, only to find the Dumas that were hit by his most powerful spell had almost returned to their previous state.

"I am in trouble, am I?" asked Emery to himself, smiling wryly.

Emery once again casted [Blink] to dodge the incoming group of Dumas. He decided to run to the furthest corner and heal himself first by using the [Nature Blessing] spell.

While the burns on his shoulder slowly healed, Emery began looking for a bright idea that could get him out of his current predicament. He sifted through and checked all the items inside his storage ring, and finally found something that might work.

[Freezing Potion - Tier 1]

Emery decided to try it by throwing it to one of the closest Duma.

*shatter*

As the potion bottle broke, the cyan liquid inside immediately splashed over the monster, causing it to freeze.

Seeing the satisfying results, Emery was excited. He directly took out his Tier 3 sword and used [Heroic Slash]. The target, the frozen Duma.

PRANG!!

Loud piercing sound resounded through the air as the frozen monster was destroyed into pieces. More importantly, Emery could see that even though the ice began to melt, the monster was unable to reform to its original state. That meant he could finally kill them!

"This is it!" 

Emery was about to kill those blocking the way using the same method, when he noticed a shiny crystal laying among the destroyed pieces of the Duma. It was a spirit stone… A yellow one. That was 100 spirit stones!

Curious about the matter, he decided to use the dozen or so Freezing Potions that he had and killed a dozen Duma with it. From them, Emery found 10 yellow stones, which meant the chances of Duma dropping them was a whopping 90 percent!

In an instant, Emery's brain began to calculate the numbers.

This could be the solution to his spirit stone drought.