Chapter 50: Within danger and wealth

One of the items Shane bought before was a [Uncommon] concealment potion with a long-lasting effect of 16 hours that was priced at 7 gold coins.

Gulping down the potion his mana would be completely concealed for the next 16 hours, making it difficult for wild stage beasts to notice him.

Furthermore, once he was discovered, it was likely that these beasts would underestimate him due to his unimaginable low mana fluctuations.

As such, Shane was confident in himself.

With slightly less than 40 hours left, Shane had many things to take care of in order to harvest the elemental crystals he could already see shining brightly in front of him.

However, mining them right now would be a death sentence because the sound would attract other beasts' attention inhabiting the cave.

Before he could mine, Shane would have to clear the cave as well as possible.

The size of the cave mattered for this scenario, while it was also important if the cave had only one layer or went deep below the surface where it was more likely to encounter higher-ranked crystals which would be a bad sign.

At least for his current situation because he couldn't cope with strong beasts that would definitely reside close to higher-ranked crystals.

If the cave was extremely large, he would only clear the upper layer and start mining while observing everything around him but if the cave was not that big, he would just clear everything inside out and mine later, before he would contact an Elus merchant, form the elementals race.

There was also the possibility of him being unable to reach a merchant but if that was the case, he would just sell the elemental crystals to other races which required them in order for their descendants to increase their innate elemental affinity.

This might reduce the price he would receive drastically, but there was nothing he could do at that time then.

As such, he didn't have to rely on the elemental race's merchants but they would most likely give him the most profit because they were about to expand their territory within their stellar system and the Primordial Dimensions.

Nevertheless, the amount of elemental and mana crystals Shane could see at the cavern entrance were much more than he could ever imagine even though they were not even remotely comparable to the number of the Nightshade flowers inside the Colossal Darkness-python's valley.

Calculating that he could most likely receive 30 silver coins for a fist-sized [common] elemental crystal with basic elements from foreign intelligent races, he felt extremely satisfied because the quality mattered more than the quantity with elemental crystals.

Furthermore, the crystals he saw, had at least half his size, which would mean that he would obtain dozens or even one hundred fist-sized crystal from a single source

Elemental crystals were high in demand and humanity only began their construction of the RadiantRing shelter a month ago without daring to venture too far away in order to prevent other intelligent races from noticing them.

At least until their own shelter had the capabilities to defend against a beast tide and an invasion of hostile foreign races.

Nevertheless, due to the high demand for elemental crystals, Shane was confident in solving his [Mythic] mission as long as he eradicated the scaled lizards, which was his main mission now.

Estimating that a few elite stage beasts could be within the cave, Shane was glad that he used up his fund of 20 gold coins within the market.

Descending into the cavern that leads him slowly downwards, Shane noticed that the interior was brightened thanks to the crystals and his steps slowed down as his observance heightened.

Looking around, there were dozens of wide tunnels leading into different directions.

This caused Shane to frown deeply because his previous calculation about the average combat prowess within the cave was immediately shaken.

The tunnels were extremely wide and some of them lead deep down, preventing Shane from seeing the end of it.

Recalculating everything in his mind Shane predicted the worst-case scenarios with awakened stage beasts habituated areas further down the cave.

As such he pondered if he should even look through the upper layers before he would start his hunt in addition to mining the elemental crystals.

With close to 40 hours left on his [Mythic] mission, Shane had more than enough time to accomplish it if nothing major happened within the cave.

Investigating the highest layer of the crystal cave with careful and slow steps, Shane figured out that 14 wide tunnels and 7 smaller ones lead down, while several more paths ended in huge cavities that were filled with elemental crystals.

Predicting that the wider tunnels would lead him even further than the smaller tunnels because larger beasts would directly venture towards the higher graded elemental crystals, Shane made up a rough plan about the cave's interior in his mind.

With this information, he could roughly figure out how powerful the existence that stepped through the different tunnels might be.

This was important in order to prepare for any kind of possible scenario.

His plan, however, remained simple.

First, clear the first cavern room with its surroundings from all kinds of threats before starting mining the elemental crystals at the cavern entrance.

After that, he would contact a few Elus merchants to pick out the best prices.

Selling his mined elemental crystals Shane could use a part of his fortune to protect himself with miscellaneous items or accumulate a small fortune.

Nevertheless to do that he had to eradicate all threats first.

While venturing through the cave's upper layer he went through multiple rooms and saw many scaled lizards with most of them being late Wild stage Fiery scaled lizards.

But other than that there were also quite a few aqueous scaled lizards in addition to breezy and earthy scaled lizards as basic elemental mutated scaled lizards.

Around the whole cavern's upper layer, Shane could only see small mana crystal occurrences and basic elemental crystals consistent with wind, water, fire, and earth.

Intermediate crystals could contain the elements, magma, metal, ice, and thunder, while the most advanced and exceptionally rare elemental crystals were darkness, light, nature, spatial, and even blood elemental crystals.

There were many additional elements like poison, shadow, holy and other variations.

Their price was irregular and Shane only knew that holy and shadow elemental crystals were as valuable as advanced elemental crystals while the holy elemental crystal could be sold for even more.

Looking at the basic elemental and Mana crystals all around him, Shane smiled as he unsheathed his shiolite dagger before he crouched down to sneak up to a small group of 5 fiery scaled lizards that were completely unaware of the imminent threat crouching up to them.

Knowing that at least several dozen late-Wild stage scaled beasts were within the upper layer, Shane gazed at the time he had left to accomplish the [Mythic] mission with a thin sense of pressure weighing down on him.

[37H:17M:54S]

Sneaking up to the five fiery scaled lizards, his steps didn't utter a single sound while his mana circulated within his body slowly, calming him down with an additional layer to his passive [Hunter's mind].

Right as Shane was about to cross the distance of 15 meters the guardless fiery scaled lizards twitched slightly when they turned around simultaneously.

Noticing Shane with his weak mana fluctuations they didn't even hesitate to spew out fireballs instead of flames, throwing them towards him, who was taken by surprise.

'Are they super sensitive? And why do they throw fireballs now instead of spewing flames like before?` Shane lamented as he jumped to the side only to make a smooth roll at the end of his jump to stand up without wasting any time.