Chapter 53: Shane, the Miner

One could see a black-clothed youth with a crimson blood gleaming dagger firmly in his hands as he trusted the dagger towards the exhausted earthy scaled lizard, mercilessly eradicating it's life force.

Shaken by the death of two of their brethren, the remaining exhausted scaled lizards lost almost all their fighting spirit and were killed within half a minute.

Cleaning the dagger, Shane sighed deeply because he already felt slightly exhausted.

[36H:43M:31S]

Previously Shane thought the time for his [Mythic] mission was not even remotely enough but with a good plan and a highly demanded resource, he understood that it was more than feasible to manage this mission.

One could say that he was extremely fortunate that mankind found the [Radiant Mountain ring]-dimension in addition to him being one of the first humans who entered it as the shelter was still under construction and not a desirable place for most cultivating youths.

Furthermore, if he hadn't done his research and a large amount of luck, he could only try his best in a depressed manner in order to accomplish his mission as a Mortal stage.

Demanding from a Mortal stage being to accumulate 1000 gold coins within 48 hours with his own strength, was more than harsh but Shane's luck helped him a lot.

As such he collected the scaled lizard corpses before he took out a few aqueous scales he already harvested from the aqueous scaled lizard to test something out.

The liquid within them was extremely refreshing and Shane used it to stay fully energized as he gulped down the content.

A few drops fell on shallow cuts on his hand and they surprisingly stopped bleeding.

Smearing the unknown liquid on his remaining cuts, all of them stopped bleeding and they even began to heal faster when he circulated his mana around the area he was cut.

Figuring this out was extremely beneficial and Shane questioned how much these scales were worth.

A single scale had roughly the same amount of liquid a potion had while its effect was a mix between, healing, calming, and energizing potion.

Because the aqueous scale was from a peak wild aqueous scaled lizard, it might even be a [Common] quality ingredient probably even [Uncommon] if transformed into a potion.

There were at least one hundred scales on an aqueous scaled lizard probably even more and each scale was most likely worth a silver coin based on the effect it provided.

As such the aqueous scaled lizard could be seen as a treasure trove and Shane was even more motivated to hunt all scaled lizards within the cave if possible.

Shane thought the other scaled beasts had also certain effects and he wanted to take out the fiery scaled beasts of his shop before he figured out their special effect if a fire-resistance effect wasn't everything they provided when he noticed that they were already sold out.

He received 1 gold coin for the beast corpses but in his mind, he complained about his decision to sell the corpses in the shop.

Maybe he would have been able to receive more from the fiery scaled lizards because their value was unsure yet.

In addition to all the elemental mutated scaled lizards, Shane knew he found a treasure trove.

This treasure-trove wouldn't remain unnoticed by others humans that teleported to the RadiantRing shelter in order to gain a fortune by searching for rare materials and so on.

One could say the [Mythic] mission he accepted accidentally, was a blessing in disguise.

Knowing he didn't have much time left, Shane went through the surrounding rooms to eradicate copulating, eating, and sleeping scaled lizards with all kinds of basic elemental affinities.

Except for a few cuts and burns, Shane was still alive and kicking when he walked back to the cave entrance with a broad, radiant smile on his face.

If someone saw him, even the calmest person would turn around to run away as his radiant and broad smile made a big contrast to his sullied clothes that were almost completely drenched with blood in addition to the shiolite dagger in his hands that shone violently.

As if that was not enough, even though Shane was smiling, behind his eyes one could see a faint trace of coldness, indicating his ability to kill everything that hindered his path.

There were exactly [33H] left on his mission timer when he was once again inside the cavern's entrance.

Looking around the cave's outside, Shane couldn't spot a single beast which was most likely caused by the dominance of the scaled lizards' existence.

Taking out a black shining pickaxe, Shane was glad to have purchased it some time ago.

Its quality was only [common] and he didn't doubt that he would turn it into scrub throughout the next few hours but more importantly than that would be his profit.

He was still hesitating to make his first swing with the pickaxe as he stood in front of the first elemental crystal at the cavern's entrance.

It was only a small fire crystal source and most likely [trash] quality like most crystals he would mine for the next few hours but their worth wasn't something to scoff at.

Even hand-sized trash quality elemental crystals were worth 10 silver coins at the Primordial shops.

And these shops were the only visible by humans without adding other races in their race selection in order to increase their profits which was hardly considered a problem and more than a little bit foolish not to do.

In the end, these humans wasted some of their profit, by limiting their connections to their own race.

But who was Shane to judge other people's actions?

He decided to stop thinking about it and maybe if he accumulated enough funds he could purchase large stocks of low prices crystals from human shops in order to sell them to other races for a higher price like many more intelligent human merchants did.

There were even other races looking through all kinds of shops searching for items and products that were useless for some races and worth nothing to them in order to purchase them in a large bulk, only to sell them to a different race which was in a dire need of such items to gain a huge profit.

This was smart but one required to have connections to do something like that on a larger scale in addition to a mountain of funds to purchase the goods and even more important time to search for possible shops and items.

Focusing on his main mission, Shane decided to start mining when he pulled back the common quality pickaxe before he swung it down in an arch.

*Clang*

Hearing the sound of his steel pickaxe hitting the crystals, Shane frowned.

He hadn't exerted his full strength but the hole Shane caused by his first swing was ridiculously small.

Pulling out the pickaxe with force, Shane pulled it back once again before he circulated his mana inside the arms and exerted all his strength in his arm, shoulders, and back in order to smash the pickaxe into the elemental crystal in front of him.

*CLANG* seeing cracks spreading on the basic elemental crystal, Shane's smile stiffened as he struggled to pull the pickaxe out of the hole he pierced into the crystal.

'F**K... How will I survive the next hour?!' He asked in his mind as multiple curses left his mouth.

Throughout the whole cave's upper layer one could hear metal hitting on a crystalline surface as thick lumps of elemental crystals were dug out of the large occurrence of elemental crystals.

More than 2 hours already passed and there were slightly less than 31 hours left as Shane massaged his sore arms.