Chapter 58: Conquest

Shane felt already weak without much energy left and now they wanted to tell him that the elemental crystal cave he was about to venture deeper in, was going to be demolished by some roars?

Wasn't that a bad joke?! But Shane had a much bigger problem for the moment. The two roars he heard seemed to come from a powerful lizard and another beast from a different race Shane presumed to be a powerful wolf.

He wasn't exactly sure about what kind of beasts or what their ranks were but the roars alone could tell him that they were nothing Shane could handle and he was definitely glad to be on the upper layers.

Right now his spatial ring was once again filled with elemental crystals and there seemed to be slightly more than 1600 of them.

Shane felt distracted by the two powerful beings that continued to voice out their roars and shook the cave violently, but in addition to [Hunter's Mind], Shane forced himself to calm down as he send the 8 parcels with his 1600 elemental crystals towards the Elus merchant.

Estimating the average price range of the elemental crystal parcels to be between 28 and 35 gold coins, the [Mythic] mission progression bar would break into the last segment with less than 100 gold required.

With slightly less than 19 hours left, Shane was confident in dealing with the last step of his mission but somehow his curiosity about the two hostile races deeper in the cave dragged him closer to the tunnels.

Are they fighting? If that's the case, why exactly are they fighting against each other within the cave? Is it a territorial fight to claim the rights of this cave or is there something more behind?

But more importantly, was a question that formed into Shane's mind.

'Is there more than one entrance to the cave and how large does this cave have to be for two powerful existences within the basic Primordial Dimensions to fight against each other?'

The ground below him shook, loosening some stones and crystal which fell from the ceiling as Shane looked around carefully.

But before he could leave the safety of the cave's highest layer in order to satisfy his curiosity, Shane had to ensure that his mission would be accomplished without any problem.

Gulping down the liquid of a few aqueous scales, Shane noticed that the effect lessened by a noticeable degree.

In the end, his stingy heart overwhelmed his other senses and he disregarded the opportunity to purchase vitality potions for the moment and had to be satisfied with the aqueous scale liquid.

A whole hour full of uncertainty passed and a consistent number of wild stage lizards rushed out of the tunnels in order to flee from the elemental crystal cave which astonished Shane greatly.

Fortunately, they didn't mind his concealed existence due to the distinct fear spread within them, otherwise, Shane would be in a thought situation.

Once he farmed 600 elemental crystals, Shane immediately sent them to the Elus merchant, before he took a glance at his finances and mission progression.

While his finances reached a whopping height of 856 gold coins, the progression bar reached [912/1000] and the last three parcels he sent out had to be enough for now.

If there were a few gold coins amiss, Shane would just sell a few magic crystals he mined or corpses from the scaled lizards he hunted.

Even though Shane felt exhausted beyond his limit, he was still curious about what kind of beast was trying to annex the territory of habitant lizards here.

With around 18 hours left, Shane took a glance down at the widest tunnel, before he docked a few items at his bell to feel more secure.

Before Shane went outside the DeepMountain shelter, he purchased a few goods, which included an empty grenade with a terrifying stench skunk dissolved scent gland within, in addition to a few smoke grenades and prismarine-luminous crystals.

In the worst-case situation, Shane was still confident in being able to flee, even if he would reek in a disgusting stench for a few days once again.

And it was only because he bought these items, that he was confident in venturing down towards the direction where the terrifying existences most likely fought against each other.

Shane never saw a territorial fight and felt excitest about what could happen, as he noticed something far ahead of him at the second-highest cavern layer.

Immediately below the highest layer, Shane mined the mana and elemental crystals for the last several hours, where hundreds of wild stage scaled lizards in addition to their stronger brethren, which were most likely their evolutions

At the second layer, Shen saw a few dozen elite stage scaled lizards with a height of almost one meter in addition to a length of more than four meters, shocking him.

Due to his recently widened knowledge about evolutions, he knew there were multiple evolution paths from all kinds of qualities.

However, from the number of large-scaled lizards in front of him, Shane could only conclude that this evolution path was the one provided at the common quality, which was shocking.

The scaled lizards' length increased by more than four meters while their height almost tripled and Shane looked at Umbra with doubts.

`What should I do with Umbra if his size increases like that?` Until now he didn't really waste any time thinking about Umbra's possible size after he evolved but remembering that he was able to evolve into a colossus darkness python, his face darkened.

`Ugh…` He was unsure what to think or do about that, but he had to figure out a way later.

Now, he had more important things to do and Shane not only noticed wild and elite stage lizards at this cave's layer but also purple furred wolf packs charging out of the tunnel, pouncing at the scaled lizards, turning the second layer into a battlefield.

Only from the purple furred wolf packs Shane saw, he estimated their strength to be at the peak wild stage at the worst, while they had more than a dozen more elite stage wolves.

This caused the scaled lizards to be at a numerical disadvantage for each stage, but this did not mean they were innately at a disadvantage.

They were not physically stronger and fewer in number, but there was something in particular, they excelled in... their strengthened elemental affinity!

Shooting out lightning strikes, the purple furred wolves seemed to have a weak lightning affinity and were able to shock the scaled lizards for a short moment, before devastating meter long wind blades, thick spiked earth walls, fireballs, and water jets shot towards the purple furred wolves.

From the looks of it, even though the wolves' side was numerical and from their rank at an advantage, it looked like the elemental affinity of beasts took in a huge role to calculate the combat prowess of beasts.

This was the first thing Shane noticed and the lightning strikes seemed to be able to barely shatter the large wind blades and water jets, while the wild stage elemental attacks were destroyed rather easily.

Nevertheless, the lightning strikes weren't able to hit many scaled lizards and the only thing the weakened lightning strikes could do was paralyze their opponent for a quarter of a second.

Hundreds of purple furred wolves charged at the scaled lizards in front of them with their high speed, evading earth spikes, fireballs, and other elemental attacks with minute movements, if possible, as they finally entered the closer proximity of their enemies in order to fight with their physical strength instead of elemental attacks.

Shane was shocked to see the battlefield in front of him and he made him wonder which group would win the small skirmish, as the ground shook more violently once again, indicating that the lower layer battles were even more devastating.