Chapter 45 - Legendary Ore

Cecil and co. had already spent 5 days in the dungeon and they were very tired from the experience. It wasn't fun at all diving into a dungeon. Lucia for one immediately thought that the cons of dungeon diving outweighed the pros.

All the 3 got was a fatigued mind and body, plus Cecil's incessant complaints. The only positive thing was that they had a pretty decent harvest of monster subjugation proofs, mined a good amount of mana crystals and ores. Unexpectedly, they actually mined the legendary ore, Adamantium in the dungeon.

Silver was the one that found the adamantium when they passed by an inconspicuous area on the 9th floor.

They didn't have any mining tools and Silver communicated to Lucia that it was a rare ore vein since he felt the mana emanating from the vein to be very dense and it held a unique feeling to it.

Cecil had also activated his mana sight and saw the uniqueness of the vein. They had no choice but to mine the ore since it was rare. So Cecil used a very crude method of 'clawing' the ore out of the ground.

When they saw the ore, Lucia was able to identify the small piece of rock as the legendary adamantium to her surprise.

The adamantium was chrome in color with a slight azure tint to it. It was also a very rare ore that boasted 100 times as much magic affinity than the three staple mana ores of Alterna which were violet gold, orichalc.u.m and mithril.

Lucia said that they could turn in the ore to the kingdom or guild and they would be rewarded handsomely for doing so, but after hearing the word 'legendary', Cecil immediately wanted to go ask a blacksmith to smelt the ore into a decent weapon.

However, the ore was only around the size of a tennis ball. Cecil was disappointed since he wouldn't be able to create a sword with the ore, but Lucia thought otherwise.

She remembered hearing from her mother that the elven kingdom, Elfenheim, recently discovered an adamantium ore that was the size of an apple, more or less the size that they possessed, and the kingdom's blacksmiths were actually able to smelt that small piece of adamantium into a whole armory of weapons, enough to equip one of the kingdom's army battalion.

Cecil was immediately psyched to hear that. He then started planning out the array of weapons he wanted to create, as well as a suitable katana for Lucia that could also act as her wand.

He was already teaching her the Silvaria family's martial arts which included swordsmanship, so why the hell not? She could be a magic swordswoman in the future.

Besides, the thought of a fox girl wearing a battle dress or kimono while wielding a katana made Cecil very much excited. He had only seen something like that from the anime he watched during his short breaks in between training.

He wanted to fulfill his small hope of seeing a live 3d version instead of a 2d version of his favorite character from the anime!

The only problem was that they needed to find a trustworthy blacksmith that had enough skill to smelt their adamantium as well as being willing to keep the adamantium itself a secret from the kingdom and from other people.

Since the guild and the kingdom was willing to reward someone handsomely if they turned in adamantium to them, Cecil figured that people who possessed adamantium and didn't turn them in would be wanted because they possessed such a precious ore.

Cecil already had a person in mind, so all that was left was to reach the capital city.

Cecil was thinking and planning out their next course of action while atop Silver who was rushing his way out of the dungeon.

They were still on the 7th floor after 3 hours of travel.

"Don't push yourself too hard Silv." Cecil said.

Silver only responded with a spirited bark. Even after 3 hours of continuous full speed sprinting, he wasn't anywhere out of breath.

"Waaa~fuu~"

Lucia who was seated behind Cecil tightened her hold around his waist. She also started rubbing her face on his back while giggling.

Lucia had already cast a cleaning spell on them before they mounted on Silver 3 hours ago. Her water elemental spells after half a year of constant training was finally on par with her fire elemental spells, although she still prefers to use fire magic while in combat.

Since her water element was proficient enough, Lucia had already started her training on using the earth element.

Feeling Lucia rub her face on his back, Cecil felt a little bit ticklish.

"Hey Lulu... that tickles stop it."

"Ehehehehe~ nooo~"

'I've spoilt her too much,' Cecil thought.

Cecil could only leave her be while he shut his eyes and started concentrating on the mana cores in his eyes.

After 4 months of constant training, Cecil had finally acquired perfect Mana Eyes. The color of his eyes had permanently changed to a golden color after he successfully condensed the mana cores in his eyes.

Even without Lucia's transformation magic, his eyes would still be gold in color. It felt weird for him at first, but he soon got over it.

With his perfect mana eyes, his control over mana had reached the point where it felt like he had an extra limb.

Cecil was now also able to use Mana Burst for as long as his mana allowed. He also constantly kept his mana circulating around his body. This way his body was always empowered 24/7 and it also served as a good method of training.

Although it felt like the mana had become an extra limb to him, how to effectively and efficiently use this 'limb' still eluded Cecil. So he concluded that he could only continue training non-stop to make this 'limb' fully his.

As he was training, he turned his focus on his mana point. The mana at his mana core was finally condensed into a liquid form, but he still felt that he wasn't in the mana sea stage yet.

In actuality, he was already at the mana sea stage, but because of his unique constitution where his mana was distributed all throughout his body, only the mana in his mana point was in a liquid form.

Cecil wanted to turn all of the gaseous mana into liquid state. Only then would he acknowledge himself as finally stepping into the mana sea stage.

Cecil opened his eyes and sighed, he then turned his head to look at the fox girl who was snuggling up to him.

'Lucia had stepped into the man sea stage a month before me... even Silver reached the mana sea stage 2 weeks ago! I can't let myself fall behind!'

Cecil resolved himself to train even harder. He had to catch up to Lucia and Silver no matter what!

"YOOOOSSSSHHHH!!!"

His shout startled both Silver and Lucia who was hugging him from behind.

"W-what's wrong Cel?!"

Thinking that there was an enemy nearby, Silver grounded to a halt and Lucia started looking around the area. She even started chanting a detection spell while still hugging Cecil.

Cecil immediately started to apologizing.

"Sorry, sorry! My bad, I was only motivating myself!"

Lucia sighed and said in exasperation.

"Haaahhh? Come on already... stop being such an idiot, stupid Cel."

"RAWR!"

"Hehe, sorry, sorry!"

After another bark from Silver, the group immediately continued dashing towards the dungeon's exit.