Chapter 547 The Hidden Treasure Within the Crystal Caverns

“All of you wait here, I am going after the leader to make sure it does not regroup and come back again.”

After saying this Marcus went into his ghost form and phased through the piles of corpses and barely clinging to life rays. Flying in the direction he had last seen the flying ray matriarch.

Catching up the fleeing rays, he found his target flying along with some of the other stronger of its kin who had managed to survive Quillon’s attack.

Looking at them he could see that they had all taken a bit of damage, as blood trickled down wounds on their backs from the slash Quillon had delivered.

‘Level sixty-one. It certainly is strong, but monsters like these that propagate quickly tend to be weaker individually.’

Floating overhead, Marcus reappeared right above the ray matriarch and slashed down with his scythe as he imbued it with the power of his supreme skill.

Naturally the ray noticed his attack as soon as it had begun due to its own danger sense skill, but it was just too slow and large to dodge Marcus’ surprise attack.

Cutting into its thick skin, Marcus pushed down with all his might and then yanked back with everything he had. Slicing one of the matriarch ray’s wings off.

With one wing now gone the huge flying ray dipped towards the ground and crashed, skidding across the surface for dozens of feet before smashing into a large pillar of crystal..

Immediately the remaining ray’s that were acting as their leader’s guard swarmed towards Marcus to kill him.

‘Death Dance.’

Disappearing in a blur Marcus began spinning around the area and dispatched one ray after the other with his quick and fluid slashes.

They simply stood no chance against him under the effect of his supreme skill and strongest attack skill, especially since they were injured from Quillon’s earlier attack.

Soon, all of the remaining ray’s lay dead except for the matriarch that was clinging on to life.

‘Let me see if you can block this one your own.’

Whipping his hand forward Marcus unleashed a darkness drill that shot towards the huge matriarch ray’s head.

As soon as he did this, she began emitting that high pitched buzzing sound all of the other rays had and Marcus’ spell began to become unstable.

Still, on its own she was unable to completely disrupt Marcus’s magic, and even though it lost around a third of its power it still bored right into her head and ended her life.

Seeing the enemy that had given them so much trouble dead, Marcus smirked and floated over to her.

Quickly he began cutting up the matriarch ray’s corpse and pulled out a vibrant dark green magic core.

Next her removed the tails and cut away a portion of its hide which could be used to make some strong armor in the future.

Once he had finished up here, he returned to his companions and found them all sitting on a raised platform of ice Mrazivý had made in order to avoid being soaked in blood.

Landing back down he looked at all of them and gave a smile, before saying, “I got the rest of the big ones.”

Nodding their heads and thanking him, all of them were happy that they were not going to get another surprise visit from a swarm of flying crystal rays in the future.

“But seriously what were those things? They came out of nowhere and there were so many of them.” Lyra said exasperated by what had just happened.

Of course, none of them really knew what to tell her other than what they had gleamed from their appraisal skills.

“We just got unlucky and ran into a swarm of monsters. I mean we have been traveling for days, so I suppose it was inevitable that we were going to run into something at some point.” James said being the most experienced one here.

He had encountered his fair share of monster nests while out on patrolling with his sky knights, and this was not the first time he had been surrounded by and endless swarm.

“Though we do need to give it up to you Quillon. You really saved us back there with that attack of yours.” Fallon said, giving credit to Quillon who was still panting heavily.

After Fallon’s acknowledgement everyone else thanked Quilon as well, since they would have been in quite the dangerous situation without him.

“Well maybe we are getting close to whatever I was told was down here. It might be that these monsters were guarding an invaluable tressure.” Marcus said, having a sinking feeling that something was nearby.

Normally really powerful monsters made their homes around natural treasures or areas that had elemental crystals growing in them.

These areas were typically full of ambient mana and allowed for a higher rate of growth that monsters and beast were naturally drawn towards.

Sitting around everyone discussed what they should do next, and the answer was unanimous for them to continue exploring deeper into the caverns.

They had been down here for five days now and seen plenty of amazing sights.

If they all decided to leave at the first sign of trouble this would not have been much of an adventure.

After giving themselves a few hours to recuperate, everyone was once again ready to go.

To start things off Mrazivý froze all of the corpses around them using her tier six raging tundra spell a half dozen times.

To follow up, Marcus used his cataclysmic iron sword as a drilled and blasted his way through the frozen remains of the flying rays.

Quickly they dug their ways out of the mounds of corpses and back into open space where Marcus had dispatched the fleeing rays.

“I already gather the best materials off of the higher-level ones, so no need to check on that. Let us keep continuing down this way, and maybe we will find their home.” Marcus said as he saw Lilia approached the rays to carve out their materials.

Of course, they could have collected what was left of the small fires they had killed, but that could have taken weeks for only subpar materials that held little value to any of them.

Moving onward, the walked down heading deeper as the caverns sloped downwards.

They walked continuing down for around thirty minutes, when finally, they saw a bright light ahead that was uncharacteristic for how deep below the surface they were.

At first some of them thought maybe it was a pool of magma, but the quickly realized that was unlikely because the glow was incredibly soft and there was no heat.

Heading towards it, they soon found themselves in an open area that was breathtaking.

All across the ceiling were crystals that gave off light like the sun, and in the middle was a huge lake that was being filled up from above, as a dozen or so waterfalls drained down from the ceiling.

Yet while the natural beauty of this area was impeccable. something else quickly grabbed everyone’s attention as they looked into the middle of the lake where a massive structure stood.

Immediately everyone recognized what it was and stared at the gates that led into a dungeon no one had probably ever entered.