After replacing his Silver Moon Leaf, Herbert once again entered combat against the White-Horned Snake.
This time, he could feel just how much he had improved. It wasn't only his speed that had an obvious change, his strength had also increased immensely. Before becoming a Transcendent, Herbert's normal attacks could not break past the scaly armor that the White-Horned Snake had all over its body. To damage it, he would need to concentrate all of his power and mold it in the shape of an arrow, it was only then would he be able to deal considerable damage.
However, now that he had ranked up, Herbert's normal attacks could make the monster in front of him bleed to death. If one strike was not enough to kill it then he would launch two. If two were not enough then he could slash more! His advantage over speed was clear in their exchange.
The position of the hunter and the prey has now been decided. Herbert no longer let the battle last long, within the next two minutes, Herbert decided to end everything.
When the dust has settled, in front of Herbert was the corpse of the Transcendent White-Horned Snake. To commemorate this event, Herbert decided to personally slice open its forehead to take out what's within it.
Monsters that had the combat power from those ranks 1 to 9 can condense a Monster Core, but when those monsters reach the Transcendent level then their Monster Core would change and evolve into an Awakening Crystal.
Once he had taken out the Awakening Crystal from it, Herbert finally felt the stickiness and unpleasant feeling of being dirty. For a moment there, he shuddered at the thought of being this filthy, but he maintained his dignity and tried to set it aside by not thinking about it.
To distract his mind, he began thinking about the discrepancies that he noticed between this monster and the one that is described in the book. There was something wrong but he did not understand why it was like this. So, he decided to investigate this by diving deep into the cave that the monsters considered their home.
"Clean up the remaining White-Horned Snakes and collect their beast cores. You and you, follow me we're exploring their cave."
After saying this, the two guards followed Herbert as a torch holder. With Herbert's current strength, they all gained a boost in confidence as they were nearly unstoppable at this stage.
Because there were no longer any White-Horned Snakes inside the cave, Herbert and the others quickly made progress. With not a single hurdle along the way, they could explore freely in any direction.
After walking deeper into the cavern, they soon reached a larger space. This time, Herbert could feel that there was something different about this place. The area was far too clean. It was a stark contrast to the earlier area where it had been littered with bones.
From one corner of the cave, Herbert remembered that the original White-Horned Snake that the protagonist had fought had originally benefitted from a fortuitous encounter. But this was something that wasn't explained directly in the story. Instead, the protagonist had simply inferred that whatever it was, it must have been something good as it improved the quality of the bloodline of its descendant which the protagonist later used as a pet.
At the thought of this, Herbert couldn't help but speculate about what kind of treasure it could be.
"Give me that."
He then took over one of the torches from his two guards and commanded them.
"For now, stay here and wait for me."
The two guards could only look at each other before nodding in agreement.
At their level, it was too much to say that they were the ones guarding Herbert, rather, it should be more fitting to say that Herbert was the one that was protecting them.
As he continued forwards, Herbert could finally see signs of something artificial. There were ornaments, statues, and carvings of snakes that had been damaged by time or were destroyed by something unknown.
But upon seeing this, Herbert couldn't help but feel a sense of elation. His thoughts were right. This should be a remnant of the era where humans were nothing but slaves to monsters. At the same time, he also became more cautious. In the book, there were no mentions of this place being spotted by the protagonist.
It only mentioned that the only worthwhile thing that it had found inside the cave was the egg from the White-Horned Snake. In his mind, Herbert wondered if the place had a self-destruct mechanism that could be activated somewhere.
As he continued, Herbert could see a rectangular building with pillars on each side. The style of the building reminded him of ancient Greek architecture back on Earth. As he scanned the building, Herbert slowly understood what it was meant to be used for.
"Is this a mausoleum?"
Even though Herbert did not recognize the carvings or the writings on the wall, he understood that this place was not for comfort. But this only gave him an elated feeling as he could already guess that there was another unexpected gain that he could potentially receive.
"There should be some kind of treasure in here somewhere."
As Herbert continued on his exploration, he then encountered a large hall. This hall had an enormous stone sculpture of a White-Horned Snake. However, this snake did not only have two horns on top of its head. Instead, it had three horns that made it appear similar to the illustrations of the Triceratops dinosaurs back on Earth.
After taking a closer look, Herbert did not see anything that he could take out from the area. However, what caught his eye was the huge altar that was placed directly beneath the stone sculpture.
He didn't know why, but there was something in this stone altar that was attracting him. He couldn't understand it but he could sense that his soul was craving for whatever it was. But since he could not take away the entire altar in front of him, Herbert decided to cut it all into pieces to check and see if there was something inside it.
To test it, Herbert first decided to deal with a normal attack. In a blink of an eye, black feathers materialized in front of Herbert and formed a sword. Herbert knew that using a blunt force would be more suitable for this kind of job, but the characteristics of his abilities couldn't make it possible so he could only make do with a sword for now. With one swing, Herbert wasn't that surprised to find that he had only managed to chip away at the stone altar. After all, for something to last for a long time, the materials used should be extraordinarily durable.
So, after taking a few steps back, Herbert instead decided to make an arrow. If slashing didn't work, then he would try piercing it through. However, since Herbert did not want to damage whatever it was that was inside, he could only try to aim it near the corner and slowly try to remove all of its outer coverings.
After launching a couple of spear-sized arrows at it, Herbert could finally see the thing that has been hidden deep inside this altar.