After the fourth wave of magical beasts, I noticed that not only their number was increasing but their strength as well, the more we kill these ugly fur balls their number increases and their strength too, but strangely they do not get bigger but smaller.
During the last one they should be about eight inches shorter but that is not necessarily a good thing as their speed has increased because of their size reduction the only positive point and their physical strength has decreased a bit. Another thing that has hindered our progress is that the time between the waves train has decreased and the magic beasts has come with many different elements, I really have a bad feeling that things will only get worse when we get to the place that these magic beasts are being born.
We managed to cover a good part of the distance without wasting much of our energy the red light on my back was already strong enough to light up the entire forest in front of us and that caused most of the beasts to attack me, but that's not something bad among the three of us I'm the one with the best defensive ability on the move, my double shield of fire and wind is more than enough to stop most elemental attacks from magical beasts and as long as Amael and Vali manage to kill enough of them to that my shields are not overloaded i will be able to maintain our speed of advance.
But in the end, this is not much more necessary because in front of us is a cave that looks more like an almost vertical hole in the forest floor, a cave with a little more than two and a half meters wide and has a new wave of magical beasts rising to the entrance.
This is going to be a tough fight under the tunnels, and it is a shame for them that I don't even have an intention of doing something stupid like going into a pit like this. And to make my life even easier I only saw two beasts with elemental energy from the earth element, most of them and wind, fire, darkness and to a lesser extent the element water.
"Close that hole before more of them come up, Amael!"
A layer of earth began to close off the cave entrance and this irritated many of the magical beasts Vali and I hit with our wind element causing them to retreat into the hole while the cave entrance was blocked.
"Stiffen this barrier well, Amael. She's going to have to hold them for a while."
"Okay, but I won't be able to keep this hole closed forever, and nothing is stopping the creatures from digging another tunnel out of this hole."
"Relax, I have no intention of letting them escape their den alive, I just hope I can kill what's giving life to these things. Vali, help me cut trees, we're going to need a lot of firewood."
"Stiffen all this solo Amael, I don't want to see these companies coming out on the floor. I want them to have a challenging time creating a new tunnel in this aria, it will give us enough time to kill them all."
With Vali's help it did not take long for us to gather a good amount of wood cut into small pieces, I could even ask Amael to fill the tunnels with lava, but he does not have the mana to fill the entire tunnel if this tunnel needs to be very deep to dry. Amael's mana and elemental energy reserves before it is filled with lava. Because of this I will resort to building a large fire at the entrance to the cave.
"Now you must be careful to avoid any accidents, we will start attacking burning wood in the hole and then feed with wood normally when we reach this stage Vali will need to inject a stream of air into the hole and prevent the smoke from coming out. Amael will have to narrow the entrance to still be able to feed the fire and draw the attention of the magical beasts for them to try to pass through the fire, will you understand?"
"OK."
"Is this really going to work?"
"Yes, since these things are born from a living creature like them hands to be able to kill him that way, no matter how strong our enemy is if he needs clean air to breathe, we can suffocate them with smoke. Let's start."
With the fire formed and several logs of burning wood ready to be thrown into the hole, Amael started to create a hole in the center of the cave entrance, when the light entered the cave, we could hear the shrill roars of the magical beasts that ran towards the light.
As the first arm approached the cave entrance a dozen wind blades traveled through the tunnel wounding the magical beasts, and the moment they retreated I started attacking the burning logs inside the hole. It only took Vali twice more to attack the magical beasts before most of the burning logs burst into the hole, which now looked more like an oven than a cave exit.
With Vali occupied with her wind magic to fuel the flames inside the tunnel and keep the smoke from coming out of the tunnel, I went after more fuel for the fire while Amael focused on the floor of this forest aria, looking for any clues that magical beasts have been digging a new tunnel, but in the end it has proven unnecessary.
As I did not see the need to take any chances, I decided that we would spend the night here feeding the fire for a long time so that the cave would be filled with smoke for a long period of time, when night came, I had already cleared a good part of the surrounding forest. from the hole we threw lanes of twenty trees in this fire that lasts several hours and that its intensity is so great that the entire ground in this area is containing a huge amount of heat, the grass on the ground is already showing signs of death from the heat that is piling up on the floor.
With the moon in the sky, we decided to let the fire go out which did not take long, without the wood to feed the fire which was very intense because of the constant air flow that fed it the wood inside the tunnel was completely used up. But before going in there I asked Vali to completely cut off the air entering the cave just to make sure the flames had died out.
I really wasn't too excited to go into the tunnel which must still be extremely hot almost to the point where it hurts our skin just from touching the rock, also the massive amount of soot that must be all over the cave walls, we're going to come out completely black from the tunnel, but unfortunately there is no way to finish the mission without entering it.
I tried several times, I planted that magic tool all over this aria, but its light didn't turn green or get stronger as I walked in a circle. It must have been programmed to be sold inside the tunnel, probably where these monsters' nest is, I doubt the examiners wouldn't force us to exterminate these pesky monsters to finish the test.
After the tunnel became a little more habitable, I lit the light element magic lantern that I bought at the camp market, I thought it could be useful during this camp or even later, the craft of this lantern is high level for a tool so simple and difficult to find a flashlight that it can even be submerged in water without being affected.
Leading the team, I started to get dirty entering the cave, just as I stepped on the ground a huge layer of soot covered my boot, we're going to come out completely covered in soot from this shit tunnel.
As we expected the tunnel was completely deserted and apart from the fire and earth element that run through the tunnel walls, I couldn't see a hint of mana or other elemental energy that I didn't have from the environment, my plan worked out everything that was. alive inside that tunnel is now dead and covered in soot.
The cave was bigger than I expected, we descended several meters before reaching our destination which was completely red because the light from the tool, I carried on my back was so intense that it reflected through the entire cave without even an effort. I don't know if and why we're indoors, but the red light of this magic tool is the strongest we've seen until now.
The cave we arrived at was quite wide, an obviously excavated dome and in the corner of it a pile of dirt, when Vali sent a wave of wind against this dirt it crumbled leaving several large bones behind and another kind of black gelatinous substance. that permeated the ground in that part of the cave.
I have no idea what it would be like to be able to leave that kind of dirt behind and I'm not too excited about harvesting that kind of goo, maybe we should get some of the bigger bones. They must be worth something as they seem quite resistant, what was giving birth to these monsters was quite big, at least he was twice the size of a man of average height.
While Vali collected some bones to avoid touching the black snot, I went to jam the final tool in the center of the room.
We've been waiting a long time for that, but I have to admit that seeing the light turn green only to turn it into golden lit up the tunnel that used to be red and green was actually very beautiful but it didn't last long the golden light went out quickly. The magic tool broke when it released a pulse of energy the only thing that ended up whole of the tool was the gem that released the light before the rest turned to dirt on the floor.
"Well, looks like the mission is over. How about we get out of here before one of the examiners decides to make the test difficult for us, I doubt they all thought it was cool the fact that we avoided fighting whatever that pile of goo and bones was before we died."
That's how the four-star mission ends, with the three of us covered in soot and dirt walking through the forest behind a lake to clean up
.