Chapter 291 - Cave.

Just like the first trip we took through the desert on our way to the border to attack the smugglers, the magical beasts of the desert are chasing us as if we were the greatest delicacy in the world for them. Maybe they like to eat lizards, but one of these beasts jumped out attacking one of our mounts.

During our one-and-a-half-day trip through the desert thanks to the speed of our mounts that only suffered a few scratches that only marked their skin but were not able to harm the mounts.

On the bright side, we already got some of the desert plants for the desert resource gathering quest and a large number of magic materials from the desert beasts. Their remains are worth a good amount of gold coins, and as we have already killed more than two dozen waves of attack from the magical beasts, Zephyr and Alice's backpack is spinning full of claws, fangs, and the leather strap covering the back. column of the beasts, this is the part of their hide that is most valuable.

But what caught my attention the most was the lack of veracity of beasts and magical animals here, apart from the beasts of the desert we only saw one more beast and magical animal of level two that was not even worth harvesting parts of its body. We don't have that much space to carry all the materials that are in our way.

During the afternoon of the second day in the desert we finally saw a small mountain on the sands of the desert, we finally reached our destination. This is actually an underground cave the part of the mountain that is above the sand is barely ten feet high.

"This is really a beautiful sight."

"It's a chunk of brown rock in my brown sand, where's the beauty in that Gloria?"

"Bite me."

"Can you two try not to fight anymore? I know everyone is pissed off at our current situation, but you're bickering and hurtful comments aren't helping the mood lighten up. Let's go to the cave soon, I hope there's less sand inside."

"Who's getting in trouble and your annoying girlfriend, why don't you keep her on a leash so you don't talk shit to others anymore?"

"Do you want to die of rotten clay?"

"Both of you shut up! We don't have time to waste here, the longer we take the more desert beasts we will face when we leave the desert. These pests must be assembling a new pack to attack us shortly."

With that the group went to the cave, but I still heard Hilda insulting Gloria who even tried to pull Alice into their fight. Hanging out with a group with this kind of problem is really tricky, although I don't think either of them will really attack the other just yet and it's very stressful to put up with their fights.

As we approach the entrance of the cave, I am shocked, I expected this cave to have a large amount of mana and earth element as inside it generated several precious minerals, but under that mana and earth element energy there is a third energy that I never seen before.

It looks like elemental energy, but I don't remember elemental energy traveling in the form of dark or light gray threads. This energy has a glow to its color that causes it to go from light gray to dark and then back to light as it traverses both the mana and earth element of the cave. Very little of that energy compared to the other two, but there's enough to see that it flows like a river through the entire cave.

"Hey sleepy leader, how long are you going to stare at the cave entrance?"

"Now you started Gloria, obviously the leader is looking for the magical beasts that live in the cave. There's no reason for you to get in trouble with him."

"I thought you were on my side Alice."

"I'm not on anyone's side, I just want to get back to camp soon this test should be dangerous, but its dangers have nothing to do with our abilities, but our misfortune to get us into trouble."

"Focus on the cave. There is not even an ambush at the entrance of the cave, let's just enter it and set up camp so we can explore the first part of the cave before dark."

"Okay, but are the beasts nocturnal in the cave?"

"Not the distinction between day and night inside the cave, Alice. When we enter it to get the ores and rocks of the quest, we will be attacked by the magical beasts that are also on our list."

We only spent half an hour to set up camp and let the mounts rest inside the cave. We didn't make the camp very far inside because at the entrance of the cave there is a small elevation of rocks that serves as a windbreak preventing the wind and sand from entering directly and in large quantities into the cave.

This cave is almost like the mouth of a giant deformed magical beast with no eyes and teeth of stone.

"Let's look at the part closest to the cave exit, there should be few magic beasts here. Zephyr take care of the light magic tool and stay in the center of the group; I will lead the team with the other light magic tool."

With Gloria on one side and Hilda on the other I led the team into the cave, it only took a few minutes for us to find two magical beasts that appeared to be sleeping together hidden in one of the walls, but when we got close, they slowly woke up and attacked us. at the terrible speed a beast of the earth element must have.

They were the most common magical beasts in this cave, they were a type of low lizard with an earthen carapace serving as armor over their body and they love to live in caves. They gave them an apt name, dark rock armored lizard.

The two beasts were only level two, their armor hadn't started to have spikes. Gloria and Hilda used the poor magical beasts as targets for their pent-up anger.

Neither one of the two armored lizards lasted long, but as they were being killed, I noticed that inside their body were some threads of glowing gray elemental energy, it was very little energy, but I think it was affecting the lizards in a negative way and in a good way.

When Hilda was dismembering her target, I noticed that the lizard's reaction seemed a little slow to when trying to defend against Hilda's spear, earth element beasts are slow to move but they don't have slow reflexes in reality they have very good reflexes and That's why your defense is so strong.

As not even a body has a perfect defense, magic beasts and just like shield warriors always end up having to practice their defense to be able to mount them quickly against incoming attacks. Beasts do this by relying on their extinct and battle experience, but these two lizards seem a little slow for tier two beasts.

Gloria's victim, who was being crushed to the floor or wall by her brute attacks, ended up lasting longer than her colleague. The main carapace of the lizard that is her beads had a very hard surface and was where two strands of the gray element circled.

But that tougher shell didn't stop her body from being crushed by the brunt of Gloria's blows. Both beasts died without causing any problems for our team.

It's a shame that we can only rescue the cores from them, the only other part worth picking up would be the lizards' shells, but they are very big, heavy and not one of the items on our list. The stone heart that is on the list comes from lizards, but it needs to come from tier three beasts, the tier two stone heart is not worth much.

After harvesting the cores from the magical beasts, I turned to the two warriors who seemed to be in a better mood.

"Did you notice anything wrong or different about these lizards?"

"No, was there something wrong with them?"

"I noticed something wrong with the earthen armor that the lizard I crushed had, its shell was quite hard and broke into large pieces when the layer of rock underneath it broke into the lizard's skin. I don't remember this in the discretion of these beasts in the quest information."

"You didn't find them too slow.

When they both shook their heads in denial in a synchronized manner, but Alice comes forward by sharing her analysis of the lizards' unusual behavior.

"The lizard that Hilda skewered to death is defending itself in a very bad way, Hilda was only using her aura to pierce his body but it seemed like the lizard was not able to keep up with Hilda's spear."

"That's because I'm fast, Alice."

"I disagree, not on your part to be quick. But during this fight his speed was normal to face a tier two beast, but even so the lizard was my slow."

"I didn't notice, but if he's slow what's the problem?"

"His being slow isn't the problem, it's what caused it. Try not to consume anything from the cave, let's see if there's something different further into the cave."

"Do you think there's some toxin in the cave?"

"Perhaps because of this possibility it is good to be well taken care of.

I've continued to lead the team into the cave, but I've been focusing well on watching the gray elemental energy coursing through the cave. I want to see if she tries to get inside the body of anyone on my team.