With the new day the sun doesn't shine in the sky, the sand storm is really big and doesn't want to go away. The entire region around the cave is under the onslaught of a fierce sandstorm, the sunlight is almost completely blocked.
"All ready, today we are going to explore the middle sand of the cave, various level three and level two beasts. Remember that the shell of level three lizards has sharp spines, the more spines the stronger the lizard is."
"And keep an eye out for anything weird or natural features on the walls, ceiling and floor of the cave, we have to harvest a good number of ore from this cave."
Using the same formation as yesterday we entered the cave again killing the lizards and I was hoping to get more claws or fangs from the lizards with the gray element.
But my luck is not so good, the contaminated lizards had the gray elemental energy that is usually found in the flesh or skin of the lizard and the meat is useless while the skin is too big to carry too much of them when we already have to carry too many materials to complete the missions.
Also, the elemental energy is a bit too dispersed in the leather or armor of the lizards, only when they are concentrated in small places like claws and fangs that it should be easy to see the influence of this elemental energy, in large parts and basically impossible to see the influence of the energy gray elementary.
The first hours of exploration were no different from yesterday, besides getting some metallic nuggets from one of the walls, unfortunately none of them had the gray elemental energy in it which I found quite strange. This gray elemental energy shouldn't be in the materials generated from the cave, like these three metallic nuggets, but inside them only mana and a little elemental energy of the earth element.
When we left the initial part of the cave and I didn't notice almost any difference in the cave, the mana and earth element in the cave are denser and the amount is slightly higher, but the gray elemental energy remains the same, flowing through the cave I found that it would also increase its density or the number of streams of it flowing through the cave would have its number increased, but it remained the same as before nothing new.
Only a few meters after exiting the initial part of the cave did the first level four lizard appear and its mana and elemental energy was very strong as well as its cup also contained a large number of gray threads, they only spread over the entire body of this lizard.
A roar announcing our new enemy's intentions, he came to battle.
"Caution! I feel a lot of mana and elemental energy in the body of this level three magic beast, it must be very close to level four, keep an eye on the spikes in his cup."
A formation would be set up with Gloria in the front with her flanks protected by Hilda and Alice. I stayed behind them along with Zephyr who was only preparing his support magic to increase the power of the front line.
With heavy steps the lizard reveals itself before the light of the magic tools roaring to intimidate us. What's wrong with him?
In front of us is actually a level three lizard and its carapace has several spikes, but it is about the same height as a level two lizard in its cups and only slightly wider in a bad way.
You can see that this lizard is not healthy, the spine covered by the armor of a lizard in dark rock armor has a concave shape, but the one in front of us is very flat. What if your body tried to increase size but failed because the lizard is sick? Perhaps without food or energy?
The muscles in the joints that are between the lizard's body and limbs, which are areas with little defense, are strangely thin for a lizard of its size, if his physique gets a little worse, he'll perhaps be in these running skins right.
The sight of this lizard is truly shocking. And adding his charge that is as fast as the lizards and level two we faced earlier, shows how difficult this fight is going to be.
"Gloria don't try too hard to block them! Aim at members with little protection from him!"
The lizard's charge was stopped when the thorn in its head that looked like a sharp horn hit Gloria's shield, shattering and pushing her nearly two meters back. Okay, this beast is not ok, but its brute strength is still and the strength of a level three beast, but sharp thorn in its forehead is kind of fragile.
Two wind-covered spears slashed through the joints of the lizard's forelegs, cutting through the thin stone armor that had covered that part of the lizard's cup. The spears didn't rip the lizard cave deep because their blows lost much of their strength breaking through the thin armor that contained a few wisps of gray elemental energy.
But the wounds were deep enough to cause the magical beast's body to bleed, normally the lizard would attack whoever it was able to hurt, but instead it charged towards Gloria's shield.
After the headbutt, the lizard bit into Gloria's shield, breaking through most of the earth element that was covering it. He really doesn't like Gloria, I was going to attack the magic beast, but I decided to lean my body against Gloria's back.
As the lizard kept pushing her, I decided to help by resting my glass on Gloria's to keep her from backing away any further. With my help Gloria's shield was propelled backwards, but now we were able to resist the bulging of the lizard's body.
Hilda and Alice continued attacking the same point and on the fourth attack the lizard fell to the ground roaring in agony from having its front limbs cut off. It lasted longer than I expected, it felt like he was dying of old age especially when you add the strange attitude of insisting on the same ineffective attack.
"What's wrong with this lizard?!"
"Is your shield, okay? He really didn't like you, Gloria."
"Very funny, Alice. My shield is fine, but now it has some tooth marks on it. Damn lizard, and it really is expensive to fix my shield."
"Was the lizard that killed me really able to bite your shield?"
"It's a level three Zephyr beast, you didn't really see Gloria being pushed by it. His brute strength comes from the weight of his cup and the mana concentrated in his muscles, it doesn't matter if it looks like he's dying and he's strangely slow the brute strength of him and a level three magic beast without a shadow of a doubt."
"Hey Ulric. I thought you said it was a powerful magic beast coming earlier and you said to be careful because the magic beasts here are weird, I thought they would be stronger and not weaker, what's going on?"
"If I knew what was going on I would tell you what was going on. I look like someone who studies magical beasts or takes care of them, I just noticed that there was something wrong with the magical beasts,"
"Do you want to study her?"
"Even if I opened it, I wouldn't know what to look for, but we're still going to open it up to get its heart of stone and its core. If I remember correctly, we need seven hearts intact for one of the requirements of the quest to gather materials in the cave, so try not to crush the torso of the magical beasts, those hearts are worth a lot."
"Can we keep how many of him?"
"About two dozen. We still have to take several miners out of the cave."
"We better go."
As I ripped out the core and opened the dead lizard's chest carefully to get its heart, I took my time to see the gray elemental energy inside the lizard's cup that had stopped flowing.
With the lizard dead both the mana and elemental energy in the lizard's body stop flowing, allowing me to see where the gray energy is concentrated.
Inside our last victim, the gray energy focuses primarily on the lizard's flesh rather than its claws or armor. The little bit in your teeth I think I'll take them.
It seems that the gray elemental energy is not so compatible with the lizard's flesh, when I cut to get to its heart, I passed a part that had a good amount of gray elemental energy, but the meat there was not tougher, it felt less healthy.
It wasn't soft but it looked a little 'hurt', if it was worse, I'd say the lizard was recovering from a fight and this spot was bruised and didn't fully recover.
"What did you find there, Ulric?"
"No big deal, looks like this lizard was recovering from a fight. Near his heart were marks as if he were recovering and a wound."
"So, he was weak because he fought a little while ago, but not even a poisonous magic beast living in this cave or this entire desert. For him to look weak like he was he must be fighting a poison, be careful with his flesh."
"You're wrong Alice, look here."
Zephyr took out a small, green crystal that had a point of light in the center, he brought the crystal closer to the dead lizard but there was no change in the crystal.
"This is a poison crystal, if it had any magic beast venom. warrior or mage the point of green light on the crystal would be moving. Not the poison element energy here."
"This is useful."
"Is expensive. I've seen one of these crystals before, they are rare and expensive because any potent poison has to have elemental energy to strengthen that crystal and one of the most effective ways to protect yourself, even red core warriors or greater would try to have more than one crystal of those."
"So, it's not poison."
"At the end of the day it doesn't change the fact that we have to kill more level three lizards and harvest minerals in the cave."
So, we continue our slow descent through the cave killing everything that looks alive in front of us.