Our exploration of the cave lasted several days, we managed to kill the level three dark rock armor lizards without much difficulty. Not one of them is as 'sick' or 'injured' as the first level three lizard we killed, and from what I could gather, the older the lizards are, the greater the chance they have accumulated a lot of elemental energy. Gray.
Most lizards are not so unlucky that the gray element accumulates in their flesh, most of them have a combination of their armor and flesh points, but only one of them had a fair amount of gray elemental energy in its heart. When I saw the last one I thought he would be pretty weak but he put up a good fight and I even managed to hurt Alice quite well with his tail after being hit by her spear, unfortunately Alice's arm broke which is a big problem for the team.
A fracture like this isn't dangerous to her life if she were in a safe place, but in the wild, a wound like this that without a healer can't fully heal. Even with our healing tools, it boils down to herbs since not one of you won't dare drink low-level healing potions that are within our budget.
It will take a day or two of rest and some well-applied herbs to mend Alice's bone, but even after that she won't be in her best shape. She's going to have to avoid using force on her arm for a few more days, I hope I don't encounter even a strong enemy during our trip through the desert.
But that bad news aside we got a lot of miners during our travels in the middle area of the cave, the amount of ores scattered through the side tunnels of the main tunnel. Unfortunately these side tunnels aren't very safe and Gloria's ability to manipulate earth is not one of her strong points.
She can barely dig for a while and her tunnel is very unstable, but once we had to run away from being buried by earth, but the best way to get ore is by digging in the side tunnels that have a lesser amount of hard rocks. .
For us the main tunnel is so solid that Gloria can use all her strength and elemental energy and she could barely create a depression in the rock wall of the cave, but I'm not so sure that this hardness is simply achieved because of the elemental energy. earth that is in the rocks, I suspect the gray element that flows through the walls.
I suspect this because the dark rocks in the cave have a metallic quality when I cut them with my sword and when I touch them I feel that they look both rocky and mental. It is yes, I believe the gray element with a metallic sheen and the metal element that doesn't exist as I've never heard of it, but the reality has been thrown in my face for a long time.
I suspected that gray energy was the metal element, but I would prefer not to jump to conclusions, but after seeing how it affects the lizards and various cave miners and rocks, I feel comfortable claiming that I discovered the metal element in nature.
I even have a theory why this element is not known or is kept secret. Anyone who discovers it will either try to take advantage of their new knowledge rather than share it with everyone or they too may simply not be able to gather much of that element to use as proof that their findings are indeed a natural element and not the fruit of your experiences or a divine gift.
I also realized why the metal element does not appear in any of the races that inhabit this earth like the other elements, it is toxic to living beings. The lizards that have it inside their body tend to be less healthy, the more metal element they have in their cup, the less healthy it is.
Probably if a large amount of it the lizard would likely die a long and painful death, the effects are very reminiscent of poison death, but I think it's closer to small intense wounds that accumulate in the target's body until they do enough damage for them to start to die, when vitality does not support or the damage done by the elemental is too high for the body to heal the contaminated victim dies.
But this only applies to the flesh of a living being, bones seem to love the metal element to a certain extent, they get tougher, hard sharp, but the downside is that they also get heavier and I haven't tested more yet I think they can be a little weak against electricity.
I don't know how resistant they would be against corrosive elements like the shadow element can be, not too many test bodies for me to use. Most of the bones, claws, and fangs I've collected contain enough element to turn the animal part into a true iron bone.
But since the metal element seems pretty stable inside the beast parts or the materials I got I have no idea how I can concentrate them in one place just to see if I can create something that contains all this elemental energy.
Maybe I'll try to melt the burning minerals and try to cook one of the claws in the metallic mixture. Maybe it works.
On the last day that we were hunting, we finally reached the border of the intermediate area of the cave, in the last few hours there were few beasts, but the amount of minerals was great.
I filled a backpack with only the minerals clearly visible on the walls of the cave, it was as if many stars had been painted in the yellow and blue sky of the cave. Beautiful, but this image is something that only a junkie should be able to see in their life, even after all this time I still find it a little weird to see so many bright colors painting everything.
But facing the dark abyss that the cave tunnel has become in this steep descent that serves as a barrier between the middle and final part or core of the cave. It really scared me.
I may not be afraid of the dark or even the problems we'll face against the worms and lizards down there, but the behavior of the metal element in the walls scares me. The metal element seemed pretty stable before, but now it's like it's alive and pulsing through the holes, the more I look into the tunnel the more elemental energy it has and the more concentrated it becomes.
I don't know what the source of the metal element is here, but I know I won't find it. Doing that and asking to get in even more trouble, in the last dangerous territory I invaded I almost died and a catastrophe was born for the kingdom and an entire mountain was charred by a very angry owl.
I don't want to find out what kind of trouble I'd have going down that tunnel.
"We're not going down, are we?"
"No, Hilda. Even if Alice was okay and the group was in the best condition I wouldn't go down that hole."
"Why?"
"I have a bad feeling, Gloria. Something bad is going to happen with us going down there, every fiber in my body tells me not to go down and when I think logically about the danger we might find down there, I have no doubt that shit will go down if we go down there."
"Ulric is right, remember what happened the last time we entered a dangerous place. I was already ready to risk my life during the test, but facing an enemy that can pulverize us once and a completely different risk, I'd rather not risk going deep into a territory where we can find a very powerful beast like last time ."
"Don't be such a coward, Zephyr, that was just bad luck. We cannot cower in the face of challenges, perhaps the worst enemies we will face there are level two worms and we can deal with them."
Gloria prays very excitedly to want to go down there which is not a good thing, but Alice and Zephyr don't seem to want to scare so Gloria's opinion will be dismissed once again.
"It's not a lack of courage, Gloria, there's no reason for us to go down there. We managed to gather all the materials from the cave and we only need two plants from the desert to take on the way back to complete our missions, and we better leave and not push our luck. We still have to make our way to the training ground, and it would be nice to have a little bit of luck left over to spend on the trip, Gloria."
"Do you think the smugglers will be waiting for us to ambush us?"
"Perhaps, we cannot rule out this possibility as this seems to be their habit. Let's go back to camp and leave in the morning."
"OK."
"Good, I really didn't want to go down there."
"I didn't find anything very useful to use on my equipment, the ore here is good, but not able to improve my equipment much."
"Pure bad luck, let's go and if we are ambushed it will be your bad luck Gloria's fault."
"I hate you, you knew that, Hilda."
"And I adore you too, Gloria."