After what felt like forever, they finally killed the two Giant sandworms that had almost taken them by surprise, the group immediately collapsed on the sand as a wave of exhaustion washed over them.
Breaths of relief and panting could be heard from those around Ryan as he felt what the others were experiencing.
"Alright, we might as well retrieve the cores before we move out."
Ryan said as he walked towards one of the bodies of the Giant worms. The other warriors class Rifters in the group nodded at his suggestion as they split up and walked towards each of the death monsters.
While the majority of the resource harvesting process was left to their third unit. It was the job of the Rifters to remove the monster cores from dead monsters themselves else they would be rated by other monsters which could cause a mutation.
A monster mutation within a Rift would cause the danger level of the Rift to increase dramatically. The last time this happened, the main force of one of the largest guilds in the world was completely wiped out.
That was a force compromising of several S-ranked Rifter and tens of A-ranked Rifters. Yet, a mutated Rift had been too much for them to handle.
Hence it had become a priority for Rifters to retrieve the core of the monsters they killed along the way no matter how tedious the task was. This was not the same as plundering the rift for its resources. They also didn't need to increase their weight by carrying the cores around with them.
The most important part was stripping the cores from the corpse of the monsters. After that, they could leave the cores somewhere hidden as the cores themselves, did not attract other monsters, this only happens whenever a core was left inside a monster corpse.
No one truly understood why this was but everyone followed the rules and retrieve the cores before starching them somewhere for the exploration team to find.
As the exploration and elimination teams did not include any porters, they could not afford to carry any extra weight with them. Besides, it was never the exploration team's job to battle monsters in the first place, so this was not something they would usually have to worry about.
After retrieving the two Grade 6 cores from the corpse of the worms. The group spent another 10 minutes resting before getting themselves back into formation and advancing at a much slower pace than before.
The sun was scorching hot and the heat was taxing on their mental state so they needed to conserve their energy in case the monster here roamed around the region at random intervals.
However, they had turned out to be quite lucky this time as they did not encounter any monsters that behaved out of character like those Giant sand worms.
After spending more than 9 hours in their exploration of the desert, they encountered most of the species living here.
The first were the Giant sand worms who lived underneath the sand and were the hardest to locate as they roamed about in the center of the desert. The second was Giant Black Scorpions. They were monsters similar to normal scorpions but much more massive.
Standing almost 3 meter tall and 7 meters long, they were as black as the knight and can be easily spotted from a distance. They roamed about aimlessly in the eastern part of the desert and did not give chase in groups, allowing the exploration team to safely confirm the boundaries of the artery trees.
The third species was a breed of red hyenas called scarlet terrors. They were the most vicious of monsters amongst the three and resided amongst the few hills in the southern part of the desert.
According to the information they had obtained from the union, there should only be three different species of monsters in a Grade 6 Rift, one more than what was contained within a Grade 7 rift. So that meant, they had almost completed their exploration of rift in record time.
In the end, the openess of the desert had work to their advantage as they did not need to search to hard for monsters within this Rift.
Amongst the three species, the most difficult to handle was surely the sand worms whose durability would pose a problem even to their main fighting force.
However, there was something else that worried Ryan the most at the moment. The problem was, even after combing the limits of the entire desert for so long. They were yet to locate the source of the Rift.
As far as they could see, everything around them was nothing but sand, and they had searched as much as they could without entering any of the other monster's territory but found nothing.
At this point, the intense heat in the desert was already getting to most of them and their senses were getting impaled so that might've been contributing to their current failure to locate the source.
Ryan was sure the temperature here was already over 130 degrees Fahrenheit already. He didn't know how much they could take the heat much longer so perhaps he should just call off the rest of this exploration and exited the Rift to prepare for the monster extermination in less than a day.
However, he was hesitant to do such a thing. missing any step of their plans would be quite risky for a larger guild much less them.
Still, if things continued the way they were, they would end up collapsing into the desert and wasting their precious time.
"Hey Guild leader. I think we've run out of water. Should we head back to restock?"
"…"
Hearing that, Ryan knew the choice had been taken away from his hand but he still couldn't bring himself to answer as he felt as though they were missing something extremely crucial to closing this Rift.
However, without any leads to go on, they would just be torturing themselves for nothing. With a sigh of resignation, he activated his skill one last time as he observed their surroundings.
As Ryan surveyed his surroundings with his eagle vision, he was just about to call it quits when a sudden strong wind blew across the desert and almost swept them off their feet.
The other guild members grumbled at the sudden burst but Ryan's expression was stunned as he had just noticed something that wasn't there before.
"Holy shit! Is that?"
Ryan quickly deactivated his ability as he looked toward the direction he had seen from above to make sure his eyes weren't playing tricks on him.
The others hearing him exclaim had gone quiet as they paid attention to his actions and traced his gaze.
"Crap, is that a cave. How the hell didn't we notice that before."
To everyone's surprise, the sandhill they had thought was just a pile of sand in the distance was actually a real hill with a cave whose entrance had been completely obstructed by sand.
However, the sudden gust of wind had blown away a portion of the sand obstructing the entrance and they could all instantly tell that it was a well hidden cave.
"Alright, let's move."
The one who spoke was Val, who had been in a near death state from the heat only a moment ago but was now suddenly energetic as she was probably just desperate to get out of the sun.
Without any objections, the group rapidly approached the cave in their usual formation as Tyler tried to find out if there were any signs of monsters inside the cave.
However, as far as he could tell, there weren't any signs of the monster living in the cave. At least not in the area he could see with his ability.
It didn't take them long to reach the cave and the warriors began to dig the remaining sand away before venturing into uncharted territory. Ryan naturally instructed some of his teammates to guard the entrance as they explored what lies within.
"Wow, this place is larger than I thought."
Val expressed her amazement as she stepped into the cave before everyone else and no one had any doubts about that.
From the outside, this cave didn't look like much but the inside was a different story.
Before them was a dark passageway that was only illuminated by the faintly glowing rocks on the wall. Those were energy stones and were one of the most common resources found inside a rift.
Besides, where there were energy stones, there was usually a monster feeding off the energies. Not to mention, a strong stench had assaulted their noses the moment they had stepped foot inside the cave.
That was a stench like nothing they had ever smelt before. It was the stench of death.
"Crap, don't tell me this place is a—"
Before Ryan could even complete his sentence, the group suddenly heard the sounds of loud footsteps approaching them accompanied by the cracking of bones and metal armors.
In the next moment, their vision adjusted as they all caught a glimpse of hundreds of skeletons creatures marching from one of the tunnels towards them.
Apparently, this cave was the lair of the undead.