Chereads / From Elite Monster to Dragon (LitRPG) / Chapter 21 - Chapter 21 Iron Vein

Chapter 21 - Chapter 21 Iron Vein

Kent, who had started looking for his next prey, hesitated whether to put the equipment of the priest and the mage up for sale on the trading post.

Before reaching level 5 and choosing a profession, players have no class unless their talents come with skills.

Players don't have any spell-type skills and can only learn threshold-free physical attack scroll skills like "Leap Chop" from the store.

Selling them now might not fetch a high price. But after thinking for a moment, he decided to sell them directly.

Players generally choose their profession based on their talents, so even if they don't need staff now, players with suitable talents would still buy it in advance.

The reason he collected silver coins was to wait until the players' levels went up a bit, so he could commission players to buy Rare-level resources from NPC shops.

Soon, except for the "Silver Longbow" that Prophet bought on credit, the remaining equipment was all sold. The conscientious trading post did not charge any intermediary fees, so he earned 2250 silver coins in one go. With the money from the loot, he now had a total of 2 gold, 437 silver, and 573 copper, enough to buy at least 40 pieces of Rare-level resources!

"Hiss, hah!" A chilling laughter echoed in the underground space. Not far away, a huge dark purple worm, frightened, drilled out of the ground and fled into the distance.

Where are you running to?! Taste my Savage Charge!

The dark purple worm was much larger than Kent, with a body length of over twenty meters and a diameter of nearly four meters at its thickest. It had no eyes or nose on its head, only a terrifying mouth full of sharp teeth, resembling a meat grinder.

[Race: Iron-eating Worm, Rank: Elite, Level: 19]

[Strength: 15 (16-1) Constitution: 30 (31-1) Spirit: 9 (10-1) Agility: 9 (10-1)]

[Physical Resistance: 158 Magic Resistance: 139]

[Health: 3000/3000 Mana: 450/450 Stamina: 388/400]

[Talent 1: Strong Acidic Stomach (D-level) - Stomach acid with strong corrosiveness can digest Uncommon-level and below ores, increasing resistance and size.]

[Talent 2: Iron-eating Maw (E-level) - Sharp and dense teeth coupled with a meat grinder-like biting muscle, allowing the Iron-eating Worm to chew iron ore, dig tunnels, and increase damage from biting by 20%.]

[Skill: Charge and Bite (D-level) - Consumes 200 mana and 100 stamina, performs a slightly directional charge, simultaneously biting enemies in front, dealing 1895 physical damage to hit enemies, and causing a 1-second immobilization effect if biting an enemy, cooldown of 60 seconds.]

[Evaluation: Although named Iron-eating, the Iron-eating Worm digests impurities in iron ore, and its excrement is highly pure pig iron.]

The Iron-eating Worm's agility was much lower than Kent's. He quickly caught up and rammed into it.

-3976.9!

With a crunch, the Iron-eating Worm burst open on the spot, its dark purple flesh and mucus splattering all over the underground space.

After a battle that further boosted Kent's attributes, the damage from his Savage Charge reached a terrifying 3759 points! Even with the high physical resistance of the Iron-eating Worm, which was comparable to a red-named elite monster, it was killed on the spot.

Kent looked at the mess of flesh and blood on the ground and scratched his head. Fortunately, the criteria for gluttony were quite lenient. It only required him to swallow most of the body to trigger the experience bonus.

Otherwise, it wouldn't have been easy to eat it cleanly this time. He had always avoided eating the dirty parts like the buttocks and intestines of other monsters.

It took him more than ten minutes to devour the visible remains.

[Devouring Rare-level resource "Iron-eating Worm's Body Wall," Physical Resistance +4, Magic Resistance +3.]

[Devouring Rare-level resource "Iron-eating Worm's Maw," Strength +0.2, Physical Resistance +1.]

[Devouring Rare-level resource "Iron-eating Worm's Intestines," Constitution +0.3.]

Kent returned to where the Iron-eating Worm had emerged from the earth and looked down, not knowing what was inside. Since no creatures were threatening him on the lower level, and he had 320 design points saved up for emergencies, he simply drilled in.

After a moment, Kent crawled out again, cursing as he ran to bite a bunch of Nightlight Mushrooms, and then crawled back in.

The tunnel wasn't steep, basically going down at a 45-degree angle. Kent walked for a few hundred meters and reached the end. At the end of the passage was a sealed underground space with a network of tunnels dug out by the Iron-eating Worm.

Kent opened his mouth slightly with the Nightlight Mushroom, used its weak light to explore, and discovered that this was an iron vein!

Just the exposed part of the tunnel wall contained hundreds of cubic meters of iron ore, weighing about a thousand tons.

And a ton of average-quality iron ore had a market price of about 10 silver coins, which meant that there were at least 10 gold coins' worth of iron ore here!

Kent's breathing suddenly became heavy, but he quickly calmed down. It wasn't that he had matured enough to ignore 10 gold coins, but he simply didn't have the means or time to mine it. Ah, having a mine at home might not necessarily be a good thing. Kent sighed and was about to Turn Away.

Suddenly, a lump of dark solid in the corner of the tunnel caught his attention.

Could it be...

[Common-level resource: "Iron-eating Worm's Excrement" is equivalent to very pure pig iron ore, with a market price of 64-70 silver coins per cubic meter.]

Kent's eyes widened, staring at the pile of excrement. Just this pile alone was close to half a cubic meter, which was worth about 30 silver coins. He quickly searched the tunnel and found a total of eight piles of excrement, totaling about 4 cubic meters. He put these eight piles of excrement up for sale on the trading post, priced at 200 silver coins. Both casual players and combat players would be willing to buy this excrement and sell it to NPC for a small profit.

The reason for selling it so cheaply was that if no one bought it by the end of the trading time, the consigned resources would automatically return to the player's backpack.

Kent didn't have a backpack, so it would likely return to his internal space, and if he wanted to take it out, he would have to vomit it out... What's the difference between this and eating shit?

Kent retraced his steps to leave the iron vein, found a rock, and blocked the entrance to the tunnel. He couldn't get the iron ore, and neither could anyone else!

The Iron-eating Worm's excrement wasn't instantly sold, after all, even the rich kids found it hard to earn copper coins, so they were waiting for chance players to hang up Rare-level equipment. It would be a waste of time to earn this small intermediary fee.

What if they missed the equipment?

Kent continued to wander in the network of tunnels underground. He wanted to find a red-named elite monster to get the first kill, but he was unfamiliar with The Chaotic Rock Cave and couldn't find it at all.