Chapter 121 – Rare and Shiny

“Hm…”

Roland glanced at the inside of the strangely lit-up room. In it, he spotted a ruby variant of the volcanic salamander as well as some other monsters.

“How many enemies?”

Robert asked while getting ready for some monster slaying.

“There are six… I saw two of those Skolopendra crawlers around…”

Roland explained to his impromptu party. His detection device showed six monsters hiding in the open cavern. He took a peek outside to see the closest monster nearby. To his surprise, it was a rare variant of the volcanic salamander. The rest were creepy insect types that were even crawling on the ceiling.

“Sir Robert… can you be the vanguard?”

Roland asked while Robert nodded without even complaining. He feared that he would have a repeat of what happened during the bandit attack all those years ago. This wasn’t the first noble lady and her knight that he was teaming up with. Robert didn’t seem overprotective of Lady Lucille, it seemed that he had some trust in her magical abilities.

“I’ll be right behind you then… and Lady Lucille give us some ranged support if you can.”

“Leave it to me, Sir Wayland!”

“Stay safe Lady Lucille, if something happens just run!”

Robert turned to the ice mage, the woman just nodded while also replying.

“Don’t worry Sir Robert, I’ll be fine, Sir Wayland’s tamed beast will protect me.”

Agni moved his snout up high, it was as if he was saying ‘Leave it up to me’. This Ruby Wolf was the weakest member of the party but he could at least stall some of the monsters. This could give Lucille precious time to finish an incantation and land a finishing blow.

The plan was to use ranged attacks, Robert was the only person who lacked those capabilities. He was tasked to keep the monsters from getting past him while Roland and Lucille pelted them with spells.

“Everyone ready?”

Lucille and Robert nodded at Roland’s question and they entered the strangely lit cavern. It was of moderate size with about a hundred meters in length with fifty in width. The ceiling was quite high, over ten meters.

The layout was also quite peculiar as there were many glowing gemstones everywhere. Even before entering Roland and Lucille could feel the mana concentration spike. The light was coming from these crystals that hang down from the ceiling like stalactites.

There were small holes in the walls with enough size for the centipede and slug-like monsters to crawl from. Along with them, there was also one pool of lava in the middle, probably through which the ruby salamander came through.

“Mana, source of all power heed my call…”

The battle started with Lucille beginning her incantation. She was quite speedy with her words, much faster than Roland ever was when he was still training his magecraft. Even with that, Roland only needed to raise his magical rod to produce a burst of cold energy.

This was a spell called icicle rain. It created many small sharp icicles that would fly in a burst of cold air in a wide area. These creatures would all lose some of their bodily functions when exposed to freezing temperatures. The best way to do this was with an area of effect spell.

The open cavern had a small lava pool in the middle which would make this process more difficult. It was also closed off from most sides and the area was limited, which gave this strategy some validity.

Roland kept spraying cold air and icicles in all directions while Robert guarded him. Lady Lucille managed to finish her incantation, the spell she used sprayed cold energy along with snow in all directions.

“Cone of cold!”

The monsters that were here were a bit slow to react as the party of adventurers was not aiming at them directly. The red Skolopendra crawlers started wiggling around as they felt the shift in temperature. By instinct, they started to back away from the source of this cold energy.

Two slug-like creatures that were hanging on some of the stalactites started compressing into themselves while falling down. The Ruby Salamander reacted as well but instead of attacking it started retreating away towards the nearby lava pool.

“No, you don’t!”

Roland quickly reacted by sending an ice arrow towards the fleeing monster. It could not escape them, it was far too valuable and needed to be stopped before it could flee.

The ice arrow connected with the creature’s leg, it went right through those red gems while freezing the entire leg in place. Roland’s high intelligence stat, paired with his high-grade rune weapons was not something that a creature of this level could hope to resist.

The Ruby Salamander gave out a maddened shout while turning its head towards the person that injured it. It opened its mouth wide, soon a wide range flaming attack was produced and headed right towards its attacker.

This was the moment that Robert was waiting for. With his shield forward he jumped between Roland and the salamander’s flame breath. The runic shield that was given to him produced a blue light.

The blue light began glowing brighter before expanding outwardly into a frozen block of ice. This block of ice took the form of the kite shield with which the flame breath collided with. The runic shield kept radiating cold which successfully doused the flames without letting any heat past.

Roland used this chance to take aim once more, this time blasting the Ruby salamander with more freezing arrows. The monster’s body was soon covered in icicles and it stopped moving altogether.

‘Knowing magic sure is handy…’’

He looked around the now frosted over cavern. The other insect monsters weren’t looking so great after he and Lucille lowered the temperature in this room. He could even see Robert shivering from the cold.

The rest of the battle was quite uneventful as they went around and finished the paralyzed monsters off.

“Think that was all of them… let me check.”

Before pulling out his detection device he took some time to look around. It didn’t seem that there were any more hidden enemies around now and that was soon confirmed with the help of his magical item.

Thanks to the pool of lava in the middle the ice began to quickly melt. Even with that, it would take some time, and thanks to this the party of three and a pup could cool down.

“What is this place?”

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Lucille commented after stepping into the cavern. Robert was quick to come over in fear of any monsters popping up.

“The mana in here is strange… those crystals… are they?”

“Elokin’s Crystals?”

Both Roland and Lucille could feel that large quantities of mana radiating from some of the glowing gems in this cavern. They seemed to be crystallized forms of the mana fluid used to power magical items. There were quite a few of them in this cavern and would probably be worth a lot of gold.

Roland leaned down to grasp one of these crystals. They looked like blue gems but were much softer. When applying too much force they would break easily and even turn to liquid when used as fuel after a while. From what Roland knew, the harder the crystal the more mana could be stored in it.

‘I could probably stick one of these into a golem… wonder how long it would last…’

Golems just like any other magical item required a power source. This would be either something like Elokin’s Fluid or a magician using their own mana. Roland was trying to develop his own batteries that would use his old world knowledge but this would work just as well.

This wasn’t all there was to this cave, after some of the frost had melted he spotted some other strange-looking rocks. One of them was quite red and had some metallic luster to it.

“Could this be…”

He spoke out without noticing which brought the attention of his two noble companions. They saw him taking out his runesmithing hammer along with a chisel.

“Did you find something Sir. Wayland?”

Lucille asked but didn’t get much of an answer as Roland was busy hammering a spot in the ground. After a moment they saw him pulling out some kind of reddish rock.

“What is that Sir. Wayland?”

“Oh… excuse me…”

Roland was finally able to snap out of his trance. He was somewhat shocked that he managed to find something like this here.

“If I’m not mistaken, this is Red Mithril…”

“Red Mithril?”