91 Meeting the Mountain Lizardmen Tribe

With the trio's attention firmly placed on him, Kirou spoke up, \"My method isn't anything special, but I don't think anyone will be able to pull it off without a pet similar to Asura here.\" As Kirou said this, he ran his hand through Asura's fur, causing the badger mole cub to nuzzle its head on Kirou.

The girls looked at the affectionate action between Kirou and Asura and couldn't help inwardly squealing at the scene. Reya was the one who got over it first as she spoke up, \"What do you mean by needing a similar pet to Asura? Are you talking about its race specifically or something else, Mr. Wolf?\"

Kirou directed Asura to a few mineral resource points before continuing, \"While I'm sure you could probably find other badger moles with the skill initially, I don't think you'll be lucky enough to get the skill needed on the first try from them since monsters tend to lose a few skills when they are tamed. Instead, I'm talking about creatures attuned with either metal or earth attributes.\"

At those words, all three looked at Kirou in a bit of confusion. While they were aware that all monsters, regardless of whether they could use magic or not, were attuned to at least one element of nature, they had no idea how this would enable a pet being able to find mineral resource points. This was further compounded by the fact that these women had no idea how Kirou had obtained a pet in the first place when this should have been an ability locked to both the archer and summoner classes.

Seeing their confusion, Kirou chuckled before speaking, \"Let's get this out of the way. First off, I am playing as a Weapon Master. My class makes it so that I am unable to learn skills the normal way like all of you can with your class instructors. That being said, this also allows me to learn basically everything, so long as I discover how on my own. The archer class pet system just so happens to be one of those things.\"

The girls nodded in understanding at such an explanation. While Navi and Reya already knew this from previous interaction with Kirou, that doesn't stop Kirou from proving this point once more with his strange actions. With this being Small Pebble's first time seeing the strangeness of the Weapon Master class, she was looking at Kirou with stars in her eyes and was filled with anticipation to learn more.

Having caught the women up on this, Kirou continued, \"As for how I got the pet system unlocked, that is a discussion for another day. Moving on, for all creatures that you do manage to tame, not only will they have to start back from level one, they will also lose access to a few of the skills they possessed while in the wild. My theory on that is that the system is giving you the chance to raise your pet however you want. You can raise it in a similar fashion to its wild counterpart or raise one unique to you.\"

Once again, the girls nodded in understanding to Kirou's theory. While none of them had a pet of their own, they could see the logic behind his words. Kirou continued on his lecture, \"Now, my reason for saying that one should aim for a creature with either a metal or earth affinity is that these creatures usually have either a -control skill or a -sense skill with them. I mainly care for the -sense skill but it should be possible to train the -sense skill if all they have is the -control one. I lucked out and obtained both with Asura.\"

All three women looked at Asura with a passionate expression, prompting the badger mole cub to stop harvesting the ores and turn to face the three women. It had a confused but wary expression on its face. Seeing their actions prompted Kirou to make a few fake coughs, attracting their attention back to him. Now free of those gazes, Asura went back to harvesting ores on its own.

Kirou continued, \"In any case, the important skills that you need from those creatures are for earth attribute monsters and for metal attribute monsters. With those skills, they'll be able to sense the location of an item to you within a limited range. allows you to notice the presence of any metal, be it processed or not within a set radius of the being while allows you to sense everything within the earth within your surroundings within a set range, according to Asura's skill description.\" After Kirou said this, he went over to one of the crystal veins and started admiring it, leaving the girls to digest the information that he had just shared with them.

While the girls were still lost in thought, digesting the info, Kirou gave them another bit of info, \"What I did was have my pet understand the characteristics of the unprocessed ore itself. Since it is metal, I never planned on having it look for areas with such materials directly. Instead, I had it look for areas where there was a lack of earth at certain points within a set area. This cave apparently fit that condition and it led us here.\"

The girls went quiet for a few moments as they went over the information Kirou had just shared with them. As a dwarf and a person that's done both blacksmithing and mining herself, Small Pebble understood the information provided by Kirou much faster than Navi and Reya. After a few minutes, she was looking at Kirou with a flash of enlightenment within her eyes. As for Navi and Reya, they eventually figured it out, albeit on a surface level.

Instead of focusing more on the topic from one direction, Navi decided to look at it from another angle. While dissecting the information, she noticed an anomaly and immediately spoke up on it, \"Hey, Kirou. you said that it's best to find a pet with either earth or metal attribute that possesses a -sense skill, right?\"

Without even turning his head, Kirou responded, \"That's correct. Did you figure something out?\"

This caught both Reya and Small Pebble's attention as they both started to focus on Navi as she spoke, \"Since that is the case, how would you know about metal attribute monsters?\"

Kirou hid a sly smile as he turned around, \"Hoo? What do you mean, Navi?\"

\"I can understand you know about the earth attribute monsters and because of your pet badger mole over there, but how would you know about metal attribute monsters? As Navi said this, she stared at Kirou with narrowed eyes. \"Knowing you, you wouldn't willingly tame two monsters that can do the same thing, even if the first one was weaker than the next. So how do you know about and its restrictions?\"

To that, both Reya and Small Pebble stared at Kirou with narrowed eyes as well, wondering how Kirou came by this information. As for Kirou, he responded in a casual manner, as if the words he's about to say was common news, \"That's quite simple, really. I have the skill personally and I used it as a reference with Asura's traits to explain.\"

While the words were said in a casual and relaxed manner, they went off like peels of thunder within the minds of the three women. While Kirou went back to staring at the crystal vein with a cheeky grin on his face, the women behind him all slumped to the floor in defeat. This was especially so for Navi and Reya. At the moment, they had no idea how they should describe the man before them. His rate of progress while he was on his own has left them speechless.

As for Small Pebble, she collapsed for a different reason. Right now, her mind was going over the various applications that a skill such as would have when applied to a craftsman like her that dealt with various metals on a daily basis. She had to admit, she was currently eyeing Kirou with eyes as green as emerald at the moment with how jealous she was. Sadly, she could only release a depressed sigh as she got up and went to work on a few of those mineral resource points herself.

Both Navi and Reya saw this but could say nothing to Small Pebble as they too felt defeated by the strange beast before them with such a great pet. They too got up and started their own harvesting work. While they lacked the mining ability to harvest rare minerals and minerals above average quality from these resource points, that didn't stop them from being able to harvest materials from the resource points at all.

Like that, the trio went to work quietly while Kirou finished examining the crystal vein before him. It was glowing a deep color of red, signifying that it might possibly be a ruby vein. Kirou wasn't an expert or even an avid fan of the jewelry field so he had no idea what the crystal before him truly was. At best, he only thought it was ruby was because it reminded him of a few of those uncut crystals he previously transported during his younger days on the Grand Desolate Continent.

Kirou eventually took out his from his inventory and went to work, mining those ruby-like crystals. He was curious about what he could make with those crystals. After mining a sizeable amount for himself, Kirou left the vein alone before moving on to the other veins in the cavern. Like that, the quartet and badger mole cub spent the next twenty or so minutes to completely harvest dry all the mineral resource points and mineral veins in the underground cavern.

By the end of it, Kirou turned towards the ladies before asking, \"Do you three wanna head back now or are you up for heading a bit deeper into the underground cave system? We've got a bit over an hour left so we can't head too far either, so what do you say?\"

The ladies went silent for a moment in contemplation. While they were tempted to head deeper into the cave system in search of more materials, they knew they had to get back to the group in time to have Kirou harvest materials from that large snake.

While the ladies were lost in thought, both Kirou and Asura instantly turned towards the direction of the cave that led deeper into the underground cave system. A few seconds later, the ladies felt a tremor as they too now turned towards that direction and what they saw caused them to instantly take out their weapons.

What appeared before the quartet was a group of reptilian creatures. These reptiles were humanoid and possessed weapons ranging from swords to spears. Each reptile humanoid stood at two to two and a half meters tall. Looking at the creatures, Kirou was intrigued as he saw their names.

NPC Name: Draco Blade

NPC Class: Mountain Lizardmen Tribe Warrior

NPC Level: 26

Affinity: Neutral

NPC Name: Draco Wing

NPC Class: Mountain Lizardmen Tribe Archer

NPC Level: 24

Affinity: Neutral

NPC Name: Draco Pine

NPC Class: Mountain Lizardmen Tribe Spearman

NPC Level: 23

Affinity: Neutral

NPC Name:...

Kirou looked at the group of humanoid reptiles now identified as lizardmen. He silently told the women to lower their weapons as he saw the group of lizardmen stop ten meters away from the quartet. The group was speaking in a language that none of the players understood but Kirou had a suspicion that they were there for the cavern his group had just left.

As if to prove his point, the one known as Draco Blade came forward from the group of lizardmen and spoke in the common language spoken by all races in Immortal Era.

\"Outsiders... Have you just returned from the Great Cave?\"