Chapter 159: Retrieved

Tyler continued his talks with the five dwarves, Ragdek, Hulnyl, Darren, Bernir, and the lazy Gerl that mostly just kept quiet or complained about something. He skillfully slipped in a compliment when needed which help the dwarves to feel completely relaxed around him as they walked.

He asked about the dwarves' families and why they had left them behind but it turns out they the five had little to no family members still left alive. Despite their long beards they claim to all be relatively young, only a 120-year-old Hulnyl said. Right, that makes sense Huh.

If he hadn't spent some time here in the demon continent already he would've surely thought the bunch was joking but considering he was technically over 1,025 years old, he could only chuckle dryly.

With that, Tyler had nothing else he needed to ask the dwarves. Their conversation soon came to a halt for a while as they routinely got ambushed by monsters. Nadine handled most of them by herself with Tyler occasionally having to help.

Their journey through the tunnel soon came to an end as they came to the opening that lead to the underground cavern. The cavern was dark enough that even with Tyler's magic vision, he couldn't seem that far into it but he could sense the entirety of the place and knew there were no longer any monsters within it.

"What in the holy beard is this."

"The mana density here is quite high."

"You're right, this place doesn't feel the same as the tunnels. There must've been some valuable metals here."

"And to think we're only digging just a few meters away from here."

The dwarves eagerly entered the cavern as they had darkvision and thus, did not need any light to observe the entirety of the room. Or at least as far as the terrain would allow them. However, they had only moved into the carven a little when something immediately caught their eyes.

Deep inside the cavern, there was gleaming red gem-like substance sparsely embedded on the walls of the cave. Their footsteps seized and their bodies trembled. It was easy for Tyler to sense their chaotic emotions as they swelled up in excitement.

Without even waiting for him, all five of them dash madly into the cavern until they got to the end where the closest gem had been embedded. 

"I can't believe it, we found something like this."

"Oi, this is Runite right."

Their astonishment was short-lived though, as the moment they tried to touch the metal, their body felt stiff as they felt a stiffing amount of killing intent aimed at them. The pressure sent a thrill of fear down from their heads to the sole of their feet.

Like broken puppets, they all turned their heads stiffly in the same direction. In the deepest parts of their cavern where their vision had failed to reach earlier, was a pair of eyes that glared coldly at them in a light devoid of life.

The eyes glowed in an eerily green hue and a thick aura that felt like death itself had arrived oozed from them. A vaguely humanoid but shadowy figure suddenly moved and naturally, the eyes moved with them as it walked slowly in their direction.

"D... D-Devil! It's a devil!"

Gerl panicky said as he stumbled back and trip on his leg, falling right on his butt. The other four were also no different as they trembled in fear, clearly unable to move.

"That's enough Zelda."

As though the creature had heard the voice of its creator, the devil surprisingly stopped at Ty's words and just stared at them as the shadowy aura that surrounded the body slowly faded away, revealing the figure of a beautiful young lady with pale wax-like skin tone, greenish-black hair, and green eyes, clad in a rouges outfit with a hood draped over her head.

The female 'devil' then shifted her gaze from the five and walked away towards Tyler. Ragdek and the others, while still stricken by fear, felt confused at her actions and their gaze followed her until they saw her genuflect before Tyler.

Tyler sighed, perhaps he should have warned the five ahead of time but they had rushed into the cavern before he could even say a word. As such, Zelda had treated them as hostiles as he had instructed her to protect this place until his return.

"Welcome back master. I apologize, I have yet to complete the task you assigned me as there are still a few Runites, I'm yet to mine."

Tyler could barely see far into the cavern but the gleaming lights of the Runites told him she had more than done enough. From the looks of the wall, more than 90% of the place had already been mined. 

"This is good enough, I was a little worried I didn't tell you not to mine all the rocks as I don't want those five to be considered liars by the guilds but it looks like I was able to make it here on time."

Zelda nodded with the same expression on her face as she brought out a small spatial storage box and handed it to Tyler. This was one of the boxes he had on him and had given to Zelda to store what she mined. He had a lot of these from the scouts in the darknar forest and the red ogre settlement.

He ordered her to rise as he walked into the room and both Nadine and Zelda trailed behind him. 

"I supposed I should apologize to you five. As you heard, this is not the first time we came here and we did not find this place by accident."

While still shaky, Ragdek found the courage to walk forward and speak to Tyler. "We already knew that much. It took us a while but we finally remembered seeing that miss running through the tunnel a few days ago."

"Hmm, I see..,"

"So I guess that means we can't have any of the Runite here can we?"

"I'm afraid not. This continent's Hunter and Merchant guilds would be coming here soon and they have to find something or some poor folks will get the blame."

"That's too bad."

Tyler could see the devastation hidden behind their faces as he said that. He was just about to make an offer to them when Ragdek spoke again:

"Say Mr. No master Ty, if I remover correctly, you said something earlier about hiring us right?"

"That is correct. The majority of the contents of this cave had already been extracted and are stored in this box. I don't mind handing it to you if it will help you create magic artifacts."

"You'll give something like that to us. What do you want in return."

"Nothing."

"That's..." Ragdek narrowed his eyes and sent Tyler a suspicious gaze which invited a chuckle out of him.

"Indeed that's a lie. But there is nothing you can give me right now. However, I will require your services in various projects, and when you do discover the secrets to artifacts in the future, and hope you won't reject me. Also, you can only sell the magic artifacts you're able to make to me. Of course, I'll pay generously for all your wares and even sponsor your research."

The five dwarves all stared at Tyler in disbelief. Their eyes widened and their mouth agape. This was obviously quite a lucrative deal to make and they could not find any downside to it. Still—

"Mr. Ty, you're most definitely not an ordinary demon, are you? Please tell us who you are. Are you a Noble? Or perhaps the so-called behemoth we've heard rumors about."

"Noble? Behemoth? Does it matter?"

"Well, perhaps not but I had to ask since we will be in your care from now on."

"Uh, my care?"

As though on cue and as if they had practiced it beforehand, all five dwarves dropped to a knee before Tyler and Ragdek spoke first.

"There is no way anyone that can summon and control a devil of that magnitude would be beneath us or even our equal. We all have one goal and that is to do what we love no matter where we are and if you're offering that —"

"That was not my— besides she's not a dev—" Tyler tried to explain something but was immediately cut off by a resounding shout.

"We dwarves of the dwarven kingdom hereby proclaim by our heritage, that as long as you adhere by your words, and grant us the means to do what we love, we will serve you for the rest of our lives!"

They spoke simultaneously and in perfect unison as though they had practiced this beforehand and their eyes seemed to glow faintly in an orange hue.

'Oh shit.'

Tyler was speechless. 

He did not have any intentions of making them serve him or anything like that. His original goal was for them to return to the human continent and show him the way there while occasionally visiting them to see their progress and assigning them a task or two.

However, that didn't seem possible again as he could tell that they had just used an oath skill similar to the demon's pact. 'I guess most races have their own version Huh.' He sighed internally as he massaged his temple and saw Nadine smiling and nodding her head with immerse satisfaction written all over her face as though she was very proud of the dwarves for some reason.

Zelda didn't have any reaction to this which made Tyler give in to their will and just accept this. He sighed and spoke.

"I'll accept your servitude. Since we're done here, we should leave before it's too late." 

There was no way the group the city had tasked with the job would make it here in such a short a mouth of time but they had scouts that could probably get here much faster to do some light investigations and Tyler did not want to be caught unaware.

He turned around to leave when he suddenly had a nasty idea.

"Hmm..."

"Something wrong?"

"Well, the Hunters coming here are expecting to see a devil and they had probably prepared for extensively so it's not a good idea to let them waste all that effort is it."

"What do you mean?"

Tyler didn't answer the inquisitive Ragdek and just reached into the void and pulled out a scroll. This was one of the summoning scrolls he had obtained in the library because he had originally thought he would need protection and in case of emergencies. However, he hadn't gotten a chance to use it and this was a perfect time.

Tye scroll was a grayish black parchment that oozed ethereal energy as though it wasn't real and would fall apart if not handled properly. However, the energy that surrounded the scroll told everyone that this was a high-level summoning scroll, although monsters summoned with this would not be able to remain in this plane for long.

However, as long as he used some mana, the monsters summoned with a scroll would remain in this plane for at least a week and that was more than enough time to do what he wanted to.

"Summon monster - Dark Wraith" Tier 6

A large magic circle the size of a bus appeared on the ground and from within it, eerie winds that chilled the bones blew in like a raging storm as a shadowy four-armed monster rose from the circle with glowing green eyes and an illusionary shadow body.

The monster reminded him of when Zelda was engulfed in her shadow cloak only way larger but still, this was perfect. An evil grin appeared on Tyler's face as he ordered the monster to go and wait at the end of the room and kill anyone that enters this cavern.

Hopefully, those five didn't come back with them. If they did it would mean their greed had gotten the best of them.

Thinking that Tyler turned back around and took out a few Runites from the small spatial storage box and handed the box to Ragdek as promised. He would run some experiments of his own later. He then placed the Runites inside his spatial storage ring and was about to leave the cavern with the others who were all walking ahead of him when suddenly—

He felt a sudden migraine kick in as he vaguely heard something.

{Notice: The conditions have been met, this one will now begin its evolution.}

{Notice: This one has now obtained all the materials required for evolution.}

{Essence of 300 intermediate beast - obtained}

{Energy from 200 intermediate cores - obtained}

{Energy from 3 Advance cores (Magic crystals) - obtained}

{Energy from 1 Lord class core. (Magic crystal) - obtained}

{2000 ouch of any magic metals - obtained}

{Notice: Monarch authority required for evolution.}