Chapter 267 Gravenovarish's Weapons {Minecrawlers} [VII]
"What's going on?" Pagan shouted from the back of the group, annoyed that he had to be so far away from Lucius, and impatient because he had expected to have killed something by now.
~What the hell was that?~ Lucius thought to himself, ignoring the questioning gazes that surrounded him. The original content can be pinpointed to n0v3lbin•
~Was that a Morrentor?~ he wondered, trying to rationalize the immense energy signal he had just sensed. Sadly though, he was acquainted with earth sense well enough to know that the owner of this energy signal was a sentient being and not some beast.
~It's more powerful than the necromancer... or at least the version of the necromancer I fought back in the last war,~ he realized.
Sure, if he put all his cards on the table -counting Belladona and using kumulipo to its full sadistic potential- he was probably slightly stronger, but what really worried him was that the creature was emitting this much energy at base level.
Usually, there was a huge discrepancy between the energy readings someone gave off when they weren't in battle and when they were. For instance, even Eiknyr wasn't this powerful before they had engaged in battle.
To make matters worse, there was the fact that his earth sense may not have accurately measured its energy readings since it was still so far away. This mission was starting to look more and more dangerous.
However, Lucius already knew the consequences of shying away from dangerous situations. Enemies only grew stronger, and if he wasn't willing to put things on the line every now and then, they would surpass him at an exponential level.
"No, we're moving on. We'll just avoid the pathways that creature is in," he announced, before explaining the situation to the others.
~Well, that would've been too easy, wouldn't it,~ Lucius thought to himself, before venturing on.
The deeper in they walked, the more prevalent the ember rocks became. At one point he used the crystal chunk they had extracted earlier to test which was harder -the crystal won, though just barely.
So, using the crystal chunk, he began hacking away at one of the ember ores, extracting several large pieces.
Realizing that his sack would be too small to store it all, he Elmando to morph the tunic he was wearing into a knapsack, in which he stored the minerals he had extracted.
As they explored deeper within the tunnels, the earth walls were beginning to showcase patches of crystalline material. It was the same sort that the crystal pillars were made from, though here they seemed to be growing more like fungal mould -laterally along the earth instead of upward.
Once they had gotten deeper, they found that most of the tunnel walls had become completely infected by this crystal growth, giving the illusion that the earth around them was made from glowing glass -as the crystals had absorbed the light being emitted by the light runes.
It was a magnificent sight, to say the least, like walking under an aquarium tunnel, only instead of aquatic life, the shimmering kaleidoscope internals of the crystals were the ones on display.
"Hold," Lucius whispered, gesturing towards a fork in the path up ahead. There were three possible paths they could choose from, and only two of them seemed to have creatures in them.
"Are we taking the empty one?" Ghost asked, standing only a few steps behind Lucius. Even though he had ordered her to take rest, based on her positioning and stance, he could tell that she would join a fight as soon as it broke out.
"No, we'll take this one," Lucius replied, gesturing towards one of the populated paths.
Ghost turned to him in confusion, not understanding the reasoning behind his decision.