Shane thanked his late mother in his mind while glancing at the Ancient ring of the Susurro with its excessively large spatial storage.
Even though his plan was to earn a lot of funds, it would have been impossible for him to accomplish the [Mythic] mission without his mother's heirloom. The three vacancies of his store were barely enough to store different kinds of elemental crystals in addition to all their qualities.
With that in mind, Shane even reluctantly decided to thank his dad with a short message through the system, even if he didn't really want to.
Nevertheless, Shane said to himself that it was a way to respect his mother and messaged a simple <Thanks for mom's heirloom.> to his dad.
He sent it while running through the forest and not without dangers, but Shane did it on impulse because he knew that he would only hesitate, and in the end, he would find other excuses to not message him.
Looking up the mountainside from the outskirts, Shane saw many caves at higher positions, but there was a small problem.
There were a few flying beasts around the caves and from their looks, Shane thought all of them had a crystalline, elemental mutation or evolution.
From their large size, which Shane could barely assume from the distance, he concluded that these beasts were at least at the elite stage if not at the lower awakened stages.
With this thought in mind, he furrowed his brows as he searched the outskirts of the mountain to find a cavern with weaker beasts.
It was common knowledge that high-graded materials were always protected by stronger beasts, while mortal-grade materials or ingredients were only useful for wild stage beasts and weaker beasts at the elite stage.
Elemental crystals would slowly temper a beast's affinity, increasing its chance to mutate or open a variation evolution path, like Shane had seen higher on the mountainside.
Mankind couldn't be considered knowledgeable about the Primordial Dimensions and variation evolutions were mysterious grounds for tamers that they didn't dare venture into. It was difficult enough to upgrade a beast's quality with their capabilities alone.
Shane had never heard of a human who had opened a variation evolution for a tamed beast, but not everything was made public, so even he wouldn't know for sure.
Maybe there were some beasts with a variation evolution but Shane was unaware of the fact.
Nevertheless, it was more important for him to find a cave at the lower parts of the mountain hopefully with mortal-grade crystals inside. He would be able to procure smaller crystals much easily It was easy for him to fight the Wild stage beasts protecting them in order to temper themselves at the same time.
But Shane still knew he couldn't neglect any possibility, as the threat of the colossus darkness python within the shadow-snake valley was still fresh in his mind.
Shane had only seen the mortal grade Nightshade flowers within the valley but there was a high chance that a mid-awakened beast was lurking within the mountain range. The quantity most likely overshadowed the quality of higher grade treasures, herbs, and materials around.
The same could apply for mortal grade crystals even though it was unlikely because the effect of elemental crystals would only work until a beast strengthened its affinity to a certain degree.
As such, only non-elemental mana crystals would be useful to strengthen higher staged beasts, giving Shane enough confidence to search for caverns with much more motivation than before.
[44H:24M:15S]
More than 3 hours had already passed since Shane had foolishly accepted the [Mythic] mission. The amount of gold he had accumulated was still at [0/1000] because the corpses within his spatial ring had yet to be sold before he would see an increase there.
But these 30 or so corpses within his spatial ring could only be seen as a drop in the ocean. Shane searched more vigorously for a cavern entrance when he suddenly remembered the fiery scaled lizards.
Their elemental affinity could be considered top-notch for wild stage beasts and an idea suddenly struck him as he gave up searching around the mountain outskirts.
Running back to the place where he had killed the fiery scaled lizards, Shane surprisingly spotted a small group of three scaled lizards.
Oddly enough, only two of them were fiery scaled lizards, while another one was an aqueous scaled lizard with a water affinity that attracted his attention.
From the information he had gathered about the RadiantRing shelter, Shane knew that a large number of fiery scaled lizards inhabited the area, relatively close to the mountains.
They were considered the most threatening Wild stage beasts due to their high affinity but Shane hadn't heard about aqueous scaled lizards.
As such it had to be an elemental mutation caused by an environmental change or an extremely high amount of transmuted mana that was absorbed by the aqueous scaled lizard. It had probably ripped it off its fire affinity, slowly transforming it into the transmuted mana's affinity.
Without knowing if it was true, Shane came to the conclusion that there had to be a low-grade elemental crystal cave nearby their nest.
Deciding to wait for them to return to their nest, Shane thought this would be the best way to find a relatively weakly protected cavern.
If the fiery scaled lizards were the most threatening problem within the elemental cave, Shane was confident in eradicating them.
Thinking about this, he rubbed his itchy skin that was slowly healing from the burn caused by the fiery scaled lizards he had previously fought.
Without further ado, Shane crouched down and waited for the scaled lizards to move back to their nest.
Unfortunately, that didn't happen and they kept searching for prey in order to satiate themselves, before they took multiple corpses with them, as they turned around.
These wild stage, scaled lizards were only around 1.5 meters long and 30 centimeters tall. They were relatively short but this didn't mean that their power was essentially weak.
The scaled lizards were multiple ranks higher than Umbra while their length was only around 50% larger than Umbra. Shane knew that Umbra couldn't support him to the fullest.
This discouraged Umbra a lot, turning him into a cultivation freak, as he knew that evolving into a stronger being would make him much more helpful to Shane.
Nevertheless, at the moment Umbra was useless, and not even his shadow needles could be used against late-Wild beasts without aiming at the eyes.
Following the three oblivious scaled lizards with a distance of over 30 meters, Shane could barely see them through the bushes.
Unfortunately, he couldn't inch any closer to them because a single noise would reveal his pursuit which was not something that Shane wanted to happen.
It was almost afternoon when he suddenly lost the scaled lizards, startling him, as he noticed that they descended into a cavern which gleamed faintly in several colors.
After activating his mana gathering technique, Shane could see all kinds of element transmuted mana particles, turning his sour mood into a delighted one within a single second.
There were only [39H:58M:51S] left on his counter, but that didn't matter because the elemental cave in front of him was at the same location as the nest of the scaled lizards.
With a sly smile on his face, Shane took out a certain item he bought previously as he followed the scaled lizards with slow steps.
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