One of the items Shane had bought before was a [Uncommon] concealment potion with a long-lasting effect of 16 hours that was priced at 7 gold coins.
The potion would completely conceal his mana for the next 16 hours, making it difficult for wild stage beasts to notice him. Once he was noticed, it was likely that Shane would be underestimated due to his abysmally low mana fluctuations.
As such, Shane was confident in himself and he consumed the potion.
With slightly less than 40 hours left, Shane had many things to take care of in order to harvest the elemental crystals that he saw shining brightly in front of him.
Mining them right now would be a death sentence because the sound would attract the attention of the other beasts inhabiting the cave.
Before he could mine, Shane would have to clear the cave as thoroughly as possible.
The size of the cave mattered in this scenario.
If the cave was extremely large, he would only clear the upper layer and start mining while observing everything around him. But if the cave was not that big, he would just clear everything inside out and mine later, before he would contact an Elus merchant of the Elementals race.
There was also the possibility of him being unable to reach a merchant but if that was the case, he would just sell the elemental crystals to other races. There were always potential buyers who required the crystals to help their descendants increase their innate elemental affinity, even if the price would reduce drastically.
It was not like he had to rely on the Elementals race's merchants but they would most likely give him the most profit. They were planning to expand their territory within their stellar system and the Primordial Dimensions and thus they would be one big customer for Shane.
Nevertheless, the amount of elemental and mana crystals Shane could see at the cavern entrance were much more than he could have ever imagined. though, they were not even remotely comparable to the number of the Nightshade flowers.
He could most likely receive 30 silver coins for a fist-sized [common] elemental crystal with basic elements from foreign intelligent races. He thus felt extremely satisfied because the quality mattered more than the quantity in this scenario.
Furthermore, the crystals he saw were roughly the height of a small youth, which would mean, he could receive dozens or even one hundred fist-sized crystals from a single source.
Elemental crystals were high in demand and humanity had only begun their construction of the RadiantRing shelter a month ago. Mankind didn't dare to venture too deep in order to prevent other intelligent races from noticing them.
At least, until their own shelter had the capabilities to defend itself against a beast tide and an invasion of hostile foreign races.
Nevertheless, due to the high demand for elemental crystals, Shane was confident in achieving his [Mythic] mission. His main mission now was to eradicate the scaled lizards.
Estimating that a few elite stage beasts could be within the cave, Shane was glad that he had used up his fund of 20 gold coins in the market.
Descending into the cavern, Shane noticed that the interior was bright because of the crystals and his steps slowed down the deeper he went.
Looking around, he noticed dozens of wide tunnels leading in different directions.
This caused Shane to frown deeply as his previous estimation of the number of beasts lurking within the cave was immediately shaken. He couldn't fathom the number of beasts hiding in each of the tunnels and he shivered at the thought.
Recalculating everything in his mind, Shane predicted the worst-case scenarios with awakened stage beasts habituated areas further down the cave.
As such, he pondered if he should look through the upper layers before he would start his hunt in addition to mining the elemental crystals.
With close to 40 hours left on his [Mythic] mission, Shane had more than enough time to accomplish it if nothing major happened within the cave.
Investigating the highest layer of the crystal cave with careful and slow steps, Shane figured out that 14 wide tunnels and 7 smaller ones were leading further down.
Shane predicted that the wider tunnels would lead him even further than the smaller tunnels. He believed that the larger evolved beasts would venture towards the higher graded elemental crystals which were most likely within the cave's deeper layers. With this in mind, he roughly sketched the cave's layout in his mind.
Nevertheless, this information was only useful for Shane in order to figure out how powerful the beasts that stepped through the different tunnels would be.
This was important in order to prepare for any kind of possible scenario.
His plan, however, was pretty simple.
First, he had to clear the first cavern room and its surroundings from all kinds of threats before starting to mine the elemental crystals at the cavern entrance.
After that, he would contact a few Elus merchants to negotiate the best prices.
After selling his mined elemental crystals, Shane could use a part of his fortune to protect himself with miscellaneous items or accumulate a small fortune.
Nevertheless, to do that, he had to eradicate all the threats first.
While venturing through the cave's upper layer he went through multiple rooms and saw many scaled lizards. Most of them were late Wild stage Fiery scaled lizards.
But other than that, there were also quite a few aqueous scaled lizards in addition to breezy and earthy scaled lizards as basic elemental mutated scaled lizards.
Around the whole cavern's upper layer, Shane could see small mana crystals. Basic elemental crystals consisted of wind, water, fire, and earth.
Intermediate crystals could contain the elements such as magma, metal, ice, and thunder. The most advanced and exceptionally rare elemental crystals were darkness, light, nature, spatial, and even blood elemental crystals.
There were many additional elements like poison, shadow, holy and other variations.
Their price was irregular and Shane only knew that holy and shadow elemental crystals were as valuable as advanced elemental crystals while the holy elemental crystal could be sold for even more.
Looking at the basic elemental and Mana crystals all around him, Shane smiled as he drew out his shiolite dagger. He then crouched down to sneak up to a small group of 5 fiery scaled lizards that were completely unaware of the imminent threat advancing towards them.
Knowing that at least several dozen late-Wild stage scaled beasts were within the upper layer, Shane looked at the time he had left to accomplish the [Mythic] mission. He was beginning to feel the pressure weighing down on him.
[37H:17M:54S]
Sneaking up to the five fiery scaled lizards, he adopted the stealth of a cat. His mana circulated within his body slowly, calming him down with an additional layer to his passive [Hunter's mind].
When Shane was about to cross the distance of 15 meters the oblivious fiery scaled lizards twitched slightly and all of them turned around to look at the intruder.
After noticing Shane with his weak mana fluctuations they didn't hesitate to spew out fireballs instead of flames, throwing them towards him, who was taken by surprise.
'Are they super sensitive? And why do they throw fireballs now instead of spewing flames like before?` Shane lamented as he jumped to the side to evade the attack. He rolled a bit and got on his feet without wasting any time.
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