“What in the world… Wait are those, Runites?”

“Runites?”

Nadine asked the dumbfounded Kylyra In a soft tone as they both stared at the pitch-black underground cavern that had spots of faintly glimmering red lights that were sparsely scattered all over the natural cavern walls.

Taken aback by something inside this cavern, Kylyra didn’t answer Nadine’s question as she unconsciously moved forward and took a step into the cavern.

“Are you sure you should you should be doing that?”

Struck by that question, Kylyra promptly stopped and turned her head around to glance at Nadine who remained standing in her original location.

“Is there something wrong?”

Tilting her head slightly to the left, Nadine spoke again in a puzzling tone. “It’s an unknown cavern. Are you sure you want to explore it alone?”

“What do you mean by that, this whole place is unexplored and equally dangerous. Besides, I’m not alone am I.”

She replied while pointing her left index finger at Nadine and continued.

“Besides, with just the two of us, if something goes wrong I can always just fly us out, you saw my speed didn’t ya. No monster will be able to catch us.”

Nadine almost rolled her eyes at Kylyra’s smug smile but managed to keep the blank expression on her face as she decided to not bother with it anymore. She had already done her best at warning this broad so if she felt it was fine after seeing the interior of this cavern then there was nothing she could do about it but just go along with it.

After all, she had a tool to help her survive in a pinch and if that didn’t work, she could simply just contact her master and he’ll teleport over to save her. She was surely confident in keeping herself alive till then.

Thinking of the time her master had assured her that he would come to save her no matter what, a gentle smile suddenly blossomed on her face. However, Seeing this young girl smile at her, Kylyra assumed she had gotten through to the quiet girl before her.

‘See… she’s still just a kid, I just need to take charge… Damn, I’m getting hungry, who knew taking charge was so difficult. I should compliment Dohel a little when we get back.’

Kylyra then proceeded to walk inside the underground and massive cavern, and for some reason, the floor seemed a little wet but looking up she could see nothing but pitch-black darkness. Her eyes weren’t perfect in the dark so her vision could only travel so far however, she was still able to see the things a few meters around her quiet.

Still, the cavern was too dark to explore it in its entirety so Kylyra had no such thoughts. Rather she was only interested in the red glimmering substance on the cavern’s walls.

She walk in slowly while being quietly trailed by Nadine as she finally saw the gleaming red ruby-like object that was embedded into the walls. It was around the same size as her palm and there were countless numbers of these sparsely scattered in the walls all over the cavern.

“Do you know what this is?”

“Not really, no.”

“I see, no wonder you didn’t react when this place was revealed earlier. Here come take a look.”

“Why? I can see it fine from here.”

“Just do it.”

Nadine’s expression didn’t change as she then approached the red gem as Kylyra had instructed and took a closer look at them. For a moment she saw nothing different but then… Her eyes narrowed the moment she saw it and she couldn’t help but exclaim: “What is this!”

“So you finally understand huh, that was faster than I thought though, I guess beastmen visions are as impressive as they say.”

While Nadine didn’t particularly like that statement. Her attention was currently stuck on the red rocks before her. One would not be able to see it at a glance but upon further inspection, they would be able to see incredibly tiny runes that had been engraved all over the body of the rocks, each completely unique and looked nothing like what she had ever seen before.

“These are Runites. Although they are classified amongst magic metals due to them having similar properties as metals, they are a weird mix between crystals and metals. A sort of metallic crystal if you prefer.”

“Those runes you see there are what we call, Natural essence. They are the results of the absorption of pure natural energy. Although, the type of energy varies greatly depending on the element of the natural essence. Still, if we harvested all the Runites in this place it would be the equivalent of having hundreds of magic crystals.”

Although the energy contained in a single chunk of Runite was abysmal, they were the purest form of magic energy in this world, unlike the wild and chaotic energy of a magic crystal. This simply meant the energy from a Runite ore or crystal, could be absorbed into the body although that wouldn’t do much to improve the man’s body and would be an unbelievable waste of resources.

The metal was also not hard or flexible enough to be used in making items or equipment, rather they could be mixed into materials for wonderous effects so, therefore, Runite was even more valuable than Tritanium as it was considered a magic metal and there was no know mining spot for it here in the Demon continent.

“It will be impossible to extract all these ores by ourselves so let’s just get this one and head back out to inform the others. This is way more valuable than gold and we no longer need to stay in this damned place anymore.”

While saying that, Kylyra walked over to the wall and gently pushed Nadine to the side as she brought out her ax to strike the sides of the Runite ore in order to extract the metallic crystal.

“I wouldn’t do that—”

Realizing what Kylyra was about to do, Nadine tried to stop her but before she could even raise her arm. The girl’s ax had already lightly struck the wall.

Naturally, she had used the least amount of strength possible but the strike had still caused a slight vibration in the walls which would normally not be a problem giving as they had already collapse part of the wall some distance back, however, for some reason, Kylyra instantly regretted her hasty actions.

The vibration gently traveling towards the ceiling and it trembled. What trembled? Why did a strike like that have such a reaction? She could not figure it out. She did not understand why Nadine had tried to stop her nor why she suddenly felt frightened.

In reluctance, she slowly raised her head once more. It was simply to see why the ceiling had trembled and she hope it was just because of some like weak structural integrity. However, unlike the last time, she did not see the absolute darkness there anymore. Rather, she saw something there.

There were countless flashing red lights in the ceiling, all of them being paired together as it felt like they were all pointed at her.

“Please tell me those are all just more Runite.”

“I doubt that, they look like giant bats.”

“You’re kidding right, this is bad, this is really bad.”

“I tried to warn you didn’t I.”

“Wait, what do you mean? Were you able to see something from the beginning?”

“Of course.”

Kylyra’s mind almost went blank at that casual and nonchalant statement even in such a precarious situation. She wanted to yell something at her but fought hard to control herself else they miss their chance to escape.

While the monsters stared at them from high in the ceiling, they hadn’t attacked the pair yet but Kylyra could feel the overwhelming pressure from hundreds of Night Terrors, her mind slowly being evaded by fear.

“We should run.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Fine, what should we do.”

“Huh, I’m not sure either.”

“Why you!”

Fighting to hold back her voice, Kylyra gritted her teeth and slowly started moving along the edge of the wall, trying to avoid the gaze of the monsters.

“You shouldn’t go too far away, I think they’re using some type of ability but my staff can block it so far and if you leave my range, you might get affected.”

“What, say that sooner.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“Why are you so exhausting. Still, we need to get out of here so do what I’m doing.”

“Alright.”

Mimicking Kylyra’s movements, Nadine and her moved ever so closer to the exit which was the collapsed cave wall. However, as they moved, the eyes of countless monsters moved with them and as they got closer and closer to the exit, the bodies of the monsters that had looked like nothing but dangling black cocoons suddenly shifted as a few of them unwrapped their wings from their bodies and as the fell, they suddenly flapped them and like a plane doing a nosedive, they plummet towards the girls.

“Damnit!”

Kylyra exclaimed as she raised her ax to block the charge of the Night Terrors. Her arms feeling the weight of the impact as she barely managed to push the large bat-like monster back. The creature seemed to be shrieking at them but they barely heard it as several more flew down from the ceiling to join in on the attack.

The Night Terror in front of Kylyra charged at her with its lower limbs as it tried to wrestle the ax away from her with its legs. However, Nadine quickly slammed her bo-staff into the monster’s face, sending it tumbling back.

The other Night Terrors did not like that as their eyes glowed further but neither Nadine nor Kylyra seem to be affected by their skill. That seems to unnerve the creatures as they slightly hesitated to attack but the moment the girls tried to move to the exit again, they immediately attacked.

“Shockwave.”

While this would be considered a high tiered spell to many, to those that could use up to the tier 3 of magic, they knew that shockwave was amongst the easiest spells to learn and one did not need any elemental affinity so it could be learned by all types of magic users like mages, sorcerers, wizards, and even witches.

An invisible force slammed most of the Night terrors back and Kylyra swung her ax at the other two who were able to easily avoid her attacks. Although she could fly, she hated fighting flying monsters the most as they would always move around making it harder to land a precise attack unless one was several times faster than them.

Not to mention she could not use flight right now as she needed to stay near Nadine to avoid being influence by the Night Terrors’ fear inducement ability.

However, if they remained as they were now, they could not do much damage to the monsters and more of them would eventually join in. If this continues, they would be overwhelmed and almost literally be trampled to death.

Suddenly—

As Kylyra was just about to swing her large battle-ax wildly with skill, in an attempt to land a devastating blow that may be able to allow them to escape and could also just as easily backfire, leading to their death, a sharp flash of light suddenly went through the bodies of several of the Night Terrors in front of her and their bodies dropped lifelessly to the ground having been cleanly cut to pieces.

“What Jus—”

With her mind and mouth agape, something that sent chills down her back happened. In the depts of the dark cavern was a pair of eyes that had surely not been there before.

They glowed in an eerily green light 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.

“D… D-devil… It’s a devil.”

Suddenly fear-stricken, Kylyra did not hesitate and immediately grabbed Nadine’s hands and activated her skill, Super Flight. She then slammed her ax into the wall behind her as it collapsed, creating a large tremor that vibrated throughout the massive cavern and more eyes flashed in the ceiling as every single Night Terrors in the place were awakened.

However, Kylyra could not care less and immediately flew away like a launched rocket, while also grabbing onto Nadine and pulling her by the arm.