Chapter 41: Drinking Healing Potions Like Water

This little girl’s class seemed to be something called a Demolisher? She certainly packed quite a punch. Compared to her, the minotaur rogue and the like were utterly outclassed. With her relentless barrage, she cleared out the entrance in an instant. However, from further in, more monsters, alerted by the commotion, quickly surged forward.

“Bloodbath Frenzy!”
The elven berserker shouted, as if filled with a surge of adrenaline, charging in recklessly.

Swish, swish, swish!
The Titan archer was equally unerring: arrow after arrow felled swathes of Redfire Ants. His massive frame allowed him to wield a bow as tall as a person, each shot skewering several ants at once.

At the same time, the others began to act as well, quickly pushing deeper into the mine.

Royong brought up the rear, glancing warily at the thundering explosions, anxious that the little girl might bring the whole mine down around them. He kept a teleportation scroll at the ready, prepared to activate it at any moment.

After advancing for a distance, the group entered a wider chamber. Having cleared out all the Redfire Ants in the vicinity, they paused to catch their breath.

“There are twelve tunnels ahead,” Mira volunteered, taking on the role of guide, mostly for Royong’s sake. “The monsters inside aren’t numerous, scattered about. An ordinary level 8 hero can handle them alone.”

“As always, each person takes a tunnel!” Without waiting for the others to respond, the elven berserker dashed off, selecting a tunnel and launching into his bloody rampage.

Boom, boom, boom!
The Demolisher girl, silent and grim, hefted her cannon and headed into another tunnel. Wherever the firepower swept, nothing survived.

“You’ll be alright?” Mira cast a glance at Royong.

“I’ll manage.” Royong nodded. Though he was level 8, his true strength hadn’t caught up. In spellcasting, he still lagged behind genuine level 8s; his stamina and energy remained closer to level 5. Still, it didn’t hinder his performance.

“That’s good. We’re used to seeing who clears their tunnel fastest, then taking on the remaining four together…”

“Is there a reason for doing it that way?” Royong was puzzled.

“Whoever finishes first has first pick of whatever comes out of the treasure chest,” Mira replied with a conspiratorial smile, winking at him.

“So there really is a treasure chest!” Royong sighed and strode into a tunnel of his own.

Several Redfire Ants lay quietly within, oblivious to his arrival.

“Gentle light, dance upon my blade!”

With a low incantation, Royong’s bracer transformed into a longsword, imbued with wind magic. He dispatched the ants swiftly, the familiar sound of gems clinking as they dropped to the ground.

This was why Royong had held back earlier—he didn’t want to be bogged down by these people, as had happened with those other female teammates before.

Ahem.

This tunnel stretched on for quite a way. The ants were sparsely distributed, but still, every few steps brought another.

For a mage, whether using single-target or area spells, it would be a waste of mana to deal with them. Thus, Royong opted for close combat, cutting his way through one by one.

As he ventured deeper, the sounds of his teammates gradually faded until there was nothing but silence.

When he finally reached the end of his tunnel, having cleared it, Royong was left somewhat fatigued. He began the trek back, uncorking a recovery potion as he walked. He’d stocked up before the prices went up, so supply was no issue.

“I hope I’m not the last one left… I wonder if the others have finished…” Royong hadn’t seen it, but the elven berserker, who’d charged in first, reached the end of his tunnel just as swiftly, despite the Redfire Ants only posing a threat through sheer numbers. As the berserker’s adrenaline faded, exhaustion set in, and he slumped to the ground, catching his breath and slowly recovering.

The Demolisher girl dragged her heavy arsenal down her tunnel, relying on deafening thunder and violent bursts of energy to draw the ants together before obliterating them in one shot. With unyielding firepower, she cleared her tunnel before running out of shells, then paused to rest and wait for her munitions to replenish.

The Elementalist, though a dwarf, differed from ordinary practitioners—he could cast multiple types of elemental magic. Any element he’d studied was at his disposal. As he advanced, boulders tumbled down, especially on sloping ground, where he sent huge rocks rolling, crushing everything in their path. Elsewhere, lightning flashed, or a flurry of razor-sharp wind blades tore through the enemy.

The Titan archer’s gigantic arrows were custom-made, each one suitable for another hero to use as a spear. After firing, he had to retrieve them himself—loosing an arrow, picking it up, and loosing it again, methodical and meticulous—a true man’s man.

Perhaps the least troubled was Mira, the team captain. Her class was Forest Guardian. Though the name differed, it belonged to the same family as the Wild Hunter—both were summoners. One called forth powerful beasts, the other, nature’s tools.

“Thorns, rise!”

With a soft command, a wall of brambles blocked the onrushing Redfire Ants. Though the thorns lacked direct combat power, they were both barbed and poisonous. The sharp spines easily pierced the ants’ shells, and, left alone for a moment, all would succumb.

Thus she advanced, repeating the process whenever she drew near another group of ants. Little effort was required; the mana expended could be recovered during the wait.

In another tunnel, the Ursine Warlock, cloaked and imposing, raised his staff at the approaching ants and intoned, “Freeze!”

Instantly, the Redfire Ants seemed paused, as if someone had hit the stop button. The warlock, expressionless, drew a long knife from his cloak and dispatched them one by one, before surreptitiously stowing the blade away.

The half-mechanical Life Mage, faced with the Redfire Ants, pressed his palms together and chanted, conjuring the image of an Ancient Tree of Life about a meter tall before him. It seemed almost real, roots digging into the soil, lush branches spreading, shedding a gentle light infused with life magic. Any ant touched by the light saw the red glow in its eyes fade to black, turned around, and began attacking the ants behind it, holding them off until it died.

…

When Royong returned to the chamber at the junction of the twelve tunnels, not a soul was in sight. The mine was utterly still; not even the faintest breeze stirred, nor any sound from the others. Feeling a little bored, Royong waited a while, sipped a recovery potion, and, seeing that the remaining four tunnels were untouched, could only shake his head in disbelief.

“So much for how amazing they are…” he muttered before heading into another tunnel to kill more Redfire Ants.

This one ran straight, with a clear line of sight to the end. In the distance, the ants shimmered with a dark red glow.

The entire mine was suffused with an unpleasant odor—its source uncertain. The smell was enough to make Royong queasy, and he didn’t fancy killing the ants one by one. Instead, he pulled a scroll from his storage.

It was a single-use magic scroll, inscribed with a powerful spell.

“Lightning’s Radiance!”

With a shout, Royong unfurled the scroll and activated its array. Instantly, a searing bolt of lightning blazed from one end of the tunnel to the other. In the blink of an eye, every Redfire Ant along the path convulsed, and within a few breaths, the air was thick with the scent of charred flesh.

As the smoke cleared, the Hoarding Spider scuttled out, collecting the dropped gems and occasionally picking up a scroll or two.

Royong didn’t bother to check the damage—he simply turned away and entered the next tunnel. He still had a few of those one-use scrolls left—not many, but enough. This was just a test of their power.

“Not bad,” he mused, draining another recovery potion before raising his sword once more.

“Gentle light, dance upon my blade!”
…

After clearing two more tunnels, Royong sat in the central chamber, waiting for his teammates, surrounded by empty potion bottles.

“I’ve heard there are some secret realms with fruits or rare herbs that can boost stamina and energy directly. If only I didn’t have to drink these tasteless recovery potions all the time…”

To maintain his level 8 mage performance, Royong practically drank recovery potions like water.

“Look what I found!”
At that moment, Mira came striding from one of the tunnels, holding an unusually shaped scroll—another type Royong had never seen before.

“A magic scroll?” he asked.

“This is no ordinary scroll!” Mira declared, sitting down beside him with a hint of pride. “It’s a Gravity spell scroll… Wait, what are all these empty bottles around you?”

“Oh, just regular recovery potions—the kind you can buy at any magic shop,” Royong replied nonchalantly.

Mira was speechless.

He actually drank recovery potions like water?!