Chapter 159: Retrieved (1/2)

Tyler continued his talks with the five dwarves, Ragdek, Hulnyl, Darren, Bernir, and the lazy Gerl that mostly just kept quiet or complained about something. He skillfully slipped in a compliment when needed which help the dwarves to feel completely relaxed around him as they walked.

He asked about the dwarves' families and why they had left them behind but it turns out they the five had little to no family members still left alive. Despite their long beards they claim to all be relatively young, only a 120-year-old Hulnyl said. Right, that makes sense Huh.

If he hadn't spent some time here in the demon continent already he would've surely thought the bunch was joking but considering he was technically over 1,025 years old, he could only chuckle dryly.

With that, Tyler had nothing else he needed to ask the dwarves. Their conversation soon came to a halt for a while as they routinely got ambushed by monsters. Nadine handled most of them by herself with Tyler occasionally having to help.

Their journey through the tunnel soon came to an end as they came to the opening that lead to the underground cavern. The cavern was dark enough that even with Tyler's magic vision, he couldn't seem that far into it but he could sense the entirety of the place and knew there were no longer any monsters within it.

”What in the holy beard is this.”

”The mana density here is quite high.”

”You're right, this place doesn't feel the same as the tunnels. There must've been some valuable metals here.”

”And to think we're only digging just a few meters away from here.”

The dwarves eagerly entered the cavern as they had darkvision and thus, did not need any light to observe the entirety of the room. Or at least as far as the terrain would allow them. However, they had only moved into the carven a little when something immediately caught their eyes.

Deep inside the cavern, there was gleaming red gem-like substance sparsely embedded on the walls of the cave. Their footsteps seized and their bodies trembled. It was easy for Tyler to sense their chaotic emotions as they swelled up in excitement.

Without even waiting for him, all five of them dash madly into the cavern until they got to the end where the closest gem had been embedded.

”I can't believe it, we found something like this.”

”Oi, this is Runite right.”

Their astonishment was short-lived though, as the moment they tried to touch the metal, their body felt stiff as they felt a stiffing amount of killing intent aimed at them. The pressure sent a thrill of fear down from their heads to the sole of their feet.

Like broken puppets, they all turned their heads stiffly in the same direction. In the deepest parts of their cavern where their vision had failed to reach earlier, was a pair of eyes that glared coldly at them in a light devoid of life.

The eyes glowed in an eerily green hue 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 as it walked slowly in their direction.

”D... D-Devil! It's a devil!”

Gerl panicky said as he stumbled back and trip on his leg, falling right on his butt. The other four were also no different as they trembled in fear, clearly unable to move.

”That's enough Zelda.”

As though the creature had heard the voice of its creator, the devil surprisingly stopped at Ty's words and just stared at them as the shadowy aura that surrounded the body slowly faded away, revealing the figure of a beautiful young lady with pale wax-like skin tone, greenish-black hair, and green eyes, clad in a rouges outfit with a hood draped over her head.

The female 'devil' then shifted her gaze from the five and walked away towards Tyler. Ragdek and the others, while still stricken by fear, felt confused at her actions and their gaze followed her until they saw her genuflect before Tyler.

Tyler sighed, perhaps he should have warned the five ahead of time but they had rushed into the cavern before he could even say a word. As such, Zelda had treated them as hostiles as he had instructed her to protect this place until his return.

”Welcome back master. I apologize, I have yet to complete the task you assigned me as there are still a few Runites, I'm yet to mine.”

Tyler could barely see far into the cavern but the gleaming lights of the Runites told him she had more than done enough. From the looks of the wall, more than 90% of the place had already been mined.

”This is good enough, I was a little worried I didn't tell you not to mine all the rocks as I don't want those five to be considered liars by the guilds but it looks like I was able to make it here on time.”

Zelda nodded with the same expression on her face as she brought out a small spatial storage box and handed it to Tyler. This was one of the boxes he had on him and had given to Zelda to store what she mined. He had a lot of these from the scouts in the darknar forest and the red ogre settlement.

He ordered her to rise as he walked into the room and both Nadine and Zelda trailed behind him.

”I supposed I should apologize to you five. As you heard, this is not the first time we came here and we did not find this place by accident.”

While still shaky, Ragdek found the courage to walk forward and speak to Tyler. ”We already knew that much. It took us a while but we finally remembered seeing that miss running through the tunnel a few days ago.”

”Hmm, I see..,”

”So I guess that means we can't have any of the Runite here can we?”

”I'm afraid not. This continent's Hunter and Merchant guilds would be coming here soon and they have to find something or some poor folks will get the blame.”

”That's too bad.”

Tyler could see the devastation hidden behind their faces as he said that. He was just about to make an offer to them when Ragdek spoke again:

”Say Mr. No master Ty, if I remover correctly, you said something earlier about hiring us right?”

”That is correct. The majority of the contents of this cave had already been extracted and are stored in this box. I don't mind handing it to you if it will help you create magic artifacts.”

”You'll give something like that to us. What do you want in return.”

”Nothing.”

”That's...” Ragdek narrowed his eyes and sent Tyler a suspicious gaze which invited a chuckle out of him.