LIGHTNOVELONLINE 59: Metal
Liz's expansion into the world below her territory went surprisingly well after the first attack.
Her main base of operations was established in the first cavern the gravediggers had found and by both expanding it and creating a number of walkways, platforms and other rooms; Liz was able to quickly install herself in the area.
There had been few stone eater attacks since the initial fight where Liz's giants had scared them off - though she did worry that their intelligence was high enough to recognise when they were outmatched. Undead were stationed to attack any worms that did find there way in as the diggers improved conditions in the cavern; and there were little to no problems.
This continued even after Liz began her expansion. She had ordered 4 tunnels to be built that were wide enough for 3 diggers to walk through side-by-side and in order to combat any worms who found their way into attacking the undead, Liz sent a large group of mages with them. Of course Liz hadn't been idle, knowing the mages weren't fast enough to kill the worms she had sent out a request to her guild members, quickly getting a skill she felt she could use:
[Flamethrower (1) (B+): Eject a stream of fire, fueled by the user's mana. Mana drain and flame intensity scale with INT and skill level]
For Liz, getting the [Flamethrower] skill was the same as her skeleton mages getting it thanks to [Voodooist].
For a while she did worry that the fire would not be hot enough to melt through the stone exoskeletons of the stone eaters at lower levels and therefore be useless, but her worries were unfounded. The first worm attacked the eastern group quite soon after the diggers began tunnelling off and the mages were up to protect them; letting out 10 streams of fire directly at the worm - Liz watched through her puppet as the worm released a horrific scream, not in pain, but fear as it immediately returned back into the wall it had come from.
At first she didn't know what had happened, seeing that the worm remained almost entirely unharmed; but as the same thing began to occur, Liz pieced it together. She believed that the mixture of heat and light frightened the stone eaters, forcing them to retreat - likely some kind of evolutionary trait that kept them safe from magma.
Knowing her groups were mostly safe, Liz smiled in her strategy room, planning out how she would proceed. It didn't take long for even more good news to reach her as the northern group discovered something in their path - something they could not move.
"If tha' boys can't move it, then it's prolly not rock or dirt." Ralt had said after Liz had told him about the situation. Looking through her puppet once again there seemed to be a stretch of stone that couldn't be moved by the gravedigger's [Earth Shifting] ability; and Liz felt it had to be metal.
Liz and her guards rushed down the northern tunnel, killing a couple stone eaters on the way, until they finally arrived at the group of diggers and mages.
"Looks metallic alright." Ralt said as he placed his hand on the unmovable part of the wall.
"I can feel mana coming from it too." Eren chimed in with a beaming smile, excited that her master had likely found what she had come looking for.
Finally time to put them to work. Liz thought with a grin, bringing her skeleton miners out to work for the first time. Appearing in the tunnel were a dozen or so skeletons carrying pickaxes and wearing old mining helmets. They stepped forward and began hitting away at the wall, going for a few minutes before a sizable chunk fell off; Liz bent down and picked it up, inspecting it without a second thought.
[Magic Iron Ore (C): Regular metal ore that has absorbed a large amount of mana and become much more receptive to magic]
Liz felt slightly disappointed, but didn't let it show as she placed the ore into her inventory.
"Magic iron is quite good." Eren cheered with a smile, "It's the lowest ranked mana-infused metal, but it's still worth more than any other normal metals. Even if the entire mine is all magic iron there will have to be a lot of it."
Eren was entirely sincere with her words, but Liz still felt disappointed in not having found some kind of amazing treasure.
Before beginning excavation Liz had looked into the types of mana infused metal; magic iron was the most common and basic, it was much more receptive to mana than normal weapons and was what most magic swords were made from. It could also be turned into magic steel which massively improved its durability, with a slight decline in mana receptivity.
After magic iron was mithril. This was the softest mana-infused metal, but had the second highest mana receptivity and was most often used in making staves or wands for magicians. Pure mithril could enhance a spell by more than 500%, making it exceptionally valuable.
The 2nd rarest was adamantite and despite having the lowest mana receptivity it was still much more expensive than mithril. Adamantite absorbed the mana infused into it in order to improve its durability and hardness; it was a hard ore to process as even dragon fire could not always melt it entirely. However, once forged into a weapon the user could then infuse their mana or aura into it in order to empower their attack beyond their limits.
However, the cream of the crop of the mana-infused metals was orichalcum. Not only was it more receptive to mana than mithril, but it was also stronger than adamantite - it was exceptionally rare and cost thousands of gold for a single bar of processed metal.
There were other mana-infused metals that could exceed even orichalcum, but they were even rarer and often limited to certain regions; so, magic iron, mithril, adamantite and orichalcum were considered the most foundational magic metals. Liz had not been so conceited to expect orichalcum, but she had been hoping for mithril. Eventually, she pulled herself from her funk and smiled once again as she remembered the value of magic iron - what's more it was the easiest to process.
"Collect all of this, give priority to the metal blocking the tunnel's progression" Liz ordered, retrieving more miners in order to speed up work. As Liz made her way back to the base she smiled at the rythmic sound of metal hitting metal.
However, her piece did not last long as the rocks in front of her burst out in an explosion and a larger worm than before appeared right in front of her. Not only was it larger, but much shinier, it didn't take Liz's inspection to tell her it was an evolved variant:
[Metal Eater (102) (Monster)]
Gloria jumped in front of Liz, blocking the metal spears that were flooding from the creature's mouth. Gloria had massively improved and so a single swing of her sword could shatter the metal coming and any more that hit her did little to nothing - pushing the goliath of a woman back slightly before she stepped forward with her swing once again.
Beneath her mask, Gloria grinned cruelly as the metal spears slowed and the metal eater began to seem tired. It tried to retreat back into the wall, but before it could Gloria sped forward and grabbed hold of the worm - her hands digging into the metal exoskeleton with ease - and ripped it from the wall into the cavern. Dust and rocks rippled through the opening and Liz was glad that as undead, no one present needed to breathe; through the cloud Liz could hear the worm screaming before it all went silent with a disgusting thud, metal cutting through metal before flesh hit stone.
As the dust settled, Liz saw that Gloria had cut through the metal eater with her sword - finishing the fight quickly as it struggled on the floor. Walking up and using [Dismantle] on the worm, Liz was happy with the results, having received some [Magic Iron], fully processed.
These things are more useful than I thought. Liz smiled as she began to reconsider wiping the worms out.
Despite their increased levels, Liz didn't consider the metal eaters that much of a threat - if she could get through their metal exoskeleton their actual bodies were quite weak and Liz had more than enough ways to get through it.
Soon enough, Liz was finding magic iron in all of her tunnels, but just as metal was popping up so were metal eaters. To Liz's annoyance they were becoming much more common and were much less afraid of the light and heat of fire. Thankfully, Liz was increasing the level of the skill because of how many mages she had actively using it - Liz was just barely managing to push back the metal eaters.
"This place really is infested." Liz sighed as she lost connection to even more of her undead as a pair of metal eaters shattered them before being captured and killed by one of her puppets.
"May I suggest we find their nest, My Lady." Luthor offered. Liz had considered that too, but she couldn't figure out how she would do it; there were simply too many tunnels to search and any undead small enough to run through the tunnels would be destroyed instantly by any stone or metal eater that appeared.
"I'd like to, but I don't have the abilities for that." Liz responded, activating [World Map] to see the full scale of the tunnels she had dug. A 3d map of the tunnels appeared and inspiration hit Liz like a ton of bricks, "Actually. It seems I do."
Liz tuned into the puppet she had left at the manor, making potions and sent it to go hunt for small monsters - or more specifically a large number of the rats that she had seen running through the collapsing few buildings that made up the town of her territory.
Soon enough, Liz had dozens of zombie rats, but she wasn't done there either as she took some paper that Luthor had offered to her and made use of both [World Map] to make maps and [Create Undead] to create the best units for the job. Liz looked at the reduced crowd of zombie rats that were no longer zombies, but [Zombie Scouts]; it took 10 rats per undead, but it was more than worth it.
[Zombie Scout]
[Abilities: {Enhanced Speed}, {Enhanced Connection}, {Enhanced Stealth}]
[General rank estimation: E]
[While incredibly weak, the zombie scout is an excellent unit for gathering information. Small and fast with a stronger connection to their summoner than other basic undead, these soldiers can quickly gather the lay of the land and relay it back to their commander. While not strong, nor the best scouts available to a necromancer, they make excellent padding for a information gathering unit]
[Ingredients: {10 Small Corpses}, {1 Scouting Tool}, {Mana}]
[Reduced Ingredients: {50 Corpses}, {Mana}]
The new zombie scouts were less rat-like than the zombie rats; Liz's scouts stood on their hind legs and were clearly more humanoid, but still smaller than the average goblin. However, it was still clear they were made from rats as their long noses, whiskers and rat-tails gave it away.
"Find the worm nest." Liz commanded simply, causing all the humanoid-rat scouts to scamper off in different directions, heading through the tunnels dug by stone or metal eaters that had attacked, leaving Liz with nothing to do but wait.
She really felt how the scouts' connection to her was stronger; their movements and positions were much more vivid, but never overpowering as she had to desire the information she offered; furthermore, with [World Map] she was quickly able to gather information on the layout of the tunnels dug by the worms. Liz grinned with glee as she came one step closer to conquering the underground - a thought that halted at something she dreaded to learn of.
Deep, deep within the cavern, just barely above a sea of magma and thousands of kilometres below where Liz had set herself up was the very thing Liz was looking for: The worm nest. Pushing her connection with the scout who had discovered the nest allowed Liz to fully see the full scale of the infestation - a mistake she greatly regretted.
Immediately cutting the connection, Liz felt her stomach turn in disgust - despite not actually having one. She had seen people being eaten alive by Ouroboros and the disgusting habits of goblins, but Liz couldn't help but feel disgusted at the sight of the nest.
The cavern was enormous, larger than even her own by 10 times at least and was full to the brim with writhing worms and larvae, a little cesspool of worms being hatched and devoured in an abhorrent display of survival of the fittest. Worst of all was what seemed to be the creature birthing them, a worm that reminded Liz of the ancient tales of a world devouring serpent covered in bile and pustules that burst one after the other into yellowish pus and worms - the sight alone was enough to push Liz's mind, she could hardly go and fight herself.
No, I can't allow such a disgusting creature to be alive. Liz thought, thinking back to the boss monster and immediately getting a warning that she would be forcibly logged out if she did not calm down, the memory alone almost bringing up what little food she had eaten.
"Ralt!" Liz called with a horrible glare, "We have a new target. Star digging down."
With her command the gravediggers began to change trajectory - Liz would do the world a favour and remove the infestation of stone eaters from this cavern.
She would kill the mother, the:
[Monolith of Motherhood (173) (Boss)]
