New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Chapter 986  An Idea TO Bring Back The Whole Haul

"I think if we can strike at the wall right here," he said, pointing to a spot between some crystals, "We can break through. It feels hollow on the other side, so there might be a split tunnel there."

Alex looked at him with narrowing eyes.

"Did your dwarven instincts tell you that?"

Winston shrugged, unsure what made him so certain about his deduction, either.

"Then I'll trust your word for it," Alex said, walking to the spot Winston had pointed at.

"Right here?" he asked, double-checking, to which Winston simply nodded.

Bringing his arm back, Alexander changed his fist into his demonic body's fist, which could barely be perceived under the dim lighting, and punched at the wall with ferocity.

A deafening boom echoed through the tunnel, as dust and gravel were kicked in every direction, forcing everyone to cover their faces from the flying debris.

But, just as the boy had said, the wall crumbled, and behind it appeared a small cave, in which many more of these white crystals glistened in the firelight now shining on them.

Whispers of awe at the sight of such beauty echoed in the tunnel, and Alex grinned wide.

"What a haul!" he exclaimed, turning to look at Winston.

"Nice catch, man. What about the other side?" he asked, pointing to the opposite tunnel wall.

Winston shook his head no.

"I can't sense the same thing on that side. I think that one is just a plain wall. Maybe there are crystals inside the bedrock, but I can't tell for sure. We would have to dig."

Alex's grin changed into a disappointed frown.

"I guess we can only be so lucky, right? Anyway. Let's get as many crystals as we can in here," Alex declared, looking back into the treasure trove of a cavern.

The small cavern was about thirty feet deep, by forty feet wide, with the ceiling raising up to twenty-five feet, with an oval-like shape. But the crystals lined every wall as if they had just cracked open a room-sized geode.

David looked at him and chuckled.

"How are we supposed to harvest all that and carry it with us, dumbass?" he asked mockingly.

Alex looked at him, about to respond with his own abrasive comment, but realized David had a point.

His brows furrowed, and he looked at the room.

"Right… I hadn't thought about that. Gimme a moment," he said, walking to the side to think.

He sat on one of the larger pieces of fallen stone and started thinking to himself, humming and sighing.

Kary giggled at his focused face and turned to the others.

"While he figures that out, we can start plucking out the crystals that aren't too hard to get. I doubt we'll be able to harvest the entire room, but the more we get, the better," she said, heading inside the newly found cavern.

The others followed her, and they slowly started plucking out crystals that were loosely attached to the walls, some requiring more wiggling than others, until they had a nice pile at the center of the room.

With hundreds of crystals, varying in size from finger size to banana size, the pile rose three feet off the ground with a two-foot diameter, making it quite the hefty harvest. Sadly, they couldn't find any other crystal that they could harvest without proper mining equipment, and their harvest ended there.

All in all, they had spent a little over half an hour in that little cave, during which, Alex had been outside of it, thinking about a way to get all this sweet loot back.

'We can't carry all of this, and we don't have access to a game-like inventory. Our bags will be too heavy to fight if we all split this between us, and it'll only make everything more exhausting,' he mused.

He thought and thought, trying to figure out if they could build a makeshift cart, which they could push to the end, but it brought about other issues.

With little to no material to make the cart, they would have to construct it out of stone using Rì-Chū's magic, and that would both waste mana and make it extremely heavy. It brought him back to the same thought of how they would be unnecessarily exhausting themselves.

"If only there was an exit to this stupid dungeon aside from the end. We could carry some of it outside, at least until we finish it. If only dungeons weren't freakin' teleporters," he mumbled to himself.

But as he had this thought, he realized something.

'Wait… I have a teleporter of my own,' he realized, his eyes going wide.

Reaching inside his mind, he manifested inside his soul space, interrupting a loud conversation between Paimon and Asmodeus.

"Why would you get to spend more time near the soul than us?!" Paimon howled at the tall demon.

"Because I require more power to stay in peak condition than you, vixen!" Asmodeus seethed back.

"Hah! Who cares about your peak condition, you talking portal gate?!" the succubus mocked, making Asmodeus' black skin take a darker tone.

"What did you call me, you lesser slut?!" he growled, his hands lighting up with black flames.

"Alright, knock it off, you two!" Alex interrupted them.

"Master!" Paimon immediately cooed.

She ran at him, trying to lunge into an embrace, but with a snap of his fingers, Asmodeus made her reappear where she started, making her lunge into the ground.

She growled at the tall demon, who smirked at her before looking at their host.

"What can we do for you today, Master Astaroth?" the demon asked, playing the deference card.

"Don't mock my intelligence, demon. I know you still hate me. Plus, my name is Alexander, not Astaroth. Astaroth is my game name. We are not inside New Eden." Alex spat back, giving him a stern look.

Asmodeus's eyebrow twitched, but he kept a smiling face, if somewhat less sincere.

"Still. There must be a reason for you to come here in the flesh, so to speak. You could have talked to us mentally, but you came here directly. What is it you want to ask of us?" Asmodeus asked.

Alexander grinned, walking up to him directly.

"Not us. Just you. I need to know something about your powers, and I don't have time for riddles and playing games."

"Huh?"