Zalroth, and the others, arrived back at the crossroad and looked down the two other tunnels that contain the other two mana cores.

"Given there aren't any other monsters close by I think we should split up to speed things up," Zalroth recommended. Sophia and the others agreed.

"Ok, I'll go down the fourth tunnel while you three go down the first and to be safe don't touch the mana core with your bare hands; Sophia, if anything happens, contact me," Zalroth instructed. The trio nodded their heads before the group split up and went down their respective tunnels.

"I didn't know you gained the ability to use telepathy, Sophia," Zalroth could hear Ruby remark as he walked down the fourth tunnel.

Zalroth was making his way through the tunnel with Kiki, Star and Iris eating sandwiches when he could sense that Sophia was trying to contact him.

"What's up, don't tell me you need to come back already?" Zalroth remarked telepathically.

"As if, I just have a question," Sophia asked telepathically.

"So what's the question?" Zalroth asked. Sophia could be heard making apprehensive noises as she tried to ask her question.

"What is... a Scubagoose?" Sophia asked with a tinge of embarrassment in her voice. Zalroth seemed puzzled at Sophia's random question but figured it had something to do with whatever she was dealing with in the other tunnel.

"It's a blue goose that is commonly seen wearing scuba gear that it's stolen from scuba divers," Zalroth answered. Sophia thanked him before ending the telepathic call. Zalroth scratched the back of his head while Kiki offered him a sandwich.

Zalroth, as he finished the last of his sandwich, entered into an extremely large cavern filled head to toe with long stalactites and stalagmites. Zalroth walked over to the ledge of the platform he was on; he noticed that the stalagmites descended super far down with a body of water barely visible at the bottom of the cavern.

"Do you want me to check if the mana core's down there?" Iris asked. Zalroth considered it before his ears perked up.

"I wouldn't recommend that," Zalroth stated as he aimed his arm towards the water.

"How come?" Iris asked as she squinted her eyes at the water. Zalroth fired a barrage of lightning bolts and the moment the lightning bolts struck the water thousands of ear-piercing bug-like screeches erupted from the water as it violently spasmed.

"What the hell is that noise!" Iris shouted as she, Star and Kiki covered their ears. Zalroth stopped firing when the sound of the screeches stopped.

"Who would have thought there were still locusurus running around, though these ones seemed to have adapted to living in water," Zalroth remarked as he lowered his arm.

"locusurus, as in the locust-like creature from when the Dusty Plains was known as the Dusty Desert?" Kiki asked as the girls uncovered their ears.

"What's so bad about a bunch of locusts?" Iris asked with an unimpressed tone.

"Well, take a pirana make it smaller and a thousand times faster and can fly, that's what those locusurus are...were," Zalroth explained. This seemed to get through to Iris before she realised how close she was to dying if Zalroth hadn't noticed.

Iris swiftly buried herself in Zalroth's hair and only left her head exposed. As Kiki was trying to get Iris out of Zalroth's hair, Star was looking around and spotted another ledge on the other side of the cavern; although it was significantly higher elevation compared to the one they were on.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

"Mr Zalroth, up there," Star whispered while pointing at the other ledge. The others looked up at the ledge with Kiki and Iris struggling to see it. Zalroth pulled his leg back before jumping at one of the stalactites. The moment his foot touch the stalactite it rapidly shook and Zalroth quickly jumped off it before the stalactite snapped off the ceiling.

Zalroth landed back on the original ledge as the stalactite plunged into the body of water below. Zalroth stood up as all the girls were strongly clinging to his head. He looked up at the forest of stalactites as the girls slowly climbed down from his head and back to where they originally were.

"Could you light up the way, Star?" Zalroth requested. Star created multiple orbs of light mana and spread them out throughout the space between the two ledges. Zalroth looked up at the remaining part of the stalactite and noticed it was a crumbling white mess. He glanced over and noticed that a few of the stalactites were the same dark orange as the cavern.

"So that's what's going on," Zalroth remarked before rapidly parkouring from all the orange stalactites and quickly landing on the other ledge. Zalroth noticed a tunnel before walking down it. Zalroth managed to take a few steps into the tunnel before the group noticed a mana core at the end of the tunnel.

"Alright," Iris said excitedly as she did a fist pump. Zalroth smirked as he went to take a step before a large blade dropped millimetres in front of his face, managing to ever so lightly cut his fringe. Iris, who still had her arm in the fist bump position, had a terrified expression on her face as she felt her soul leave her body before falling backwards and off Zalroth's head, with Star quickly catching her.

"Well... this will be problematic," Zalroth remarked as he wondered how he'd get past all the traps.

"If only I could control my hands when they're not attached to me; I could just detach my hands and..." Kiki remarked before she noticed Zalroth had put his left hand around his right wrist as his white sun tattoo activated.

"That's not a bad idea," Zalroth remarked as his right hand was completely covered in white mana particles before he ripped it off. Iris blinked a few times as the fingers of Zalroth's severed hand rhythmically riggled before she passed out while making a strange noise.

"Oh right, we could've just had Iris pick it up with her... oh well," Zalroth remarked as he looked back at the passed-out Iris. Zalroth lined up his hand before tossing it through the tunnel; the hand soared through the air, triggering every single trap and eventually landed on the mana core. Zalroth smirked as he activated his magnetism ability(signified by his handless arm glowing blue while the mana core and his severed hand glowed a faint red) and pulled the mana core towards himself.

He waited until the mana core was close to him before deactivating the magnetism magic and punching his severed hand with his handless arm. Zalroth's severed hand and arm merged back together before he dropped the mana core on the ground; he quickly balled his right hand into a fist and punched the mana core into smithereens.

"I wonder if the others have destroyed their mana core," Zalroth remarked as he turned around and headed back while readjusting his right wrist.

Meanwhile, Zulcrestus(in his paladin/templar armour) was flying high above the clouds as he was heavily pondering something while manoeuvring around a flock of scubageese.

"Was it the right call to have Callie come to the meeting instead of letting her skip it like always..." Zulcrestus murmured to himself.

"Don't worry Master Zulcrestus you did the right thing, she could have gotten hurt when the elemental prototypes broke free.". Zulcrestus sighed.

"You don't need to comfort me, Hika," Zulcrestus requested.

"But comforting has been shown to increase people's mood." the five-inch tall, super pale, silver-eyed girl sitting on Zulcrestus' shoulder said as her long flowing silver hair with cyan ends flailed in the rushing wind. Hika glanced over at the star-shaped mana construct floating above Zulcrestus' other shoulder.

"So what's that thing?" Hika asked before bursting into silver cubes and reforming next to the light construct.

"Shouldn't you be able to connect to the Zi-Net and read it from the magic database?" Zulcrestus coldly asked. Hika didn't seem amused by Zulcrestus' lack of an answer.

"It's called small talk, mama tasked me with helping you get better at it," Hika explained as she teleported back to and sat down on Zulcrestus' left shoulder. Zulcrestus defeatedly and slightly amusedly sighed.

"It's a light type magic ability developed by Emperor King Providence Luminous, and to put it in simple terms; it acts like a communication device and video recorder," Zulcrestus explained. Hika seemed visually pleased with Zulcrestus' answer.

"See it wasn't that hard and, for the record, its definition wasn't in the magic database." Hika smugly remarked. Zulcrestus sighed and continued to look forwards.

"I guess it's fairly new, so could you add the name and description to the database for me," Zulcrestus requested.

"Will do," Hika stated while giving a salute before teleporting away.