Timmy, and Billy the dragonfly, darted above the pool of lava, and they did so without suffering any casualties. Billy avoided making any spin moves, and that was about the main thing that kept the both of them safe. Dragonflies were generally very agile creatures, they strived in precision, and they were capable of thinking critically, so Tim was in good hands!
“I gotta keep an eye on Arvena,” He muttered quietly, as he didn’t want to distract the dragon. “She made all that lava disappear, it's almost like she drank it or some shit, because where the hell did half of it go? Twenty fucking meters of boiling rocks shouldn't just disappear. I'm guessing that the yellow dragon is gone as well, so… so much for eating its flesh.”
Timothy was perplexed, but at least the lack of lava made his little trip a lot safer, as he could barely even feel the heat on his combat boots, nonetheless his skin. The hot lava was just too far away from the two of them, though it would still be deadly to fall into the pool, so they had to be careful.
They made it to the other side of the cavern, where they scanned the twelve or so tunnel entrances afterwards. Now that they were up close, they could see that at least three of the tunnels were very short, and they'd lead into an instant dead end, so it was best to avoid them.
Instead, he eyed a tunnel that was about twenty meters away from them, because he was almost sure that it wouldn't lead them to a dead end. He looked at it a bit earlier, and noticed that it featured a strictly downwards path, and although it was likely that the bottom of it bore some amount of lava, it was still worth the risk to fly down there.
“Okay, we're going in that one.” He pointed, “But it was filled with lava up until a moment ago, so be careful, its ground has to be really hot, do not land on it. Also, you can see in the dark, right?”
When the dragonfly nodded, Tim then said. “Okay then, let's go. Do not touch anything in there, just fly, that's all you need to know.”
With the plan sorted out, Billy then dived in. This was hardly a challenge for him, because the tunnel was five meters wide, it was very easy to fly through it without his wings hitting the walls.
The two of them dove about fifteen meters deep, and Billy had to make a sharp turn afterwards, because that's how the tunnel was shaped. The only other option had been to dive into this ditch of sorts where the remaining lava had pooled at, and that was very much against what either of them wanted. They progressed throughout the tunnel further, by flying upwards.
They flew upwards for about fifty meters afterwards, and the tunnel was quite winding, but they made it through without any issues. They made it to another cave, and landed there because they were sure that the lava couldn't have reached this high, even when it had been at the peak of its volume. The cave here was really cold, actually, and they felt the temperature drop seconds before getting up here.
“Okay, what do you see?” Tim asked, and his words echoed back to him, which confirmed that this cave was more of a cavern. “I'm gonna light a torch, cause it's not like you can answer me anyway. If you see a monster, don't fight it, we can't risk it, we'll just turn back. Now let me get that torch…”
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Tim lit the torch, and got a slightly better look of his surroundings, but he still couldn't see much. The cavern was too big, and his torch was too small to shine any real light on his surroundings. He needed tens of such torches to make sense of things, but that wasn’t possible right now, so he had to improvise.
“Let’s hope there isn't any flammable gas around here,” He said, and then shot a bunch of light fireballs across the cavern.
The progress he had made regarding mana quality, gave him a much greater control of his abilities. He could pick how intensive each power of his could be, and in this case, he made the fire cold to the touch. Now cold fire was unheard of in any other context, but it was a simple trick, he just removed the heat out of the fireballs that he shot, and just kept the light on them, because it was the light he needed.
Several fireballs flew across the cavern, but they weren't in the air for long, as they dissipated before they could even hit anything. That was the main disadvantage with these heatless fireballs, they disappeared too quickly, but at least he wasn't going to run out of them anytime soon. Each of them cost a single mana point to shoot.
“Nothing, there's nothing here…” He sighed, he felt mopey. “I guess finding nothing is better than finding another dragon.”
Tim wanted to toss a few more fireballs across the cavern, just to have a final look at this place. After that, he just wanted to head back, but before he could do either of those, he heard something that was even more terrifying than the symbolic hollering of a dragon. He heard something mammalian, he heard the voice of a woman!
“Hello? Who's there?” She asked.
Tim did not want to answer, because at first he thought that a ghost was messing with him or something like that, but that was not the case. It was not a ghost.
After gathering the guts, he decided to answer. “I'm Terr-Timothy! Who the hell are you? Are you living in these caves? How many of you are there?”
“It's just me, I've been alone for twelve years now.” She answered, and then with a clear hint of desperation in her tone, she asked. “Is it finally over, did you kill Saranax?”
“Saranax?” Tim asked, he was clueless for a moment.
“The dragon, that's what my ancestors named him. That's its name in the old goblin tongue, it translates to Sulfur Demon! Please tell me you killed it!” She followed along, and by now it was noticeable that she was getting closer.
“Oh? That big yellow bastard? We killed it, my friend blew it out of existence a couple of minutes ago.” He answered, and he tapped his free hand on Billy’s back, in order to have him look for this woman.
Billy had apparently been planning on it already, because he pounced just a second later, and pinned that woman down. Any and all threats were seemingly eliminated there, because the system rewarded Timothy with the points that she promised him, upon the completion of task number ten. The Forbidden Caves were now safe, and he felt relieved to have the system confirm that!
[Congratulations on the task completion. You managed to survive, and clear the Forbidden Caves, so you won 5,000 system points as a reward. In total, you've accumulated 9,000 points.] She confirmed.
Now that was one of the best things that he could hear about, but he couldn’t focus on this decent reward right now. He walked over to where Billy was at, and had a look at who he had just pinned down.
Tim got a good glimpse of this very hairy goblin woman, and gasped in response. He had expected a ghost for a moment there, so it was surprising to him that Billy the dragonfly actually caught a living being instead!
“Who are you?” He asked her.