Walking into the tent, Elizabeth’s eyebrow rose as the ridiculousness of the “tent” extended past its remarkable exterior. Inside, there were ten rooms with enough space to comfortably house everyone in Elizabeth’s party and then some. Additionally, there appeared to be additional items spawned from the disc as a pantry of food sat right before the entrance, and beside the pantry, there sat hundreds of containers filled with different liquids; mostly water, but some held condiments for cooking.
Upon further exploration, there were sleeping mats on the “bedroom” sections of the tent and across the entire tent, there were lighting fixtures spread out. How the disc materialized an electric panel and connected it to all appliances baffled Elizabeth.
Eventually, everyone made their way into the tent and pick out their rooms. There wasn’t any in-fighting as all the rooms were essentially the same and the matter of rest was of little consequence to the group of practitioners. Thus, without much more interaction everyone split off to train at their leisure.
Jane stayed in her tent to bolster her Intelligence and energy capacity, while Sun took to the forest to look for something that could challenge his powerful body. Yrre was tasked with helping Liam advance far enough to enter the Path of Extreme Physicality.
Tristan asked Elizabeth to learn of her style of Enchanting as he had grown interested in the subject and knew from Sun and Jane’s experience that she would probably oblige him. Elizabeth followed through with his request and the man settled into his room to practice after breaking through to the Path of Extreme Physicality. After Elizabeth had stopped his body from self-destructing and has thoroughly healed him, all his parameters had reached the point where he could enter any of the three Extreme Paths.
Elizabeth took after Belle’s incessant demands and left the base. Using a sliver of her true strength she ran through several dozen kilometers all the while traversing forest. She surmounted a waterfall and eventually came back to the same cave system she had previously taken as a temporary home during her first visit in the Shadow Realm.
“Are you sure that monster’s soul signature is coming from THIS cave system?” Elizabeth truly felt it was too coincidental for that monstrous white wolf to come to her home after she invaded its territory.
“MHMM HMMM!” Responding only through exciting noises, Belle conveyed affirmation.
“If you say so~” Elizabeth sighed as her body let out a soft glow courtesy of her Blaze Spirit Body. She also coated her eyes in Neutral Magic and what would have been a very dark cave was indistinguishable from the outside environment in terms of how well she could see.
Walking through the cave, as Elizabeth reached the halfway point to her previous resting location, she stopped. Frowning, as her hand glowed with dangerous Cold Fire, she thought, ‘Did the cave collapse naturally or have others already come across this gold mine?’
Against the relatively inert rock and dirt that blocked her path to the end of the cave system, Elizabeth glowing blue hands cut through all obstacles like it was loose sand. With care, she excavated her way through the cave as her Spatial Ripple detecting method guided her to the Graviton Bismanthium. Naturally, she hadn’t taken all the Graviton Bismanthium during her first visit; she hadn’t even scratched the surface of how much material there truly was. But through her space rippling method, she could sense the material even hundreds of kilometers away.
Eventually, as she progressed deeper into the tunnel she had been creating, her hands felt even less resistance than before to indicate that she had breached into another part of the cave system. By actively using the intense heat of her hands to compact the rocks and dirt in her path into the tunnel instead of scooping it behind her, she came out the breach without risk of her exit path collapsing and let her eyes feast on the treasure trove of rare materials all around her.
Ores, Crystals, and even Spirit Veins could be detected as Elizabeth was sent into momentary stasis as her senses were overwhelmed. ‘This… This is fine...’ As clarity returned to her eyes, Elizabeth sighed, ‘It may all be Mortal Grade junk I don’t personally need, but for the changing Earth and my personal friends and family, I think I can see a use for all these treasures.’ She planned on sparing some treasures for her friends who had recently taken up Secondary Occupations and selling the rest to the people of Earth; for a profit no doubt.
Thud! Suddenly, Elizabeth’s hand caught a sneaking rabbit that had attempted ambushing her. Clenching her hand, a whimper escaped the rabbit as Elizabeth brought it into her line of sight. ‘Jadewood Rabbit? It's Level 22, too!’ With a bit more strength put into her grip, the predator turned prey had its life snuffed without mercy. Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed as she sensed more Wild Beasts and after extracting the Rabbit’s Core, she smirked to herself; moving to dump all the treasures in the cave before heading deeper.
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By carefully coating her hands in Core Fire as she had for excavating down the tunnel, Elizabeth rather quickly managed to excavate the spiritual materials of the cave. Alas, the sheer number of treasures was too much for her to manage. She could speed weeks or perhaps even months excavating away and still find treasures. Thus, she opted to only dig out treasures she could sense as well as those that were in plain view. A great deal of materials containing energies she had no affinity for were directly ignored as she continued deeper into the cave.
Along the path, Elizabeth had no shortage of Wild Beasts eager to die by her hand as ambush attempts one after the other followed her treasure hunting adventure. Unsurprisingly, as she headed deeper into the cave, as the treasures increased in rarity, so too did the strength of the beasts that challenged her. With the Jadewood Rabbit she initially killed being one of the weakest beasts at the Early Phase of the King Stage, Elizabeth found herself contending against the beasts of the cave in a linear progression.
An hour into her adventure, Elizabeth stopped in her tracks. Gasping, her eyes widened as she saw something of mythical rarity. “Is that a fucking pool of Yin-Yang Dew?!” Of course, her question didn’t need to be confirmed as very few things would behave how Yin-Yang Dew would. From her position a mere hundred meters away, after just turning corning in the cave, she could see from her elevated position, a small puddle of white and black energy coiling precisely around itself as the symbol of Taiji would suggest.
Before she could delight in her discovery any further, there was only the very familiar sensation of imminent death and a low growl which followed an ungodly beast pouncing upon her almost before she could even react. Fortunately, with her Timeworn eyes effectively slowing down time by a factor of five for her, she managed to activate her Chaos Seals before being mortally wounded.
Boom! Elizabeth crashed through the earth with a plume of dust and dirt shooting everywhere as a pair of menacing yellow eyes stared at her from her previous position. Before the dust could settle, however, a red glow of fiery destruction slowly grew in intensity as Elizabeth dragged herself out of the pit she had been crushed into; a trail of fresh magma left behind as indication of how she freed herself.
Casting away her Blaze Spirit Body’s activation in favor of the more destructive Limbs of Corruption, a look of fury crossed Elizabeth’s eyes. ‘Why the fuck is a Spirit Beast in the fucking Forest of Beginnings?’ And that was the last thought that crossed her mind before only the thought of survival filled her mind.
Stacked with the near black film of her 6th Seal of Chaos and the added blackish-green of her Limbs of Corruption, Elizabeth’s every step caused craters to form as she shot forth with hypersonic speeds to end this very real threat to her life before the effects of her Chaos Seal ran out. All her Time Spells were already put into effect.
As her Death Thai Mystic Art and its sub-skills were being trained leading up to her confrontation with the Spirit Beast, Elizabeth chose to stick with unarmed combat as the buffs to her Strength and Defense brought her already augmented stats to a level only those at the very peak of the Spirit Realm could stand against.
Shing! Elizabeth snapped her arm at the beam of Pure Yang energy the Spirit Beast she had classified as a Soliger shot at her. Though a small burn could be seen on the back of her hand, there was relatively minimal damage done. Boom! As the deflected Pure Yang energy collided with the ceiling behind and towards Elizabeth’s left, the exit had been sealed.
‘Fuck me!’ Elizabeth cursed as she continued dashing at the Soliger. Death Magic flickered in her hand as she threw a punch that would rattle the earth for hundreds of meters, yet the Soliger barely flinched; a barrier of Pure Yang energy cast over its body mitigated the grand majority of her Death Magic’s effects.
Taken aback by how pitiful her punch was even in her current overpowered state, Elizabeth took a lash to the face as the Soliger’s tail struck her without any mercy. She would have had her body carved up by the Soliger’s claws if not for her superior speed and strength quickly putting up a defense for herself.
“Fuck off!” The form of Magnolia appeared in her hands as a Shotgun Slug was fired at point-blank range right into the Soliger’s midsection. Following the Soliger’s whimper, the flaming liger withdrew a couple paces from Elizabeth. But, due to all her efforts coming up short, the Spirit Beast held witness to Elizabeth activating her 8th Chaos Seal for the first time.
‘I hope this doesn’t cripple me any worse than those fucking Seals of Augmentation...’ She prayed. However, as if to kick her while she was down, reality did the exact opposite of what she wanted as a horrible pain originating from her hands nearly drove her insane.
“Ahhhh!” Unable to control herself, a grunt of pain escaped her mouth as all ten of her fingers grew black scale-like armor. On her palm, the near black film that came from her 6th Seal of Chaos became as black as the scale armor of her fingers, but no transformation occurred.
Moving to take advantage of Elizabeth’s obvious pain, another Pure Yang beam shot out of the Soliger’s mouth. ‘Fuck...’ Elizabeth was barely conscious after going through her first Transformation thus the only defense she could prepare was lifting her hand at the flaming mass of energy.