Jena's party quickly chased after Cecil and found him standing in the center of the mine's 'lobby' area surrounded by a bunch of monster corpses. Cecil nodded at them before gesturing that they needed to move quicker. Jena awkwardly nodded her head before she took the lead to guide Cecil through the mine's complex interior. Jena's party members felt a little uneasy at the speed they were traveling through the mines, but Cecil thought otherwise.

'We're making good progress, good thing I agreed to let them guide me.'

Each and every monster that they encountered was swiftly dispatched by Cecil and he only used his legs to attack, which caused the rest of his party to wonder why he wasn't using his sword. Cecil obviously didn't address their curiosity and continued pushing his Mana Pathways by slowly increasing the output of his Mana Burst.

Other than the time he had slept at the inn, he hadn't stopped using Mana Burst at all since his departure from Angla City. Of course, this was only possible because he was limiting the activation to only the mana inside his legs. If he had Mana Burst activated in full the entire time then he would have already fallen into the red level and Lucia would've probably chased after him by now.

He used his family's martial arts footwork throughout the whole trip and he continued to do so while he was in the dungeon, moving from one enemy to the next at blinding speeds and striking them with his martial arts. Even when he was put through a slightly difficult situation, he continued to only use just his legs and whenever Jena's party tried to help out, he would throw a rock in their direction to stop them from interfering.

At first, the party was a little disgruntled because Cecil had stopped them from helping out, but as they continued to move through the dungeon just slightly behind him, Jena and her party members could only sigh in constant amazement at his absurd combat prowess. This was the Silent Sword! He was supposed to be extremely powerful when using his sword, but even without it, he was still frighteningly strong, treating monsters that her party had some difficulty dealing with like small fries.

As they continued progressing through the dungeon, the party soon arrived at the 7th floor. Just a little more and they would reach the 10th and final floor of this field dungeon. Cecil had the group stop to take a rest when he saw that his party members were a little winded from their fast pace journey until here.

Cecil asked them to rest while he would go and roam around the floor a bit and continue training. He departed from the small room Jena's party stopped at and began exploring the floor a bit.

'It's indeed just a normal mine with a little bit more mana concentrated in the air.'

He took a look around the floor and saw abandoned mining carts and mining equipment everywhere. They were all rusty, but he found some to be in good condition when he searched deeper inside what he thought to be storage rooms. Many have already found these rooms, but they didn't deem it necessary to loot the equipment.

Cecil scratched his head at this. The pickaxes and other equipment had runes engraved on it so they should have some value when sold. He didn't think about looting them, however, since he had no need for the items.

After leaving the storage rooms, he continued roaming around, dispatching any monster he saw while also keeping his eye out for any valuable ore veins. Maybe he could get lucky and find some mithril or orichalcum. He kept searching for a while longer, but only found black steel and magic iron. Then he remembered the info that Jena's party had told him about the mines and shook his head depreciatingly.

'I forgot... these mines are only here to mine intermediary level magic ores...'

The ores in Alterna were divided into 2 different categories, normal ore and magic ore. Normal ores were just like the ones from back on Earth with some differences. Then there was the Magic Ore. Magic Ore was divided into 4 grades, namely, Basic, Intermediary, Advanced, and Top grade.

Basic magic ores didn't have much use in refining or forging. They would only be used when creating basic rune engravings for weapons or as supplementary ores when forging. Intermediary magic ores would be used as the core component when forging some mid-grade level weapons, armors, or artifacts. Advanced grade magic ores are mainly used by the Kingdom or government of a settlement. These ores are what's mainly used to craft the army's weapons and armors as well as any artillery or war weapons.

Top-grade ores, now that's something like the adamantium that Cecil and Lucia found the other time. These ores are used as the core components to forge high-level or maybe even legendary-level equipment. Lucia's kodachi and Cecil's spear fall into the legendary category, while their sword and katana fall into the high-level category. Of course, the two people didn't know this and only treated these national-level treasures as normal weapons, not caring whether or not they would break when used.

Cecil returned back to Jena's party and they went further into the mines and it didn't take long for them to reach the 10th floor. He got rather lucky and managed to quickly find an Earth-source magic stone vein. He pulled out his adamantium pickaxe and quickly mined the stones out of the walls. He mined more than enough and then when he was just about to stop, he suddenly felt a strange mana pulse coming from the wall where he was mining.

"?"

The pulse came again and he was finally sure that there was something unusual about the wall he was mining.

'What's this?'

Cecil continued mining the walls until finally he hit something dense and extremely hard.

CLANG CLANG CLANG THUNK

"Oh?!"

After hitting the hard wall a few more times, it eventually gave way as pieces of it collapsed and revealed something quite interesting underneath it. A large, ruby-colored crystal poked out and it seemed pretty large. The shape of the crystal was oddly in a perfect sphere and Cecil thought that it was quite beautiful.

'This'll be the perfect gem to use to create mother's necklace!'

The crystal was pretty sturdy. When he struck it with a full-powered swing of his pickaxe, there wasn't even a scratch on it. This made him quite happy as he continued to strike at the area around the crystal, determined to completely unearth it.

'I've never seen this kinda gem before! It's emitting an absurd amount of mana. It'd make the perfect vessel for carving the runes I have in mind!'

When the earth that was surrounding the large crystal was finally cleared away, Jena and her party finally returned from their recon mission to make sure that the area was safe while Cecil was mining and completing his trial. When they approached Cecil from behind, they were dumbfounded when they saw the lad mining away at the bright red crystal and the moment they saw it, everyone in Jena's party paled in fright.

Jena quickly shouted at Cecil, fear clear in her voice, "Silent Sword!!! S-Stop! Stop mining that crystal!!"

"?"

Cecil turned around and looked questioningly at Jena. He saw that they didn't have any greed in their eyes, but...fear?

'What're you guys so afraid of?'

Behind him, the large red crystal 'blinked'. Jena's party paled even further when they saw this. The dungeon floor immediately began to rumble and the wall behind Cecil immediately began to crumble.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

"?"

Cecil looked back at the wall and finally saw the large red crystal 'blink' once more.

'...I don't think crystals are supposed to do that...'

"Silent! Run!! That's the dungeon's guardian! It's the crystal-eyed Orobos!" Jena warned before she and her party immediately began retreating. They didn't bother looking back to check on Cecil, because they knew that he was powerful enough to get away on his own.

Cecil followed after them, but he felt a 'gaze' constantly following him. He turned back and noticed that a 'pupil' had formed in the crystal and it was following his body.

'...'

Cecil flashed next to Jena and asked in a small voice.

"The Orobos... is it strong?"

"Huh??" Jena and her party were genuinely surprised when they heard Cecil talk for the first time. Honestly, every adventurer that knew of him thought that Cecil was a mute. Jena lagged for a moment before she quickly responded to Cecil's question.

"Yes, unbelievably so! It's the guardian of the dungeon for a reason! The Orobos is a large golem-type nightmare eye! Unlike a normal nightmare eye that uses illusions and beams to hunt, the Orobos uses petrifying beams and earth-elemental magic. Also, since it's a golem you have to destroy its core to defeat it! Otherwise, it'll just keep on regenerating endlessly!"

Cecil nodded after hearing this. It was a unique monster that also had a name given to it by the guild. He then asked another question, "Core?"

"You've seen it already! The red crystal is its core or more precisely, the small black pupil!" She said as they kept on dashing towards the ninth floor.

Cecil contemplated for a moment and remembered the black pupil that appeared in the nearly indestructible red crystal that he had mined earlier. His strike with the adamantium pickaxe that was backed with at least 80 percent of his power didn't even leave a scratch on its surface, so hunting the monster might prove a little bit difficult.

Of course, he didn't have Mana Burst active, but he was currently weighing his odds of defeating that monster by just relying on his legs. He had no plans of using anything else other than his legs at the moment.

'Hmmmm... I won't know unless I try. Let's just do it.'

Cecil came to an abrupt stop and he quickly turned around.

"Silent?!" Jena exclaimed seeing his turn around.

Cecil looked back at the party who had also stopped. He gestured that he would go back to fight with the Orobos.

"T-That's reckless!! The Orobos is an SS minus ranked monster! Another half-grade and it'll be considered a natural disaster! You'd need a large party to take that thing down!"

Cecil only nodded and said, "Don't worry. I'm strong."

After leaving behind those words, he disappeared from his spot to everyone's shock. Clearly, he was going back to the boss room to fight the Orobos.

"WAIT!" Jena yelled with her arm stretched out at the empty space. She was at a loss, not knowing what to do. The boy had already left, so she was caught between going after him or staying with her party.

"...Jen... I think we should head out."

"Huh?"

"Yeah... we should go back."

"And leave him here?!" Jena exclaimed incredulously. She couldn't believe what her party members were saying to her. The person that left was one of their saviors. How could they be so heartless as to just leave him by himself to face off with the Orobos?

The Orobos has been constantly claiming the lives of multiple adventurers and people that have braved their way into the mines. It was never stationery and would sometimes go to other floors, including the first floor. It would abruptly show up and claim the lives of the adventurers and people quietly mining the ores inside of the mine. It was the Mine's guardian monster and the bane of all adventurers that came here.

"He'll get killed you know!"

"And that's exactly why we should quickly head back!"

"Huh?"

"We have to head back! Get some reinforcements, hurry back and support Silent Sword! With just us 5 here, what can we do?!"

"...you're right... sorry, I wasn't thinking straight. Let's go! We have to hurry and put together a team and hurry back! We can't waste a single second! Milla! You go ahead first. You're the fastest one here, so go back as quickly as you can and inform everyone in the guild!"

"A-Alright!"

"There are many who know Silent Sword's name so make sure you tell them!"

The catkin Milla quickly activated a wind elemental combat skill and dashed away towards the exit of the dungeon. The party also followed suit and chased after.

*********

Back at the large cavern where Cecil first mined the red-eye Orobos' gem core, he and the monster finally met each other face to face.

"Yo~ sorry about your eye," Cecil greeted with a flippant attitude before he continued. "I kinda like your eye, so I'll be taking it. I want to create a nice necklace with the jewel."

"GROOOOAAAARRRHHHH"

The monster issued a loud roar of anger, like it had somehow understood him. Cecil only chuckled before taking a proper look at the Orobos, observing it to see if he could find some kind of crack in its defense. It was spherical in shape with a large diameter of roughly 5-6 meters and it's body was composed of a black iron-like ore. The large red crystal that was its core was tucked in the middle like a pearl, surrounded by the black iron.

Its shape was reminiscent of an eyeball, except that the 'eyelids' had sharp spikes growing out of it and the exterior also had similar protruding spikes though they were larger than the monster's 'eyelashes'. There was some kind of long, spikey tail protruding from its back side, and it was waving back and forth like a stinger, poised to strike at Cecil if he got a little bit closer.

'I'll have to push my limits this time since I'm only going to be using my legs, but finally, a fight that'll be interesting.'

Cecil activated his Mana Burst at full power this time, focusing only on the mana in his legs, before kicking off from the ground and sending his body into rotation as he soared through the air. From the Orobos's perspective, it looked like the small creature that had taunted it had disappeared before suddenly reappearing right in front of it.

With a smile on his face, Cecil channeled as much mana as he could from his mana point into his legs and powerfully kicked the Orobos. His rotational force along with the mana that empowered his kick caused the Orobos's iron shell to crack apart as it was sent flying across the room. The monster roared in anger at the sudden surprise attack as it quickly picked itself back up.

Cecil scoffed sensing that the monster was 'saying' that his attack was a cheap shot.

"I was right in front of you, what the heck to you mean by chea—woah!" Cecil's words were abruptly cut off when a red beam suddenly flew straight at him.

He quickly dodged out of the way and whistled in surprise after seeing the aftermath of the deadly red beam. The area that the beam had passed had transformed into a strange white color and then the affected area immediately started crumbling.

Cecil strained a smile seeing this.

'I have to be careful... that looks dangerous.'

He once more kicked off the ground and immediately resumed his assault. The fight ensued once again with increasing ferocity as Cecil and the monster began unloading attack after attack on each other.