This time, they purposefully headed for every cave that they could see, looking for easy essence for the fighters who were yet to reach the cusp of F Rank. It was almost easy for them to resist the overtures of the lure monsters, which Sam had taken to calling angler trolls, and they made short work of them.
They crested this mountain a few hours later, only to see a line of even taller mountains, with darker caves and deeper valleys. Whatever had created this landscape must have been powerful, and Sam suspected that it had everything to do with the hammer. His knowledge of Norse mythology would come in handy here. In the legends, Mjolnir was so heavy that even Thor had to use special gloves to wield it. What if the System had accentuated its weight even more, and rather than just being supernaturally heavy, it was so heavy that when it was placed on the land, its gravity warped everything around it? That was pretty unlikely, unless that effect vanished when someone picked it up, because there was nobody on the entire planet that could come even close to picking something like that up. In addition, the beacon of light shooting up into the heavens from the center of the area could only mean one thing. There was something else valuable there as well.
Sam was distracted from his errant thoughts by a screech like a steam whistle as one of the monstrous eagles caught sight of them and started swooping down. Sam fired off a quick scan, and when he found that it did not return anything save for the eagle’s name, which was a Juvenile Thunderbird, he realized that it was at least F Rank. Sam did not have a chance in hell against a flying F Rank beast, at least while having to protect the others. He was the only one capable of fighting on an equal level with an F Rank, and this thing could easily carry off any of his companions in the blink of an eye. Sam drew his mace, and started to pump power into it.
“Run! Towards one of the caves!” he shouted at his companions, who all started to scramble down the mountain. Sam flicked his mace out to the side, and started to prepare a special technique that had been devised for the crippling of flying beasts. Sam channeled the mana, elemental energy, and Dao energy construct of his Mythical skill into it, creating the same recursive explosion effect on his mace, but rather than launching into a series of attacks designed to spread the energy through the bird’s body, he instead let it come near. Leaping up high into the air, he grabbed ahold of the eagle’s feathers, and threw himself up onto its head.
At this point, his body was like a balloon to him, and he could do whatever he wanted with it, as long as he had something to push off. The eagle screeched as it suddenly lost sight of him, and it started jerking around in the air at lightning speed, trying to throw him off. Sam held on grimly, and as the eagle bucked its head upwards, Sam used the momentum to throw himself upwards as well.He soared a hundred feet above the eagle, and arched his back into a shallow C shape, getting ready to bring his mace down on the bird. It looked around in confusion, no longer feeling his weight on it, and a moment later, Sam came down like a thunderbolt.
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He tensed all of his powerful muscles in one go, and his mace slammed down like a cannon shot, right onto the brittle bones of the thunderbird’s head. Or at least, they should have been brittle. Its bones were exceedingly dense, to the point that it should have been impossible for it to fly under its own power. However, the System was the great leveler of all things. If a gigantic bird wanted to fly and to be an absolute unit at the same time, then who was Sam to deny it? Still, something cracked within its cranium, and it screeched in rage, before taking off.
Sam jumped off its back immediately, and watched as it flew up miles into the air, before performing multiple barrel rolls in the air, trying to throw Sam off it, without realizing that he was already gone, running towards the cave where the others were waiting. It was not a retreat, just a tactical positioning. Luckily for Sam, he had none of the ego that so afflicted many cultivators. He had no issues with backing down, or admitting when he was wrong. In the rest of the multiverse, there were many that would rather die than cave in to another’s will, unless that other person was far more powerful than them.
High up above, the eagle realized that something was amiss, and it realized that Sam was already gone. It spotted him running down the mountain side, and started flapping towards him. Sam redoubled his pace and reached the cave just before the creature reached him. The others were huddled in the far corner, and Sam joined them. There was a cry of rage from outside, and then lightning bolts started to strike the outside of the cave. The bird seemed unable to get to them,but then Sam saw that it was not trying to hit them. The cave started to rumble, and Sam’s eyes widened.
“Out, now!” He shouted, but it was too late. The top of the cave entrance collapsed under its own weight, and an avalanche of rock buried it under hundreds of tons of stone. They were unharmed, but there was no way out. There was a muffled, triumphant screech from outside, and then everything went quiet.
The interior of the cave was like a tomb, and even with their enhanced eyesight, nobody could see at all. If there was no light, then no matter how sensitive one’s eyes were, then there could be no sight, at least in the visible spectrum that was. Rax could still see fine. He had the infrared senses of a snake, and every person in the room was as clear to him as if it had been day. Well, their outlines were clear. The one problem with infrared was that it did not differentiate shapes from each other well. Still, their sizes allowed him to pick them out well enough.
“Come over here,” Rax said, making his voice as sonorous as possible to cajole the others over to him. They blindly followed the source of the voice, and eventually stumbled across him. The cave was only about 30 or 40 feet long at its deepest point, and there was not too much space to be had. Everyone sat down as soon as they had found their bearings, and Sam lifted up one hand, imbuing it with mana until it glowed. He could have done this the entire time, but he had been distracted by Rax’s voice. There was really no System assistance at all with mental maturity. Sam would have expected that his tendency to go off on introspective rants would have been erased with the increases in his mental stats, but it was still the exact same. Still, it was good that the System was unable to alter his personality. Besides, in this new world, there was a lot to be introspective about.