NOVEL ONLINE FREE Chapter 310: Where Do We Go…From Here
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For some time, the pair of siblings sat in silence, one trying to figure out what kind of luck her youngest brother had accumulated throughout multiple lifetimes and the other blazing through every question he could come up with in an attempt to further understand the full extent of his new abilities.
That is until…
Knock Knock Knock
"Mn? You can enter." Aoni stated calmly, a total façade that hid his inner turmoil.
Hearing the command, Ellewyn entered the office, bowed, and greeted both Aoni and Charlotte.
"Milord, it seems something has happened."
"Well…judging by how you appear more annoyed than scared, I can only assume that Clara with the Duo-de-floof made a mess…" Flaring his nostrils and opening his Lord's display, Aoni couldn't find anything wrong with his territory or village, leaving only one possible outcome.
"It's as you say, Milord; Miss Clarissa seems to have…located a large chasm several miles down the mountain and well…" Fidgeting with her apron, Elle seemed hesitant to speak, forcing Aoni into coaxing the information out of her.
"Go on, you know how I am; if they deserve to be punished, that's what'll happen." Although appearing calm on the outside, he had already considered 50 different torturous punishments for his annoyingly clingy sister.
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About 15 miles down the eastern face of the mountain, Aoni stood at the edge of a massive chasm, one that split the mountain entirely. Without a bridge, unless he had Nyria's help, there was no way for Aoni to cross it.
{'Glacia…'} Speaking through the LoS, Aoni peered down into the blackness of untold depth.
{'Hi brother, whatcha doin'? We are playing in a big hole, there's lots of shiny stuffs, and all the pups are here, plus Big Sissy Clara!'}
"They're fine…" Turning to look over at the worried faces of his sister and the elder wolves, Aoni's eyes lacked light, and he instantly cut off the connection with Glacia lest she talk his ear off.
"…"
"Don't look at me like that; if Glacia is able to babble on and on about random shit, she's fine and no one got hurt. Nyria, can you check how deep it goes for me?"
"Cheee!" With a flap strong enough to kick up all the snow in a 15-foot radius, Nyria nodded, launched herself off the chasm, and dove into its blackness.
"So what did she say?" Char asked, walking up beside Aoni and looking down into the crevasse.
"They found shiny stuff, and judging by her tone of voice, she's treating it like another adventure; if anything were actually wrong, she would radio me immediately," he responded with a shrug of his shoulders.
{'Brother…it's deep, like over 300 feet. I've already pulled out one of the Cavern Crystals (glowing Energia Crystals) because it's pitch black.'}
{'Gotcha, take it slow, Nyria; I don't want you getting hurt on the way down.'}
Five and a half minutes later, the birb gave him a rough estimate of how deep the large crack in the mountain was, and thus, after securing himself through an intricate system of pegs and supports, Aoni and Char began the long climb down…
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It took them nearly an hour to descend into the dark depths, but when their feet finally touched down, the first thing they noticed was that the area was in shambles.
Broken rocks, snow, and all manner of destruction had been laid out from an apparent collapse that, no doubt, Clara and the floofs generated; however, that wasn't his main concern.
Closing his eyes, Aoni's next course of action was tapping his foot on the ground several times and expanding his perception. With each tap, he would expel a minute amount of Energia into the terrain, generating a minor fluctuation in the Ambient Energia, allowing him to see in the dark reasonably.
Mind you, he could have also whipped out one of the thousands of Crystals in his inventory or even set up a light source, but this way was not only more cost-effective but also detailed, with the only downside being his range wasn't that wide, maybe 20 or so feet in every direction.
Was it perfect? No, but since it worked on the same principles as echolocation, it allowed him to get a rough idea of what he was dealing with.
"Five tunnels and I found traces of their Energia Signatures, stay clos…" Turning around, Aoni noticed that he was alone…because Charlotte had already merged with the darkness and vanished to who knows where.
"Sigh, must be nice having Shadow Elementalized Energia," he complained while throwing his hands in the air and moving in the direction he noticed everyone's signatures heading.
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"Gaooo GAOOOoooOOooO"
"No, no, I don't CARE how sorry you are, Glaci; this wasn't good; you should have immediately called Ao and told him. In no reality should you have gone off exploring; what if something happened to the puppies? That would have been on you…"
As Aoni was walking down one of the many tunnels, the sound of his sister scolding Glacia entered his ears, causing him to pick up his pace, and soon, he found himself in a cavern a fraction of the size of where he'd placed his village…and entirely made of Energia Crystals.
That's right, it was an Energia Vein, something he didn't even know EXISTED on his mountain.
Walls- Crystal
Floor- Crystal
Ceiling, yep, you guessed it, 100% bright as fuck, CRYSTAL!
Around his sister and Glacia were over a dozen small wolves, including a full-sized Blixt, head hung in shame and tails between their legs…and then there was Clara.
"…ppfft…ppfffttt…*snort* PPPHAHAHAHAHHA!" Seeing her current piggish state with a soul floating above her head, Aoni couldn't contain his laughter and collapsed onto his knees, hugging his stomach, and laughed so hard that tears streamed down his cheeks.
Charlotte had beaten Clara half to death to such an extent that Lea would have been proud.
Of course, upon hearing Aoni burst out in laughter, the mood of everyone except Charlotte and Clara brightened instantly before The Dark Storm, known as Charlotte Thurston in Mom-mode, came back down on them a second time.
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Two hours…two full freaking hours of stern talking to and the occasional beating of Clara later, and finally, everyone was back topside.
In the end, apart from a few superficial injuries treated by Clara with potions and items, everyone was safe and sound.
Back at the Manor, Aoni found himself back in his office while Clara, with her head down, offered up a nearly complete map of the underground area she had found.
Apparently, while they were out hunting, Blixt and Glacia got a bit trigger-happy, and a stray spell hit the ground in just the right place to create a cave-in. Or at least that's the story he was being told.
Whether or not it was the full truth, only they know, but he didn't really care since the result was no one being hurt and them having found A FREAKING ENERGIA CRYSTAL VEIN!
Honestly, it was a good thing for Aoni and his territory that the place had been found, considering it was only one step away from generating enough Energia to create a dungeon…in which case, well, not even the Barrier would help because his entire territory would be overrun in no time flat.
"So…where do we go…from here?" Char asked with concern apparent on her delicate face.
"I mean, the obvious course of action would be to start mining the Vein; based on what I felt down there, it's already in the latter stages of evolving into a full-blown menace. However, the only problem is…"
"We don't have any actual miners…Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Although you could send some of the residents down, no one except maybe the Blacksmith has enough physical strength to crack through Energia crystal."
"My thoughts exactly."
"mumble mumble mumble." While Char and Aoni went back and forth, Clara suddenly spoke up, inaudibly but still saying something.
"Come again? How about you talk like an adult, OH WAIT, you are soooo fucking keen on us treating you like a kid that maybe you've regressed." Aoni snorted, causing Clara to snap her head up and glare at him pitifully.
"I said, why don't you just clear it using excavation Nodes…" She repeated, causing Aoni and Char to look at her strangely, not because it was a bad idea or anything, but because Aoni had already grown beyond the use of standard Nodes.
After all, didn't he technically have an entire race of beings sitting around in storage in the form of Ark Stones?