Chapter 154: Pure Iron Nuggets
A cave, which looked a mixture of brown and green and had a moss-covered opening with lush vines, didn’t seem particularly unique at first. However, in the middle of this green paradise, the darkness within it managed to capture anyone’s attention.
Looking at the cave in front of him, Dhruv hesitated for a moment, thinking whether to enter it or not. The darkness had managed to make him hesitate as well.
Taking a deep breath, he finally found the courage and began to walk towards the cave entrance.
’What will be inside this thing...’ No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t help but try to guess the content inside the cave. His hesitation had already died down.
Putting an end to his thoughts, Dhruv stepped forward and entered the cave.
The moment he entered the cave, he knew that in this darkness, he couldn’t see a single thing. Dhruv first activated his mana vision to check whether there were any monsters.
When he was sure that nobody else was in the cave with him, he quickly cast the spell Fire Torch. With the light coming out of the torch illuminating the surroundings, Dhruv began to move forward in the cave.
Tap! tap! tap!...
In the silent cave, the sound of his footsteps began to echo. Dhruv felt like someone was walking along with him. Turning around, he gazed in all directions, trying to find the creature that was trying to scare him.
After looking around, he once again confirmed that he was the only one in the cave. Dhruv hastened his pace, eager to reach whatever destination this cave led to.
The more he moved, the more he felt that the temperature of the cave was changing from being moist to cold. Dhruv shivered a bit but continued to walk forward.
After a few minutes of travel, Dhruv found that the structure of the cave was wide enough to accommodate three more men walking side by side. While walking, Dhruv was also carefully observing his surroundings in case he missed something.
As he was walking, he suddenly noticed something shining in the corner of his vision. With careful steps, he began to walk toward the shining object.
When he was close enough to the pile and with the light of the torch casting on it, Dhruv finally understood what it was.
"A pile of some kind of metal nuggets," he thought aloud.
Dhruv quickly retrieved his glasses from the ring and looked at the item in front of him. As he injected his mana, the name of the item appeared in front of him.
[Name: Pure Iron Nugget]
’Iron nuggets, ohh! Yes, iron nuggets...’ he was about to move forward when he finally realized the weight of the situation.
"WAIT, IRON NUGGETS, where did they appear from here?" Dhruv thought as his mind began to race.
Dhruv tried to calm himself down and began to look around to see if there were any other piles of nuggets or if this was the only one. As he looked around, he indeed found something, but the place wasn’t the same. He found a cluster of something growing from the top of the cave.
Thinking this might be the source of his answers or at least a clue, Dhruv began to walk toward it.
Looking at the cluster in front of him Dhruv activated his mana sense. With the help of mana sense he found out that there were traces of mana in the cluster, and it was quite a bit, but unfortunately, it wasn’t at the amount where a monster could survive.
As Dhruv looked at the cluster in front of him, he couldn’t exactly figure out what it was. The only thing he could tell was that it had a metallic color to it.
For further inspection, he took his glasses out from his ring and began to look at the cluster in the hope of getting its information.
After injecting mana into the glasses, the moment Dhruv looked at the cluster, a notification appeared in front of him...
[Description: Cluster of Iron ore is the most common material found in dungeons all over the cosmos. If kept in a mana-rich environment for a long time, there is a chance for it to transform into Mana Iron.]
"So, this is an iron cluster. Hmmm! If it grows in clusters, then how come I found nuggets of it?" Looking at the description, Dhruv thought about this.
To check the size of the cluster, Dhruv began to loosen the area around the cluster with the help of earth magic and unearthed all the iron ore.
After doing that and looking at the ore, he found out that the weight of one cluster would approximately reach 15-20 kg.
The smile on his face brightened up as he found a good source of metal, and with it, many things would become easier.
All the items that needed iron as a base material could be produced on their own, eliminating the need to go to the mainland to search for them.
Now, he just needed to find out how this ore was transformed into nuggets.
Dhruv took a big sigh of relief and began to move forward. As he was moving forward, it didn’t take long for him to encounter another abnormality.
This time the abnormality came in the shape of a monster... A rat, to be exact.
The rat monster was the size of a year-old human baby. Its tail had a metallic luster with spikes at the end of it, and its whole body looked like it was made out of iron instead of flesh.
The monster noticed Dhruv as well and quickly tried to flee, but unforcunately it was one step behind.
The moment his gaze went to the monster, Dhruv was already casting a spell. The rat was caught in a metallic box from all sides.
The reason he didn’t kill the rat and instead capture it was because after killing it,he couldn’t get the status information, and he had a feeling that this was the missing piece to solve the case of the Iron nugget.
As he took a few steps towards the rat, Dhruv noticed that the rat had already begun to cut his metallic shield, and if given a few more seconds, it would surely destroy the shield and free itself.
Looking at the damage to his shield, Dhruv instantly added mana and made the shield new once again.
While the rat was contently trying to cut down the shield, and with Dhruv constantly trying to maintain it, there was a stalemate between these two parties.
Dhruv quickly ingested the mana in the already worn glasses and looked at the rat with them...
After numerous tries, he finally had a full list of the rat’s status description.
