Chapter 794

【 MAGIC ELECTRITE 】

Frozen Valley.

Once one of the seven ancient cities in the Elven Forest, it was said to have been the homeland of the Thunderspark Clan.

However, a thousand years had already passed since its fall into ruin. Perhaps because of the unusually large number of magical beasts that roamed the surrounding wilderness, or perhaps due to the relentless passage of time itself, this city nestled deep within the valley had been preserved far less well than the other ancient elven cities scattered throughout the forest.

Standing outside the valley and gazing inward, the entire city appeared as though it had not been abandoned for merely a thousand years, but for several millennia.

The once beautiful elven metropolis had long since vanished, leaving behind only crumbling walls and ruined structures hidden among tangled thickets and overgrown brush.

From time to time, the roars of magical beasts echoed through the valley. Many of them seemed to have built nests among the ruins, and traces of Flash Wyverns could occasionally be found as well.

Flash Wyverns were a species of draconic beast that favored the forests of colder regions. Adept at lightning-element magic and blessed with extraordinary speed, their strength ranged from lower Silver-rank to upper Silver-rank.

Rumor held that they possessed the bloodline of Blue Dragons and some pure-blooded flash wyverns even have the potential to advance to the gold rank.

The players’ eyes immediately lit up.

“There are signs of Flash Wyvern activity in this valley!”

Wyverns were among the more popular magical beasts in Elven Kingdom, making them an excellent magical familiars and mounts.

An adult Wyvern was only about one and a half to two times the size of a Dragonscale Horse, or roughly two to three times the size of an ordinary warhorse.

But their endurance surpassed that of Dragonscale Horses, and they could also actively assist in combat. Moreover, their comparatively small size, especially when compared to other sub-dragon species, made them far more practical as mounts.

Although the system rated them only as rare blue-grade creatures, their overall capabilities were actually comparable to those of epic purple-grade Unicorns.

And if one were fortunate enough to obtain a Flash Wyvern King as a familiar… then that would be a genuine epic purple-grade magical beast.

The First Legion, one of the seven major guilds in Elven Kingdom, had their main city, Winterhold, located near the northwestern region of the Grand Canyon. Thanks to its advantageous location, First Legion had managed to capture a large number of Flash Wyverns and had even established a wyvern cavalry force of roughly three hundred aerial riders, which were renowned for their formidable combat power.

Now that traces of numerous Flash Wyverns had been discovered within the valley, many players became visibly excited.

These highly cost-effective draconic beasts were immensely attractive to them. Even if they were not kept as mounts, they could still be sold for a considerable profit.

“Let’s go! We’re entering the valley!”

Li Mu gave the order.

At his command, the members of Heart of Nature immediately sprang into action.

Many players had already begun exploring the valley ahead of them. The valley appeared vast, and once people ventured deeper inside, they quickly disappeared from sight.

Upon entering the valley, the temperature seemed to drop even further. Snow could even be seen blanketing parts of the slopes, as though the entire region had been frozen over.

It was a rather peculiar phenomenon.

Although the area’s elevation was relatively high according to the data shown on the minimap, it was nowhere near sufficient for water to freeze naturally.

The reason for this was unknown.

Nonetheless, a great number of magical beasts had made their homes among the frozen ruins.

Not long after entering the valley, Heart of Nature’s expedition team encountered their first battles.

However, all participants in this expedition were elite players from the guild. As such, these mere lower silver-rank magical beasts posed little threat to them.

As for the weaker creatures, they fled at once after sensing the players’ presence. Thus, the exploration proceeded relatively smoothly.

Yet whenever they passed through certain sections of the ruins, the unicorn beneath Li Mu conveyed feelings of unease. This made him realize that even more powerful magical beasts likely still inhabited the area. Anything capable of unsettling a unicorn was probably at least a Gold-rank monster.

With the Unicorn’s warnings, Li Mu directed his expedition team to avoid those dangerous regions.

Other explorers, however, were not so fortunate.

Before long, as the Heart of Nature expedition continued deeper into Frozen Valley, they heard furious beastly roars and the screams of players echoing from one of the areas they had deliberately avoided.

A flock of startled birds burst into the sky.

Moments later, a massive figure shot upward with a thunderous roar and spread its wings.

It was a gigantic hawk covered in white, dragon-scale-like feathers. Possessing draconic blood, it had a wingspan approaching forty meters, comparable to that of an adult dragon.

Looking at it from a distance, the hawk’s strength seemed at least at the peak of Gold-rank, and it might even have already stepped into the Legendary-rank.

Moments later, a terrifying pressure radiated outward, causing every player who sensed it to feel a chill run down their spine.

Watching the hawk disappear into the distance, with traces of fresh blood still staining its claws, Demacia spoke with lingering fear.

“Good grief… Thank goodness we didn’t go that way…”

“Everyone stay alert and stick close to me.”

Li Mu’s voice was grave.

Unlike the ambient music heard throughout other regions of the Elven Forest, the background music here in these ruins resonated deeply in the players’ ears.

Profound.

Ancient.

Combined with the shattered debris scattered throughout the valley and the icy winds that occasionally swept past, it evoked a profound sense of loneliness born of the passage of ages, as well as a powerful awareness of history’s relentless march.

Looking at the remnants of elven architecture, still faintly recognizable after all these years, the players could not help but wonder what this place had looked like a thousand years ago.

Never before had Elven Kingdom felt less like a game and more like a genuine fantasy world steeped in history.

Ancient ruins.

Slumbering magical beasts.

Adventurers exploring the unknown.

If such a world truly existed, and if such a journey could truly be undertaken…

Then it would surely look something like this.

At that moment, the same thought surfaced in the minds of many players.

Unfortunately, it seemed that centuries of magical beast activity had severely damaged the ruins. Throughout their journey, the players failed to discover any of the treasures they had initially hoped to find.

A few people unearthed damaged pieces of equipment, but these were completely unusable. At best, they could only be offered to the Goddess in exchange for a pitiful amount of contribution points.

Li Mu even strangely discovered that many equipment materials that should have been salvageable had already lost their magical properties.

Upon closer inspection, it did not seem like natural decay.

Rather, it was as though something had deliberately erased it…

After spending a great deal of effort digging up nothing but worthless junk, Demacia stubbornly continued excavating with his metal shovel.

“I refuse to believe there’s nothing good buried here!”

However, the moment he drove the shovel into the ground again, a dull thud suddenly echoed from below, as though he had struck something solid.

Before curiosity could even arise, the surrounding players watched in surprise as Demacia let out a startled cry and hurriedly released the shovel.

At that instant, Li Mu thought he heard a faint crackling sound similar to an electric discharge.

At the same time, traces of lightning flickered briefly across Demacia’s hands where he had been gripping the shovel.

Accompanied by a series of crackling pops, the infamous tank warrior, who was already at upper silver-rank, began convulsing violently and foaming at the mouth, while his neatly slicked-back red hair instantly sprang back into its familiar afro-like mess.

His lips twitched slightly before he slowly exhaled a ring of smoke.

Then, with a dull thud, Demacia face planted onto the ground.

Startled, Li Mu cried out:

“Demacia!”

He immediately reached out to help him up, but the moment his hand made contact with Demacia’s body, a sudden numbing sensation shot through his palm.

“Electricity?”

Li Mu quickly withdrew his hand, giving it a sharp shake as the lingering shock spread through his fingers. His expression was filled with astonishment as he stared at Demacia, then toward the ground beneath him with renewed caution.

Luckily by then, Demacia had already begun to recover.

After staring blankly for several seconds, his breathing steadied. Then, as if the earlier shock had only fueled his excitement, he suddenly sprang to his feet and excitedly pointed toward the spot where he had just been digging.

“Brother Mu! There’s something down there! Charged with electricity!”

As an upper Silver-rank warrior with a Guardian specialization path, Demacia possessed exceptional durability.

Yet even he, with his heavily tanky build, had nearly been electrocuted into unconsciousness in an instant.

Therefore, whatever was buried beneath was definitely no ordinary object.

Because what he had experienced had not been normal electrocution, but it had felt as though he had been struck by magical lightning.

Li Mu cast Demacia a strange look.

Although this guy’s luck was usually abysmal, when it came to uncovering treasures in ruins, his fortune was nothing short of extraordinary.

Li Mu still remembered that back when they were still newbies, Demacia had once dug up an epic-grade meditation manual in Florence, and even now, the royalties from those manuals continued to generate a steady stream of contribution points for both of them.

“Dig.”

Li Mu signaled to his teammates.

The players nodded and exchanged their metal shovels for wooden ones before beginning to excavate the area Demacia had struck.

Shovels were standard equipment for any exploration team.

Since there was always the risk of damaging buried objects with a metal shovel, players often carried wooden shovels as well. These were crafted from a type of soft blackwood native to the Elven Forest. Under normal conditions, the wood was soft and flexible, but once infused with magical power, it rapidly hardened and expanded, making it ideal for excavation work.

However, as soon as the players drove the enchanted wooden shovels into the ground, they were shocked to discover that the wood suddenly seemed to lose all strength.

The moment the shovels entered the soil, the magical power infused within them dissipated, causing them to become limp and ineffective.

“That thing can absorb magical power!”

One of the players exclaimed in surprise.

Absorb magical power?!

Li Mu became even more interested.

“In that case, put on your Crypt Spider Silk gloves. Dig with your hands instead,” he instructed.

Crypt Spider Silk was a type of magical material, but the gloves carried by the players had undergone special treatment. Not only did they prevent the transmission of magical power, but they also possessed anti-magic properties.

Such gloves were considered essential equipment for excavating ruins.

After all, one never knew what might be unearthed with the next handful of dirt.

The Elven Forest contained countless ruins of varying sizes, and the players had long since accumulated considerable excavation experience.

Soon, they finally uncovered the object.

Demacia blinked in surprise as he looked at it.

“A stone?”

It was a pale azure stone.

Even through the spider silk gloves, they could feel the chill radiating from its surface. Touching it felt much like touching a block of ice.

Faintly visible across its surface were intricate patterns that appeared naturally formed, yet strangely orderly.

Demacia removed his gloves, disabled the pain sensation on his settings, and cautiously reached out to touch it.

Crack!

Before the astonished eyes of the other players, a dazzling spark erupted from his fingertips as streams of electricity coursed through his body.

A couple of seconds later, Demacia quickly began convulsing again.

His eyes rolled back, foam spilled from his mouth, and he collapsed once more.

For a brief moment, everyone present seemed to catch the scent of roasted meat in the air.

Li Mu: “…”

This guy really was a daredevil.

He looked at Demacia with genuine admiration.

But just then, a familiar glow suddenly emerged from Demacia’s body.

Bathed in radiant light, his figure slowly dissolved and vanished.

At the same time, his username in their team’s group chat abruptly dimmed.

Li Mu: “…”

“H-He actually died?!”

His eyes widened.

Looking from the stone on the ground then back to the empty spot where Demacia had just disappeared, he asked in disbelief:

“…What exactly is this thing?”

༺⟐༻

“Electrite! This stone must be Magic Electrite!”

Inside the Elven Blacksmith Shop in Florence, the elven master blacksmith Carlos adjusted the monocle that the players had custom-made for him and stared excitedly at the stone placed upon the worktable.

Nearly five years had passed and the scale of the blacksmith shop was now vastly different from what it had once been.

The massive influx of players had provided Carlos with an enormous pool of free labor. Inspired by Meng Zhihan’s success, more and more players had gone out of their way to curry favor with the old blacksmith in hopes of learning the art of smithing.

Over time, even Carlos himself had lost count of how many apprentices he had accepted under the relentless enthusiasm of these Chosen Ones.

Although Meng Zhihan remained his sole direct disciple, the number of registered apprentices had long become impossible to tally.

And so, little by little, his blacksmith shop in Florence continued to expand.

“Magic Electrite? What’s that?”

Li Mu asked curiously.

Their expedition team had already returned from the north.

And along with them came the stone that had electrocuted Demacia to death.

In fact, there was far more than a single piece.

After digging deeper, their team discovered that the ground beneath contained a large quantity of these stones.

Curious, they decided to haul back an entire cartload to see whether these stones had any real value.

“This is an exceptionally valuable magical material,” Carlos said excitedly. “Or rather… a mutated form of mana crystal.”

As he spoke, he brought out a complex instrument and connected it to the stone.

To everyone’s astonishment, arcs of electricity immediately crackled across the connection points, while the needle measuring magical energy concentration began spinning wildly.

“Electrite is a special type of mineral deposit that contains an enormous amount of lightning-mana element. Hmm… perhaps you’re unfamiliar with the lightning element. It is a variant attribute created through a specific combination of fire-element and wind-element mana, and it possesses tremendous destructive power.”

“Unlike ordinary mana crystals, Electrite actively absorbs stray fire-element mana, wind-element mana, and various other forms of magical energy. As a result, areas rich in Electrite tend to have much lower temperatures.”

Hearing this, Li Mu suddenly understood.

At last, he knew why Frozen Valley remained so cold despite its relatively modest elevation.

Meanwhile, Carlos continued his explanation.

“Magic Electrite is quite unique. Although it belongs to the mana crystal family, its mana-absorbing properties make it extremely difficult to utilize the magical energy stored within it under normal circumstances.”

“However, those who specialize in lightning magic can do so. Lightning-attributed magical beasts can as well.”

“Because of this, regions rich in Magic Electrite often attract large numbers of lightning-attributed magical beasts.”

As he spoke, Carlos looked up at Li Mu and the others with anticipation.

“Sir Li Mu, where did you find this stone? And so much of it at that? Could it be… could it be that you’ve discovered Frozen Valley?”

Li Mu paused briefly before nodding.

“That’s right. We’ve already found it.”

“As expected!”

Carlos revealed an expression that seemed to say just as I thought before continuing:

“According to the records passed down through my clan, Frozen Valley is the only place known to contain abundant veins of Electrite.”

Then he turned toward the surrounding players and asked excitedly:

“Do you know what the most remarkable property of Electrite is?”

The players exchanged glances.

“What is it, Master Carlos?”

“Heh.”

Instead of answering directly, Carlos put on a pair of gloves, picked up a smaller piece of Electrite, and began chanting a spell.

To the astonishment of Li Mu and the others, bolts of lightning burst from the old elf’s body and quickly enveloped the stone.

Before long, the stone’s glow noticeably dimmed.

“Sir Li Mu, please touch it.”

Carlos dispersed the lightning and handed the stone over.

Li Mu instinctively recoiled.

But seeing the old elf’s reassuring expression that clearly said Go ahead, it’s safe, he hesitated for a moment before cautiously touching the stone.

His face filled with surprise.

“Huh? The electricity is gone?”

“Heh…”

Carlos chuckled, took the stone back, and began chanting once more.

This time, a swirling sphere of flame appeared in his hand and wrapped itself around the Electrite.

A moment later, Carlos dismissed the fire spell and handed the stone back again.

“Try it one more time.”

Li Mu reached out and touched it.

The instant his fingers made contact, he jerked his hand back as an electric shock shot through him.

“Uh…”

The players stared in amazement.

Smiling faintly, Carlos explained:

“The most extraordinary property of Electrite is that even after the lightning-element mana stored within it has been completely depleted, it can continuously absorb fire-element and wind-element mana from its surroundings and gradually convert them into lightning-element mana for storage.”

“In other words, as long as it remains exposed to the air, any magical energy it loses will slowly replenish itself over time.”

Upon hearing Carlos’s explanation, the players’ eyes widened.

With this explanation, the way they looked at the Electrite instantly changed.

As for Demacia, who had only recently respawned, he suddenly slapped his forehead and exclaimed:

“Holy crap! Isn’t this basically a magical version of a rechargeable battery that can charges itself?!”