Chapter 271

Haruto looked up at Frieren, who was examining materials nearby.

"Frieren, it looks like your theory about Magic-Sealing Ore was right."

"It doesn’t just nullify magic. It can also suppress the mana that makes up a monster’s body and prevent it from dispersing after death."

"These skeletons are the best proof."

Frieren nodded, unsurprised by the conclusion.

She had already been fairly confident in her theory.

For Haruto, however, the discovery was a tremendous source of motivation.

Unfortunately, the cavern seemed endless.

Haruto and Stark were still fine. Both possessed extraordinary stamina and could continue walking for more than ten hours without their breathing even becoming noticeably heavier.

Frieren and Fern had reached their limits.

As mages, neither possessed particularly impressive physical endurance, and with magic completely unusable inside the deposit, they had no choice but to walk every step themselves. Their pace had become unsteady, and exhaustion had left both of them visibly pale.

Frieren was managing somewhat better thanks to her vast experience.

Fern, however, had remained uneasy the entire time.

Being unable to use mana detection made her deeply uncomfortable, almost as though she had been thrown into an endless darkness with no way to sense what might be lurking around her. Every faint sound made her tense instinctively, draining both her physical and mental stamina far faster than usual.

Eventually, the four stopped and decided to rest.

They found a relatively flat section of the cavern, and Haruto took some firewood from the Gourmet Restaurant and lit a campfire.

The flickering orange-red flames chased away some of the underground chill.

Dinner was simple.

They used the glowing umbrella mushrooms they had collected earlier, and Haruto simmered them into a pot of mushroom soup.

Within the milky-white broth, the mushrooms’ faint blue glow shimmered beneath the surface. A gentle sweetness gradually filled the air, easing away much of the exhaustion accumulated over the day.

"These mushrooms have a softer sweetness than the ones that grow aboveground."

Stark took another sip and offered his opinion.

Frieren and Fern nodded in agreement.

Even Fern’s tightly wound posture finally relaxed somewhat.

After dinner, the four settled down to rest.

Frieren wrapped herself tightly in a blanket and lay on the ground.

Less than two minutes after closing her eyes, her breathing became deep and even.

She was completely asleep.

The sheer quality of her sleep was impressive enough that Haruto could only stare.

The other three, however, remained awake.

Fern sat beside Frieren, watching the fire with a troubled expression.

Without mana detection, she felt almost blind.

Every tiny noise in the surrounding darkness immediately put her on alert, making it impossible for her to truly relax enough to sleep.

As for Stark and Haruto, they had their own reasons for staying awake.

Stark knew the cavern was dangerous and took responsibility for keeping watch.

Haruto sat on the opposite side of the fire with his eyes seemingly closed in rest.

In reality, he had already expanded his En across several hundred meters.

He was waiting for the monster living in this underground cavern to come to them.

He did not have to wait long.

Small stones suddenly began trickling from the ceiling, splashing into a puddle nearby.

Stark immediately stood, gripping his axe as his gaze snapped upward.

Then came a harsh scraping sound.

Something enormous was moving across the ceiling, its claws grinding against the rock with a shriek sharp enough to set teeth on edge.

A massive shadow dropped from above.

It plunged through the darkness with a rush of air and slammed heavily into the ground.

BOOM!

The impact made the entire cavern tremble.

The monster finally came fully into view.

Five vertical eyes grew across its head, each one glowing with a sinister green light as they locked onto the four travelers.

Its body and thick limbs resembled those of an enormous frog.

Two powerful tails extended behind it like massive steel whips.

Even more bizarrely, two flexible tentacles several meters long grew from its back.

"Frieren, wake up!"

Stark’s expression changed as he shouted toward the sleeping elf.

But before the words had even fully left his mouth, one of the Venomous Dragon’s tentacles moved.

It lashed toward the sleeping Frieren with a piercing whistle.

The strike was so fast that it left an afterimage behind.

If it landed cleanly, even steel would have been deformed by the impact.

There was no time to wake her properly.

Stark grabbed Frieren without hesitation and yanked her aside.

The tentacle smashed down where she had been sleeping.

Naturally, the sudden movement woke Frieren.

She looked up, recognized the monster before them, and showed no panic whatsoever.

"It’s a Venomous Dragon. A highly poisonous monster that lives in underground caves."

"It mainly attacks by releasing clouds of toxic mist."

After calmly identifying it, Frieren made no attempt to join the fight.

Magic was unusable here.

Rather than get in the way, she decided it was better to leave close-quarters combat to Haruto and Stark.

As far as Frieren was concerned, they were traveling as a party.

Entrusting her safety to companions who were better suited to the situation was perfectly natural.

Haruto was already moving.

He did not bother helping Stark directly.

His objective was simple.

Suppress the Venomous Dragon before it could release its poisonous mist.

Inside an enclosed cavern like this, once the monster filled the area with poison, their only realistic option would be to run.

’Shave.’

Haruto vanished.

Only a shallow footprint remained where he had been standing.

In the blink of an eye, he crossed more than ten meters and appeared directly in front of the Venomous Dragon.

All five of its eyes locked onto him.

Enraged that Haruto had dared charge straight toward it, the monster opened its enormous jaws.

A thick purple-black glow gathered deep inside its throat.

The entire mouth filled with a suffocating toxic aura.

It was about to release its poison mist.

Haruto gave it no chance.

A fraction of a second before the Venomous Dragon could exhale, his fist slammed upward into its lower jaw.

BANG!

The monster’s mouth snapped shut with tremendous force.

The poison cloud about to erupt was forced back into its own throat.

A muffled roar of pain came from within as the Venomous Dragon’s enormous head snapped backward.

Even its thick legs staggered two steps from the impact.

Haruto did not pause.

Using the recoil from his punch, he twisted smoothly through the air.

Nen gathered in his right palm and formed into a long, razor-sharp kitchen knife.

Haruto did not want to kill the Venomous Dragon yet.

The best option was to immobilize it with Knocking first.

He aimed his Nen blade at the vertebrae beneath its neck and drove it in.

But just as Haruto thought he had succeeded, the two tentacles on the monster’s back shot forward from either side like snakes that had been waiting to strike.

They whipped toward him with shrieking force.

Haruto’s expression tightened.

The blade he had driven into the vertebrae had failed to complete the Knocking.

That meant the Venomous Dragon’s internal structure differed significantly from that of ordinary creatures.

With both tentacles closing in, Haruto kicked hard against the ground.

His body launched upward, narrowly avoiding the pincer attack.

The two tentacles crashed violently into each other beneath him.

Haruto flipped neatly through the air.

His gaze locked onto one of the fleshy tendrils hanging from the Venomous Dragon’s head.

He reached out and seized it.

The muscles in his arm tightened.

Using the force of the monster violently whipping its head around, Haruto swung himself upward and landed firmly atop its enormous skull.

"ROAR—!"

The Venomous Dragon went berserk.

It thrashed its head violently, trying to fling Haruto off.

At the same time, the two tentacles on its back changed direction and stabbed toward him like spears, showing no concern whatsoever for whether they might strike the monster’s own head.

Haruto’s feet seemed nailed to its skull.

No matter how violently it shook, he did not move.

His left hand pressed firmly against the top of the monster’s head.

His right hand rose again.

Nen surged violently into his palm.

This time, the kitchen knife he formed was denser, sharper, and far more solid than before.

Haruto focused on the exact point between the Venomous Dragon’s five vertical eyes.

Then he struck.

The Nen blade plunged downward.

It sank all the way to the hilt, piercing deep into the monster’s brain.

The Venomous Dragon’s frantic thrashing stopped instantly.

Its massive body froze.

The sinister green light in all five eyes flared once, then rapidly faded.

A weak growl rattled in its throat.

Its thick limbs twitched uncontrollably.

The tentacles hanging from its back went limp and fell uselessly to the ground.

Haruto could clearly sense that the blade had destroyed the creature’s brain and central nervous system.

Its life force was disappearing rapidly.

"Frieren! Seal it, quickly!"

Haruto immediately turned and shouted, urgency in his voice.

If Frieren could lock the Venomous Dragon’s mana in place now, its entire body could be preserved.

Frieren merely stared back at him in silence.

And in that instant, Haruto realized what he had forgotten.

’Damn it.’

They were inside a Magic-Sealing Ore deposit.

Frieren could not even cast the most basic spell here, much less something as complicated as sealing magic.

The fight had moved so quickly that Haruto had completely forgotten.

Still, he quickly calmed himself.

Even without sealing magic, they were surrounded by Magic-Sealing Ore.

There was a good chance the Venomous Dragon’s body would remain intact on its own.

Whether that would actually work, however, Haruto could not yet be certain.