Chapter 949

Anton busied himself mining spatial-energy-laced mithril ore from the first floor of the wild dungeon he had discovered in the middle of the Xinati Wilderness on the Huoxi continent.

The ones helping him mine were the summons that had hands: the Valkyrie, the Shadow Master, the Shadow Warrior, and the Clay Golem.

His other summons guarded them against any dungeon monsters that respawned. After some time, the monsters would return, forcing Anton to periodically clear them out.

At least Anton wasn't getting his hands dirty. He used Telekinesis to extract the mithril ore, allowing him to mine without having to physically handle the work. After a couple of hours, he felt that he had extracted nearly all the mithril ore on the first floor, so he proceeded to the second floor.

He spent another few hours mining the ore there after his summons cleared out all the dungeon monsters. Although the monsters were unique and possessed spatial abilities, they were low-level and therefore weak. His summons annihilated them in a short amount of time.

Still, Anton appreciated the gray humanoid dungeon monsters' abilities.

They could throw extremely sharp blades that Anton theorized were made from condensed spatial energy. They could also throw gray spheres that possessed gravitational force, allowing them to either push or pull whatever they targeted.

If the monsters had been high-level, this dungeon would have been extremely difficult to clear.

The mana stones dropped by the dungeon monsters were all low-level, but Anton kept them anyway.

After clearing all the mithril ore he could find on the second floor, Anton was ready to proceed to the third floor. However, when he reached the final area of the floor, he was surprised to find that there was no door. Instead, a more powerful dungeon monster stood there.

Anton assumed that it was the boss.

However, because it was still low-level, his summons destroyed it almost immediately. The only thing it dropped was another low-level mana stone.

More than likely, Anton was the first person to discover this dungeon. Otherwise, there should have been some kind of magical item as a reward.

He did, however, discover something peculiar.

The dungeon had a core.

Instead of destroying the dungeon, Anton decided to leave it intact. This wild dungeon was rare because it produced an equally rare resource. He already had its spatial coordinates, so he could return whenever he wanted, provided that no one else discovered the dungeon and destroyed it.

Anton felt extremely satisfied with the amount of spatial-energy-laced mithril ore he had mined. It had taken him a couple of weeks, and he had initially expected the process to take much longer.

More than likely, using his summons had been the right decision. With their help, he had been able to locate a wild dungeon containing exactly the kind of ore he had been searching for.

Instead of immediately returning to Traveler's Haven, Anton decided to explore the Huoxi continent.

Lemuel hadn't given him a deadline for completing the mission, and his tutor had told him that the first mission usually lasted several months.

Anton knew that the wild dungeon could bring him a considerable amount of wealth, but he decided to report its location to Master Vernatu as a gesture of goodwill. In truth, Anton wasn't particularly interested in managing a wild dungeon.

Maintaining such a dungeon would require a great deal of work, and that wasn't something he was willing to take on. Besides, he still didn't know what the mithril ore was actually used for.

Still, Anton planned to submit only half of the ore he had mined and keep the rest for his own experimentation.

He felt excited about exploring Huoxi. He didn't know what he would find, but as a traveler, he believed it was his duty to learn more about the places he visited.

Of course, Anton knew that the major magical organizations in Izmorta had probably explored most of the world. Traveler's Haven likely had extensive records detailing what could be found throughout Huoxi.

Anton had read some works about the continent, but his research had been shallow.

Besides, he still wanted to see the continent for himself and determine whether cultivation actually existed in this part of the world.

Since he was deep inside the Xinati Wilderness, Anton cast the Gate spell and traveled to the first location he had reached after arriving on the Huoxi continent.

It was the entrance to the wilderness and was probably closer to the civilized regions of Huoxi.

Once he arrived, Anton chose a general direction and began flying south.

He flew for a couple of hours before spotting a village in the distance.

Anton descended and cast Invisibility before stealthily approaching the village.

The village had no walls, which told Anton that the villagers didn't need such defenses against attacks from monsters in the wilderness.

The only reasons he could think of for a small village to lack walls were that wild monsters were rare in the area or that the villagers were strong enough to defend themselves against any monsters that attacked them.

While flying, Anton had noticed that there were no monsters nearby. More than likely, the reason the village had no walls was simply that attacks from wild monsters weren't frequent.

When Anton saw the villagers, he became excited.

Their clothing appeared to be from ancient China. They wore loose-fitting garments made from what seemed to be plant fibers, such as hemp. Their clothes were undyed, and almost all the villagers he had seen so far wore what looked like simple beige peasant clothing.

The villagers wore straw sandals, while some weren't wearing footwear at all. A few also wore straw hats.

Their physical features also resembled the people Anton had seen in movies from Asia. They had dark hair, tan skin that was probably the result of spending so much time under the sun, and brown or black eyes.

They all looked Chinese to him.

More than likely, Anton's appearance would be quite noticeable once he entered a town or city.

The only feature he shared with the locals was his dark hair. His blue eyes, height, and body type were all decidedly different.

Their houses were single-story structures made from packed mud, wood, and thatched straw. When Anton moved closer, he realized that all the houses were nearly identical.

Normally, villages would have one or two houses that were noticeably better than the others, with the village chief usually living in one of them.

He saw nothing like that here.

The village was extremely poor, and the people spoke a language Anton had never heard before. He had no idea whether their language actually sounded Chinese because he had no way of judging it.

At the very least, once he cast Tongue, he would be able to understand their conversations.

Most of the villagers talked about ordinary matters: the weather, the animals they were raising, the yields from their farms, and similar things.

Anton had intended to purchase some local clothing, but the village was so poor that the villagers probably didn't have anything they could spare.

He decided to move on.

Anton began flying again, continuing south while using a compass to maintain his direction.

He encountered more villages along the way, but they were just as poor as the first one he had discovered.

One peculiar thing was that he hadn't seen a single wild monster since reaching the first village.

Finally, after flying for another two hours, Anton spotted a somewhat larger town in the distance.

Unlike the villages, the town had walls. It also had guards who looked considerably more powerful.

The guards reminded Anton of adventurers with melee Classes. They were also noticeably larger than the villagers, which made Anton suspect that the villagers' short stature was at least partially the result of overwork and malnutrition.

Anton wondered how he would be treated once he decided to reveal himself.

Still, he wanted to enter the town legally.

He could only hope that the people here had encountered enough visitors from other continents that they wouldn't treat him like some kind of alien monster.