Chapter 90 - Time Is Gold!
"Don't trip on the slime trails you guys leave behind"
After saying so, Shane sprinted into a dark alley, before the surrounding soldiers could react.
Even though the beast tide had lasted for only a few hours with Shane taking for less than two hours, he felt extremely tired and only wanted to sleep.
Fortunately, the inn he had rented a room in, was still intact without any elemental attacks damaging the building. It was quite fortunate, considering the proximity of the inn to the northern wall. Hundreds of gaping holes decorated the wall through which the elemental attacks had entered the shelter and demolished a few newly built houses.
Seeing him, the Inn owner eyed him weirdly, as if he was insane because he had left the Inn in haste a few hours ago..
After greeting the owner, Shane went inside his room, only to throw himself on the bed without any energy to change his clothes.
**
Waking up a few hours later, he straightened his back, did a small workout, washed up, and changed into a fresh set of clothes, before he walked out of the inn hurriedly.
His next steps had to be careful because they were extremely important.
If the rumors were true, the Wolf den's threat should have been completely taken care of, though it had resulted in the death of hundreds of expert stage soldiers, which upset Shane almost immediately.
He wasn't aware of the number of casualties faced by humanity in the last few hours. It had to be in the thousands if not tens of thousands, and almost all of them had been seasoned soldiers. It was a painful loss to the military's strength, even though they had more than 10,000,000 soldiers in total.
The military was segmented into three main sections and their names were exactly the same as the dimensions.
Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced.
10 million soldiers might sound like a lot, but they were distributed amongst more than 35 Basic dimensions, 10+ intermediate dimensions, and few advanced dimensions, with humanity's shelter established on each of them.
In the end, the 10 million soldiers weren't supposed to work all the time. They required a lot of time and resources to increase their strength in order to strengthen humanity's defense, without sacrificing their personal life.
They were allowed to take leaves up to three months in a year, which they could distribute however they wanted, as long as nothing major happened.
These 10 million soldiers were barely enough to protect Igra, all shelters, and their defenses because each shelter in the intermediate dimension required a shocking number of soldiers each day.
If humanity wanted to establish even more shelters they would have to increase the number of soldiers and nurture them well.
In Shane's opinion, the Radiant mountain-ring shelter was the best way to improve humanity's economic situation for the Basic primordial dimensions. The Intermediate and Advanced shelters could take care of themselves without the need to fund all Basic shelters, as long as everything went smoothly.
Shane knew that the military only worked due to the resources provided by his family in the beginning. The other large clans had to do the same in order to secure the weaker classes, which was fundamental to survive the threat of foreign beasts.
Protecting each other was something Shane's family was used to and proud of, which caused him to be equally proud of his family. Every member of his extended family contributed to a rather peaceful life, even though it was hard sometimes.
Walking through the market that had opened up, even though a beast tide had occurred barely a few hours ago, Shane saw many stalls with all kinds of miscellaneous items he was interested in.
However, his funds were almost negligible and he had more important things to purchase for the next step of his plan.
Less than half an hour passed as Shane left the market with a mountain of preservable food, scent dissolving potions, concealment potions, and nightsight potions.
He had received a discount owing to his bulk purchase and he transferred a small part of the preservable food into the beast sealing card that he extracted out of himself.
The food would stay fresh for an unknown, yet long time in his spatial ring, while it would go bad in the beast sealing card. This was the reason for him to divide the preservable food mountain into several parts.
Walking out of the shelter, Shane decided to wear the devil gas mask in order to move uninterruptedly as a thick iron stench permeated the air penetrating even through the low-quality gas mask's filter.
The whole landscape around the shelter was demolished and filled with holes, debris of shattered buildings, large blood puddles, and remains of beasts, while no human bodies were littered around anymore.
Shane wasn't sure when the funeral of the fallen soldiers would be held but he noticed that not a single human part was left behind as the soldiers had ensured that their comrades get a respectful death, which made him weirdly proud.
'What's wrong with me?' He asked himself, as he saw a few crystalized feathers and lizard scales lying in his surroundings.
'With more time left, I would gather everything here for a small pocket money' Shane told himself. He circulated the mana within him before he began to jog towards a particular direction.
Less than two hours later he was standing next to a familiar lake in front of an ordinary cavern entrance. It seemed to have contained elemental crystals before someone had mined them.
It was the elemental crystal cave that Shane had used to accomplish his [Mythic] mission, only a few days ago.
Somehow this realization shocked him quite a bit because a lot had happened over the last few days. Upon entering the elemental crystal cave, Shane immediately noticed an eerie emptiness inside the whole cave as if it had been abandoned for good.
However, the most important thing and the reason for him to return to the elemental crystal cave was still there.
The mana and elemental crystals were still there!!
"My dear treasure trove" Shane exclaimed, as he slowly inspected every nook and cranny of the first three layers of the elemental crystal cave. His assumption had just been proved right as he let out a joyous shout.
"YES!!"
Jumping around like a small and excited child, Shane felt like he could let loose for a few minutes. However, he regained his composure by telling himself the harsh truth.
"Shane!! Time is money and you don't know when other beasts will start to invade this territory…"
Only then, a weird thought crossed his mind.
"The three sovereigns of this area should be dead or at least driven away, right? Will the surrounding races and sovereigns annex it in the next few days? How much time do I have left?"
Thinking about the unknown amount of time he had left, Shane felt nervous and scared about the treasures he might have to leave behind if something were to happen. This fear caused him to take out his [Mortal-(Extraordinary)] Ambrulite-pickaxe.
In the end, Shane had returned to the elemental crystal cave that he had been forced to leave because of the thunder wolves intruding the cave, trying to fight for the right of it.
However, neither the thunder wolves nor the scaled lizards would have ever imagined that a lone human might overshadow the two races, allowing him to annex everything for himself.
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