Chapter 284: Hidden Mana Cavern

"Ahhh, they’re gone... What should I do?"

"Nuoya, shouldn’t you go after them?"

"Do you think I should? Mochi said they’d be back soon, but..."

As Qiu Nuoya stood frozen in front of the hole, Igor leaned over to look inside as well.

"Mochi was talking about some delicious smell, but I don’t smell anything unusual."

Igor sniffed the air, trying to get a better sense of what lay inside.

"Right? What on earth is going on?"

Confused and unsure what to do, Qiu Nuoya and the others waited by the hole for about five minutes. However, there was still no sign of Mochi returning, so Qiu Nuoya decided to try using his sensory link with Mochi.

Normally, he used this ability while Mochi was by his side, sharing and visualizing the scenery seen by another slime. He wondered whether he could still use it without Mochi nearby, but when he tried, it worked.

The only difference seemed to be that, without Mochi beside him, the information he could share was limited to what Mochi sent him directly. For now, though, that was more than enough.

Qiu Nuoya called out to Mochi in his mind.

[ What is it? ]

Mochi’s reply was as carefree as ever, and Qiu Nuoya breathed a sigh of relief.

The visual information Mochi sent him showed a place that was almost completely dark. However, faint lights could be seen here and there along the walls. They didn’t look like artificial lights, and when Qiu Nuoya focused on them, he realized that they seemed to be coming from plants growing naturally on the earthen walls.

Was this something like glowing moss?

No, wait. Moss didn’t actually produce its own light, did it? As far as Qiu Nuoya remembered, it only appeared to glow in the dark because it reflected light. It wasn’t genuinely bioluminescent.

Yet the plants he was seeing now seemed to emit a faint glow despite the darkness and the complete absence of any other light source.

The countless points of light revealed that the place was a cavern resembling a limestone cave.

The hole in front of them, where they were waiting near the entrance, clearly looked like a passage that had been deliberately constructed and maintained by people. Yet the place Qiu Nuoya could see through Mochi’s eyes looked like a naturally formed limestone cavern.

The information Mochi sent him was limited, but he soon realized that the thing attracting the slimes with its supposedly delicious smell was apparently the glowing, moss-like vegetation. The slimes in Mochi’s field of vision were happily consuming the luminous plants.

"Mochi, is that glowing stuff safe to eat?"

[ It’s delicious~ Want some too, Nuoya? Should I bring you a souvenir~? ]

Even while communicating with Qiu Nuoya, Mochi seemed to be happily absorbing and digesting the glowing plants around it. It really was carefree to a fault.

"I don’t need a souvenir, so hurry up, finish eating, and come back."

Qiu Nuoya let out an exasperated sigh and raised his head.

Viktor was standing in front of him with his arms crossed, looking thoughtful.

"Is Mochi eating something that glows?"

"Huh? Oh, yes. They seem to be plants growing naturally on the earthen walls, and they’re glowing. The slimes were happily eating them. Is there a problem with that? Wait, could they be poisonous!?"

Qiu Nuoya suddenly grew flustered, but Viktor calmly reassured him.

"I don’t think they’re poisonous."

After soothing Qiu Nuoya’s worries, Viktor added, "It seems that this is the destination we’ve been looking for."

"Huh? Our destination? You mean there’s a concentration of magic power in there? But I can’t see anything like that around us."

Actually, could a concentration of magic power even be seen with the naked eye?

It was a place where magic power had accumulated, but magic power itself was invisible. So it seemed rather doubtful that such a concentration could actually be seen.

Perhaps these concentrations of magic power were invisible after all?

When Qiu Nuoya asked about it, Igor answered, "I can see them."

"My own magic power is pretty low, and I’m practically incapable of sensing magic. But magic concentrations... Hmm, how should I put it? The magic itself looks like it’s glowing."

Magic power... glowed?

"That’s right. When mana, or magical essence, reaches a high concentration, it begins to glow. Plants exposed to high concentrations of mana absorb and store it, causing them to glow as well. Such plants are used as ingredients in magic recovery potions, so gathering them is sometimes offered as a quest. Monsters are attracted to magic power, so the plants Mochi says are delicious are most likely vegetation that has absorbed a large amount of mana."

Now that made sense.

So the plants that glowed like moss had absorbed a great deal of mana. And if they contained enough mana to glow, that meant there had to be a source of mana nearby!

With that realization, Qiu Nuoya and the others stepped into the cave before them.

However, all they found was darkness stretching endlessly into the distance. Water was also flowing in from somewhere, making the ground uneven, damp, and slippery.

Wondering how Mochi had managed to reach that place, and from where, Qiu Nuoya proceeded carefully along the passage.

Eventually, they came to a section where part of the wall of the artificially constructed tunnel had collapsed.

Beyond the damaged section, darkness still stretched onward. However, when they extinguished their torches and let their eyes adjust to the gloom, they could just make out a faint glimmer of light farther down the passage.

"This is probably the place."

Igor cautiously peered into the opening, checking for dangerous monsters or traps before stepping inside.

The hole in the collapsed wall wasn’t particularly large, but after crouching down and moving forward for barely a meter, they emerged into a space far larger than the tunnel they had been walking through. It was the very same limestone cavern Qiu Nuoya had seen earlier through Mochi’s eyes.