章 6: Oh, that´s hot
After an hour in the dungeon, the lizards finally stopped coming on their own. There were over a hundred corpses piled up in the crossroads.
Hal was releasing the team of their exhaustion as they rested on the cold ground.
However, Mark was disheartened by his performance. The great teamwork gave him no space to actually use his potential.
Getting up from the ground Allen came up to Mark and handed him a small knife.
"Come on, I´ll show you how to salvage essence stones from the monsters."
They crouched over the corpse of the iguana monster.
"The essence stones are around the important organs so first let´s try the head." said Allen guiding Mark to cut through the rough scales of the iguana.
"No, that´s just the brain, then that means it´s near the heart." he opened up the chest of the corpse and found a shining white stone.
'I wanna puke'
Mark was not very accustomed to dealing with dismembered animals, outside of the usual dissecting in biology class so his reaction was natural.
"Are you alright?" asked Allen.
"Yeah, It´s just a bit nauseating."
"You´ll get used to the smell of blood if you clear enough dungeons."
After a moment of resting the group got to salvaging the essence stones. Even Mark got used to it by the tenth monster.
'Knife goes in, essence stone goes out.'
When they finally got all the essence stones out they could continue in the raid. However, there were countless possible paths so which one should they choose? It was quite easily solved by Mark. The fiery mana leaking from one of the caves gave the boss away.
"I think the boss is that way." said Mark.
"Alright, we don´t really have a better way so let´s go there first. Is everyone ready for the final battle?" asked Rick.
"I couldn´t be more ready." said Allen while the others just nodded.
Rick led the way through the tunnel. As they walked deeper into the cave the air was getting progressively hotter.
"It´s like 90 degrees in here. What kind of boss monster is this? A living sauna?" asked Ava with an annoyed look wiping sweat off of her forehead.
"I´m not sure, I never came across anything like this." Rick said advancing forward.
'A temperature control spell and a spell that makes a moving source of light, this is a great learning opportunity. Nothing triumphs firsthand experience it seems.' Mark thought planning his future precautions.
The raid team took a turn in the tunnel and red light assaulted their eyes.
'We´re here'
Going further they found themselves in a large nest which was illuminated in dim light.
Their eyes trailed towards the source of the light and found a car-sized lizard. It was covered in dark scales with the red light propagating in between the scales. With every breath, it exhaled a puff of smoke from its nostrils. Thankfully it was sleeping.
'Dragon? No, it has no wings so a salamander.'
Seeing the boss Allen used his skill [Powershot] and fired the arrow aiming right at the closed eye of the salamander.
The monster was caught off guard and screeched at the horrible pain caused by the embedded arrow.
"I expected it to go deeper." Rick said.
"That´s what she said?" Allen joked around even in this sweaty situation.
"God damn it, focus!" Ava shouted and brought back the severity of the situation. The boss monster charging at them full speed.
Before Rick could use his [Taunt] skill Mark already acted.
'Page 2, Magic siphoning barrier'
After setting up the spell options a white translucent barrier just about a centimeter thick appeared in front of Rick.
Salamander ignored the barrier, opened its jaws, and breathed fire on them.
When the barrier got into contact with the flames it sucked them into itself and started burning like a wall of flames.
'I haven´t thought of that. So first I have to purify the mana before condensing it into the barrier. However, this also has great implications. Maybe I can make something to redirect attacks with this.'
Salamander wasn't happy with its attacks not coming through, but it had to take a breather so it stopped spitting out flames for a moment.
This was a great opportunity and Mark didn´t leave it hanging. He dispelled the white magic circle on his hand and created another one with this one being light blue.
'Page 4, Targeted freezing'
Small white light went flying out of the magic circle and hit the salamander, doing no damage. However, that was just a magic flare. The moment it hit the monster a wave of snow left the magic circle assaulting the salamander at high speed.
Since salamanders are monsters living in volcanoes, the wave of frost became a slow and agonizing death to the lizard. Getting covered in a layer of ice which then melts and then freezes as more ice comes along, the salamander became an ice statue in a minute.
Allen was a C-rank hunter with the most experience in this party. The experience gave him enough confidence to joke around in the gate but seeing Mark defeat a dungeon boss all by himself in his first raid gave him a slap back to reality.
"This doesn´t look like a small mistake in the evaluation, buddy. You´re a C-rank at the absolute least." Allen told Mark with a smile.
"Yeah, if I knew how much firepower you were packing I´d involve you more." Rick added.
Mark ignored what they were saying and asked. "How much is the corpse worth?"
"Normally D-rank boss in a perfect condition could be sold around the 3 thousand mark. However, they usually don´t have any elemental properties so this one is probably more like 5 thousand." Rick said looking at the frozen salamander.
"Can I take a few scales? Would it like affect the price or something?"
Rick looked at Hal with a helpless look saying 'Help me, I don´t know.' with his eyes.
Hal sighed and answered Mark´s question. "They won´t even notice."
With that revelation, Mark started tediously gathering scales into his backpack.
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