We suddenly arrived at the Crystal Caverns, a series of cave sections interconnected together all into an enormous open cave with countless and colorful crystals everywhere. The entire place looked rather gorgeous to be honest. And I wish I could stay here admiring the view, but we were in a hurry so we had to quickly get out of here and into the Root Forest.
Without making a stop to admire the beautiful scenery, we quickly ordered our mounts to hurry, Belle and company hastened their pace, running and flying at an even faster speed. However, our whole trip wasn't going to be happy-go-luck until finding Jeremias… I knew something was going to show up, from the distance, through our maps, we saw red dots hiding within the enormous crystals.
"Something's lurking around." Titan pointed out.
"Many, in fact." Rita said.
"What should we do? Fight them or evade them?" Lily wondered.
"I don't think we can evade them…" I said.
"It is weird, I am fairly sure this place is filled to the brim with Crystal Monsters, and other creatures that feed on these colorful crystals filled with Mana… Where did all the monsters go?" Acorn wondered.
"So you've thought the same…" Nieve said. "I don't even need to see the map to feel something, an enormous group of living beings are waiting for us in the frontlines. There's a big wall there made naturally out of many enormous crystals, to pass through there we'll have to go around the many crystals, it'll be a hassle. They're hiding there."
In front of us what Nieve described appeared. It was a natural formation of enormous and colorful crystals branching off like trees, reaching the ceiling. They made something similar to a Crystal Tree Forest and hiding within all the trees there was an enormous quantity of red dots! Dozens, no, perhaps over a hundred?! This reminded me of the time we fought against that endless army of snakes.
"If the monsters are hiding there… We won't be able to get through the tight crevices in there as easily. And we don't even know how strong those monsters are either." Said Titan.
"It is a risky move, but we don't have anything else we can do, right?" Asked Acorn.
"We could move the crystals away, right?" Lily asked.
"Wait, you can do that?!" I asked.
"More or less… You can't?" Asked Lily.
"Well… I can't do it completely. My Terrain Changing Skills only go so far, they cannot completely delete things such as an enormous forest of crystals, but you can do it?" I wondered.
"I think so, it is worth giving it a shot!" Lily suddenly stepped forward, as she jumped off Belle, reaching the floor and then rushing forward. "Crystal Magic: Crystal Shaping!"
Lily quickly conjured her Crystal Magic, a new magic she learned which allowed her to refine crystals, jewels, and gems, and also to control them, summon them for fighting, and more. In an instant, the crystal forest started to tremble, as many of the crystals started to shape themselves around, slowly, and trying to move away, slowly attempting to make a road straight to our destination.
The sound of crystals being shaped was rather loud and thunderous, but Lily quickly ran out of MP while only having shaped one tenth of the road to our destination.
"Dirt Shaping could work, the bedrock below is too hard. Summoning Mountain Walls to destroy the crystals is impossible too, I simply can't do it, the game mechanics doesn't allow me…" Sighed Lily. "However, I think we can do this through Mining as well." She quickly drank an MP Potion, as we saw several shadows emerge from within the Crystal Forest.
"They're here! And it's a bunch of monsters…" Said Titan.
"Woah, I've never seen those types of monsters before!" Acorn was surprised.
"They look powerful, can we even get through them?" Asked Nieve.
"I sense people as well; they're hiding behind the monsters…" Titania pointed out.
The monsters that showed up resembled something similar to turtles. They were covered with colorful crystal scales, and in their shells they had immense and colorful crystals growing out like sharp spikes. These were named Giant Crystal Turtles.
Their sizes were of roughly 4 meters big each, but there were more armored monsters near them… these were bugs as large as the turtles, with white exoskeleton and colorful crystals growing all over their bodies, they had sharp jaws resembling rhinoceros beetles, and horns shaped as piercing spears. These were named Crystal Cave Guardians and seemed to be stronger than the turtles themselves!
Aside from the two big tank-type monsters that were working together as if they were of the same race. There were smaller and more vicious looking ones.
Tall praying mantises with shiny, rainbow exoskeletons and blades made of sharp crystals, their eyes were big and could probably see anything within their surroundings even in the dark caves named Crystal Assassin Mantises, they were as tall as trees, growing as tall as five meters, true behemoths.
And lastly, bats, dozens of bats with black fur and red eyes similar to Rita's bat, in fact, they were named Shadow Vampire Bats, and were coming for blood, quite obviously.
"Those monsters… They're some of the monsters that show up in the Dwarven Mountain Caves, that's Level 40 and above Leveling Grounds!" Said Titan. "I never thought such tough monsters could have gotten here to begin with!"
"But how did they even get here?!" Asked Rita.
"Probably because these caverns connect to the Dwarven Mountains since ancient times. The monsters living there have probably migrated here over time." Said Titania. "They feel stronger, however. Dark auras are leaking all over their bodies!"
"That's probably the guys over there controlling them, right? I didn't knew that Jeremias dude had friends with himself!" Rita said angrily, raising her staff as several magic circles emerged. "If we have to beat some guys, so be it. Planta, step down, I know you don't like to do the nasty work."
"No, if they're really getting in our way and want to contaminate the forest, I'll fight them too!" I stepped forward. "I cannot let you protect me all the time like you did back then."