They arrived full of energy. Unfortunately, they couldn't use their energy because their next location had also been occupied. The two of them could only rush to another location.
The consolation was that they weren't wasting their time going from one disappointing location to another. Thanks to their scanner and Roar's nose, they were able to find the next best thing around and take it for themselves.
So they got richer along the way. This dampened the disappointment they felt from the two unfruitful targets.
The tides turned for them at the third location. There was no elder at the third location, so they could finally take the precious plant.
This time, the guardian of the precious plant was too strong for Arthur to fight. Arthur couldn't tell just how strong it was, but he didn't want to risk it. So Thor had to come forward to fight it.
The guardian was a large serpent. Its venom is one of the reasons why Arthur chose to give up. Since the golem was immune to poisons, it was a good idea to let it fight the snake.
Thor himself stayed behind Arthur. He needed Arthur to protect him. This was despite the fact that he was wearing thick metal armor that covered him from head to toe.
When the golem became active, Thor stopped moving and focused all of his attention on controlling the golem. This was another of the weaknesses of controlling something so powerful with a weak mind.
The golem was 4 meters tall. This was tall for a human and also a giant snake.
Height wasn't the only thing the snake was missing out on either. The snake was also lacking in strength. This inadequacy was why it was nearly knocked out with one punch from the golem.
The snake had tried to strangle and swallow the golem. It even managed to bite the golem. But this ensured that its head was close to the golem.
The golem punched the snake's head, which caused the snake to nearly lose its consciousness. The skull of the snake was also cracked by the punch.
The snake was stunned by the punch, which gave the golem time to punch it again. The second punch managed to crack open the snake's skull.
With the snake's strongest defense broken, the golem's fist was able to go unhindered into the snake's skull and smash its brain to pieces.
The whole fight took less than two seconds. Arthur was impressed by the performance of the golem.
He said to Thor, "Not bad. The snake was incapacitated in seconds."
Thor was feeling a headache, but he still put on a proud expression and said, "Of course. He is not bad at all."
The two of them went further to harvest the reward for their effort. Thor went to clean the golem and rest while Arthur and Roar got busy dealing with the corpse and harvesting the precious plant that the snake was guarding.
The precious plant was a small fruit tree less than one meter tall. The tree was thin, but it was producing fruits the size of pumpkins. The fruits were large and numerous, but somehow, the small, thin tree managed to hold onto them.
The fruit of the tree itself was black. But it had an appetizing smell that induced salivation in Arthur and Roar.
Arthur harvested the fruits but left the tree for the future. This is how harvesting is done so as to preserve the value of the secret realm.
Of course, things would be different if the valuable part of the precious plant was the tree itself. But the fruit tree itself wasn't edible, so they left it alone in hopes that another beast would come to guard it.
The new guardian beast will protect the fruit tree, harvest its fruits, and grow stronger. Then sometimes in the future, the guardian beast itself will be harvested. The cycle will start again then.
After putting away the corpse of the snake, the two of them set off to their next destination. They were fruitful in the next destination too.
The guardian beast they encountered was a porcupine. Arthur couldn't fight it, so the Golem had to come forward to kill it.
They harvested what it was protecting and moved on. But they encountered a complicated problem in their next destination and the one after it.
The first problem they encountered was the same as before. Their target was being hunted by an elder. So they had to give up.
The second problem was similar too. Some people had arrived at the location of their target. What made it complicated was that there was more than one group of people.
Arthur's eyes scanned everyone at the scene when he got there. He saw disciples from every sect. They were 12 in number. All of them were staring at the guardian beast and at each other with a faint sense of hostility.
Thor also saw this and asked, "There are many people here. Should we back off and go to another place?"
Arthur didn't care about the number of people around them. He only cared about the single disciple from the Blood Skull sect.
He said to Thor, "Don't be afraid. They are disciples like us, not elders, so we can fight them. And if we fight them, I'm sure that we can win."
Thor nodded and followed. The two of them went up to the only disciple from the Blood Skull. Their actions attracted a lot of attention, but no one moved to stop them.
The only disciple from the Blood Skull sect had black skin that was as black as obsidian. He was black from head to toe, including his eyes and hair.
There was no white in his eyes at all. This made him look like one of the corpses of the Black Bones sect. But Arthur could sense a terrible life force and exuberant life energy from the man, so he determined that the man couldn't be a corpse or even a member of the Black Bones sect.