The pain continued even though she wanted nothing more than to lose consciousness like she had done whenever she went through an evolution. Even the pain resistance that she had managed to get to level two didn’t show any signs of helping relive the pain she was feeling at the moment, or maybe it did help, but she just couldn’t sense it...
No matter what it was, Scaly continued suffering from the terrifying pain that almost seemed like someone was directly squeezing her heart, while at the same time setting it on fire before poking it with a thousand needles.
Even worse, she realized that she couldn’t stop the mana from rushing into her heart from the rest of her body. Meaning that she had no way to stop the terrifying pain and could only roll around on the ground while praying that she would run out of mana before her heart ended up being overwhelmed by it, something she felt was possible, as she could still sense that her heart was growing weaker the more mana, she ended up unwillingly pouring into it.
If there was one positive thing about her current situation, it would be the fact that she knew that she only had a little bit of her mana left after having used her lightning magic not long ago.
As long as she could endure for a few more minutes at the current rate that her heart was absorbed the mana inside of her body, Scaly felt confident that she would be able to make it through her current situation. At which point she would seriously reconsider before suddenly trying to pour her mana into any part of her body.
And so... A few painful minutes that felt like an eternity flew by, as Scaly came to a stop and collapsed silently. Not making any sound, as the terrifying pain she had to endure ended up causing her to faint from mental exhaustion shortly after the pain disappeared. Not able to check what had changed, as it looked like she would first have to rest before she would be able to see what or if anything had changed compared to before she had decided to pour mana into her heart in an attempt to create a dragon heart of her own.
...
At the same time Scaly collapsed from exhaustion following her attempt to infuse mana into her heart and create a dragon heart in that simple manner, a group of the slime enthusiast were happily chatting with each other around a small temporary camp they had set up after leaving the territory of the mountain.
"What was that monster...? It looked like a lizard of some kind, but with wings..."
"I don’t know, I haven’t seen anything like that before... From what little I know, it looked somewhat like the dragon described in books, but is obviously far too small to be a dragon..."
"Maybe another dragon related monster?"
"Hm... Maybe, we will have to ask senior crimson, he is after all a senior adventurer and might have encountered such monsters in the past."
The subject of the conversation between these slime enthusiasts, normally uninterested in anything that didn’t relate to slime, they even turned to look towards the crimson flame knight. Hoping that he could help them understand the strange creature or monster that had just suddenly appeared and kill off the mutated dragon devouring slime before disappearing.
"This... I don’t know what kind of monster that lizard is, but I do know that it should be one closely related to dragons. Possibly even being related to a real dragon at some point in time not too long ago, causing significant changes and mutations to have happened.
As for it being a real dragon, I doubt it... Real dragons are incredibly difficult to find outside and inside dungeons. Even young ones. If I’m not wrong, this might be one of the monsters that was brought in to feed that mutated dragon devouring slime, but considering its death, it’s likely that this dragon related monster won’t be able to survive for long."
"Huh? Not able to survive for long? But that terrifying attack just now-"
"Used up most of the monster’s mana if I’m not wrong and doesn’t have a low cast time either, as lightning magic outside of body enhancement, has become quite well known for.
Haa... I didn’t notice earlier due to most of my attention being on the mountain gnoll champion back then, but if I had, I would have definitely tried to catch it and taken it back with me. After all, a monster that closely related to dragons is bound to be filled with all sorts of materials useful to both mages and alchemists alike."
Shaking his head in a somewhat saddened manner as he said this, the crimson flame knight could not help feeling like it was a pity that he hadn’t been able to charge over and kill off the weakened Scaly and drag her back up to the third floor of the dungeon to be dismantled when he had the chance. Especially when he thought about how much those beautiful scales of hers would have been worth if sold to a noble...
Haaa... There is no medicine for regret, I can only hope I end up finding that monster again in the future. Although I do feel like a monster like that will spend most of its time hiding away to avoid danger. Even if I stay on the fourth floor to hunt it, there is close to no chance I will find it.
Instead of that, there is a far higher likelihood of me wasting a few weeks searching for nothing inside this mountain range. Not that good of an idea considering that the recent commotion might end up attracting the king of this floor.
Narrowing both of his eyes as he thought about a monster on the fourth floor of the dungeon that even he, a senior A Rank Adventurer, didn’t want to mess with, the crimson flame knight decided it would be best to leave the fourth floor of the dungeon now that their objective had been completed and the mutated dragon devouring slime was dead.
Even if they weren’t behind the death of the mutated dragon devouring slime, it didn’t matter, as they didn’t descend down to the fourth floor of the dungeon for training or to increase their own strength, but instead to kill off the mutated dragon devouring slime before it became even stronger and decided to wander back up to the third floor of the dungeon and possibly even making its way all the way to the first floor of the dungeon where the exit was located.
"We will rest here for another two hours before getting ready to leave this place."
With that in mind, the crimson flame knight quickly announced their soon to be departure from the mountain range on the fourth floor of the dungeon.
"Ah!? Do we have to leave immediately? Can’t we stay a few days- weeks longer? I’m still interested in studying those mountain slimes that are said to live somewhere inside this mountain range."
"Me too, I also wanted to study those mountain gnolls but never got an opportunity to enter the fourth floor of the dungeon with such a strong group in the past.
"I want to study those small rock slime we’ve encountered everywhere on our journey here."
"I hope to find and study the mountain bouncing slimes said to roam high up on the different tall mountains around the center of the mountain range where these large mountains naturally sectioned off a part of the mountain range.
This is why I didn’t want to work with these people in the first place. Always end up turning every expedition or dungeon exploration into a slime discovery mission. Oh, what is that slime? What does that slime do? And who can forget... What happens when I feed this thing to it, surely it won’t explode?
Once again remembering why he didn’t like working together with these slime enthusiasts in the first place, the crimson flame knight stared up towards the sky with a somewhat empty expression on his face. Knowing very well that these slime enthusiasts would be far more annoying if he refused them, as he had tried to do so in the past several times.
"Fine, you will get one day to look around and experiment, but after that we leave this place!"
"Yesss!"
"Thank you!"
"Hehe, one day now, two days tomorrow!"
Hearing the expected happy response along with a slightly worrying one, the crimson flame knight soon found a place to lay down and recover his strength while relaxing.
Giving the slime enthusiasts a day, in his opinion, was the best option that stood before him, as refusing them would cause them to come after him for taking their "research opportunity" away... And there was nothing worse than having these slime obsessed fanatics coming at him with bad thoughts in mind...