Shifting his attention away from the dead bodies that he had just confirmed belonged to the Eternal Life Sanctum, Verdell found himself looking over the dead mist bound behemoth that a certain dragon had already started tasting with great relish, as it turned out the dead mist bound behemoth was far more delicious than said dragon had originally expected given the not so appetizing appearance of the mist bound behemoth.
The sheer joy present on Scaly’s face caused Verdell himself to wonder if he should take a bite and try this mist bound behemoth himself. The only thing stopping him from doing that being the simple fact that he would almost certainly end up getting sick if he attempted to eat the mist bound behemoth raw like Scaly was currently doing.
Of course, outside of this, there was another thing about the dead mist bound behemoth that caught his attention as he looked over it, that being the face of the mist bound behemoth that had been hidden from view earlier when it had essentially been dragging its face along the ground while locked in battle with the SS Rank Adventurer or now more likely, powerful member of the Eternal Life Sanctum.
The face of the monster wasn’t exactly what had drawn his attention, but more so the gemstone that had replaced most of its face. Making one wonder how this kind of monster would even eat or see with no visible eyes or mouth.
But then again... Maybe the gemstone that made up most of its face served the purpose of being its eye in some kind of magical way that he just couldn’t comprehend with his current understanding monsters above the S Rank, something understandable given how difficult it was in general to get information on any monsters that exceeded the S Rank.
"Would you mind me taking a look at the-"
Chomp~!
"I guess not..." Feeling he got the answer he wanted from the dragon, who didn’t even bother lifting her head to answer him as she continued chomping down on one of the sizable arms of the dead mist bound behemoth, Verdell made his way over to the head of the mist bound behemoth to take a closer look at the gemstone that made up its face.
Not just because he was interested in potentially pocketing the gemstone and selling it after he got out of the dungeon, but also because he was curious if the gemstone might have been what the group from the Eternal Life Sanctum wanted from the mist bound behemoth. After all, from what he could see, none of them had reached the limit of their current level and needed to complete a class quest. Meaning that they likely had some reason to hunt down a monster as powerful as the mist bound behemoth, one that likely wasn’t the experience alone, as the danger and difficulty involved was far from worth it compared to just hunting down a group of weaker monsters with little to no risk involved.
Rustle~
Of course, he had no way to recognize what the gemstone was nor what purpose it served, so he decided to pull out one of the more precious artifacts he caried on him for identifying anything valuable he might end up encountering within a dungeon. The artifact in question being a small trinket in the shape of a coin that needed to be placed on top of the thing that needed to be examined, dubbed a coin inspection artifact by most who recognized it.
"To think I would end up using this thing for once... Haaa... If this isn’t anything valuable, this little artifact will truly end up being wasted for nothing." Silently muttering this to himself as he placed the small coin shaped artifact on top of the large gemstone, he had already forcibly extracted from the head of the mist bound behemoth, Verdell sincerely prayed to himself that the gemstone was something valuable that required identification.
After all, though the small coin shaped artifact was miraculous and able to identify objects with far more accuracy than most of the guild’s professional monster part identifiers, it could only be used once before becoming useless... And while that might have been fine if it was cheap, it happened to be one of the most expensive magical artifacts out there that an adventurer could get their hands on, being more expensive than the usual magic weapon that could be used far more than just one time.
Because of this, though the coin shaped identification artifact was considered a useful artifact in the eyes of most adventurers, it was rarely used by those below the S Rank and even then, rarely used outside of special circumstances because of how pricy it was and the simple fact that the adventurers guild would identify monster materials for free if one brought them back to the guild for exchange.
Whoosh~
Watching the coin getting to work and start rapidly absorbing magic from the air before injecting a small amount of the absorbed mana that had been forcibly modified into the gemstone, Verdell felt his heart sink knowing that the small artifact wouldn’t be useful any longer now that it had absorbed mana and modified it to analyze the gemstone.
[Mist Infused Crystal (Unstable)]
[Description: A mist infused crystal saturated with a vast quantity of death energy, causing the mist crystal to become unstable. Preventing the mist bound behemoth from making use of its mist magic.]
Reading through the description that popped up above the small coin shaped artifact, Verdell couldn’t help frowning. Not having expected the crystal to be saturated with death energy and also be in a state where it had directly prevented the mist bound behemoth from making use of its mist related magical abilities, something that had undoubtedly weakened it considering how it had been forced to rely entirely on its physical abilities during its battle against the people from the Eternal Life Sanctum.
Without a doubt, the saturation of death energy should be related to the people from the Eternal Life Sanctum. Problem was, he had no idea what purpose they had in doing something like that to the mist bound behemoth. The only reason he could think of was that the people from the Eternal Life Sanctum might need the mist infused crystal saturated with death energy from the mist bound behemoth.
Problem was, though he guessed they need the crystal from the mist bound behemoth, he had no clue what they might need it for, as the only real information he could get his hands on from the brief description outside of what the crystal in front of him was and the fact that it was unstable.
Although... Knowing that he was dealing with people from the Eternal Life Sanctum, it wasn’t too difficult for him to guess that they were planning something dangerous. Together with the fact that the dungeon had started acting abnormally like it was under attack, the overall picture of the current situation and what the Eternal Life Sanctum was planning became increasingly clear, as he guessed that they might be targeting the dungeon core for some kind of experiment that would almost certainly end up affecting Temple Guard City on the other side of the dungeon.
The mist infused crystal saturated with death energy either serving as some kind of component in a ritual created by a powerful necromancer or to attack the pedestal guardian that served as the final guardian protecting the dungeon core.
After all, even if there were multiple SS Rank Adventurers from the Eternal Life Sanctum involved, it was far from simple to kill a pedestal guardian, as these things were beyond powerful and partly exceeded the SS Rank in terms of strength. Serving as the final guardian of dungeon cores for a reason.
Of course, their strength varied widely depending on the depth of the dungeon, but generally, the strength of a pedestal guardian was at the very least at the pinnacle of the SS Rank.
Another less obvious challenge when it came to trying to destroy a dungeon core, was the fact that the Adventurer’s Guild would never allow someone to destroy a dungeon core and would respond immediately the second anyone attempted to destroy the dungeon core of a dungeon under the guild, as the destruction of a dungeon core meant the dungeon it controlled would soon follow and break apart. Destroying everything the guild had built up within the dungeon and ensuring no more resources could be extracted from the dungeon.
If anything, considering the current state of the swirling sands dungeon, Verdell had a feeling that a group of elites from the main headquarters of the adventurers guild had already set off and might already have reached the swirling sands dungeon and be on their way to stop the people from the Eternal Life Sanctum from doing whatever they were planning to do to the dungeon core of the swirling sands dungeon.