There wasn't much Kyle could do for now.
He didn't have the power to repay Selene. After all, her family was far more powerful than he was.
Naturally, Kyle wanted to repay her, but well, wanting something and being able to do something were two different things.
Over the next day, the number of Metal Elemental attacks had dropped significantly.
It seemed like over 80% of the Metal Elemental attacks had come from only one of them, and they fed that one to the World Wyrm.
On average, there was one attack every four hours, which was still okay since the golem could make quite a lot of progress during that time.
Two days after the attack, they were already closing in on the Ether Essence.
At some point, Lily smirked and looked at Kyle, who was nearby.
"We're basically there," she said. "The golem says that there are only five meters between our tunnel and the Ether Essence."
Kyle looked at the golem, which had walked out of the tunnel to deliver the news to Lily.
Then, Kyle nodded. "I'm going to call the others. Leave the golem there. As soon as it gets destroyed, we wait for an hour and go."
Lily nodded.
She was no longer worried about another incident happening.
After she had found out that Metal Elementals could copy golems, she had immediately reprogrammed her golems.
Now, as soon as the golems noticed an approaching enemy four levels higher than them, they detonated their own cores.
Naturally, since the Metal Elemental managed to copy the golem, it meant that it had to have absorbed the core to analyze it.
As long as the core was a jumbled mess of Ether, there would be no repeat incident.
Kyle traveled through the frontlines to gather the team.
There was no point in keeping all of them stuck to the entrance. After all, there was nothing they needed to do.
Because of that, the other three looked around the frontlines, talking with a lot of the soldiers.
The soldiers also didn't have a lot to do.
They basically just looked at the other side of the crater.
Of course, that wasn't true for every soldier.
The soldiers who didn't have much to do were the snipers.
Meanwhile, the other soldiers were quite busy.
After all, the crater didn't only have two edges.
The most intense battles happened at the point where the two half-circles of the crater connected.
While running across the crater would almost certainly end in death, attacking from the side was different.
After Kyle gathered everyone, they waited. A couple of hours passed.
"It died," Lily said.
"Do you feel the Metal Elemental that killed it?" Kyle asked.
"No," Lily answered.
Kyle nodded. "Then, in one hour, we will charge in."
The team nodded as well.
The hour slowly passed.
'An Ether Essence,' Kyle thought. 'I will be charging right towards one of the things that every person in the entire world wants.'
'Even Transcendents want one.'
'And soon, I will be touching one.'
The minutes passed, and everyone readied themselves.
"Alright, let's go," Kyle said. "Let's earn some money!"
The others nodded.
Then, everyone charged inside.
They rapidly ran down the tunnel.
By now, some new Earth Elementals might have appeared in the surroundings, but as long as nobody came too close to the walls, the Earth Elementals probably wouldn't notice them.
From time to time, Selene and Kyle went inside to clean out more Earth Elementals, but they rarely found a new one.
Within just a couple of minutes, the entire team reached the bottom.
One of Lily's golems was already at the end of the tunnel, making sure that there were no Metal Elementals.
Sadly, there was no surefire way to avoid the Metal Elementals.
On average, they struck every four hours.
Sometimes, it happened after two hours.
Sometimes, it happened after eight hours.
It was difficult to tell.
There was a chance that a Metal Elemental was already on its way.
Sadly, sometimes, there was no avoiding rolling the dice.
The only thing one could do was to stack the odds in one's favor as much as possible.
They quickly reached the end of the tunnel, and Kyle touched the wall.
He limited his Ore Sense and only looked at what was in front of him.
Kyle's brows furrowed.
There was a big open space.
It was almost like there was a second crater below the first crater, and based on the angle of the crater, this one also wasn't small.
It was probably around a kilometer wide.
However, since the crater was underground, it was more of a sphere.
After all, craters didn't usually have ceilings.
By now, Kyle knew where the Ether Crater had come from.
That was the Ether Essence's doing.
Since it absorbed all kinds of Ether, it also absorbed the Metal and Earth Ether in the surroundings.
Due to the Ether Essence's shape, it absorbed everything above it and everything below it.
However, the edges beside it weren't absorbed.
If both sides had equal Ether density, one would see two craters of equal size, above and below.
Yet, the Ether this far down was far denser, which was why the "cave" below the Ether Essence was much smaller.
Kyle thought about digging around the bottom crater, but there were two issues with that.
First, it would take more time, which might get the attention of a Metal Elemental.
Second, if they destabilized the ground around the Ether Essence, it might collapse into the bottom crater.
That would provoke a massive attack from both sides.
A couple of people in the Mid Second Realm wouldn't be able to survive while being at the center of such a conflict.
"Well, got no other option," Kyle said. "Gotta break through."
It was risky to break into the crater.
After all, it was a widely open space, and there could very well be Metal Elementals.
However, using a golem to scout came with its own risks.
What if the Winterfire Kingdom was already secretly mining the Ether Crystals around the Ether Essence?
If they saw the golem, they would create an ambush since they had far more time to prepare.
Yet, if the team directly exploded into the crater, they might be able to catch the enemy off guard.
"Alright."
"Let's go!"
Then, Kyle struck the wall with his hammer.
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