264 Buried
Goli trembled so hard his snake form almost unraveled. It may seem like Aunty Jeena was only teasing, but amongst Trelops, using another Trelop to reach adulthood was a very serious issue.
One way for them to reach adulthood, naturally, was to slowly age and eventually grow into it. But this was one of the rare cases where a long lifespan worked against them. Growing into adulthood would take so long that your chances of being killed were incredibly high in the meantime.
The second method was to take over some natural landscape and grow it, but realistically speaking, it was difficult to find an unoccupied area large enough to achieve this. The third and fastest way was to forcefully encroach upon a landscape that was once occupied by a Trelop. To be clear, this was not lethal to the other Trelop, but it would naturally weaken them a lot.
In this case, if Goli admitted to wanting to use her help to reach adulthood, it would mean encroaching on her land. Jeena was so incredibly strong that even the thought of it was borderline insane.
To explain the power difference, Goli, who used his forest to strongly suppress the human expedition, and had for so long resulted in a halt of human expansion of territory, was himself only in the Golden core realm. Despite his own individual low cultivation, the might he could wield was much larger, due to having the entire forest and its energy at his beck and call. Karom too was in the Golden core realm, albeit he was weaker than Goli.
So then it could be imagined how powerful Jeena was, as an Earth Immortal Trelop.
"No aunty, not at all," the wooden snake barely managed to say.
"Oh? But then, why am I hearing something else? That you are partnering up with some humans to upgrade your fire and take my land?"
"No! No aunty it's…"
"Stop stuttering. Just answer this: are there humans in the forest, yes or no?"
"Yes," Goli replied meekly.
"And do they not have a flame stronger than your own?"
"Yes," he replied, suddenly feeling like something bad was about to happen. No matter how he tried to explain, it would definitely seem like he wanted the humans' help to upgrade his beautiful, golden flames to that nasty, stinky green flame.
Jeena only chuckled as she saw the young Trelop shy away.
"Dear young Goli, you may not want my help. But, I have some thoughts of my own. I think it's about time you boys grew up, or at least one of you did. Your younger cousin Karom told me that you had partnered up with the humans to take over my land. The fact that he wanted to pit me against you makes me think that he's the one who has partnered with the humans.
"But I don't care about any of that. I see you boys, too content with life and it makes me sad. So I think it was time you boys matured a little. One of you needs to grow up. I don't care who and I don't care how. But if I see you two slacking again, then I might be the one to take over both of your lands. It would be a waste to leave it to either of you."
"What about the humans?" Goli suddenly asked, as he watched his aunt turn around and leave.
"What about them? I don't care about humans, I just want results."
*****
Instead of a groan, Lex just let out an exasperated sigh as he covered the bleeding wound on his chest. It did not matter for squat how good his defenses were if his enemies were just too strong. On the bright side, he had gotten better at responding to his instincts of danger, and dodged almost all attacks.
He watched impassively as Barry crushed some kind of rock monster. Even though he was not a fighter, all humans here had at least some combat background. That, accompanied by his peak Golden core cultivation, made it so that he could at least defend the two of them.
Lex and Barry had been ambushed by some kind of a rock monster that had escaped the detection of Barry as well as the Fancy monocle. Even now, as Barry broke its body to pieces, his monocle only identified it as sedimentary rock and not a living thing.
After a few moments, when Lex removed his hand, his bleeding had stopped. This was not because he had recovered, but instead because he had gotten injured so many times in the last few hours, he suddenly learnt he could control his body the way body cultivators could. While it would not mitigate the damage done, he could stretch his skin to cover sharp cuts and move his muscles around to accommodate his injuries.
For the glass half full kind of people, it would seem that Lex had gained something from being mercilessly attacked numerous times. For Lex, it just seemed like they still hadn't made it to the mine.
"How much farther?" Lex asked as he surveyed the surrounding area. Suddenly, more rock monsters would be fine for Barry, but they could spell real trouble for him.
"I cannot detect the ores that deep. I can only progressively move to an area of higher concentration of the relevant ore."
"Then we should keep moving."
At some point, Lex considered ditching Barry and directly using the method Karom had given him to directly go underground till he reached the mine. But these tunnels were infested with various Gu, not to mention rock monsters and the like, so he would never make it far on his own. So he continued to stick by Barry and made slow progress.
"Yeah."
They had been slowly moving deeper underground for hours now, and the farther down they got, the hotter the tunnels started to become. They also started getting wider and larger, and Lex had come across many more rocks containing gold. A part of him was sad that he couldn't carry all that gold with him, even though he didn't really have a need for gold.
Twenty minutes later, they reached a deadend. This wasn't the first deadend they had been faced with, but this one was different because…
"I think we've reached the mine," Barry said with excitement.
"Then why are we stopping?"
"Because it's most likely that the other two Druks we detected are in the mine. Are you sure you want to go ahead without waiting for the rest to catch up?"
Lex could not reply as his mouth was left open. He remembered how strong the 'juvenile' Druk had been, he didn't want to face two adults alone. Instead, he limited himself to looking at the wall fondly. In truth, he was trying to see if the system could detect the energy yet.
But the world, or rather the Crystal realm, never truly cared for the plans of others. While Barry was content with waiting for the rest, the situation would not allow it.
The ground began to tremble, and the walls of the tunnel started to groan. There was an earthquake, and the tunnel didn't really seem to be handling it well.
For once, even Lex was caught off guard, and had no idea how to respond. But as the tunnel started to collapse, and they suffered a cave in, he quickly moved next to Barry, which ended up being the right move.
Barry's training and forethought suddenly failed him as his first true life and death situation filled his mind with panic. He used his digging technique to push through the wall towards the mine, trying to escape the collapsing tunnel. No matter how strong he was, he couldn't tolerate hundreds of tonnes of earth crashing down onto him.
Despite his panic, his speed was incredible, and he tore through the supposed deadend until he reached another open cave. Barry and Lex were both hit by a sudden gust of wind, and Lex grinned as the system finally let him know it could detect a massive store of energy.
Just as he told the system to absorb 'some' of the energy, the situation went from bad to horrifically apocalyptic.
The earthquake hadn't stopped, and while they had entered the outermost layer of the spirit mine, or well, instead of tunnel walls filled with shining spirit stones, or caverns full of spirit water, they were welcomed by erupting lava!
Barry let out a scream filled with fear and horror as the lava enveloped them, and before they could even think of retreat, the cave-in caught up with them, pushing the duo firmly into the lake of lava.
Up above, the Trelop Goli was shifting the roots of all the trees in the forest, pushing and pulling the ground with an endless fury as he prepared for a decisive battle with its cousin! Hundreds of trees that were thousands of years old pulled out their roots from the confines of the ground, causing countless artificial quakes and drastically changed the landscape. Goli channeled all the energy of the forest, whether it was held underground in his mines, or in his trees or treasures, all into his emerging army. He was as furious at Karom as he was afraid of Jeena. Someone would definitely pay for disturbing his peaceful life.