Utterly shocked, Liam looked at his left hand in which black wisps of energy coiled around, both his arm and the egg that he was holding.
He then stared at his right hand in which mana was surging, wrapping the herbs that he clutched tightly.
He could distinctly feel the two types of energies. They were different like hot and cold, sweet and sour, or night and day.
No, that was not it. They were not exactly opposing, but they were definitely different.
As Liam suddenly lost his concentration mulling over this, mana surged and burnt the herbs that he was holding in his palm to a crisp.
"Shit." He dropped the debris to the ground and quickly took out another bunch of herbs to keep feeding the egg.
After a few moments, small spots of light flew from the herbs to the egg again, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
"What is happening? Why now suddenly?" Liam leaned on the tunnel wall in exhaustion.
He closed his eyes and tried to feel the energy swirling around him again, this time more slowly, without losing focus of the mana concentration and frying the herbs.
And to his surprise, once more he could clearly sense the black wisps of energy. In fact, the air around him seemed to be brimming with this energy.
Liam silently contemplated about this for a while and there seemed to be only one plausible explanation.
"This is definitely nether." He muttered under his breath.
This place was filled with nether!
He remembered the feeling every time he felt whenever they teleported to the nether realm. It was something that was there but there was a veil around it preventing him from sensing it properly.
And now somehow that veil was broken…
He could finally grasp it.
He could feel the thick heavy nether swirling aimlessly inside the tunnel. Perhaps it had been this way for several weeks or months or years now.
It even felt as if the nether here was much thicker than the nether in the nether realm as if someone had artificially increased its concentration.
"That's it." Liam's eyes widened in realization. "This should be why the beasts are still outside, without entering the tunnel."
"Hmmm… Perhaps… then this entire underground tunnel was designed in such a way that only nether wielders would be able to survive here."
This made sense because the ability to sense nether and affinity for the same was not that common in Xion.
In the nether realm, almost every demon inhabiting the place was able to do it to some extent but here it was a much rarer ability.
"Is this also why that guy came in alone without the other three?" Liam was slowly understanding everything.
The last time he had seen Kouske, he was raiding the glacier cave along with three other experts, but this time, only he was there, alone in this tunnel.
Either the other three did not come with him or they had come here but were not able to enter the tunnel, perhaps receiving some strong debuffs because of the thick concentration of nether.
However, the important question was not that. How did they even know to come here in the first place? That too… today of all the days?
And for that, he still did not have an answer.
Liam was now more than sure that the four were no longer in the vicinity.
Only because the other three were unable to enter, Kouske had resorted to a sneak attack, rather than facing him head-on.
And even if all of them were somehow able to get into the tunnel, he was still a whole ten levels above them.
So chances were that they probably stole what they wanted and ran for their lives, also setting up the incense potion trap for him.
He doubted that they would linger around here, risking the loss of whatever they had obtained in the last cave.
Liam's gaze silently simmered. He decided to leave this part for later as there was nothing he could do about it at the moment.
His focus and priority right now was the fox and only the fox.
He started to walk into the tunnel once again, towards the spot where the moss started explosively overtaking everything, growing rampantly everywhere.
In the long empty dark tunnel, only Liam's steady footsteps could be heard.
He walked a few feet and then paused. "So the concentration of the nether thickens as I go in and the mana thins out…"
Earlier he was only able to sense the mana that was becoming weaker and weaker but now he was also able to sense the nether that was becoming stronger and stronger.
"Does the corresponding debuff also increase?" Liam pondered.
He was worried that Luna would become even weaker because of this. He observed the egg carefully to see if the condition is worsening but luckily nothing like that happened.
However, was it really luck?
There were several questions lingering in Liam's mind. Why was he able to sense nether now and not before? Why did Luna's egg suddenly start cracking?
Also, was the inheritance still inside?
He wanted to barge in take a look but he couldn't rush things.
Luna's life was more important so once he arrived at the spot he patiently started scraping the moss from the wall and fed it to Luna little by little.
He looked ahead and saw the entire place crawling with this moss everywhere, up, down, right, and left. This should be enough?
He looked at the copious amounts of the stuff smeared all around and he couldn't possibly scrape everything efficiently.
So for the next batch, Liam placed his palm directly on the wall and circulated mana onto the thin or rather the thick layer of moss.
He also held the egg close by and soon small dots of herbal essence started floating from the wall to the egg, the useless debris after the transfer falling down on the ground.
"Alright. Now you can eat as much as you want.." Liam sighed, looking worriedly at the egg in his hand.