Liam calmly bent down to pick up the small treasure chest from the ground. It was tiny so whatever was present inside was probably small too.
"Hmmm… What could have been inside this? Skill book? Item? Or maybe something else?" he was curious but really there was no way for him to know.
He observed it for a moment trying to find some clues, but the metal crate did not contain anything else. It was simply useless now.
Nevertheless, he tossed it into his inventory space. He then calmly looked around the rest of the cave.
The inside of the cave was huge and once again covered with the same moss everywhere. There was a huge table and a throne-like chair, all made of earth.
Other than that there was nothing else in the place. There were no cobwebs. There was no skeleton debris. There was nothing at all.
In fact, if it was not for the moss, this would have been pristine, neat, and clean. When compared to the rest of the tunnel, this cave alone was well-maintained.
"So that death knight was basically taking care of this room…" Liam pondered out loud and then raised his hand to harvest all the moss in this room as well, sending everything to the egg.
The cave was now truly empty.
Liam took one last look and then walked out. He was pretty sure that there was nothing more in this cave or in this tunnel for that matter.
Kouske would have already emptied out everything else too. There was no point in him sticking around here anymore.
Also, Luna's condition had now somewhat stabilized so he wanted to return back to the royal city as soon as possible.
Whatever treatment he did might just be complete and utter nonsense. He needed to take her to Seraphina to get her properly treated.
And after that…
Liam clenched his fist and was about to walk out when he noticed the other two caves as well from the corner of his eyes. They were also covered with moss.
"Hmmmm..." He paused. He had cleaned out this entire long ass tunnel of this moss, using every last bit of it. So why leave these two caves behind?
It would only take him 2 more minutes. So he stopped and went to the one on the right, noticing the creepy skeletons mounted on the walls.
He observed everything carefully, searching here and there, but just like he expected, he didn't find anything valuable. Not even a random common-grade item.
"Bastard." Liam gritted his teeth and then commanded the nether in the air to do his bidding.
Soon herbal essence leaked out and Luna's egg hungrily absorbed everything, not in the least showing signs of being fully satisfied.
"It's fine. Eat as much as you want." Liam mumbled. After the egg was done absorbing, he walked over to the other cave.
This place also looked like it was completely ransacked from top to bottom.
He did not know what was there but just judging based on a couple of broken cauldrons in the corner and the big furnace, this looked like a workstation.
"Hmmm… he took even the cauldrons? Very thorough." Liam chuckled and then waved his hand to gather the nether, clearing the moss in the room.
Countless light specks flew out and the dried debris fell down onto the floor. The egg as well greedily absorbed everything.
"Alright. Shall we leave then?"
Liam was busily observing the egg, his gaze fixated on that.
When he finally looked up to walk out, he gasped in shock, because he hadn't noticed anything until then.
He did not take another step and stood still frozen.
"What is this?"
Liam's mouth was wide agape as he looked around the huge cave without blinking his eyes.
It turns out… underneath the moss, the bald empty wall was actually not that bald!
The entire wall was made of solid rock, in contrast to the rest of the tunnel and the other caves which were made of mud instead.
More importantly, on these rocky walls, there were numerous strange and weird symbols carved all over.
No, they were in fact written in a very orderly and concise fashion as if they were important formulas or recipes that the person inhabiting this cave did not want to forget.
Taking a minute to observe everything, suddenly a thought popped into Liam's mind. Did Kouske see this?
He couldn't possibly have! The rampant moss was covering the whole thing!
Even he was able to find out about this only because he cleared every inch of moss from the place. So, how would someone who was frantically running away have noticed it?
Impossible!
Liam did not know what these meant but maybe he could decipher it and from that, he could also obtain the same information about the inheritance that Kouske had taken?
Perhaps he might even be able to learn something that the other person did not know?
Liam was not able to shake off this idea but he forced himself to snap out of it. After all, it never boded well to be too optimistic.
What were the chances that this was actually something useful? Maybe 50-50.
Liam stopped thinking about it and started carefully slicing up the rocky wall into separate chunks with his semi-epic sword.
The sword that would have been worshipped by countless players right now was actually being used for rock cutting.
However, Liam did not care about it.
He carefully sliced each and every segment and stored it in his inventory slots.
He also marked numbers on the edge to make sure that they did not go out of order and stored everything properly.
He took his time to do this so he only finished after a few minutes. Now the room was truly empty, well except for the furnace that was shoved in a corner.
Liam nodded satisfactorily and turned to leave. However, he once again stopped. He turned to look at the furnace again. Why just leave this behind?
On a whim, he decided to dismantle it and make sure that he absolutely did not miss anything at all.
He was also curious as to why a necromancer experimenting with skeletons and herbs would use a furnace. This person was also interested in forging?
He unsheathed the purple sword and swung it around a couple of times.
SLASH SLASH SLASH
The rusted furnace broke and the broken parts fell down on the ground one after the other. Liam picked up this as well and quickly tossed them into his inventory.
There was no hurry to dismantle it and inspect it right here and now. He could do it later after taking care of Luna first.
"Alright. That should do it." He dusted his hands and sheathed his sword back. Now it was truly empty?
Well, there was one more patch of moss left. This was hiding behind the furnace and now that the furnace was broken down, this was revealed.
"Hmmm…" He narrowed his eyes and looked at this small patch. It was not like there was going to be a treasure here, right?
Nevertheless, Liam ruffled his head and weaved the nether in the air to absorb herbal essence from these last bits of the plant.
He had taken everything else after all. He was not going to leave this behind.
The next second, the corresponding light specks also started flying towards the egg, Luna absorbing it.
However, right at this moment, suddenly something unexpected happened.
As the moss cleared out and the small specks of light dispersed from the wall, something else was gradually revealed.
In the space where the furnace was present, particularly at the spot which usually contained the fire source, there was a small blue stone or rather a crystal.
"Hmmm…" Liam leaned over and inspected it closer.
He then leaned back and unsheathed his sword, cleanly slicing off the crystal that was seemingly jammed into the wall.
Thud.
A small piece of rock with the crystal embedded at the center fell out. Liam picked it up and looked at it more closely to see what it was.
"Fuck!" Almost instantly, his eyes widened in shock and his eyebrows shot up!
This was neither a stone nor a crystal!
The thing that he was holding in his hand was actually a small wisp of a flickering blue flame embedded inside the rock!
Liam only recognized it because this was very similar to the one he had obtained from the glacier cave.
That flame was reddish-orange in color, bigger, and embedded in ice while this was much tinier blue in color and embedded in rock.
He knew that this was probably a precious flame just like the other one, but why would a necromancer have this?
He was using it to power up the furnace? But for what?
Just as he was pondering about this, the egg in his hand started twitching, a bit violently.
"Huh?" Liam panicked and looked at the egg in worry. It took him a second, but he immediately understood what was about to happen or at least had a feeling about it.
"NO LUNA! NO! STOP!" He quickly shouted but he was still too late!
The partially cracked egg thrummed in his hand and the blue flame from the crystal magically disappeared!
And just like that… the thing that he had gotten was gone in a second.
Liam did not know whether to laugh or cry. Was today just a very unlucky day for him? Everything that he wanted was getting stolen away right from under his nose!
First the inheritance and now this flame. He barely had a chance to even look at it properly before the greedy fox gulped it down.
"You too Luna?"