Soul of Searing Steel

The black object that Black was holding in its mouth was rectangular. It looked simple, but truthfully, it was made of refined steel. On its tough outer shell, there were many complicated magic patterns. There were also clear traces of magic energy flowing around, making the item looked like a valuable magic item.

Black, which was holding the item in its mouth, had noticed much earlier on that this item was bizarrely tough. At least that thing was tougher than the condensed and solidified lava rocks. Black’s huge dragon eyes blinked and gave the item a few bites. With its sharp dragon teeth attempting to tear it apart, deafening screeching sounds were heard coming from the friction between the teeth and the surface of that item. However, it could not destroy the item.

“Rawgh…”

After playing with it for a while, Black did not get any result from toying with it. Black then lost its interest in that black iron shovel. Even so, it also vaguely remembered the task its master entrusted to it.

“Don’t let anything come in, or get out. You stupid dragon! Lower your voice!”

After ignoring the second half of what Joshua said, Black stared at the black metal box that was right in front of it.

Don’t let anything come in? But this thing has already came out of the place—what should I do now?

Even though the bloodline evolution took place and caused the half-dragon to obtain no less than the wisdom of a human, Black was still once a horse that only had the simple minds of a beast. That was not enough for Black to swiftly make a correct judgment—While it was hesitating, Black suddenly came up with a good solution to its problem.

Since Black could no longer change the fact that the object came out of the dimensional door, then it would be better for Black to make it disappear.

Upon having that thought, Black opened up its large mouth that was large enough to bite a mammoth to death with a single bite. And then—

It swallowed the object entirely.

The black steel object was swallowed into the stomach of Black along with some lava that stuck to it. Right before it was swallowed, Black had also chewed on it as hard as it could. It was attempting to crush the rectangular metallic box-like object into dust. However, it seemed that Black’s effort to crush it did not work, obviously.

But that would not matter. Because even steel would be reduced to nothing while it was in the stomach of a dragon. In fact, many species of dragons relied on chewing iron and steel to survive. Not to mention that Black had inherited the Smelting Black Dragon’s bloodline. The stomach of a half-draconic being would almost be like a bottomless pit. The only thing that restricted the amount of food it could take would be the size of its mouth now. As long as the food could enter its mouth, then it could eat anything it wanted!

After a loud gulp, the black steel object which was half of the size of an ordinary human was swallowed down to Black’s stomach just like that. There were also visible greenish-blue sparks present around the object when it was being swallowed down. It looked as if the object was attempting to irritate the giant living being into spitting it out. However, it was truly unfortunate that after all of those attempts, the sparks, did not work at all. The sparks did not even feel like a tickle at all.

Feeling that the stomach was secreting a high concentration of strong acid as the acid swiftly corroding the black steel object bit by bit, Black nodded in satisfaction. It turned around to climb onto the black rock pathway that was made by Joshua. After closing its eyes, it began to rest as it started digesting.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the dimensional space.

The top of the magnificently towering Mount Sigma was releasing high-temperature gray smoke. Meanwhile, the entire sky was tainted murky black and yellow. At that time, there was a rainstorm going on. The mud mixed with water as the rain was pouring down from the dark clouds. Covering everything around with a thick layer of mud along with the occasional strikes of deafening thunder, one could see that there were golden lightning flashing in the volcanic clouds.

Meanwhile, by the mountainside of the volcano, in the middle of a strong campsite, the noises of people discussing among each other could be heard. The shadows of people walking hastily around in the campsite in the middle of the rainstorm could be seen as well. News was spreading. They were walking in and out of their own rooms. However, by the end of it, everyone ended up gathered at the largest dining hall in the campsite.

“How is this happening?! The probe detector is made from Darium alloy of the highest grade that could resist high heat and corrosion! So how can it sudden lose contact with us?!”

A man that seemed like the leader of the campsite came into the hall a little later than the others as he was shouting in anger. Because of the sudden rainstorm that hit upon them, he was covered in mud and he looked quite pathetic in a sense. This man was extremely angry at the time. “Do you know how many gold pieces are required to make one probe detector? Do you know how many mages I needed to hire to do that? I’ll tell you straight in the face! Even if I sell you all out, the amount I can get will not cover even half of the cost! If it isn’t for the expedition on Mount Sigma to find out the reason for the volcano to become active, I would not have acquired the permission to use it at all!”

The man that was talking appeared to be humanoid. He had a body structure similar to a human being. He had two legs, two arms, one head and one torso. However, the difference between a human being and this creature was that their ears were pointy. From that point of view, they looked more similar to an elf.

Wiping the mud off his face with some effort, his face was seen much clearer now—this was a creature that looks very similar to an elf in an ordinary sense. However, compared to the average features of the elves, which had six points or more out of ten points, his appearance fell short of expectations. Meanwhile, his strong body also made the man looked very different from the elves which normally had slender and elegant body figures. In addition, he also had a pair of purple eyes and silver hair. There were densely packed tattoos on his dark skin. It seems that because of the extreme anger he was feeling right now, those tattoos seemed to be activated and they were glowing with magic.

“Captain! I’m truly sorry. But we have no idea what really happened!”

There was a huge crystal light screen in front of the hall. Meanwhile, a guy that looked a lot younger who was sitting before the light screen stood up. He stuttered at first, but then he returned to normal and quickly explained, “Before that, Lucia and Bella took the probe detector to the woods next to the campsite to pick samples from the soils. But after a seeing a flash of blue light, the probe detector vanished without a trace!”

“… Are you playing me for a fool? A flash of blue lights and it’s gone? Even the strongest archmages in the Confederation cannot do that! They can just move some steel, craft some runes, and manipulate flames and steel density.”

Magic power was already lost in the incident [The Great Escape] that happened thousands of years ago. Now the so-called archmages were nothing but the losers of a dying era. Even so, in order to fight against those strange and bizarre monsters that possess terrifying power, they who possessed the highest grade of skills remained as the VIPs (very important person) among the entire campsite. Each time they appeared, it would also mean that one must have paid an extremely large amount of money already.

After roaring in anger for a while, the young man was so terrified that his limbs were shuddering in fear as he saw the gloomy face of his leader that was about to turn black. He did not have any other information about it at the moment. However, at that time, a beeping notification sound came in and reminded him to check on the light screen. The young man quickly checked the control screen and brought up a footage, “Argh! Look at this, captain. The probe detector has sent the footage back… Look at this, the volcano was not shaking yet at that time. There’s no sign of muddy rain as well. Bella and the others were collecting samples of the soils and the plants during that period of time when the probe detector was at this location.”

Before rudely pushing others away and walking up to the screen, the captain of the campsite frowned and gazed at the image on the light screen—as the young man said, everything was normal at that time, and the probe detector was constantly moving. Surrounded by a verdant forest, it was taking samples from various places and gathering all the samples into its own compartments.

That’s right. There was nothing wrong there though. So why did it lose its signal then?

At the same time when their captain was thinking deep into it, an intense blue light flashed across the screen, followed by surprised screaming of two people; Bella and Lucia. Then the scenes in the surroundings suddenly changed—at that time, the probe detector seemed to have entered a pitch-black astral space. Everything in the surroundings of the probe detector vanished without a trace. All that was left was dead silence.

“At that time, I had turned the probe detector into its defensive mode…”

The young man was still explaining himself about what he did back then. However, a strong arm pressed on the little head of his and interrupted him. The captain was staring at the pitch-black scene with his purplish eyes as he looked deadly serious. There was no telling what sort of thoughts he was having on his mind at the moment. However, after a brief moment, the colors of gold and red filled the entire screen. Meanwhile, the unique pulsing sounds that only the interior of a volcano had were broadcasted over through the probe detector.

“Lava?”

He whispered softly, his voice sounding puzzled, “Did it just enter the interior area of a volcano? B-but how… why…?”

Those who were standing around the hall did not dare to speak as they nodded together at the same time. They also had the same thoughts on their minds.

“The probe detector was originally used in various extreme environments, replacing our Elven Reconnaissance to investigate and identify other places that we cannot reach. The probe detector cannot even be destroyed by lava. So it’s actually not possible that we would lose its signal… what the hell?!”

The captain that seemed puzzled by what he just witnessed suddenly let out a roar. However, no one in the hall blamed him for making a fuss though. Instantly, the entire hall was filled with panic and gasps. The place became noisy as hell.

All of that was because of the scene that suddenly appeared on the screen—just as everyone was not prepared at all, a horrific huge mouth that seemed to be large enough to swallow the entire hall appeared out of nowhere on the large light screen across the front of the hall. Then the mouth snapped down on the probe detector. While the probe detector was letting out screeching sounds of horror that seemed to be caused by the friction between something sharp and the tough surface of the outer shell of the probe detector, it was being held on by the huge mouth. And then it was thrown onto the condensed volcanic rocks at the side. A gigantic golden eye of a dragon appeared on screen right before everyone’s eyes.

The terrifying pressure had ignored the distance between the dimensional space, making its way from the other side to the hall, causing everyone in the hall to get shocked to the point that they could not even move an inch. Meanwhile, after staring into the probe detector for a while, it moved away and disappeared.

However, before everyone could catch a breath and process what just happened, the huge mouth reappeared.

This time, there was no follow-up or whatsoever. Along with the constant vibration of the probe detector in the dark, a violent sound of corrosion came… Then everything went completely silent.

The hall was immersed in a bizarre silence. Everyone looked at the screen with their eyes widened. Their faces looked strange.

Anybody could see that the probe detector had been swallowed into the stomach of some sort of creature. And it should be on the way of getting digested by now.

“What… what the hell is that creature?”

The captain took a deep breath and his face looked abnormally bad. He clenched both of his fists as he frowned so hard that green veins were seen on his forehead. But even so, he was puzzled by many questions. “It can actually digest the fifth generation probe detector that was being made of Darium Alloy… Could it be that…?”

In the meantime, the others could not help but to start discussing about the topic.

“What was that monster we saw just now?! That mouth can easily swallow an adult!”

“Really? I believe it can swallow a few more at the same time! The probe detector was half as tall as an ordinary person. But it looked like a candy to that monster! Meanwhile, its teeth are actually as hard as Darium alloy! They did not break even after biting the probe detector so hard! Material with that sort of hardness do not exist in our world at all!”

“Oh god… Judging by the size of its mouth, that monster should be at least eight meters tall. Its body should be no less than fifteen meters! That’s genuinely a monstrous behemoth already! It must not be lousier than those [Monsters] that came from the sky! Maybe this monster we see on screen is even larger than them!”

A few people with sharper sense had discovered a more unbelievable point. “Wait a minute. Just recall carefully—about the scenes that were sent back from the probe detector. Almost everything in the surroundings seemed like lava, right?!”

“Yeah…that’s right! So how is it possible that this monster come out from the lava then? How could it have survived in the lava?!”

That discovery had everyone astonished to the core. The entire hall even went silent for a brief moment. However, right after that moment of silence, everyone started speaking again and the entire campsite was in an uproar, with people speaking and shouting.

Everyone was analyzing the monster that they saw on screen earlier on. They had completely forgotten that they were currently at the mountainside of an active volcano. Obviously, they had forgotten about their responsibilities.

However, the captain was still feeling distressed over losing the probe detector. Well, he had no mood or heart to blame his members of his party now. Currently, he had an unbelievable though on his mind though. This tall and strong man ignored every single noise around him as he muttered to himself in surprise, “Could it be that, it… it is the reason that Mount Sigma has gone active?”

As he had spoken his word out, the entire hall went silent once again. After getting reminded of that, everyone felt an even more terrifying feeling building up in their chests. That was actually fear and judgment that were masked by the excitement of seeing a creature that they had never seen before in history.

If it really was the reason that Mount Sigma was active again, then—this monster would very likely to be very near them!