Magnus of Ice

Betrayal Pt.2

'Why do I care so much if he's okay or not? I don't know him, and he doesn't know me. So why do I care so much...?' Magnus was preoccupied with his own thoughts that he didn't notice the look on Jin-Woo. 'Magnus usually doesn't try to make friends first, or even acquaintances... So why does he care for Jin-Ho so much?' He thought as he kept looking forward. Little did they know that Magnus would start treating him as a little brother as time went by.

Ahead of them is the entrance to the boss room. Spider webs seemed to make up the entrance and pathway of the tunnel that went deeper into the boss room. Layers upon layers of spider web could be made out, and in some of the layers were bodies of ants cocooned and waiting to be eaten. They seemed to have been trapped there for a while since their natural bright red exoskeleton is now a brittle brown. Since there was no natural light, the hunters could see nothing but darkness down the pathway of this tunnel.

"It's the boss room." Dong-Suk managed to spit out without a stutter. 'Shit, of all the insects, it had to be a spider.' Dong-Suk thought as he took out his sword and shield. "Magnus! Come up." 'Why is he always disappearing from the frontlines...?' He thought as he saw Magnus making his way towards the front from the back.

"Magnus, I'm going to need you to be on my left. Gyu-Hwan, you take my right." Dong-Suk ordered once Magnus reached him. With a nod, Gyu-Hwan responded, "Yes sir!" while Magnus just clicked his tongue.

*sigh*

With a sigh, he continued, "The rest of you... Get ready." He ordered as he started to make his way forward. As time passed, they noticed that the walls seemed to be getting less and less thick with spiderwebs. As the hunters started to get irritated and tired since they've been walking for a while, one of them noticed something.

"Huh?!" The hunter who first noticed this is a plain-looking one. He has black hair with a buzz cut, thin eyebrows, and double hood eyelids. He's wearing a brown hoodie with a brown leather vest and dark blue jeans.

"T-This is!" Gyu-Hwan started, surprised at what they stumbled across.

"A jackpot!" Dong-Suk finished for him, as equally surprised as the rest of them.

'That's quite a lot....' Magnus thought as he also stared at their discovery.

'Are these...!!' Jin-Woo recognized what these were but had never seen any this size before.

"MANA CRYSTALS?!" One hunter asked no one in particular as they viewed what seemed to be their most significant discovery since they started their career as a hunter.

Protruding out of the wall were clusters of mana crystals. There were so many that the faint light they seemed to radiate managed to illuminate the area around them entirely. Some spider webs were still on the areas that appeared to have little to no mana crystals, but besides those areas, the rest of them were spotless. They radiated a light blue glow and varied in size. Some were four feet long, while others seemed to barely reach the one-foot mark.

"How many are there?" One hunter asked as they stared at the clusters of mana crystals.

"Wow, this is amazing!" Another exclaimed as they approached the mana crystal clusters.

"These are worth less than the magical cores from the monsters, but...." Gyu-Hwan started as he got closer and inspected the crystals. "If there's this much...the total price wouldn't be something to sneeze at. If we can manage to sell all of them, we'd be looking at a total of over one billion won." Gyu-Hwan finished with an estimation that seemed to bring out the greed in all of them.

'More than one billion...' Magnus thought as he approached the mana crystals. Putting a hand over the mana crystals seemed to make them change their color slightly. 'I always liked this about them.'