St Chaos Healer

Ch 53 - The Mana Crystal Cavern

The platform descended deeper into the ground. We were deep inside a cavern surrounded by rocky walls from all sides.

In the center of the platform stood Sigurd standing in his squatting posture. He was concentrating all his attention on his closed fist. Whatever he was doing with his fist, must be the key to controlling this platform's descent.

The platform that we were standing on was about the size of 10 big rice fields combined together. Maintaining control over such a big platform required quite a lot of reserves of mana. This platform wasn't a big giant piece of rock, it was actually a collection of slab rock tiles combined together. Sigurd's technique was not just only lifting this platform but was keeping the platform together.

This shows how skilled and powerful the head mage was.

As we went deeper inside the cavern, it started to become dark. The surface view disappeared out of view which was the only source of light. Thankfully Sigurd's floating dollhouse fortress overhead was glowing and helped us to see the surrounding area around us.

But soon the cavern wall rock structures started changing.

As we went deeper into the cavern we started seeing small little rocks the size of pebbles that had a light blue glow. At first, there were few glowing rocks but as we went lower and lower we soon started seeing hundreds of the glowing pebble-like rocks attached to the walls. It was as if seeing fireflies sitting around on these cavern walls.

"What are those strange rocks?" questioned one of the 2nd tier candidates onboard the platform.

".."

But everyone was silent as none had a proper answer.

Not until we saw a big long glowing rock crystal embedded in the cavern wall. It had a much brighter glow than those little pebbles. Some candidates started to get a vague idea, but soon there such big glowing rocks started appearing on all sides of the cavern walls. They were of different shapes but all of them were enormous.

"Oh my god! These glowing rocks are actually Condensed Mana Crystals!" shrieked out one of the 2nd tier candidates.

"What? For real!"

"I knew it."

"Damn! These city folks are loaded."

"I have seen a few crystals used by the adventurers but they were in small quantities."

"How much does one mana crystal cost anyway?"

"This place is actually a 'Condensed Mana Crystal Deposits',"

I had a hunch so this is what it looks like.

Condensed Mana Crystals, as the name implies these crystals store pure mana within themselves. These crystals form when a huge number of naturally occurring mana gather under the earth's crust and get pressurized to a single spot to form these. It takes quite a bit of luck and time to get this from nature.

No wonder these Condensed Mana Crystals are rare and valuable resources.

Also to add a warning, these mana crystals can only be used by 'True Mages'. Lesser mages like us who try to absorb this Condensed Mana might get mana poisoned or even explode.

So I don't know why my fellow candidates were looking at these big condensed mana crystals like some delicious candy. They had already shed their arrogance for being 2nd tier candidates and now acted like a bunch of kids on a field trip in a cavern.

The candidates gawked at these big glowing crystal rocks that managed to light up the entirety of the cavern in a dim blue glow. The 2nd tier candidates had already shed their arrogance and now we're acting like a bunch of kids on a field trip.