Defiance of the Fall

A surge of energy entered his body and he saw that he gained roughly 800 Nexus coins . That was even more compared to some of the weaker demons , surprising Zac somewhat . It had been pretty quick for its large size , but it felt like less of a challenge compared to a demon .

As he was mulling it over a sizzling sound interrupted his train of thought , and he turned his head toward the sound .

Smoke rose up from the ground next to the chopped off head and a sizzling sound could be heard . He went closer to take a look , and was appalled to see that its saliva was highly corrosive . The sounds came from its tongue touching the ground , and it had already corroded a small hole where its saliva dripped down . Zac realized even a flesh wound from a bite might cost him a limb when fighting these salamanders .

It was a shame he couldn’t use his eye skill on it as it was already dead , but it didn’t matter much what the system called the animal . He went over to the headless carcass and observed the body . At least the blood wasn’t corrosive as well , otherwise , the huge pool of blood forming beneath the body would have carved out a new path among the tunnels .

Zac barely managed to cram the beast inside his smaller pouch after chopping off the tail as well , and then moved on . He didn’t want to leave a carcass out in the open that was clearly killed with something sharp . He still didn’t know what the relation between the demons and this animal was , and he’d just have to lug it along until he did . Or found somewhere to dump it where it wouldn’t be found .

Zac continued on , diligently marking crossroads with a Z . By now he was starting to fully acclimatize to the cold light of the moss and various other plants and had no problem discerning his surroundings .

After a while , the tunnels started to change once again , as he saw spots glimmering between the pieces of moss on the walls and ground . He walked over to the closest spot that shone and saw that it was a crystal .

His heartbeat quickened and he quickly pried it out with a knife . The stone was far harder than he expected , and the extraction taxed even him with his huge Strength . But he only increased his pace with a widening smile adorning his face , and soon he held his prize in his hand . The crystal he pried out truly was a Nexus Crystal , roughly half the size of the ones in his bag .

As he looked around the walls he saw glimmering crystals embedded all over the walls .

He was rich!

Chapter 51 - Stench

After a bout of excitement Zac suppressed his giddiness and refocused . As much as he wanted to , he couldn’t start a mining operation at the moment . He had things to do .

Besides , it likely was more effective to let the demons mine the crystals , and then commandeer it when it was all extracted and gathered . They shouldn’t have sent their most powerful warriors to mine , so an assault wouldn’t prove to be too difficult . He longingly took another look at the glistening walls and then kept going .

This obsession with wealth was something new he had started to develop . He hadn’t really cared too much when the world still was normal , and he just was a white-collar worker . He was happy as long as he had enough to live a comfortable life .

But lately he was running toward corpses like it was Christmas morning and the bodies contained presents . It was a weird type of callousness that translated corpses into loot . He had always enjoyed the grind in video games , waiting for that rush of seeing some glimmering unique or valuable item drop . He was starting to get the same feeling in real life as well . Just the thought of finding a magic pouch full of crystals made him want to forget about the Heralds and go on a treasure hunt instead .

But he knew he couldn’t , at least not for now . As he walked , he started to gradually hear rhythmic sounds of metal hitting rock . It was still far in the distance , but Zac presumed he was hearing mining operations .

He hesitated for a bit , but then reluctantly decided to go in another direction . There was no real need to see the miners at the moment , and he wouldn’t risk getting exposed this early just to steal a peek . What he currently wanted to explore was whether the thrifty imp was a loner who had snuck into the caves , or whether it was part of a larger group .

As he crept along the paths the sounds of pick-axes hitting rock didn’t diminish , rather it was a constant drone in this part of the cave system . This made Zac realize that the mining operations were on a larger scale than he had expected . After walking for 30 minutes the sounds finally started to diminish , letting him know he was moving away from the mining operations .