The Fourth Calamity: Starting with Dungeon Slimes

Chapter 127 Crack

While the vice-captain was still leading his men to scavenge resources on floor 55, the players were making good progress in exploring floor 59.

"Brothers, remember to mark all the monster locations."

"There's not much to say about this. We'll make some arrangements here and thoroughly clear out all the monsters here."

"In short, what we need to do now is to eliminate all the monsters here as quickly as possible."

"Then we can go and make a good profit."

The strategy players adopt to scavenge resources on this floor is to concentrate their efforts and clear out the monsters here first.

There are quite a few monsters on this 59th floor.

Fortunately, during their previous guerrilla warfare here, they had gained a fairly good understanding of the types of monsters and how they hid.

Therefore, the cleaning speed is also very fast.

Soon, the monsters at the monster locations marked by the players were mostly cleared out. Although these monsters were powerful, they were not a big deal for the players.

After all, they had thoroughly cleared out all 60 floors, and the strength of the 59th floor was not even as good as that of the 60th floor, so naturally they could not stop the players' progress.

After clearing out most of the monsters, there will definitely be some left behind, but the players don't care. If these monsters do come looking for trouble, they won't be difficult to deal with.

After about two or three days of clearing, heavy trucks, including loaders, excavators and other equipment, soon began to arrive.

The players first arrived at a magic crystal mine.

These magic crystal mines, which look similar to crystals, are distributed throughout the 59th floor of the dungeon, and there is a large vein of them.

To be precise, it shouldn't be considered a mineral vein, but rather a cluster of these magic crystals; they covered the entire passage.

Players made a preliminary estimate that this passage, which is at least six or seven hundred meters long, is made up of these magic crystals.

The original maze walls were replaced by magic crystals that grew out of them. The magic crystals, emitting a purple light, illuminated the passageway beautifully.

Of course, this is just one of the resource points, and the magic crystals here are mostly uninfected.

It's no exaggeration to say that if some merchants from the human empire were to find this place, they could make a fortune from these magic crystals and even cultivate a new noble family with enormous wealth.

But for players, these magic crystals are nothing special; they wouldn't fetch much money selling for them, since the NPCs...

Not much was collected.

Because it's the 59th floor, the magic crystals here are only of Tier 5 quality, which is a huge difference compared to Tier 6 on the 60th floor.

However, most of the 60-story level 6 buildings are contaminated, with only a small portion remaining uncontaminated.

It is impossible for such a large area of ​​uncontaminated magic crystal veins to exist at least at level 60.

However, the players didn't care about the specifics anymore; at this moment, heavy trucks had already been driven to the area near the passage.

Then the loaders and excavators were already in place, and many players had already gathered here.

They then began casting spells, cutting these magic crystals.

There's nothing we can do; this thing is quite tough. The most crucial point is that the excavators and loaders they bought don't have this kind of cutting capability at all; they only have the ability to load goods.

Fortunately, these magic crystals were easy to cut. The players each had their own role, and like locusts, they cut down the magic crystals growing on the wall from different directions.

With a tremendous roar, the excavator was the first to enter, digging up the magic crystals that the players had cut together.

Then they were piled up into one small mountain of magic crystals after another. Then the loader came in, and each bucket could scoop up a large amount of magic crystals.

Then all these magic crystals were loaded onto the vehicle.

As truck after truck was loaded, accompanied by a roar, these heavy trucks transported the magic crystals to their gathering point, one truckload after another.

Although this maze is constantly changing, it is not difficult for players.

The location of this underground labyrinth changes roughly every day, and players have dedicated exploration teams responsible for constantly finding new routes.

Basically, every morning after the maze changes, a new exit route will appear after about an hour, so they are not worried about getting lost in it at all.

Once the departure route for the day is determined, the heavy trucks will begin hauling goods out one by one.

Thus, thanks to the players' joint efforts, the magic crystals here are decreasing at a visible rate, while the players' magic crystal reserves are constantly increasing.

As time went by, the days passed one by one.

It took players almost three whole days to completely loot this area, and that was after they were grinding like crazy.

After acquiring the resources here, the players immediately set off for other places.

In some places, there are habitats of large monsters that players don't even recognize, and some precious medicinal herbs grow there.

In some other places, there are many hidden vine monsters waiting for the enemy, but instead of the enemy, they are met with a barrage of attacks from the players.

Before long, the area was completely cleared after being bombarded by the artillery fire.

Then the players filed in and began collecting glowing herbs around them, a precious spice.

Anyway, players often use this thing when grilling meat. Not only can it refresh the mind, but most importantly, it tastes pretty good.

Of course, this is just a microcosm of the large group of players developing their own strategies.

After the magic crystal vein was completely mined, the players basically went their separate ways.

They usually conduct a thorough search of the surrounding area in small teams.

However, the final result was not satisfactory.

Most of what I found were things like mushroom outposts, which didn't yield much profit.

We can only say that we were able to barely gather some materials.

"So, is there only one instance per floor, or is it possible that there might not be any instances at all?"

"Anyway, our team didn't find it, and it seems the other teams didn't find anything either."

A faint sense of disappointment permeated the public channel, with reports from each team being largely the same: "We found some spice materials today, but they're all just ordinary spices, their value... is negligible."

"Damn it, our team is incredibly unlucky too. We finally found a collapsed ancient stone chamber."

"We all thought we'd struck it rich, but when we went inside... there were just scattered bone fragments and a pile of rubble. It was all for nothing."

"We encountered a few monsters, and lost some ordinary hides and a few useless animal teeth..."

'

"All the other ingredients were sold to those barbecue vendors; not much of it was actually shown."

Watching the various messages constantly jumping through the chat channel.

The player with the ID "Shovel God of War" and his teammates are near a monster nest that has just been cleared.

There were about thirty wolf-like monsters on the ground.

They piled these monsters together, waiting for the buyers to come and take them away.

"Tsk, is it really all scraps? Brothers, do you think we might be going in the wrong direction? The 59th floor is so big, it can't just be a bare magic crystal mine that's valuable, right? Even if there are no dungeons, there should be some other good stuff."

While saying this, the Shovel God felt that his team's luck was really bad.

I only get this little bit of monster meat every day.

On average, each person might only earn one or two gold coins per day.

Hearing what he said, a player with the ID "Map Surveyor" frowned and said, "I'm also wondering about this. We've searched quite thoroughly, but we still haven't found anything."

"But what about the other teams? Some teams are progressing faster than us in the search, but their searches aren't as thorough. And what's the result?"

"Bro, you mean our search method is wrong?" another teammate chimed in.

The surveyor pondered this for a while.

"You know what the situation is; I've given up all hope for this income."

His complaints resonated with the others.

However, just as the group was talking, a huge roar suddenly rang out.

The entire 59-story maze seemed to have been struck by an invisible giant hammer; the rock passages trembled, and fine sand and gravel fell from the ceiling.

The commotion startled the members of the Iron Shovel Warriors team, who were caught off guard.

"What the hell is that noise?"

"Holy crap! An earthquake?"

"It's not an earthquake! The sound is coming from... the east!" The map surveyor immediately pinpointed the direction, and the public chat channel was instantly flooded with panic and questions: "What's going on?"

"Wait, what? This underground city can have earthquakes?"

"The ground has cracked open! My God!!"

"What's coming out!"

"Left! Brothers, there must be something there." The map surveyor had probably been struggling lately and was going crazy thinking about something.

Upon discovering the anomaly, his first reaction was not to run to a safe place, but to go and check the situation.

"Let's go!" Without saying a word, the Shovel God of War led his team and set off.

Not only them, but all the teams, large and small, exploring the 59th floor were attracted by this sudden change and flocked to that area from all directions.

Unfortunately, the returns on this level are simply too low.

To be precise, it's not that the rewards here are too low, but rather that the rewards from previous battles with Dark Elves were too high, making players somewhat unaccustomed to this low-reward exploration.

And so, when the Shovel Warriors team finally reached the source after navigating through several dimly lit and winding passages, the sight before them made them all gasp in shock!

This place was originally a passageway filled with jagged rocks and low, glowing moss.

However, at this moment, the ground seemed to be torn apart by the claws of a demon, revealing a huge, hideous crack.

The crack is about 100 meters long, and at its widest point it is more than ten meters wide, and its depth is unfathomable!

Within the pitch-black crack, a dense, almost tangible, blackish-purple mist churned.

From within the fog, a sharp, teeth-grinding noise and a low, suppressed roar could be faintly heard.

The rocks at the edge of the crack were in a strangely twisted and molten state, shimmering with ominous dark red spots of light.

Scattered on the ground around the crack were numerous black bone fragments never seen before, as well as some broken crystals that shimmered with a dark light.

A dozen or so players had already arrived and were cautiously peering down.

"What's going on?"

The shovel warrior, filled with curiosity, went up to inquire about the situation.

"I don't know."

"We also came over after hearing the commotion."

Just then, a player jumped over.

"I think I know something about that."

As soon as the player finished speaking, everyone else turned to look at him, waiting for him to continue.

"I explored this place and found a protruding rock about the size of my palm."

"Then, out of boredom, I jumped on it a couple of times, and that's how it ended up like this."

After hearing what this player said, everyone was full of questions.

At this moment, a player stared intently at the crack, his brow furrowed. "It wasn't formed naturally; it looks like it was forcibly torn open from the inside by some enormous force."

"I guess the thing you pressed was something like a switch."

As he spoke, the player thought for a moment and then added more.

"And don't you think this place looks like another space?"

"You know what, I actually think it's quite possible."

"I wonder if this is going to be another large-scale dungeon?" one player guessed.

"I don't know."

While players were still discussing it, another anomaly occurred!

"roar--!!"

A deafening roar suddenly erupted from the depths of the crack!

With a roar, the dark purple mist churning in the crack surged violently like boiling water!

"There's a monster down there!"

"Holy crap, could it be the boss?"

""

"Let's go, let's go down and take a look."

Just as they were about to take action, dozens of dark figures below shot out like arrows released from a bow, carrying with them the pungent smell of sulfur and decay.

The suddenly appearing monster is a mutated insect covered with thick, jet-black bone armor. It looks very similar to a mantis, but its body is thicker and its height generally exceeds three meters.

Its head is a triangular bony structure, and its compound eyes gleam with a cruel scarlet light.

Their forelimbs are two huge, jet-black bone blades covered with serrated barbs, nearly half the length of their bodies.

These mantis monsters are extremely fast; as soon as they burst out of the crack, they pounced on the nearest player team.

"Holy crap!"

"What the hell is going on?!"

Before the players could react, they were hooked by the mantis and dragged into the rift.

"It's numb! What the hell happened?!"

"What the hell is going on? Brothers, attack!"

As soon as the words fell, everyone who had realized what was happening immediately began to unleash their skills.

The battle erupted instantly!

Despite the various spells cast by the players, a mantis stubbornly charged forward, its black bone blade whistling through the air as it slashed fiercely at the player closest to it.

Faced with the sudden attack, the player neither dodged nor evaded.

"Hmph, of all people to choose, they had to pick me. They're really asking for trouble."

As the voice faded, the player, empowered by the Abyss skill, began to radiate a pale golden light.

Compared to other players, this player prefers a defensive build, so he has learned quite a few defensive skills.

With all defensive skills activated, this player was incredibly confident.

"Let me see if your damage can break through my defense."

However...