Three days passed and it was already Thursday evening when everyone gathered together with exhausted, yet overjoyed expressions.

There was not a single person in their whole expedition group whose mood was bad and this was because they had excavated every single elemental crystal within the third layer.

In the end, nobody had expected that it would take three days for more than a hundred people to mine through the third layer, and it was even more shocking after knowing that everyone had spent between 8 to 12 hours mining every day.

Adding the first stay, where everyone rested in the beginning before they started to mine, the average time spent mining was around 40 hours.

In the end, their whole expedition team gathered more than 4 Million fist-sized mana and elemental crystals together, solely from the third layer, and after estimating their net worth, they had collected around 400,000 gold coins.

However, Shane already had a contract with the Elus merchant and knew that they would receive more than 800,000 gold coins if he were to sell the elemental crystals.

They were a group of roughly 110, which meant that everyone would receive almost 7300 gold coins according to his estimation.

Shane gulped down his saliva and was also exhausted to have mined for so long which was extremely taxing but rather than wanting to sleep, Shane was hopeful to sell the elemental crystals that he had mined.

Yet, before he could do anything at all, he noticed Frer next to him, as she tapped his shoulder.

"He-Here!"

Summoning a small mountain of mana and elemental crystals next to her, she said what she wanted to and hurried away without any further explanation.

Even without explanation, Shane had understood what she meant to say and shouted a loud "Thank you" after her, which caused Frer to flinch as Aimy and Olivia appeared next to him.

"Here is our portion…" Both girls said as the pile of crystals grew into a small mountain.

After seeing the first few starting to divide their portion of mined crystals, the others followed suit and even the students that were previously against giving him a share from their mined crystals couldn't help but take out some elemental crystals from their spatial ring.

It was not only that they felt forced to follow the group but also that they noticed how hard-working Shane was and finally after figuring out how much they had earned because of him, they also began to understand why the other students and Valkyries wanted to give Shane a part of their loot.

As such, ten minutes later the mountain of elemental crystals became larger, shocking everyone, and the mountain looked gigantic.

Shane nervously gulped down his saliva, as everyone felt the urge to claim the elemental crystal mountain for themselves but they refrained from following their desire, as they directed their attention to Shane.

The students glared at him, and he could only smile apologetically because it was not like he had forced anyone to give him anything.

In the end, everyone shared their spoils willingly without anyone forcing them, which caused Shane to envelop the mountain with his mana in order to store everything away.

Unfortunately, or rather, fortunately, his mana was not enough to envelop the whole mountain and he had to split up the mountain in several parts to store it away, clearly showing how large the mountain of elemental crystals was.

Once everything was stored inside his spatial ring, Shane took a glance inside it, only to figure out that there should be around 100,000 mana and elemental crystals inside.

His hands began to tremble and only his passive ability [Hunter's mind] could barely prevent him from shouting out joyously in front of the already jealous students and Valkyries.

Aisha had already given Shane her share, and she suddenly stood up to say something.

Clearing her throat, she put on a serious voice

"As everyone might have noticed, we encountered more large centipede groups, and their average cultivation rank and combat prowess seem to increase accordingly.

Because of that, I'm pretty sure that we can't handle the fourth layer while protecting everyone else. To be honest, looking at the centipedes' current combat prowess, it wouldn't be surprising if we find even stronger evolutions than the subterra centipedes on the fourth floor.

If these stronger evolutions also attained a mutation or superior variant evolution at that, it would be difficult for us to protect ourselves, leaving us no chance to protect everyone else."

Aisha stopped talking for a moment to let everyone digest the information and even the Valkyries were slightly astonished to hear their captains' words.

However, after carefully thinking about Aisha's words, they knew that her words were certainly true and it had already been extremely hard for them to protect the students over the last three days.

The number of centipedes increased consistently as well as their cultivation rank which made everything more difficult.

Nevertheless, having tasted blood, even the Valkyries that normally were rather rational, wanted to continue their trip through the elemental crystal cave due to the possible gains.

All students seemed to be eager to proceed further, and when Aisha saw this, she couldn't help but feel that nobody valued their life enough as she noticed Shane's expression that didn't seem to have changed much after hearing what she said.

Shane was already more than aware of the elemental crystal cave's increased dangers because the third layer was previously less dangerous with weaker beasts than it currently was, which was definitely odd and not good.

In the beginning, he wanted to ignore his bad premonition but after the last three days it was evident that there had either been a massive change or that he had missed some important information.

There were too many variant elemental subterra centipedes compared to the short interval they should have been inside the cave if one were to consider that they only claimed the elemental crystal cave after the scaled lizards left.

But what if that was not the case?

Even the possibility alone was shocking enough and it might even mean that the scaled lizards were only temporarily allowed to reside within the elemental crystal cave.

In the end, this would also indicate that the strongest scaled lizard was weaker than the strongest centipede which Shane had already concluded after figuring out that the fourth layer would have even stronger centipedes than the third.

Looking into Aisha's eyes, he could only shake his head lightly which she also noticed, but in the end, he was only a single person in a large group of more than 100 members.

Aisha was also sure that there was something wrong and wanted to continue their expedition elsewhere when she noticed her Valkyries' ambition and determination to venture deeper.

This was something she hadn't seen in a long time and her hands itched to fight someone strong again after they had almost lost against the bloodlust thunder wolf when they pursued it the last time.

Not exactly sure of what to do next, she decided to take the simplest path, as she asked the others for their opinion.

"Now that I have explained what might await us in the fourth layer, I'll make it easy for everyone. We will vote whether to move ahead or not, but please bear in mind that the chances to die in the next layer are much higher than here, which also includes our own lives!"

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