A class advancement? Before he checked his status, he looked at the soul in his hands. The damages were visible as dark spots and streaks across the little glowing ball of light.

Severely damaged soul of a stone giant by the name of Chrysopras. Size and rating have been lowered because of the damage. >

Seeing the soul like this, Seth found this was a rather sub-optimal harvest. He could only sigh at the loss. If he could have directly harvested the undamaged Soul, there was a high chance of it being an epic massive soul. It might have even had an ego...

Before he could ponder over the loss or check his status the whole tunnel suddenly started tilting. The twitching and thrashing had stopped with the giant's death, but the huge figure now started slowly falling over!

In a panic, Seth climbed and tumbled up his tunnel and out of the armor layer that covered the giant. When he came out of the hole in the shoulder, he saw a massive mountain wall coming at him with murderous intent!

Ah, no! The giant was falling and about to crash into it! He had to get away or he might get squashed between a rock and a mountain.

"Puffles!? Anybody?" he called out after taking off the Helm of Hades.

Moments of silence followed as the rock wall drew near.

"I'm here! Grab my hand!" he heard an aged voice. It was not Puffles, but Xardus the old wizard who was reaching his hand out to him. He was levitation above him with his fluttery robes. Thankfully the old man wore long pants under it...

Seth grabbed the wrinkly wizard's hand, and they flew out of the crash zone. They steered to a cliff in the mountainside. Before they could land, Fin had already rushed to Seth in the air.

"You are okay! Fin is so glad!" the little brute hectically flew around them, but her high-pitched voice was drowned out by the rumbling of rocks and crashing of stones as the giant figure behind them collided with the mountains and broke apart.

Carefully the wizard lowered Seth before landing himself. At the small cliff, the seven surviving vanguards were hiding and holding their ears. Seth followed suit once he had both hands freed.

The unbelievable noise of a mountain crumbling was already loud, but the cacophony was further amplified by the surrounding mountains and the echoes. They could only wait there and shut their ears until it was over.

What was left of the walking mountain was a big valley filled with big rocks and giant boulders, like the glacial field almost. The whole place was covered in parts of the stone giants armor suits and in the middle of all of that was its true body.

A roughly humanoid figure made up of dark stone. With 40 to 50 meters the actual giant was about the same size as the giants Seth had met on the plain. The 7 survivors looked at Seth in wonder and a tinge of fear. After all, he had just killed that thing. Without a trap or anything.

"Sir, we won't contest with you about the body, we only need the Cäellapis from its head." the wizard approached.

Seth remembered that he had not even introduced himself.

"You can call me Seth, Seth Smith. You can have the thing but first, where is my pet?" he looked around and only got an answer a few moments later.

"Errm, we don't know. It told be to fetch you before it flew away...?" the wizard answered embarrassed

"Well, it's okay as long as he is fine." Seth shrugged and got back to the topic.

"Say, how are you going to get that thing out of its head? Its skin is so hard it even dulled my pickaxe."

"Oh, we have a solution for that. In our kingdom, we have a very quirky researcher. He said he came from a "much more advanced" World. He has many weird ideas; one is something he calls Operation magic.

With this scroll, we can create something like a tunnel that allows us to take out the Cäellapis without harming the carcass." the old man happily explained as they climbed down towards the half-buried body.

~that sounds almost like an application of space or even dimensional magic. Who would come up with something this crazy just to operate on something...? ~ the lich crumbled perplexed.

As someone who had seen both worlds, he roughly understood her sentiments. People from worlds with a high level of magic could solve almost any issue with healing magic. There were only few issues that magic or system functions could not take care of.

From the perspective of modern science, it would be revolutionary to circumvent the body tissue to directly operate in a specific area without having to worry about opening the body.

The theory sounded interesting, but the execution was almost surreal. Xardus used the scroll at the giant's head and in the designated area, the skull simply vanished. It was as if someone took a cookie cutter and punched a hole in the head.

The brain laid open, they could directly see past the skin and skull. That's when Seth realized just how much the body was actually worth. Its whole brain was made of .

In one of the windings close to the brain stem was something that did not quite fit. It looked like a crystal that grew in the shape of a plant or moss. This was the Cäellapis. And then the wizard simply climbed into this hole and plucked it off!

When he came out, the hole close again. There was so sign of damage left behind.

~What a crazy waste of research and materials...~ Al only commented.

"Sir, if there is any way we can thank you, please tell me." the wizard finally spoke after putting away the stone.

They had talked about a remuneration before, but Seth had no idea for now. He just didn't feel like working for free. Seeing the old man being this sincere, he did not want to let it just end like this. Also, he was quite happy with the stone giant.

"How about we leave it as a favor?" he suggested.

"Okay. How can we contact you?"

"Here, take this ring! I can identify you at my place. I am the Tower Master of Minas Mar in Delta. If you want to contact me, you can do it through the system church."

"Thank you, we will do that. Please excuse us now, we already lost a lot of time."

With that, the people of Myrrhtana bid their farewell and left. Their entrance to the pathwork was not far away.

Seth on the other hand stayed behind and shoved the giant into his inventory. Then his eyes fell on the field of rubble. There were a lot of ores in these stones, it would take a long time to mine this place clean... But where was Puffles?

~I'm here... ~

Puffles landed behind him, his jaws still crunching something.

"Don't tell me...?"

~I-I had a snack. ~

"Did you eat the ores?"

~ Yes, they are mine, right? You get that core body and I get the snack that fell off it. ~

T-the snacks that fell of it? The ivicer was talking about a mountain of ores as if it was a pack of potato chips!

"Fine, but you have to bring me all the ores you can't or don't want to eat in exchange!"

~Deal. ~