With Leyla at the awaken level, it was one less worry for Edward. Of course, Leyla would have to train to master her aura, but once that was done, she wouldn’t be defenseless against monsters anymore.

“You should check your physical abilities,” Edward advised her. “The transition to the awaken stage doesn’t just give you access to your aura.”

“Actually, I feel something strange. It is as if I’m somehow connected to water.” Leyla said, before extending her arm toward the expanse of water inside the cavern. A blob of water left the water pond to come in front of Leyla, hovering in the air.

Edward’s eyes flashed. She got a power as well, that’s good. Those monsters were able to throw high-pressure water at us, so it makes sense that she gained a water control ability.

“Wow, that’s neat. I’m starting to understand the appeal of chasing monsters if this is the reward.” Leyla rejoiced.

Edward laughed. Charles, Brian, Aquamarine, and Norte came near after having finished absorbing the blood essence of the two fallen monsters.

“So, what’s next? Are we harvesting the crystals or dealing with the monsters’ corpses?” Brian asked.

Edward sighed. “I think we have to deal with the monster’s corpses first. I don’t want them to attract another dangerous monster. But it will be a bother, we will have to drag them outside to bury them. The easiest solution would be to simply throw them in the water, but I’m pretty sure this would attract even more monsters than simply leaving them to rot inside the cavern. It is in times like this I wish I had a flamethrower.”

Leyla nodded. “This is indeed becoming a concern. Let me see what I can do.” She walked and simply picked up a rock before engraving a complex rune on it. She was done after a few minutes. She gave the rock to Edward. “Try it. Aim the rock in front of you and sent some mana inside.” She paused. “Do be careful while using it. It’s the first time I’m trying something like that and I’m not sure how it will behave.”

Edward nodded, walked aside from the group, hold the rock in front of him, and aimed it at a Murloc corpse. He poured mana into the rock and a flare of fire gushed out of it, reaching the corpse and burning it with a bright light. Edward stopped the mana injection as he felt the heat reach him. The rock itself felt hot in his hand, he would only be able to use it for a short duration each time. But it had worked. The corpse was burning and would be reduced to ash before long.

Charles whistled. “That was impressive. And that took you what, five minutes?”

Leyla smiled, it didn’t take much time but it wasn’t that easy. “I can’t only put a fire rune on it, otherwise the rock would just catch fire. So, I had to add something for the direction. And then I had to tweak it a little so it doesn’t activate just with the ambient mana, that would be dangerous.”

It was Edward’s turn to be impressed. Leyla didn’t have the Damkinan’s rune book on her, so that meant she had memorized all of those runes, and that she had been able to mend them together, which wasn’t an easy task.

“Good job. You already have surpassed me in rune expertise. I wouldn’t have been able to do that.” Edward conceded.

Leyla smiled at the praise but didn’t comment, tacitly agreeing with the statement.

Considering the number of monsters’ corpses, Leyla made another five rune flamethrowers, one for each of them. They each walked in a different direction, burning the monster corpses one by one. However, they had to take a break soon. Although the cavern was large, it was still a cavern, and the air quantity was limited. The smoke kept building with each burned body, and they had to go outside to breathe fresh air. In the meantime, Norte used his air control to ventilate the cavern, pushing fresh air into the cavern from the entrance and sending the smoke away. Without him, they would have to wait far longer for the air to rejuvenate.

They could have technically brought the monsters’ corpses outside, but taking into account the size of the exit tunnel, it would have meant crawling in a narrow space while pulling a corpse. Since they had another solution that could avoid this situation, they gladly chose it.

Once the cavern was cleared of the monsters’ corpses, they focused on the mana crystals.

“How should we proceed?” Charles asked Leyla.

“I’ve never worked with this kind of material. Let’s try to cut a piece first and let’s see how it behaves.” Leyla proposed.

Charles took his sword and sliced at the crystal but it only bounced right back, only inflicting a small nick on the crystal. “It’s more resistant than I expected. Let me try again with aura.”

He chopped once more, but with his aura covering his weapon. This time the sword cut cleanly through the crystal. As the crystal was separated into two pieces, Edward felt the concentration of ambient mana increase significantly.

“It’s leaking mana,” he warned them.

“It’s not ideal,” Leyla winced. “But I’m still interested in them. Even without mana, the crystals can still be quality material. And we may find a way to close the mana leak at a later time.”

“Actually, I wonder if you could regrow them. Crystals can grow on their own, Given the right condition it may be able to repair itself.”

Leyla’s eyes glowed with interest. “Then it would be similar to the Harpies egg’s self-repair, yet different. By comparing the two I could better understand how a material can self-repair.” She looked at Edward. “Given the creatures, you are facing, your armor is always getting damaged. I won’t always be there to repair it, a self-repairing armor would be amazing.”

They cut more crystal pieces and even dug out small intact ones still able to store mana. However, they didn’t take out all of the crystals from the cavern. They weren’t sure yet if they could repair the cut crystals so it was better to leave some in the cavern to continue to grow.

With each cut crystal the ambient mana increased. This level of mana is several times higher than normal. I can’t let it go to waste. My aura is increasing with each monster that I kill and absorb the blood essence from but I need to work for my mana. Already I have a lot more aura than mana. This is a good thing since I use aura more than mana, but I still need mana if I want to use my acceleration power.

Edward expressed his wish to stay the night in the cavern to take advantage of the mana level. The group was split. Nobody but Edward wanted to stay longer since it was still possible for another dangerous monster to appear. In the end, Edward proposed to let them go back to Gobéliard with the ship while he would stay here.

The group was perplexed by this idea since Edward would have no means of transportation, that is until Edward demonstrated his aura steps and how he was able to run in midair. Technically he could simply run all the way from Egregius’ folly to Gobéliard without even needing a boat. As for the speed, the vessel was cruising on average at around fifteen kilometers per hour, Edward could actually run much faster. The only question left was if Edward was able to maintain aura steps for the several hours that the distance required, but he was confident that it was in his capacity. Aura steps didn’t consume much of his power contrary to the big aura attacks he needed to pierce through the tough Mare Irae aura armor.

The group agreed reluctantly to let him spend the night alone on the island. While they were worried about other monsters invading the cavern, Edward had dealt with the Mare Irae on his own so he should be fine.

Edward’s decision was taken but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t help the rest of the group to transport the crystal to the boats. I wanted to try if my teleportation could work on an external object. It’s the right occasion to do some tests. Edward took an intact small crystal in his hand and teleported away. The teleportation worked but the piece of crystal stayed behind and fell to the ground. That’s weird. Teleportation works just fine for my clothes and daggers. Why is it not working with those crystals? Edward tried again but with a piece of crystal that had already lost all of its mana. This time the piece of crystal was teleported with him just fine.

So, I can teleport inert objects. But things with their own mana are not getting teleported. I guess it will be the same for living things, not everyone has mana, but everyone has some level of aura even if they are unable to use it. Since aura is made initially from mana it should also interfere with my teleportation.

Since Edward could at least teleport the cut pieces of crystals which had lost their mana, he got in charge of those pieces. It would be a lot easier for everyone since he could teleport past the narrow cavern exit with those crystals.

Once all the crystals were charged on the vessel, Edward waved the group and Leyla goodbye. He stayed on the beach at the vessel left without him, growing smaller on the horizon. Now alone on the island, Edward went back to the cavern. With the removal of many of the crystals, the light in the cavern had decreased a lot, but that didn’t bother him since he could rely on his aura to sense his surroundings.

The first thing Edward did was to install a containment around the water expanse inside the cavern. He graved a simple line of block runes. It wouldn’t be enough to stop any dangerous monsters but it would give him enough time to react and leave his meditation state. Once that was done, Edward sat cross-legged in the lotus position near a crystal outcrop that they had cut and harvested.

He closed his eyes and let himself attune to his surroundings, slowly assimilating the ambient mana to make it his own. Due to the abnormally high concentration of mana inside the cavern, he was getting twice the result for the same effort. Not only was meditation helping him to increase his mana, but it was also relaxing and calming his mind. Something that was much needed after having to deal with unexpected and dangerous monsters, especially with the looming pressure of the monster surge ever present in the background.