Chapter 610: Dugout At the Edge of the Crystal Tree Forest

Feeling that it would be best to split off from the crowd moving in the direction of the crystal tree forest, Verdell ended up convincing Valerie that he had learnt about a faster path to the crystal tree forest and took the two of them off the general path used by everyone else. At the same time also justifying it by saying that there was no way they would be faster than the other adventurers following the same path and the only way they stood a chance at reaching the crystal bunny before anyone else would be for them to enter the crystal tree forest from a different direction.

In the end, though she felt a bit suspicious about part of the reason for them to break from the rest of the adventurers, she couldn’t help but agree with the latter half of the reasoning. Understanding that there was indeed little chance of them getting to the crystal bunny first if they followed behind the other adventurers.

After all, outside of there being quite a few adventurers who would have entered the crystal tree forest ahead of them to clear out the monsters that might be blocking their path, there wasn’t much of a benefit in following behind that large group of adventurers.

If anything, they stood a far greater chance of reaching the crystal bunny first by entering the crystal tree forest from a different angle, as there was a good chance that the crystal bunny would be scared off by the large number of adventurers suddenly pouring into the crystal tree forest from one side.

Not to mention, the fact that news of the crystal bunny had made it back to the city also made it clear that the crystal bunny itself was far from easy to catch. Potentially even having escaped the pursuit of the adventurers that had originally found it. Leading to them spreading the news back to the rest of the adventurers in an attempt to either gather more help or scare the crystal bunny into a trap they had laid for it predicting its escape path faced with the streams of adventurers that would be entering the crystal tree forest from one direction.

Keeping that in mind, Valerie also realized there was a good chance they would run into this group of adventurers waiting for the crystal bunny to run into their trap, something that would almost certainly lead to a battle, as those adventurers were unlikely to want anything to do with sharing the crystal bunny with others. After all, the value of a single crystal bunny was immense and could even make an SS Rank Adventurer lend you a hand during your S Rank Class Advancement Quest, something that would make most A Rank Adventurers risk their lives for it.

Of course, the value of a crystal bunny was equally immense to those at the S Rank, as while it might not be helpful when it came to their class advancement quest, it could still be exchanged for countless valuable things that S Rank Adventurers normally wouldn’t be able to get their hands on.

The battlefield surrounding the crystal bunny is bound to get bloody... How exciting!

And thinking about this upcoming chaos surrounding the crystal bunny, Valerie couldn’t help feeling a sense of growing excitement. Knowing that her own combat strength was more than enough to take out some weaker S Rank Adventurers only experienced with fighting monsters, while her teammate was by no means weak. If anything, he might end up being the strongest adventurer around when the time came, as most S Rank Adventurers tended to linger around the earlier stages of the rank, with few ever surpassing level 120 because of the increased difficulty and risk one was faced with when hunting increasingly powerful monsters.

Not to mention most adventurers tend to work in groups when hunting monsters. Meaning the experience ended up being split amongst everyone. Slowing down the leveling speed of high-level adventurers down to a crawl.

Different from how Scaly and Verdell had worked together, as the two of them hadn’t officially grouped up like these adventurers would. Meaning that the experience they gained wasn’t split between them, something Scaly herself would undoubtedly consider sacrilegious the second she saw the experience she should have obtained from killing a powerful monster getting cut in half.

And if that experience ended up getting cut into even small chunks, she would undoubtedly start thinking about getting rid of some deadweight.

Even Verdell, someone who was considered useful in her eyes that had even helped her increase the purity of her dragon bloodline, would likely end up getting cut down the second she realized just how much experience she was losing out on, let alone someone who hadn’t done something to directly help her.

Someone like that, even if it was just some oversized rat that gave out two measly points experience that was cut down to one point of experience, would make her move to cut off the deadweight immediately...

But the potential reaction from a little dragon currently busy evolving in the dreamscape to the experience sharing feature that many adventurers enjoyed aside, Verdell and Valerie soon enough arrived at the edge of the crystal tree forest after a little over four hours of travel through the thick snow. Finding themselves exhausted beyond what either of them had anticipated thanks to the little shortcut Verdell had come up with taking them through a rather difficult to traverse hilly area where they had to guard against a unique kind of snow slime that would ambush them whenever they got too close to it.

Sure, they could go around this unique little slime that considered the snow hills its home, but unfortunately for the two of them, these unique little slimes were impossible to spot and blended in perfectly with the environment.

In the end, they were forced to settle down and rest at a nearby dugout that had been created by past adventurers that had moved through this part of the north in the past. The dugout itself being simply constructed using a few planks of the crystal trees from the nearby forest to reinforce and hold back the snow on either side of the dugout while more planks were layered on top to stop the snow from filling up the space.

Normal wood would never have stood a chance holding everything together, but the crystal tree planks were far tougher than normal wood and inherently resistant to the cold temperature. Making it the perfect building material for this kind of snowy environment.

If anything, this dugout could be considered of the highest quality, as outside of the small wooden pole sticking out of the ground to symbolize the existence of a dugout, the entrance hadn’t been buried and looked to have been recently excavated, something only seen with dugouts close to a city, as for any other dugout, even the wooden pole being visible would be a good thing, while a worst-case scenario would be the dugout having collapsed without anyone visiting it.

Of course, outside of the dugout itself being in a good state, it also contained some emergency supplies left behind by other adventurers who had visited it in the past, something that most adventurers did when encountering a dugout like this that they didn’t need any supplies from.

In fact, Verdell and Valerie also decided to leave behind a bit of preserved food while they both sat down inside the dugout.

Luckily, with the builders of this dugout having been especially skillful, a simple heating magic formation was also present within, though it required someone to inject mana before it started working, something Verdell was more than happy to do give it was far more effective than him using his fire magic to heat up the interior of the dugout while they caught their breath for a few minutes before setting off for the crystal tree forest right beside the dugout.

And while the two of them were relaxing within the dugout without anything to do, they of course took the opportunity to look around the dugout for any useful information. After all, a dugout like this that generally served as a temporary camp for adventurers entering the crystal tree forest tended to also have some simple maps and other things inside it left behind by adventurers who had visited the crystal tree forest in the past.

"Ah! There really is a map here!" And after searching around for a bit, Valrie found a map of the crystal tree forest.

Not that detailed, but it at least showed the general size of the crystal tree forest along with a few warnings about where powerful monsters had been spotted. In this case, because the creator of the map should have been someone rather powerful, the only warnings on the map was about SS Rank Monsters, as S Rank Monsters weren’t considered strong enough to warrant a warning in the eyes of the creator of this map.