Chapter 168: Chapter 167 – Time to mine.

The experience popup sprung up to signal that the monster had been killed. This was one of the more handy functions of this game-like system this world had. It kept anyone on their toes until this message appeared and made playing dead virtually impossible for any living being in this world.

“That wasn’t that bad…”

Roland looked at the corpse of the Bladed Volcanic Xornotaurus that had been blown up from the inside. He decided to implement the old tactic that worked before when he was here with Robert.

The monster had a tough exterior that was even able to take a blast of concentrated magical energy. Swords or any kind of bladed weapons would probably bounce off its armored plates if the user didn’t have any proper skills.

The previous tactic worked before and it was not something that was difficult to reproduce. Thus he decided to implement his spider droids to disable the monster for a moment. The electricity had worked before and the monster did have a large mouth for easy bombing access.

He had gambled a bit on this fight as he couldn’t be sure if the same exact monster would appear here. The boss chamber on the 10th level was the type to randomize boss encounters but it wasn’t the only type of boss chamber.

This one for instance seemed to produce the same exact monster. This one was a level higher than the one that he faced all those years before. It wasn’t much stronger though and the shocking nets that were also made to resist fire had done what they were designed to do.

Even if the monster was somewhat different he expected to be able to utilize the drone nets. With some added earth magic to tangle his opponent's feet, it was a basic plan of stopping his opponent in their tracks. If something went wrong he would then switch to plan B of using ranged spells from his armor.

He had various other weapons stashed in his golem along with a plethora of runic cards for a prolonged battle. Roland was glad that he was able to save up on ammunition as he wasn’t sure if these spider drones could be used again. Even without getting close to them, he could see that some were damaged.

“All units gather up.”

After giving the command he waited for the spider drones to detach themselves from the net. The sound of mechanical legs filled the room as only four of the six golems arrived at the destination. Two of them remained in place while flailing their limbs in odd directions. It was clear that they had suffered some damage while trying to hold the monster in place.

‘The support bolts held them in place but some of the joints have been damaged.’

Roland looked at one of the damaged golems that didn’t seem to be able to move. Before walking over to it, he noticed the victory chest with goodies appearing in the middle of the boss chamber. It was just like the last time and he would expect to receive something at tier 2.

For now he ignored the treasure box while walking over to the damaged golem. His creation was twitching on the ground while trying to fulfill what it was ordered to do. Without another command to ignore the previous one, it would continue to struggle for about a minute. Then after going through a couple of program loops it would time out and stop.

This was a safety feature to save up on the runic battery charge that was left. If he didn’t code it right the magical machine would just continue to struggle until it ran out of power or it fulfilled its command.

Just as he had predicted the spider droid shut down after a while of struggling. Only then he decided to pick it up to examine the extent of the damages.

‘The legs are bent out of shape, joints cracked… the support bolt was mostly ripped out along with the chassis, this one is going to need a lot of repairs.’

After a quick examination, Roland decided that it would take too much time to fix, there was a limit of how long he could be here. He was not sure if the secret chamber was the same as before nor if this boss chamber would respawn another sword-tailed dinosaur for him to kill.

From what he knew, he should have about a week until a chamber like this respawned a foe. This was a well-documented occurrence as most of the boss chambers worked the same between dungeons.

A monster like this that was over level 120 would take a minimum of a week to respawn. The time could be random but would not go over two weeks. With that in mind, he needed to get back before this monster appeared again. While it might be a good farming spot of treasures from boxes he could earn more just by mining the precious metals from the secret chamber.

“Agni, stop.”

Roland took the damaged golem into one hand and was about to go towards the other damaged one. At that moment he noticed his tamed beast going for the dead monster in the middle.

*I need that mana stone Agni, don’t eat it.”

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Agni whined a bit while looking at the dead monster corps. While the mana stone was not out in the open with his innate mana ability Agni could sense where it truly was.

“Don’t you give me those eyes, I need that mana stone.”

Roland shouted from the side while tossing the two damaged spider drones into the spatial bag. The other four were also deposited there for safekeeping as for the next part of the dungeon he wouldn’t need them.

The biggest reason that he didn’t want to part with the monster’s stone was aether alloys. The metals that he was going to unearth were of high quality. This could be boosted even higher with the right mana stone smelting process.

This was a stone from a boss monster so even if it was only a tier 2 stone, it still was above all the other ones he could find in the dungeon. It would be too much of a loss if he just had Agni eat up all of the best parts for his new creations.

After the golems were back in the bag he commenced the next part of the plan. His hand moved into the spatial bag and he pulled out a strange-looking tool. For people in this world, it looked like some strange long blade with spikes coming out. In reality, it was a runic chainsaw that he had prepared for this very day.

The runic chainsaw looked somewhat different from a regular tool from the modern world. The biggest difference was that it had no large motor or space for fuel like its counterparts. Instead, the handle wasn’t as chunky as the ones that had to hold fuel in them.

This handle was constructed for holding it with both hands so as to not have the tool slip out during the process of cutting. As the cutting started it would pull the runic saw downward towards the item that was being cut. Roland implemented bumper spikes that were found in regular chainsaws to rest them against what was being cut.

Roland ditched the fuel system as he didn’t need such a crutch to use this tool. His mana reserves were quite large thus he could just run it by himself. Previously the monster that was before him had to be left behind as there was no way of carrying the corpse outside, with the help of the runic chainsaw he was going to remedy that problem.

It was constructed like any chainsaw. The guide bar was rounder at the end, the chain went around it with the base being used for the chain ring. The inside mechanism that would normally be a motor either run by fuel or electricity could be replaced with runes.

With a small jolt from his mana, the chain ring began to slowly spin around. He continued to add more and more mana until he had it going nice and fast. The work thus started, the sound that this runic saw made caused Agni to shrink away and howl at it.

Roland wasn’t aiming to get everything out of this monster’s body. Its large tail that was shaped like a large sword would fetch a good price though. So would its organs like the heart, eyes, and even tongue. These were various ingredients in potions that could fetch a nice price.

With the help of his tool, he was able to get through the armored parts with a moderate amount of force. Even though the chain was spinning fast it still was a sluggish process to get through the monster’s tough body. At the end, the chain would probably need to be replaced but thanks to this construction the rest of the tool would remain intact.

This wasn’t the main reason that he was here though, he gave himself about half an hour of slicing before walking away. Even though the runic saw worked nicely it didn’t protect people from being splashed with monster blood while cutting.

He had thought this far enough and while working used a lesser shield spell to surround his body with a thin layer of mana. This was enough to not be covered in the monster's innards as he cut its limbs apart.

To save on time, he decided to make the parts small enough to fit into his mule golem. Thus its tail, head legs, and claws made their way into the large spatial bag while the middle part was left behind. The only part that was worth it would be the heart and the mana stone which he also removed.

“You can go ahead Agni, that is if you still want to snack on that thing…”

Roland pointed to the mess that he made, the cut-up corpse of the boss monster still had a lot of meat to it. Agni looked at it for a moment and didn’t seem interested after the mana stone was removed.

“You sure grew into a food critic.”

Roland chuckled while going towards the leftover chest. He pointed with his finger towards it and a gentle light shot out towards the chest. It started glowing brightly with a few colors switching on the surface. In a few seconds, the colors became uniform and it remained red for the remainder of the spell.

“Red? … is my great luck at work again?”

After seeing the color Roland grabbed the large war hammer that he didn’t use for the fight. He quickly raised it up into the air and brought it down on the chest that appeared after the boss was killed. The moment his weapon connected with the treasure box he could hear a strange wail.

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