"What are you doing here?" Yodha asked as soon as he neared Sam.
"This is the reason I came here?" Sam said as he pointed at the Lake.
"For the lake?"
"No, for the Magma Lotus." When Yodha heard that he was stunned for a second before asking.
"How do you know that?"
"I didn't know until now," Sam said with a shrug.
Yodha also chuckled and said.
"It would be difficult. The lake is infested with a lot of Lava Slime and only Pre-transcendent stage cultivators come here.
The information about the plants inside the Lake and even about the lake is completely confidential, I didn't even know how you find out. But I would be hard for you to get into the lake much less get the lotus. After all, all the other plants have multiple units inside the lake but there would only be one lotus."
"Why do you guys so much information? It is almost like you come here often or if it is your backyard. How do you know that there is only one lotus?"
"We have maps and info from the previous expeditions and this is common information. In fact, the teams of six nations come only for this. It is almost like farmers claiming the harvest. Every time, only a handful of people come here individually and they too wouldn't gain much. That is why they didn't bother with you."
"What are you guys after?"
Sam asked casually.
"Actually all the six teams are after the same thing, the main goal is the lotus. And only one from each team will go after it, the rest of us will go for the slimes. They are actually a great fertilizer for the fire elemental herbs and every year the imperial garden uses them.
The herb expert of the imperial court even found a great method to refine them properly.
So, we have to collect the slime off of the beasts after killing them."
"As far as I know it is hard to preserve them. If you don't collect the slime in a fraction of seconds as soon as you hit the core, the slime will die out with the core. Good luck with that." Sam said with a smile.
He is not that interested in the slimes, they do have some uses, but not to the point he wanted to fight for them. If he wants he can grow them and have a constant harvest of these slimes, he doesn't even have to kill.
But after thinking like that, he suddenly felt that it is not that bad to catch a couple of them alive and grow them.
He put a stop to his train of thoughts, he looked at Yodha and asked.
"What are you guys waiting for?"
"They waited for the Mov empire and the Flavos empire teams. The flavos got into some trouble and we helped them there and we came late. And the real extraction will only take place on the twentieth day.
It will take only ten days to go back to the entrance, after all, so we will wait for some of the individual cultivators to come and the teams recruit them to harvest the slimes and the other flowers. While the leaders go for the Lotus.
You want to join?"
"No need, I don't want any association with the Mov empire, just like your leader said. But do tell him to stay away from me, when I extract the lotus. I cannot guarantee anyone's safety."
"Are you that confident?"
"You haven't seen half of me. You will understand why I said that soon enough."
With that, Sam smiled and started using his eye technique along with the light element to zoom and look at the lake. The thermal vision wouldn't work and in fact, it would blind his eyes. But his light element could.
He tried to change the frequency of the light to see if he can get a glimpse of the lake all the while talking to Yodha.
He did get a blurry sight at one point and he tried the frequency near it and after some tries, he was able to get a barely comprehensible image. And that too because of the eye technique's accuracy in differentiating the energy waves.
He decided to call this method energy vision. This is a lot like thermal vision but the only difference is it shows the spiritual energy density instead of the temperature.
And in this energy vision, he could faintly outline the energies of the plants on the surface of the lake and the slimes under the surface of the lake, but what surprised him is that there are three energies that are showing some seriously high readings and there is a forth energy which is faint and that is only because it is too far from the range.
He looked at the teams and stopped responding to Yodha's words.
Yodha asked.
"What happened?"
"You guys better prepare. If you really only send a single Pre-transcendent to that place, you will have some serious trouble."
"What do you mean? What trouble?" I don't know exactly what it is, but I think it is better to be cautious."
Sam didn't say anything more. Because two out of those four energies don't belong to the Slimes. Even though he is not familiar with the slimes and the energy vision, there are too many slimes around to compare and he is pretty sure that those two are not slimes.
"Do you know if there are any other creatures apart from the Slimes?" Sam asked to confirm.
"No. the slimes are the only things that live in here. Why?"
"Nothing. But I think you should really be careful. If something happens, don't go to the lotus immediately. Wait for two to three minutes and then move."
Sam only left these words and didn't say anything more. He decided to make his move after the teams did.
He just sat on a rock nearby and meditated as he tried the ripple style.
Days passed and the influx of the individual cultivators stopped only on the eighteenth day. No one came on the nineteenth and the teams already started recruiting.
But Sam saw some familiar faces here.
They are Akhil and another guy from the Usaine sect. He is also a Player. Apart from Arkiv, there are two players in the Usaine sect because of their diverse nature of experts and the vast amount of influence they wielded. He heard from Arkiv that they escaped to other major powers before the attack.
That too because of Sam's warning to Arkiv who passed it on to them.
This person is a strong fire element user and he is the only one who doesn't have to use external means and pills to stay here even though he is a Nascent stage cultivator.
He and Akhil seemed to have come together and the rest of the candidates are nowhere to be seen. After all not everyone has the same freedom as Sam in this place. Some of the players are even waiting for the three-year time period to be over to escape their current situation.
They did get a chance at the Palace of Inheritance and they got some benefits from the Imperial families, but they lost their freedom and cannot go to events like these.
Both the players are completely focused on Sam.
Sam only smiled at them once.
Finally, the time has come for raiding the lake and every team got ready with the new recruits that joined them in the past few days.
When all of them are walking towards the lake, the Lava slimes are also slowly rising in the pools. The glow dimmed a bit. They can only use that glowing effect to a full extent when they are completely inside the lava. If not, the effect would reduce.
The beasts didn't come to directly attack though, they are still inside the lake and only a small part of them showed up on the surface. If someone saw them for the first time like this, they will think the Lava level rose in this lake.
Sam also walked after all the teams went forward and the two players followed him.
They are not too interested in the treasures of the lake, at least one of them. But stopping Sam is more important for them.
The teams took out some metal rafts and placed on the Lake. They seemed to have been made from a special alloy. Sam still didn't move and the slimes too didn't move.
Only after they entered a few meters into the lake, the lava slimes finally had a reaction. They sprung up and started shooting Lava out of their mouths.
The people also started dodging and the leaders of the six teams only have one thing on their minds, they didn't even bother dodging and let their subordinates block them. After all, there is not much space on the rafts, so all they can do is blocking mostly and only a few people can dodge.
But the situation soon changed, the team members started throwing raft after raft into the pool.
And jumped on to them, so that they could have more fighting space.
As for why they are not using some fire-type beasts, they tried but it didn't work. Of course, they were able to avoid the attacks on the beasts, but the slimes couldn't be killed with the spells and long-range attacks easily. They have to do melee combat to be efficient, if they are focused on flying-type beasts, they will be shot down and they wouldn't be able to react due to the natural cover of the Lava to the slimes.
As for normal beasts, they would die as soon as they entered the Lava.
