Project: Mage - The Frugal Mage

One of the inner regions of the mystical kingdom. The place was a large, dense forest with large, green trees. The cold, refreshing wind blew between the trees, the leaves danced as the wind blew.

From time to time, roars of wild beasts can be heard deep in the forest.

Entering the forest, many trees with thick trunks can be seen. In one of these trees, it was possible to see a large hole at the top, inside had a beautiful young woman was sitting cross-legged meditating. In front of her was a wooden sphere with a black glow.

If someone heard correctly, that person could hear the sound of a heartbeat coming from within the sphere. The sphere appeared to be an egg of some kind.

The young woman was Xiao Mei, after escaping on the ground, she hid for some time before traveling underground until she found a safe place to leave. Without realizing it, she traveled for almost an entire day.

Her delicate lashes trembled before Xiao Mei slowly opened her eyes.

"It seems that I spent more energy than usual to dig the tunnel," Xiao Mei thought when she remembered the time she spent traveling underground.

"What is this thing?" Xiao Mei was curious about this, she could hear the heartbeat coming from inside the sphere, but she didn't know what kind of creature it would be.

"This was absorbing the energy from the wood element of that giant tree. To make this creature be born, do I need to use the wood element? Or can I use the earth element? "

A brown light shone on Xiao Mei's two hands as she held the sphere in both hands. Instantly, the sphere began to absorb the magical energy of Xiao Mei's earth element.

"It looks like the earth element works too ..." Xiao Mei was happy to discover that. She imagined it was because the earth element was the main element while the wood element was a subelement of the earth element. Thus, the energies of the main element can be used to nourish the secondary elements.

However, the effects were less by about twenty percent. In the current situation, the sphere absorbing eighty percent of energy was better than nothing.

"I just hope it doesn't take too long for the creature to be born, otherwise I'll have a lot of problems" Xiao Mei planned to stay inside the tree for a few days to see if the creature could be born or not.

…

"Uda, are you sure there is someone around here?" A pair of young people talking in Japanese.

The two looked to be the same age and wore protective armor on their arms, legs, and chest. They were walking through the forest where Xiao Mei was hiding, but they don't know where she is hiding.

"I do not know. This direction compass is very vague, it can only detect magic energy, but it does not know the location for certain. The place must be a little far away. Daigo, keep walking, maybe we can have a chance to find a rare treasure. " The young man who was holding a compass was called Uda Konyo. The other young man was called Daigo Keitarou.

The pair were following traces of magical energy to try to locate a possible opponent. Since they also had a compass to locate teammates, but as this compass did not alert anything, there was no ally nearby.

"Keitarou, take out your treasure detector. Perhaps this area may have some kind of treasure from the element of wood or earth. This forest has a lot of energy from the wood element "As a mage of the wood element, Uda Konyo was more sensitive to this element.

"Okay" Daigo Keitarou took a metal detector out of his nanotechnology bag.

The design of the treasure detector was the same as a common metal detector, but with a small difference. The equipment serves to detect high concentrations of elemental energies, as it was possible to see that a natural treasure was in the region.

To avoid confusion between a mage's magical energy and nature's elemental energy, the device had two forms of detection one for each type of energy. This was to make it easier for the user of the magic equipment not to confuse one energy with another.

Daigo Keitarou started moving the treasure detector from side to side, some sounds of something without finding were found, but the sound was very low.

titititititi ...

"There are some items around here, but they are all bad things with little energy. It can't even be considered a treasure or anything "Daig Keitarou was happy with so many sounds, but the quantity was not equal to quality.

"We will continue walking, maybe we can find something interesting in this forest. Perhaps it has, our superiors said that within the mystical realm there are many interesting items to be picked up, but it depends on luck "Uda Konyo commented on the words of his teammate.

As the host country of the Olympic Games, participants from the Empire of Japan received some privileged information about items within the mystical realm. But the information was about the existence of rare treasures guarded by powerful creatures.

The location where these treasures are is a mystery that cannot be revealed.

"The most important information we have is that each rare treasure is protected by an extremely powerful guardian. If we find a powerful creature, it means that we are close to the treasure. "

"That's true. But let's keep walking, for now, it is possible that we can find some kind of treasure buried or hidden inside a tree. "

"Yes," The pair continued walking and moving the treasure detector from side to side at random.

…

Some time later…

Tiiiiiiiiii… Tititititi… Tiiiiiititititi…

The sound of the treasure detector became much louder when it was pointed somewhere on the ground.

"Bingo!!!!" The pair exclaimed when they saw that they found an extremely rare treasure. The energy levels on the measurement panel were too high.

"Keitarou, what do you think about this?"

"It seems that we have found something very rare and precious. But I need to use the magical energy reading first, we need to know if there is any kind of creature protecting this treasure or not. "

"It's all right"

The moment Daigo Keitarou changed the measurement of natural energy to the measurement of magical energy, a loud whistle sound was heard before something surprising happened.

Piiiiii… Piiiiiii… Piiiiiiiii… Poffff…

The electronic device is broken, the treasure detector is broken. This scene showed only one thing, the creature that was protecting the treasure was very powerful, but it was not just one, there were many.

The pair froze at the scene, they didn't even know what to do at the time. Cold sweat was running down their back. The two looked at each other before walking slowly backward, one step at a time.

After walking hundreds of meters in this way, the pair stopped. They were completely sweaty and afraid of the previous situation. They felt like they were in and out of hell at that moment.

"What was this??? Haven't we been told that the limit of the creature's power within the mystical realm is the Warrior Mage? How did the treasure detector explode? " Daigo Keitarou exclaimed. He was still scared because of the previous situation.

"Keitarou, take out the detector again. Let's look at the energy measurer, it can show us why the equipment broke"

Information about the detected energies is stored in the equipment's memory. They can access the information even if the equipment has broken.

The pair removed the hard disk from the equipment and connected it to another data-reading device.

When the data appeared, the pair were startled when they saw those lines on the screen. They clearly understood what that means.

"This is ..." Cold sweat started running down Daigo Keitarou's back and face after seeing the data. As the owner of the magic equipment, he knew more than anyone the meaning of the lines.

"It seems that we were very lucky to not have alerted these things. Otherwise, we will all be doomed. " Uda Konyo commented after wiping the cold sweat from his face.

"But how is that possible ?? There should be no such thing within that mystical realm. "

"I think it can and the cause of this is the natural treasure that is under the ground. We don't know what's down there, but it must be something very powerful and with a lot of energy to create that amount of creature underground. "

"Uda, what kind of creature do you think is there underground?"

"I don't know, but because of the absurd amount of lines that appeared in the reader. I guess that it is a colony of ants, as for the species, I don't know. Without seeing ants it is difficult to know about it "

"Ants ... Although they are not very strong, the number of millions is too scary to think about"

"According to the readings made by the treasure detector, the weakest creatures are in rank 2 while the strongest is in peak rank 5. This ant in rank 5 must be queen."

"Yes, but we had better not get involved in this matter. If these ants escape into the real world, our country will be ruined like the ancient Middle East.

The whole world knows what happened to the Middle East. If a situation like this happens again, the world would not know how to deal with it, especially the Empire of Japan.