Tales of The Mighty Dragonair

"So it's as he described," Arthur was surprised by the accuracy of John's words, "it seems he was a good leader," he couldn't help but shake his head before returning up there.

"So?" John asked, "everything is good?"

"Looks safe," Arthur said, "but it's weird, such places should have monsters."

This was one of the things that bothered him about this cave.

"I told you already, the army here is working all day around to clear the monsters from this area," John said as if this was a known fact, "we won't find any monsters unless we get to the border of this kingdom."

"Alright," Arthur helped him stand, "let's talk inside then."

He cautiously helped him descend till the bottom before the two entered the cave.

"Nice idea," John motioned with his head towards the nearby shining ore, "but you know this will attract unneeded eyes to here."

"I will take it back after exploring part of this cave first," Arthur held the ore before adding, "will you be alright here all alone?"

"I survived more than this," John said with his usual laugh.

"Good," Arthur nodded to him before going deeply inside the cave.

The cave entrance was just a narrow tunnel that kept widening the more he got deeper. "I should walk for ten minutes and then return if I found nothing," he muttered and started to point the ore towards many directions.

He kept attention to the ceiling and the ground. He was looking for any evidence of the presence of any monster here, like remnant bones or strange marks or even foul odor.

"This cave… it's a gold mine!"

As he kept walking deeper he only found traces of ore veins in the ground appearing every now and then. After some time he was tempted to take out his sword and try to hit the ground.

"I'll store them for later," he kept the ores in his storage ring while continuing forward.

"So it keeps getting lower," he muttered while noticing the increase in the height of the ceiling while getting deeper. "Where would this end?" Just as he walked for five minutes he finally found three more tunnels going deeper into the ground.

"I should get back," he pointed the ore towards the inside of each tunnel without getting any more info.

"Tuck!"

Just as he was about to leave, he heard this low and muffled voice of a rock hitting each other. He instantly turned around and pointed his sword towards the direction the sound came from.

"So there is something here after all," he heard another sound in the next moment and then a third. "It's coming," he didn't hesitate to create a distance by retreating while throwing the ore on the ground and standing there prepared to face whatever was coming at him.

"Neigh!"

"It's… a horse?" Just as he was ready to fight, a horse suddenly appeared in front of him. Yet this one was strangely bigger than usual horses he knew of. Rising off the ground for five meters and had a long body that would span over ten meters at least.

"Easy," Arthur glanced at the horse while watching each move that horse would do.

"Neigh!" Yet the horse waved his head towards him like a warning, turned around and returned to the tunnel it came from.

"Wait," Arthur suddenly shouted, stopping the horse, "don't you want to go out on an adventure?" he asked as if he was a mighty being speaking to an ant.

And the horse just glanced at him like he was eyeing a crazy person before returning to walk away like it heard nothing from Arthur.

"Damn! That horse looked cool!" Arthur couldn't help but mutter before the horse finally vanished in the deep darkness of the tunnel it came from.

Arthur didn't hurry to leave but the horse didn't come again to him. "So it was warning me about its territory? Interesting," Arthur couldn't help but say before taking the ore and leaving it back to John.

Just as he reached there he found John half awake and the wound over his knee was getting worse. "This wound… it was opened a long time ago," Arthur couldn't help but glance at the pale John and sighed.

"I'll try my best," he muttered before taking the ore away, sat on the ground, closed his eyes and started to regulate his breathing.

This time the spiritual energy roared while entering his body in a way that greatly startled him. "This energy… it's like a hurricane!" he couldn't help but exclaim in shock before trying his best to deal with this energy.

After all his dragonair energy was sealed away along with his system. From the words of John it seemed that breaking the seal would take more than just running away.

And that made even the life of John far important to him.

The spiritual energy first accumulated at his dantian in a terrifying speed. As a seasoned cultivator he didn't hurry to circulate it through his body meridians and kept it there locked in his dantian.

"Danitan is the heart, the nucleus, the source of everything," he muttered to himself, "I need to make it grow stronger and adapt to this higher form of energy first before doing anything else.

"To do that he had to keep accumulating the energy as much as he could. The energy started to transform the dantian, slowly strengthening it and he even started to notice some light coming from parts of his dantian.

"I can't… take anymore," yet after only half an hour he couldn't keep storing up the energy inside his dantian.

And he started to feel pain inside his dantian.

The next thing he did was to let the energy flow out of the dantian, circulating first around the meridian network around his brain. The meridian network there was so dense and he knew it would take more time to saturate them.

"At least this bought me more time," he muttered while observing the meridians getting stronger and his dantian getting improved as well.