Linley knew that the value of a magicite core of the ninth rank was worth up to five million gold coins, an incredible amount of money. In Fenlai City, some of the relatively large clan’s entire net worth might be around that much.
But the core of a Saint-level magical beast? That was a priceless treasure.
“Right.” Maintaining his Dragonform, Linley immediately rushed over to the Saint-level Violet Tattooed Bear’s corpse. Because Linley had caused so much damage to the walls and the ceiling, even the Bear’s corpse had been buried under falling rubble.
With a wave of his black-scale-covered right arm, Linley knocked over ten large pieces of rubble away, revealing the Saint-level Violet Tattooed Bear’s upper torso and head.
Using his set of two knife-sharp claws, Linley directly tore at the Saint-level Violet Tattooed Bear’s fur.
“Oooof!” Linley used as much force as he could, but the Saint-level Violet Tattooed Bear’s fur wasn’t damaged in the slightest.
“Linley, this is a Saint-level magical beast. Even under the effects of the Dragonform, you are only a warrior of the early eighth rank. If you want to split open this Bear’s fur, there’s no way you can do it alone.” Doehring Cowart laughed.
Linley was forced to admit that this was the truth.
“But Linley, look. There’s many sharp spikes on the Saint-level Violet Tattooed Bear’s body. These spikes are all extremely sharp. Based on your current ability, there’s no way you can use the spikes to cut open the fur either. But there’s a spike located very close to the Saint-level Violet Tattooed Bear’s eyes. What you need to do is pull that spike out, then stick your claws into that wound and go digging. I’m confident that you should be able to pull out that Saint-level magicite core.” Doehring Cowart instructed.
To the enormous Armored Razorback Wyrm, these spikes were nothing more than spikes!
But to the much smaller Linley, these spikes were like massive drills which were twenty centimeters in length. After pulling the spike out, a huge, gaping wound would be revealed near the eyes of the Saint-level Violet Tattooed Bear. Going digging for the magicite core through that gaping wound should be an easy task indeed.
After all, as tough as the fur of a Saint-level magical beast might be, its brain and organs weren’t too tough.
Using all his strength, Linley forcibly tugged out the giant ‘drill’, and then extended his black scaly arm into the wound, digging for the magicite core. This Saint-level Violet Tattooed Bear’s head was really large as well, over a meter long. Linley had to extend his arm into the wound all the way past his elbows before he was able to locate and pull out the Saint-level magicite core.
The Saint-level magicite core was still covered in blood and gore.
A black, fist-sized magicite core.
“It actually doesn’t have even a hint of darkness-style aura.” Linley was very surprised. If he hadn’t already known that this fist-sized black stone was the magicite core of a Saint-level Violet Tattooed Bear, he would’ve never been able to guess.
“The energy within a Saint-level magical beast’s magicite core is highly dense and reserved. Frankly speaking, the magicite core of a magical beast of the ninth rank is as well.” Doehring Cowart explained.
Linley nodded.
“The entire body of a Saint-level magical beast is a treasure. For example, the leg bones of this Saint-level magical beast definitely possesses an astonishingly resilient strength.” Doehring Cowart let out a sigh. “Unfortunately, you simply don’t have the ability to break through the powerful defensive barrier of its fur.”
Linley also nodded helplessly.
This Saint-level Violet Tattooed Bear was simply too huge. He didn’t have the ability to bring the corpse of this Saint-level Violet Tattooed Bear back either.
“What a waste.” Bebe said intentionally, off to the side.
Linley chuckled. “We’ve already done quite well. The most valuable part of a magical beast is its magicite core. A single Saint-level magicite core is already a truly priceless treasure. I am already very satisfied at having acquired it. What’s more, I also have a draconic crystal of the ninth rank.” Linley laughed as he walked over to the Armored Razorback Wyrm’s corpse.
The corpse of the Armored Razorback Wyrm had a gaping wound on its head. Finding the draconic crystal shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
Linley plunged his sharp claws directly into the wound on the Armored Razorback Wyrm’s head.
“Eh?”
After carefully sifting around in the Armored Razorback Wyrm’s skull for a while, Linley couldn’t find anything. This made Linley feel suspicious.
“Why is there no draconic crystal? What bizarreness is this?” Linley frowned.
“Impossible. A magical beast can’t be without a magicite core, and this dragon must absolutely have a draconic crystal as well. After a magical beast dies, there’s no way that the magicite crystal will disappear.” Doehring Cowart couldn’t believe it either.
But Linley suddenly remembered something…
Earlier, when he was raging and drinking the dragon’s blood of this Armored Razorback Wyrm, he had swallowed an icy cold object into his stomach. But at that time, due to his rage and his sorrow, he hadn’t paid it any attention. And then, when he had eaten the Blueheart Grass, the pain in the rest of his body had faded, except for that one place where the object was.
“No way….was that the draconic crystal?” Linley thought to himself.
Linley could still recollect that sensation of having that ice cold object pass through his throat into his stomach.
“I ate a draconic crystal? This…how could this have happened? In the Secret Dragonblood Manual, there only is a discussion on drinking dragon’s blood. Can it be that eating a dragon’s draconic crystal core also works?” Linley totally didn’t know what was going on. But no matter what, it seemed he had indeed swallowed the core, and from the looks of it, he wasn’t suffering from any particular bad aftereffects.
Linley chuckled.
“What I ate wasn’t just a draconic crystal core. It was five million gold coins.” Linley sighed to himself.
“Boss, lu, lu, look!” Bebe’s excited voice rang out.
Linley glanced at Bebe, who was standing in the middle of a pile of rubble, staring dumbly up at the ceiling of the cave. Linley immediately left the tunnel and returned to the cave, and also looked up at the ceiling.
“…what is that?”
At the top of the cave, a large, circular black platform had been revealed. This circular black platform had been embedded into the ceiling, and even now, a large part of it was covered with stone. Clearly…Linley’s wild attacks on the ceiling earlier had caused so many rocks to fall down that the circular black platform had been revealed.
Linley wasn’t too surprised by the black platform. What did surprise him was….
On the black platform, there was an extremely complicated pattern of magical marks. All sorts of marks were on the platform, and the pattern was complicated to an extreme. Clearly, on the top side of the black platform, there was some sort of magical array formation, but Linley had never, ever, seen such a complicated magical array formation.
If one described the magical array formation covering the front gates of the Ernst Institute as a single ‘wind blade’, then this mysterious magical formation was the ‘Annihilating Tempest’ spell.
In particular, in the direct center of this black circular platform, there was a violet-covered sword plunged into the platform.
“This magical formation…how is this possible?” Doehring Cowart appeared by Linley’s side as well. Lifting his head up and staring, he said, “Impossible. How could there be a magical formation such as this here, and with this bizarre sword as a focus.”
Doehring Cowart, who in the past had always been calm and composed, had now totally been shocked. In his thousand plus years of life, he had never seen such a terrifying magical formation. Although this magical formation was currently dormant and not active, he could already tell what terrible power this magical formation contained.
“Grandpa Doehring, is this magical formation very powerful?” Linley asked.
Doehring Cowart looked at Linley. “Very powerful? We can’t even use the word ‘powerful’ to describe it. The power of this magical formation is even greater than that of any forbidden spell. You tell me, is it ‘powerful’? In my entire life, I’ve never seen such a complicated magical formation, such a powerful magical formation. And what’s more, it is borrowing power from that strange sword to supplement the power of the formation itself. What, did the creator feel the power of this formation alone was not great enough?”