"Cousin, do I have to really go in as well?" Tae Hi-Ah asked.
Ning turned to look at her. "Don't you want to find a cure for grandmother?" he asked.
"I… I do," she said, finding some resolve in her. "Okay, I will go too."
"Great," Ning said and walked on ahead.
He entered ahead of the others, and White followed behind him as well. Hi-Ah was right behind him, and Kim Min-Soo entered after all of them had.
Ning appeared in a desert-like environment at the bottom of some sort of canyon. The canyon cliffs were high and the pathway through them was narrow.
"Right… so what are we supposed to do exactly?" he asked as he turned toward Kim.
"There are stone monsters as well as some desert beasts here, you will have to kill them. The stone monsters will drop ores when they disappear, and the beasts will drop mana stones. I will be taking all the loot," she said.
"Oh, and the cure?" Ning asked.
"If we're lucky, there will be a tree at the end of the dungeon. So long as we beat the boss there, we should be able to get the fruit," she said.
"Sweet, let's go then," Ning said and started walking.
"Be careful. You need to be vigilant at all moments. You never know where the monsters will come fr—"
Before Kim Min-Soo could finish her words, a humanoid stone monster appeared in front of Ning. It had been embedded in the wall itself, so it was impossible to notice it beforehand.
However, now that it had split off from the wall, it was clearly visible. And as such, all Ning had to do was snap his fingers and the monster fell apart.
Once the rock monster fell apart, it disappeared in wisps of smoke, leaving behind some metal ingots only.
Kim Min-Soo and Tae Hi-Ah's mouth was wide open when they saw that scene. Even White was surprised at how fast Ning had reacted. More than that, he hadn't sensed any Qi coming from him when he had acted.
"Oh, it's been a while since I've seen Terra's ability," Saphandra said from within Ning's clothes. "I forgot you could do that now."
"You can do that now too, can't you?" Ning asked.
"Well, yeah," Saphandra said.
He then turned to look at the White Devil Guild's leader. "You should pick this up quickly. We need to move," he said.
Kim Min-Soo was truly awestruck, and that had been for 2 main reasons.
First, she learned that Ning had gained the SSS rank in Strength and Speed. There was nothing about him having a very high amount of mana at all. Even if there was, she hadn't seen him use any magic as the magic circles never appeared on his hands.
The second thing was that the monster he had just killed would've required the previous group about 3 minutes at least to properly defeat. That was if they performed the best.
On average, one such fight required at least 5 minutes for the group.
And yet, Ning had destroyed it so quickly.
'Can I do that?' she thought. She didn't think it was possible even when she brought out her best fighters.
"Are you going to pick that up or not?" Ning asked again, breaking her out of her thought.
"Ah, sorry," she said as she took the ores and placed them in the air where they disappeared.
'Interdimensional storage?' Ning thought when he saw that. He wondered how she got that. Was that something her 'god' gave her?
'I should learn about it later,' he thought and continued forward.
Terra's powers were fearsome. Since Ning was a Rank 10 Bondforger, his bond with the spirit Terra gave him fearsome control over everything that was stone and rock.
Ning hadn't been able to use Spiritual energy since he had left Nulwurn, but now that he was on earth where it permeated underneath all the mana, he could finally use it again.
He walked forward unobstructed. Any stone monster that would come out of the wall would die in a snap of his figure as he had innate control over what the monsters were made of.
When beasts appeared, he created rock spikes that killed them or crushed them in between two massive rocks.
Ning was killing the monsters faster than Kim was picking up all the dropped loot from the ground.
Not even 5 minutes after entering the dungeon, the group arrived at the boss of the dungeon that was actually neither rock nor flesh.
Instead, it was a metal golem, formed from various ores that were available in this place. It was nearly 10 meters tall and was holding what looked like an axe.
Terra's powers weren't as usable anymore as rocks wouldn't harm the boss as much.
Kim quickly ran up to Ning. "We have come to realize that its joints are its weak points, as long as you target them, you should be able to defeat it," she said.
"It's fine. I don't need to use weak points," Ning said as he slowly walked forward.
The golem saw him coming and swung its axe. Ning smiled as he moved and caught the axe by the blade mere inches away from his face.
Suddenly, the blade crumbled in his hands even when he hadn't used any force other than to catch it.
"To rust you go," he said.
The metal axe rusted very quickly as Gray's powers were used to speed up the entropy of the materials that made up the monster.
With enough time, the metal would either rust due to coming in contact with air, or simply grind away from repeated use.
Gray's decaying powers only accelerated it by a lot. The rust flowed along the axe and went into the hands that were holding it.
Before long, the metal boss was entirely rust, and then, it crumbled into nothing but flakes of rust.
Ning looked behind the monster and sighed. "Well, that's a shame. There is no tree here," he said as he turned to look at Kim Min-Soo. "Can we do this again?"
