After a couple of minutes, everyone landed on a hill. Right now, everyone was around ten kilometers away from Warrior's Paradise.
Shang had only been in the Wasteland twice before in his life. Both of the times had been during the night, and his teacher had accompanied him. That was so that Shang wouldn't forget how to fight beasts while he was slowly adapting to his Zero persona.
Today was the first time Shang was in the Wasteland during the peak hours for hunting.
From Warrior's Paradise, the Wasteland had seemed incredibly busy, but now that he was here, he felt like there were no other humans around, except for his team, of course.
The closest humans were over a kilometer away, and they were silently walking in a seemingly random direction.
Shang could also see some beasts, but most of them were embroiled in a battle. Naturally, there were also beasts that weren't fighting humans, but those beasts were mostly either on the blacklist or at the later levels of the General Stage.
"There's an entrance to the Caves over there," Sarah said as she pointed towards the east.
Shang looked over and saw a crater. That was probably the entrance.
After that, Sarah led everyone to the east. It didn't take long for them to arrive near the entrance, and they didn't come across any beasts.
This was the reason for using the talismans. Without them, they would have all needed to get here on foot. Sure, the distance wasn't great to them, but the chances were high that some powerful beast would be in their way, which would require them to move around it in an arc.
Even though the distance of the entrance wasn't very far from Warrior's Paradise, it would have still taken them nearly two hours to traverse if they wanted to be careful.
"You go first, Shang," Sarah ordered. "It's your job to check if everything is safe for us."
Shang nodded and jumped into the huge hole.
BOOOOM!
Shang landed in the cave after some seconds of falling, creating a loud explosion of dirt and earth around him. After all, his body was very heavy. Shang's joints creaked, but he wasn't really injured.
Shang quickly looked around the dark cave. Luckily, the eyes of a General Stage warrior could see clearly, even in nearly perfect darkness.
He saw an ominously circular cave around him made of sand, stone, and dirt. The smooth walls and straight corridors definitely hadn't been naturally formed, but Shang knew about that already.
What were the Caves?
About 200 years ago, the Storm Eagle Zone hadn't belonged to the humans yet. The reason for that was the second Zone Beast.
Second Zone Beast? There could be two Zone Beasts in one Zone?
Well, not entirely.
The underground had acted as a second Zone, which had belonged to the Ancestor Queen.
The Ancestor Queen had been a gigantic insect that birthed a ridiculous number of powerful insects.
According to legend, the Ancestor Queen had been over 50 kilometers below the ground.
Back then, the beasts from the Storm Eagle Zone and the beasts from the Ancestor Queen Zone had been in constant war.
Wind versus Earth.
Gigantic insects would come out of their humongous nest and invade the Storm Eagle Zone, while the beasts of the Storm Eagle Zone went into the nest to kill the insects, but only on the highest layers.
Humanity wasn't sure how long that war had been going on.
And then, 200 years ago, the number of powerful insects diminished. At some point, no insect above the Commander Stage left their nest anymore.
The True Path Stage beasts and stronger from the Storm Eagle Zone had never been interested in entering the nest, which resulted in some kind of peace.
It had always been the insects that attacked the surface, not the other way around.
The beasts on the surface were only interested in defending themselves and eating, while the insects had been interested in conquering.
That was when the Old King of the Skythunder Kingdom became active.
He saw his chance and invaded the nest with the strongest Mages.
Why?
To give his people more land to live on.
The Old King had always been a very altruistic person.
It took over 50 years, but eventually, the humans managed to kill every insect in the Caves. Of course, only the King himself could deal with the beasts in the Fifth Realm.
And then, they found the Ancestor Queen.
She was dead.
Her entire corpse had been fried, and it had still been preserved due to her robust exoskeleton.
The soldiers and advisors asked the King what had happened, but the King had only told them that they didn't need to know. However, he assured them that there was nothing to worry about.
And that was that.
The gigantic nest below the Storm Eagle Zone had been emptied of all beasts.
And the Caves?
They were simply the desecrated corpse of the nest, the former Ancestor Queen Zone.
Over the years, it became the home of many beasts with Earth Affinities.
Ever wondered how the humans could kill so many beasts without completely decimating the ecosystem?
This was the reason.
The Wild Forest created new General Stage beasts for the Wasteland, but the Caves produced even more.
The Exploding Mountain Turtle had also come from here.
As far as humanity knew, there were no beasts of the Fifth Realm in the Caves, but there were several True Path Stage beasts.
The deeper one went into the Caves, the more powerful the beasts would become. Of course, the beasts would also become more powerful the further south one went. After all, the Canyon was above that part, and there were a lot of Commander Stage beasts.
Originally, there had also been entrances to the Caves at the northern end of the Storm Eagle Zone, the place where the Wild Forest and the Farm Line were, but humanity had closed these entrances to allow weaker beasts to thrive in the north.
Shang knew all of this from his time at the academy.
"It's safe," Shang shouted.
Some seconds later, Sarah also jumped down.
BANG!
Sarah landed, and the sounds of breaking bones could be heard.
Sarah only furrowed her brows as she sat down to focus her Mana on healing her broken legs.
It was very difficult to climb on these brittle and smooth walls, and ironically, it was more dangerous to climb instead of jump.
When one jumped, one could still control their fall.
When one fell while climbing, one might hit the ground, abdomen or head first.
BANG!
Astor landed next, and his legs were also smashed to pieces. His heavy sword definitely didn't help him in this case.
Astor only grunted and also sat down to heal.
BANG!
Then, it was Elver's turn.
"Fuck!" Elver shouted through gritted teeth. "I hate going through this every time!"
"Shut up," Sarah ordered with a cold voice. "If there weren't such a painful and heavy fall, there would be far more teams at the Initial General Stage down here."
Sarah was right.
This was one of the entrances with the smallest fall, and it still broke the legs of Initial General Stage warriors.
Warriors at the Early General Stage would only break their bones occasionally at this place, depending on how they landed and how heavy their gear was.
Only warriors at the Mid General Stage could fall down here without being injured.
After a couple of minutes, everyone was back at their peak condition.
"Let's go," Sarah ordered.
