Author: Original Seventh Generation

The three of them stopped outside the forest, cleared off the floating stone slabs, and then walked carefully into the dense forest.

"It's a good thing I'm not wearing sandals, otherwise I'll suffer~" Xia Lan sighed, glanced at the two deep-sea hunters wearing cute sandals on their feet, and shook their heads with regret.

When he thought that those two pairs of beautiful feet would be covered with dead branches, leaves and sharp sand and stones, he couldn't help feeling distressed.

Noting Xia Lan's regretful mood, Scarty turned around and comforted: "Don't worry, Xia Lan, this little road cannot damage our skin. Just wash it when you go back later."

"Oh..." Xia Lan sighed deeply when she saw the two of them going in, and said righteously: "No, I must protect them!"

After saying that, he gave them a bunch of buffs that were not very useful in theory.

After finishing all this, Xia Lan finally clapped her hands with relief, waved her big hand and said, "Let's go."

"I wasted so much time. Will the person go far when we arrive?" Laurentina whispered.

"If you go far, just go around. If the other party wants to do geological exploration, it will definitely not leave so easily." Xia Lan speculated.

The three of them stepped on the woodland covered with moss, rotten branches and leaves, low shrubs, fine sand and gravel. The glimmer of the soles of the soles was isolated from the ground. While making it difficult for the soles of the soles to fall into the ground, they also forbidden any dirty things that could roll into the sandals.

"Fortunately, the woods are not too dense, otherwise they would have to squeeze in." Scarty said as she walked, holding Xia Lan's hand who had been walking a little hard.

Although Xia Lan feels good about herself, it seems that she is indeed a bit harder than the two Supermans walking on the flat ground.

Holding her wife's soft and boneless jade hand, she noticed that she had taken some of the mental energy needed to maintain the spell, Xia Lan couldn't help but feel a little more moved, and finally had the time to scan the surrounding environment.

When Laurentina, who was walking in front, saw the two of them like this, she couldn't help but curl her lips - her woman and her man are so irritated, how can people tolerate it!

Xia Lan felt her emotions very keenly, and based on her extreme familiarity with her, she inferred her thoughts, and couldn't help but feel a little funny: "How about you two carry me away?"

"Huh?" Titi, who heard the movement around him, cast a confused look at him who said strange words.

"That's not a good idea~" Laurentina said with an ups and downs, full of emotions, showing her eyes to Xia Lan as if she was looking at the scumbag.

"Just kidding..." he said a little embarrassedly.

After he disturbed this, Laurentina's mood suddenly became loose and she focused again on climbing the mountain.

...

Twenty minutes later, they found a series of footprints, and after preliminary comparison, they found that there should be eight or nine people.

"It's a little more than I thought, why didn't you see it before?" Laurentina asked herself in confusion.

"I don't know, let's go with the flow." Xia Lan shrugged. Although he had already had some ideas, he still didn't say it out. If he said the answer in advance, the shark shark, as the initiator of the expedition, might not be so satisfied.

Judging from the spread of footprints, they should be taking the route up the mountain on the other side, which is opposite to the town, so it is rarely visited and is suitable as the starting point for theft of mines.

[Not tourist open area ahead, no entry is allowed, violators will be punished!] - A signboard stands not far away, and a circle of short wire fences that seem to be easily turned over by leaping on the branches.

"Let's go, just follow these footprints." Xia Lan looked at Scarti and said in her heart.

They nodded and understood, walked over and hung on his shoulders, allowing him to take them over the fence.

Floating on the soft weed field, the three of them saw a obviously abnormal ground exposed between the grass. Judging from the messy and lodged grass leaves, the grass was dug up not long ago, and the diggers did not pay much attention to repairing it.

"It's a bit strange. Why is the direction of these footprints spreading differently from the person we saw before?" Scartillo said in confusion.

"It's indeed a bit strange, but it should be fine to follow these footprints." The shark didn't think much about it and focused on what might happen.

"What if the other party pretends to know nothing, treat us as ordinary people, and let us leave here directly?" Scarty whispered.

"Then it won't trigger the plot." Xia Lan spread her hands.

"Absolutely not possible!" Shark Shark suddenly became dissatisfied, as if it was an absolutely unacceptable possibility.

———

At the same time, several Xista natural disaster inspectors who were installing testing equipment at the entrance of a tunnel entering the volcano felt a little chilled.

"It's the peak tourist season this year again. I wonder if there will be people who like to explore everywhere again this year. *Victoria swears * Tourists ran to the mountain." Monitor A said unhappy.

"Who knows, it doesn't matter, it's all right, since it's been driven away by tourists for several years." Monitor B looked like he was accustomed to it.

Monitor C, who was fiddling with the volcanic exploration equipment, interrupted, "Don't talk anymore, come and help me see what's going on. The equipment brought by the experts is too new..."

The two people sitting on the bench heard this, looked at each other and turned around to help.

While they are busy studying how to start the equipment, the inside of the volcano—

A Caprini girl in a flame-ablated dress and cloak was pressing her staff against a scorching stone wall, closing her eyes and feeling the pulsation of the earth.

The light red fluctuations floated around her, spreading continuously, seeping into the rock formations, bringing her information that even scientific tools could not capture.

As the fluctuations dissipated, she exhaled softly and said, "Huh~ The detection here has been completed. I will remember the data first. Are you responsible for debugging the equipment and laying out the monitoring nodes?"

"Okay, Dr. Adele." D, E, the monitor with a bunch of relics behind her, agreed, opened the panel hanging around her waist and activated the instrument on her back.

Although the girl in front of her looks only nineteen or twenty years old, they dare not neglect any - just because she has graduated from a prestigious university in Letania at a young age, and has fully proved her expert-level ability in many fields such as spells and natural disasters.

"Compared with the data you gave last year, this volcano seems to be a little more active, but it shouldn't erupt so easily in the short term," Adele said while writing.

"Huh?" Her words made the two subconsciously stunned.

Adele keenly noticed the other party's doubts and couldn't help but say strangely: "What's wrong? This result shouldn't be too big of a problem."

Monitor D, E looked at each other and explained with some difficulty: "Miss Adele, the records last year obviously did not have much possibility of an eruption. Will the data you measured... If this is true, will it be that the volcano unexpectedly recovered?"

Upon hearing this, Adele frowned slightly, looked at the terminal data in his hand, and whispered: "That shouldn't be, the natural data I measured will not lie...unless..."

"Unless what?"

“—Unless there is a living creature interfering with the volcano and promoting its eruption?”

"Ah?!" the two of them exclaimed at the same time.

But as they gradually calmed down, the two of them remembered the mining theft incident over the years and asked: "Is it possible that it was caused by mining?"

"Is it big?" Adele asked, after recording the data in his hand, he was about to lift up the staff and continue walking in.

"It shouldn't be big... because we have banned mining over the years, and even if someone mines, it will only be mined in small batches, which should be far from the size before." Monitor D explained.

"Then this should not be the main influencing factor," Adele said, waving to the two of them: "Let's walk in, put on an isolation mask, pay attention to reporting the concentration data of the source stone in the air at any time, and make a sound immediately when there is a sudden change."

The three of them continued to walk inward along the mine track that had been left behind...

Even through the gas mask, Adele could still smell the smell of volcanic gas in this passage, and his guess was more accurate - this volcano is indeed activated.

"But why? Judging from the data from previous years, this shouldn't be the case. There must be some special reason that is guiding this change. Maybe the secret here can help my research..." Adele thought slowly, and his clear and bright eyes slowly scanned around.

Just as she was ecstatic, a crisp sound of rock breaking came from the depths of the mine, scaring the three of them all over.

She immediately looked at the monitor panel, activated the radar scan, and captured the abnormal source stone fluctuations in a moment, and couldn't help but look shocked - indeed there were special signs of source stone activity here!

———

At the same time, on the other side of the volcano, deep in the mine channel, there is a large mine cave.

"Squeak--!" "Bang--!" "Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!" "Puchi---!"

The sharp screams of the source stone insects, the collision of weapons and carapaces, the sound of flames, and the sound of people cursing each other, forming a scene of war called [Siege Invaders].

Volcanic origin stone insects with sizes ranging from ten centimeters to thirty centimeters kept gushing out from all directions, using their lives to launch an endless charge towards them.

"(Victorian) Damn it, my god, where are there so many bugs here? It's really f*ck that was so lucky that it exploded. The information I had not said that there would be so many?!"

"(Wei) Don't complain about Old John, hurry up and find a way to break through. I'm not strong enough, and the barrier is about to be broken!"

"(Dimensional) Use fire, they are very sensitive to fire and release flames to the distance!" Another shouted loudly: "Break the fuel bottle and throw it over!"

As the surging flames erupted not far from the team, the already violent volcanic source stone insect swarm immediately rushed over layer by layer, swallowing the raging fire into its stomach.

"Run!" Everyone shouted loudly and released their attacks towards the entrance of the cave, setting a road in the source stone insect swarm...

A minute later, seven people in ragged clothes, covered in dust, and covered in mucus from stone insects, gasped heavily, and lay on the ground for a lifetime, relaxing their almost broken muscles and heartstrings.

Seeing that they were so embarrassed, the two people stayed in the camp immediately found the medical equipment and checked, cleaned and bandaged the wounds on their bodies as quickly as possible. At the same time, they also used a blood analyzer to test the concentration of source stones in their blood to ensure that there was no infection or the infection did not worsen.

"How come there are so many source stone insects here?!" Finally someone couldn't help but curse again.

"Stone worms are quite common in volcanoes. You probably happened to invade their territory. What else did you do to stimulate them?" said the medical staff in the team.

"What do they eat to grow up and can breed so much?" asked another person.

"As we all know, the source stone insects eat almost everything. If they are volcanic source stone insects, they eat volcanic rocks. At the same time, they can adapt to it after a few mutations in the high-concentration source stone environment. Digging obsidian mines is like snatching food from a tiger's mouth." The [Volcano Hunter] in the team spoke.

He frowned and thought about the red and black source stone worm that was still emitting a faint warmth on the sword that his teammates strung on the sword. He immediately cut off a few spikes on its back and used the instrument to test it.

As he thought, the content of source stone in the keratin shell of this volcanic source stone insect is not low, and its chemical composition is quite close to that of the Obsidian ore in Xista, and it is also mixed with a large amount of volcanic minerals...

This source stone insect should be based on obsidian ore.

"What a pity that their staple food is obsidian ore. How many astronomical obsidian ore does it have to be eaten when it reproduces to such a large population..." Another person in the team sighed with pain.

After bandaging the leader, he stood up and said, "This road is probably not accessible. We have to find other mines and look at the mines at higher locations first. The location where the source stone insects live should be deeper."

When the others saw him say this, although they were still worried, they still said nothing - they spent a lot of money to arrive here, and rather than returning in vain, they would rather take risks for money.

But just as they were packing up the camp, a man and two women approaching the forest touched the cordon arranged by the magicians in the team, which shocked them and almost surrounded them together on the edge of the cliff.

In the sparse woods not far below, three tourists in common cool summer clothes were walking on the mountain trails talking and laughing, and almost straight towards them.

"What should I do? They can get to us in just two or three minutes, and we don't have time to pack up our things." One person asked in a low voice.
To be continued...