CHAPTER 530: MAW OF STONES

Hearing the voice of Elaina echo in his ears, he looked over in the direction where her voice came from and saw her approaching while carrying her usual sword and bag.

"I know your predicament after hearing what my daughter told me about the ore veins being abnormal in growth. Care to say the current situation in the lower levels of the mines?" Elaina asked while still observing the reaction of the others and gauging the danger levels the enemy from deep within has done.

The Village chief sighed and looked at Elaina with a bit of relief. "Looks like I don’t need to explain too much about the danger ahead. But yes, please sit down since I am still briefing everyone. You can join in, and you are very welcome to hear it."

Elaina leans on one of the nearby pillars as the village chief continues talking.

"Alright, as I have said before, the monster underneath the mines has been growing bigger and bigger as it continues to devour everything on its path. Sure, its ability to improve and cause veins of rich ore to pop up in every single part of the mines is great and something that is worth celebrating, as that will allow us to harvest a lot of ores, but this is not worth celebrating when that monster under us continues to grow and eat."

One of the younger-looking dwarves raised his hands before asking a question. "What kind of monster is this, chief? And why do we have to kill it as soon as possible? Can’t we wait it out and let it eat to its fill?"

The Village chief sighed and shook his head. "That would have been much better for us...If not for the fact that this monster has a bottomless stomach and will not stop eating unless it is killed. Suppose we keep it alive without doing anything against it. In that case, not only our village but even the surface world will suffer in the process, as it will continue eating without regard for whether it was still eating rocks or it has been eating something alive. That is how the Maw of Stones operates."

Elaina couldn’t help but remember the past, where only two of the mine workers managed to get out alive from the mines due to the Maw of Stones emerging under the mines of iron, where they left it alone for it to grow and become a danger to the point that it had eaten the miners who were busy hauling iron at that time.

Maw of Stones, based on its name, is a small creature that only a big mouth attached to a square-shaped body that shelters the stomach of the monster that remains endless for some unknown reason, the more it eats things. In this state, it assumes the form of a square rock and will start eating ores in small quantities until its size grows. The more it eats, the more it will grow, and based on what mineral it has eaten, it will also change its appearance from stone to what mineral that is more abundant on its body. The more ores of the same kind it eats, the stronger its body becomes.

However, once it reaches 5 meters in size, it will start to eat anything on its path without discrimination. It will eat anything, whether it is garbage or not, alive or not. That includes monsters, and naturally...humans.

At that time, Maw of Stones were not a well-known monster due to how rare it is, and it is not something that commonly appears in the mines. However, once it does, it will make every vein around the mines abundant and rich in ores and ingots to mine, which would make those people think it was a miracle. But if they didn’t see the monster eating those ores to grow, they would think it was a miracle indeed, which, in reality, was a disaster the longer it was left alone.

The Maw of Stones in the past became so dangerous after it surfaced from the mines, as it has reinforced its body, which was once made of stone, to iron, making it very durable and hard to kill. They only managed to kill it by killing it with extreme fire magic and isolating it in an open space, allowing them to melt the monster and kill it.

After Elaina remembered the past, she returned to listening to the Village Chief. Compared to the past, she is more worried now, after all, iron is not the only mineral available to be mined at that mine.

"Alright, quiet down. Now, according to the intel we received, it has already consumed mythril in the process, but since it didn’t start out by eating iron and straight out ate mythril, the Maw of Stones is currently digesting and culminating the mythril essence into its body. It will take some time before it can fully digest and incorporate the mythril essence into its body, so we will have to strike the monster before it can start eating stronger ores. Right now, a few of our dwarf associates who are deep divers into the depths of the mines are currently feeding the Maw of Stones with dynamites and explosives. It is a dangerous attempt, but if it can turn itself into an ore that it has eaten, perhaps it can also become an explosive and can be killed by igniting it in the process."

Elaina raised her hands after hearing that. "That will be ineffective, Village Elder. It would have been best to detonate those dynamites and explosives instead of leaving them to be digested by the Maw of Stones. It doesn’t work that way, and the Maw of Stones only digests and uses the most abundant mineral it has eaten to transform into. Based on the fact that it has eaten Mythril already and the fact that veins have been enhanced a lot, it is safe to say that the Maw of Stones’s stomach right now has Mythril as the most numerous form of mineral swirling around its body. In short, even if the Maw of Stones is fed with crates of gunpowder, it won’t work and won’t change the Maw of Stones to gunpowder form; it will instead remain in its mythril state."

"Is that so? Then we will have a few messengers to have them stop them from feeding the explosives. We can instead use that to blow the Maw of Stones and slowly chip away at its health in the process."

Then, the same child who had asked before raised his hands once more, but instead of asking a question, he gave out a suggestion. "Then, if this monster is now a mythril, doesn’t that mean it can be melted with the acid we use to melt mythril into liquid form?"

Elaina frowned, considering that she was not familiar with how mythril is used in the forging process, she decided to inquire what this method was. As for the Village Chief, his eyes lit up.

"Ah, considering that you don’t know about the forging methods, Miss Elaina, we will tell you what this was about. As you can see, Mythril is very hard, and mining it was also not easy. Although we can chip it away using pickaxes, that doesn’t mean we can easily break it into pieces and turn it into ingots for forging. We have to put the ores in a special acid made from the slime’s goo and slime eggs to fully turn the solid ore into a liquid form. It is much easier, and it also allows us to easily forge it into any shape we want, much faster than fire. And that suggestion just now is very good, as we can use that acid itself to melt down the Maw of Stones and kill it without risking too much damage. All we will need is a lot of slime goo and lots of slime eggs. That way, we can make enough acid to melt down the whole Maw of Stones."

"Slime Eggs?" Elaina’s eyes lit up.

The other day, Yona had just harvested so many Slime Eggs from the slime hutch on the farm. Yona has been managing the slime hutch ever since she completed it and has been the one using the resources it produces. However, the other day, Yona asked if she could sell some of those slime eggs she harvested instead of keeping them, as she has been overwhelmed by the slime eggs her slimes have been producing daily nowadays.

The timing was so on point that somehow, Elaina was thinking whether the situation had been just a big coincidence, or somehow, the problems around her could easily be resolved by something that had been generated from her farm. Knowing Yona’s predicament, this can easily help out in dealing with the extra Slime Eggs she doesn’t need.

"How many slime eggs do we need?" Elaina asked.

"I won’t say the exact number but all I know is that we will need...A LOT."