Ashton didn't find anything useful on the island.
He's been exploring these past few days, he never saw anything that would help him reach the base of this landmass faster. This left him with his only option which was to go down the hard way.
In hindsight though, the demons he fought at least gave him more battle experience. It also progressed his quest and earned him some loot.
Ashton also reached Practitioner lv.5 (5th Refinement). This made him a hell of a lot stronger than before. It feels rather crazy to him that his cultivation speed was skyrocketing despite being outside of humanity's territory but somehow, that also made sense.
It may seem like he's taking it easy, but in truth, he's always at risk so long as he's out here. His nerves are always taut, not a single moment did he ever dare to let his guard down. He's pushing himself to his limits and that's causing his potential to be squeezed out even more. Which in turn, speeds up his cultivation rate as well.
But enough about that...
It is time for him to start digging.
Back to his new base, which is the mine he mostly emptied, you would see him crouching down, hands flat on the ground while his eyes closed.
This is him scanning the ground beneath him. He was searching for the tunnels below, which he knows exist, it has to or else there'd be no way out of here.
He's starting to get nervous since he hasn't found anything close yet. He's been scanning different spots all day long to no avail. He also can't exactly go outside either to search for them since there is yet another Black Fog crawling above him.
That Black Fog will, once again, taint everything corruption and will leave hordes of demons on the island. Ashton just didn't want to deal with those for now.
Plus, nighttime's approaching. There's no way he's getting out now.
What's left for him to do is to continue his search for the closest tunnel beneath him.
Sighing for the nth time of failure, he stood up and stretched for a bit. He groaned as he felt his body stiff, he hadn't done much physically today so that might be the reason why.
He stretched some more, just to get the blood flowing. Then he found another spot. Once again, he crouched down, took a deep breath, placed his palms flat on the ground, and began scanning the depths.
Not even a few seconds in, Ashton recoiled in shock.
"Oh wow, are you kidding me?" He muttered, feeling speechless all of a sudden.
He had scanned so many spots beforehand to no avail yet this one right was right on the money. So much so that he's questioning the stability of the ground he's stepping on.
The ground separating him from the tunnel is about 5 or so feet. There is nothing that's supporting the stability of the ground beneath him so the fact that it hasn't caved in yet was very questionable.
Nevertheless, he can't complain. He already found his target. Now, he'd just have to plan his approach and he can start making his way down.
Of course, Ashton would dig down hastily. He has no idea what kind of demons were lurking down there. He had to plan it out by observing first.
"Hmm, how should I do this?" Ashton thought to himself.
He sat down and meditated for an answer. The ideas flowed in his mind and shortly after, a plan was formed.
"Alright so, I'll make Spy Ward using the trinkets I looted from the Demons I killed. This way, even if some demons manage to discover it, they won't treat it as a hostile."
"This Spy Ward should be able to record what happens 24/7. I need to know if demons are lurking around the tunnels. If there are, do their patrols have patterns? What demons am I dealing with exactly? These are things I need to know first before I go down there personally."
"So collect intel first, after reviewing the intel, I decide whether it's safe or not. If it's safe, then I go down. If not, then I find another spot."
That's mostly the plan for now. Ashton didn't need an overly-detailed one since there will always be variables anyway. Being flexible is always a given especially when encountering demons.
With the rough plan established, he started working.
He took out several supplies with him, mainly tools that he think he needs to create a Spy, Ward.
After a couple of tries though, Ashton gave up. While he does know how to create a Spy Ward, creating it using demonic trinkets was not his specialty.
As a result, he needs Aria to make it for him. Thankfully though, she's been researching these things for a while now. If there's anyone who could do this, then it should be her.
"...yes, I think I can do that." She says after Ashton told her his plans. "It'll take me a while though. Also, I'm going to need more trinkets if you want this to be as durable as possible."
Ashton has no problems with that. He gave her more since frankly, he has no use for them right now.
It took Aria a whole day to make one though. She failed several times due to how finicky the process was but that's fine. They have enough materials on hand.
Eventually, she succeeded and the unique Spy Ward was created. This Spy Ward can record everything in crisp detail within its line of sight. It has built-in camouflage and has enough memory capacity to record non-stop. It can also be remotely controlled so that they can switch points of view.
Since it's created using demonic trinkets, demons, hopefully, wouldn't treat it as a hostile device. That's the idea at least.
And just for good measure, if demons still found it and decided to destroy it, they made it so that it will automatically end the recording and send the recent memory to an emergency device.
The item was light enough to carry and Ashton was extremely satisfied with it. As soon as daybreak hits, Ashton went out of the library and started digging down at the spot he marked.
He stopped just mere inches away from punching a hole in the tunnel. He built a foothold within the hole he created and scanned again.
Once he's sure that there were no demons near the spot, he made a small hole where the Spy Ward's lenses could fit. He then placed it there and activated it.
The Spy Ward immediately started recording, it's cloaking mechanism kicked in too. Once that was done, Ashton climbed out of the hole and relaxed.
He briefly checked what was going on outside of the mines and saw that the black fog is still around. Ashton decided to not risk it so he returned inside. Instead, he chose to chill in his home, which is the library, with Aria.
After waking up the next morning, Ashton jumped out of the library and into the hole. He retrieved the recent recording from the ward and reviewed it at 4x speed occasionally slowing it down to analyze the footage better.
Once he's done. He sighed and massaged his temples.
"Okay so...I'm mostly correct with my speculations so far." He muttered to himself. "Insect-type Demons are what I'm going to be dealing with here."
"There's a few that showed up; one that looked like a locust, a centipede, worm, some kind of a beetle, and an ant."
"Most of the demons spotted are infants at best. And from what I noticed, they appeared during nighttime. They didn't patrol in groups though, most of them just roamed around."
"All in all, it doesn't look bad for now. But I'm going to need more than that." He mused, "I see more before I decide."
And that's what Ashton did...
He continued observing the behavior of demons throughout the rest of the week. Some patterns changed while others didn't. He paid close attention to everything since he didn't want to be blindsided.
Since he saw the types of demons appearing within the tunnels. He managed to cross-reference their descriptions with the books about demons. This allowed him to strategize and update his quest count.
So far, he concluded that he should be safe to roam the tunnels so long as he enters during the daytime. The demons in there are nocturnal, but of course, he wouldn't put it past them to attack him should he disturb their slumber.
Ashton didn't want to confront them if he could help them. There is a possibility of him being surrounded real quick if he did so. And while he's strong enough to repel them, he had no way of knowing what other terrors were lurking deeper within these tunnels. He didn't want to risk his safety like that.
He already had been fighting them within the Simulation Zone. He had a firm grasp of how to defeat them obviously but that should be a last resort.
Still, now he has enough intel to make this work. All that he needs to do is to execute his plan to get the hell out of this place.
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