For a short while, silence reigned.

Air was limited in the pocket, and talking used up more of it. They simply lay there in the tight, filthy pocket of air they’d somehow survived in, listening the the noise of the rocks and debris settling around them.

Small stones shifted every now and then, and dirt occasionally trickled from the cracks.

None of this was comforting at all.

But eventually, Elane forced herself to speak through her pain and panic.

"I can move my right arm," she whispered after testing the limits of her body again. "And a little of my left... but not much. My legs are still pinned underneath yours."

Rohan maintained his breathing at a steady pace.

"You are the only one who can get us out."

Elane looked neither happy nor sad, but deep down she was happy to finally have a heavy responsibility of her own. Having an important task that relied entirely on her own efforts for once gave her a sense of pride and duty, though she didn’t show that openly considering their situation.

"What are you going to do?" She asked, concerned for him. "Lie there while I do all the work?"

Rohan closed his eyes for a second. He could hear the sarcasm in her tone, so he knew she was only joking.

But the time for jokes had passed.

They only had so much air, and time was ticking down fast.

"I’m the only thing keeping our lovely little air pocket from turning into our grave."

His Firestone skin was doing all the heavy lifting right now, taking the pressure that should have long flattened them and redistributing it enough for the rubble not to fully give way.

If he shifted too much, or worse, if his Origin Energy ran out...

That would be quite an anticlimactic ending to their second trip to the Origin Realm.

And a rather heartbreaking one. They’d be leaving behind an E rank Commander tier flower, and the loot from both the E rank bosses as well. A loss that heavy might make even the most seasoned veteran drown themselves in depression.

Even if nobody discovered the loot in the month they’d have to wait before being able to enter again, their spawn point would be completely random. Knowing Rohan’s luck, he knew the Origin Realm would place him on the complete opposite side of the Human Domain to Erenhot...

Elane drew in another careful breath and started to test the space around her more seriously. She moved slowly, not wanting to make any sudden jolts that might disturb the unstable debris around them.

Her fingers pushed through a layer of dirt first, then some loose pebbles, until she reached a few shards of sharper stone.

To her relief, there was more room than she first thought.

It wasn’t much. But enough to dig through.

A few minutes passed in silence, with nothing but the soft, ugly sounds of Elane scraping through dirt and rock by hand to keep them occupied.

It was slow, exhausting work.

Ironically enough, both of them had experience tunnel digging back in the Spike Beast gate in an attempt to get inside the central boss chamber. But even with an efficient and steady workforce, they had taken hours of labour to dig down a dozen metres or so.

And now they faced the task of digging upwards instead!

The only upside was gravity saving them the task of shifting the displaced dirt and rocks elsewhere — in their case, filling up the bottom of their air pocket.

The soil closer to them had already been compacted by the collapse, and the larger rocks were far too heavy for her to shift even when she was at her peak, let alone while pinned down and bruised all over.

Still, she kept at it. Every tiny bit of progress mattered.

And that was when she noticed something.

At first, she thought it was just some lingering sunlight filtering through the cracks.

But the more she dug, the more she knew that she was mistaken. The light wasn’t coming from the surface, or even the sun, at all.

Her head shifted as much as she could, and through a narrow crack by her shoulder, she finally caught sight of the source.

The Lava Hellebore.

It had been buried somewhere close to them in the collapse, close enough now that some of its petals were visible through the rubble.

Even buried under a mountain of dirt and weight, the thing looked untouched and undamaged.

Elane froze, and Rohan noticed it immediately.

"What?" He asked.

"The flower."

"What about it?"

"I can see it!" She shifted her one free hand away to point at it. "It’s close. Really close."

But Elane fell silent for a few moments before she asked the obvious question.

"Do we go for it?"

Rohan didn’t answer right away.

He should have, and the sensible answer should have come immediately.

He got thinking.

If they did manage to dig their way out, which there was no guarantee for, then whether or not they could come back to retrieve it at a later time was questionable.

What if Rudith had more people she knew back in Erenhot, and tells them about this location and what occurred?

Hell, with the commotion they’d caused, it was likely that other unrelated Awakened were already on their way over to see what all that noise was. The first explosion which killed the Queen ant was enough to catch the attention of any nearby Awakened for dozens of kilometres.

The second explosion? That had even caused a minor earthquake due to the collapsing beast nest, no less? Yeah, there was a fat chance this place would remain undiscovered after that.

Yeah, there was no way Rohan would let the Lava Hellebore, even the loot from the two beasts, fall into the hands of others after all they had been through to obtain it.

Even if he had to go through hell to retrieve them, he would!

"Go for it! You said it’s close by, didn’t you? So there shouldn’t be much of an issue retrieving it first."

It might even provide them a stable light source so that Elane could actually see what she was doing.