Several hours and a gruelling effort later, Rohan and Elane finally stood beneath the open sky once again.

Neither of them looked human anymore.

They were caked in layers of soot, dirt, dried ant blood and enough dust to pass them as statues if they stayed still long enough. Their clothes had been reduced to a pitiful state, full of tears and burn marks, and honestly both of them were surprised that they were even intact at all after all they’d been through.

They were half expecting to be trudging around naked after all that, which would only serve to make their situation even more awkward...

’Thankfully that didn’t happen.’ Thought the both of them.

Meanwhile their exposed skin was painted over with bruises, scrapes and cuts from the collapse — especially Elane, who didn’t have any superior defences like Rohan. Though contrary to his earlier concern after briefly losing consciousness, what looked like Elane bleeding quite a concerning amount turned out to be more superficial wounds.

But they were alive, that was all that mattered.

Somehow, against every expectation, they had clawed and dragged their way out from under what felt like half a mountain collapsing on top of them, which wasn’t too wrong since the beast nest was half in a crevice and half underground.

The process of getting out of that tight hellhole had been slow and miserable, in particular for Rohan, who had to use his own body to keep the rest of their impromptu cave from collapsing in on them.

Though, after a while of digging, Elane grew confident enough that he wouldn’t have to do that anymore, and they took the huge risk of letting him shift his body from his position, and were greatly relieved that everything seemed stable enough to hold on its own now.

All it took was some time for the compressed dirt to fully compact together under the tons and tons of pressure, for their small cave to become stable.

But now that they stood on their own two feet again with the cool open air touching their skin, it all felt worth it.

More than worth it, even.

Because they hadn’t just crawled out empty handed.

Rohan had the Lava Hellebore slung awkwardly over one shoulder, looking steady as ever, as if being buried under thousands of tons of stone hadn’t inconvenienced it in the slightest.

And on top of that, after taking a short time to recuperate, they retraced their steps before the collapse to where they were pretty sure the two beasts were when they died, and started digging down from there.

Digging inside from out turned out to be a much easier process than the other way around, and it only took them an extra hour of their time before they came across the shattered corpse of the E rank Elite Ant King. Even its sturdy chitinous armour couldn’t withstand the explosion of the Hollow Tide Burst combined with Rudith’s flames from point blank — and combined with the subsequent collapse as well, its body was unrecognisable.

Retrieving its Origin Crystal proved to be no issue at all, since it was one of only two sources of glowing orange light in the otherwise pitch black tunnels Rohan and Elane had dug.

Yes, orange, because the beast was an E rank, instead of F rank, which otherwise glowed red.

F rank Origin Crystals / Energy equated glowed red, E rank is orange, D rank is Yellow, C rank is Green, B rank is Blue, A rank is Purple, and finally the elusive and mysterious S rank glowed a magnificent white.

It took Rohan a moment to remember the order of the colours.

And it wasn’t the only one either, the Ant Queen’s Origin Crystal was nearby, easily identified by another orange glow through the cracks, which Rohan delightfully snatched after a bit more digging.

Looking at the two glowing orange Origin Crystals sitting quietly in his hand, Rohan was once again reminded of the feat that he and Elane had achieved.

’We really killed two E rank Elite beasts... Us, two F rank newbies, did that.’

If word got out about their feat, it was sure to cause an uproar in Erenhot and the surrounding cities — which was why he and Elane were now so determined to get the hell out of there before more Awakened started showing up to investigate what happened!

’Though there’s nothing we can do about Rudith spreading the news on her own... but nobody will believe her without proof, anyway, so let’s not worry about that.’

Nobody would give them a second look if rumours started to spread about what they did without any proof.

With no proof, those rumours would just be meaningless background noise in the otherwise chaotic Origin Realm, where countless miraculous things happened every day.

***

A few hours later, Rohan and Elane stood at the outskirts of Firestone Forest, both of them mostly recovered and recuperated from their injuries by that point. Unless severe, Awakened could recover in a few hours what would normally take an ordinary human days or weeks.

Sitting under the cover of a large boulder to conceal themselves from any prying eyes, they spoke to each other in hushed tones.

"What do we do with this thing?" Rohan asked, pointing at the Lava Hellebore with his eyes.

Harland, Elane’s father, had ingrained much information about the Origin Realm into her, so she was much more knowledgeable than Rohan about high value treasures like this.

It wasn’t just her father either, as Stella had also contributed a lot.

Especially after she came back as an Awakened the first time around, which was a huge surprise to the both of them considering she’d failed her last attempt at Awakening only a day earlier.

"Normally, I’d have preferred to take it to a trusted appraiser and exchange house like Stella’s, but she only has branches in tier one cities in the Origin Realm, and we still have over five days left before we can return, so waiting in hiding would just be a waste of our time."

Rohan nodded, agreeing with her wholeheartedly. While it was the safe way of doing things, it interfered heavily with their original plans for returning to the Origin Realm.

To strengthen themselves as much as they could before taking the university entrance exams!