Chapter 3. Cave

Mark made his way into the cave, looking at the walls and floor in the places he would expect to find one of the ores for the purple shining metal. He was also paying attention to any possible mountain beasts lurking in the cave as they liked to do in these types of caves for some reason. He was not really scared but he would rather not have to fight a beast on its home turf. Out in the mountains was different since he knew where he came from and any part of his known route would give him the advantage. But here in the caves, he knew that a beast could come from anywhere and the lighting was not optimal on his end for a fight.

His reservations aside, Mark thought collecting his colorful ores was more important than a bit of safety.

He made sure he produced as little sound as possible as he slowly walked one step at a time through the cave. It had started with a fairly small entrance that he had to duck under to get inside, but now it had become somewhat of a labyrinth. There were many paths for Mark to check and some of them were fairly narrow while some of them opened up into grand caverns.

"High risk equals high reward..."

Mark whispered to himself as he had to choose between a smaller cave path and one of the great caverns. He knew that there was a higher chance of meeting a mountain beast in the grand cavern but also that is where the colorful ore would tend to be as well.

The great cavern had a ceiling about 20 meters from the floor with great pillars that almost gave the cavern rooms and many stalactites and stalagmites. Mark had to walk around the stalagmites as some of them were nearly as tall as he was. This also forced him to look all the way around these rock formations as the ores he wanted could be lying anywhere on the ground in this place.

There were many rocks spread out all over the ground and he did find a couple of ores that were not of the usual color such as an orange one and a blue one but he did not find any more purple ones that he really wanted in this cavern.

He continued on through a single passageway that started out as big as the cavern but became narrower as he moved through it. It also started curving to the left as he continued on, with the only light in the cave coming from the moss growing along the walls.

'Damnit, it's starting to smell like beast in here.'

The signature smell of a beast started to permeate the air and Mark knew that he was likely going to have to fight soon. He readied his spear and took extra care not to make any noise.

As he progressed through the tunnel he also started to smell blood which could mean a variety of different things, but none of them would prevent a fight. 

As the tunnel stopped curving, it opened into a smaller cavern with much less rock formations in it but he could see the faint glow of many different colored rocks under a big shadow.

'That must be what is making the smell, it's much worse from this close. It looks like it is sleeping but it is going to smell me soon. I better hit it as fast and hard as I can.'

Without thinking too much, Mark threw his spear with all his might to ensure he got at least one clean hit on the beast. He simultaneously watched the spear go through the solid-looking shadow and heard whatever it was roar with great ferocity. He heard the spear hit some rock before he watched the shadow turn around and then collapse after only taking a few steps. 

Mark grabbed some moss off of the nearby cave wall and walked cautiously to the collapsed beast with only a simple skinning knife for a weapon.

As the light began to illuminate the beast, Mark realized that it was what the village called a warg. Its matted fur was nearly pitch black in color and about twice the size of a mountain wolf. It was horribly wounded with small cuts and large gashes all over its body and he could see a spear-sized hole right above the hips that still had some blood trickling out of it.

He crouched close enough to it to see if it was breathing but far enough that he could possibly get a quick jab in with his razor-sharp knife.

After waiting a few minutes, he figured it would be safe to move it aside to see what kind of ore it was lying on. He grabbed a good handful of fur that was not too torn up with both hands and pulled it aside after struggling with it for a few seconds.

The ore had some blood on it still but he could clearly see orange and green rocks as well as a weird blue one and some that looked like they might be indigo that were no bigger than his fist, but he also found a couple of small purple ones. 

'Jackpot! I have no idea why they like to lay on these things but that's the upside of having to fight them. At least this one was nearly dead already or that small hole would have hardly been enough to slow it down.'

Mark then started putting the ores in his sack as he kept a vigilant watch around himself in case it had any buddies. When he was done he looked at the beast that was dead for sure and grabbed his skinning knife again.

'Better not let such good materials go to waste. Some leg bones would be fantastic to craft weapons with and some of the fur should be salvageable.'

He then took his knife to the dead beast and soon had three good leg bones that were perfectly preserved as well as a skull and a few patches of warg fur.

'All in all, I had a good haul from this cave, and I think I can feel a faint breeze from the opposite direction I came from. It's time to get home.'

As Mark made his way through the other end of the cavern, he soon confirmed that there was a faint breeze of fresh air coming through the passageway. Within a few minutes, he found one of the branched tunnels he took and made his way out of the main passageway. It was still light out when he took a big breath of fresh air at the entrance of the cave.