92. Dalki or vampire

This time on the planet, Abraham had to go underground and thanks to the wireframe vision, he was able to visit the entrance easily at the foot of a mountain. After entering through it, they discovered that they were in a large cavern with several entrances, holes, and tunnels all around the cavern walls.

The cave was dark and it was hard for Happy to see but for Abraham and the others, seeing in the dark was one of the natural traits of a vampire. Still, it was not complete darkness as each of the tunnels gave off a little reflection of light.

As they walked down the tunnel they noticed that the walls were surrounded with thin blue crystals that gave off a slight glow to them. Not enough to light up the whole area, but one could follow the small light source quite easily.

"What are these?" Pele asked, looking at the small crystals. They resemble something similar to beast crystals, but he thought the only way to obtain beast crystals was form killing a beast.

Abraham having knowledge from the book already knew what those were. Abraham was still carrying the unconscious Julia so while holding her, Abraham placed one of his hands on top of the crystal. Without even the need to use the Inspect skill, the system automatically showed him the result.

[Basic tier crystal]

[Would you like to store it in your system?]

"Yes, these are basic tier crystals. There are many things we have yet to discover about them," said Abraham.

There seemed to be hundreds of crystals, through the tunnel they had just walked. If Pele was to think about all the other tunnels as well there would at least be thousands down here.

"Are we here to take these?" Pele could not help but imagine having his first full set of armor. Even though it would be just at the basic level, it was better than nothing. Alas, his hope was shut down by Abraham.

"No, I have no intention to take them for now. Maybe later. The reason why we are here is to train. After we leave here all of us should be much stronger. You will understand later what sort of harsh training I have reserved for you." revealed Abraham.

Pele and the rest of the group could only gulp in nervousness about what sort of training Abraham was talking about.

Among them, there was just one person who was still having a different feeling and that was Happy. She was the only human among them and right now her mind was bombarded with multiple thoughts. After Abraham had taken her from her planet, she put her feeling on pause focusing more on her training. But right now on seeing Abraham carrying Julia in such a way that she had only dreamt, she wonder what if she was in her place.

Happy's face was burning from the redness. Should she ask Abraham to perform the blood ritual on her? Maybe that would be killing two birds with one stone. She will become stronger along with getting closer to Abraham.

Her thought was interrupted as they finally reached the end of the tunnel. The group froze for a moment once they exited the tunnel. Looking at what lay in front of their eyes, they paused as they were all shocked. Of course, there was the exception of Abraham.

That was because right in front of them, they could see a dalki settlement.

Exiting from the tunnel, it seemed like they'd arrived at what looked like a type of town. It was impossible for them to measure how large the entire place was. Buildings stretched out far and wide and it was comparably as large as any one of the shelters they'd seen before.

If they were to give a rough estimate, it looked like a few thousand people used to live in such an establishment.

The ceiling seemed to be unreachable. Although they could see the peak, it felt like there was no way to reach it. Their gaze moved on toward the tallest building that stood in the center of the place. It was a round tower-like structure that was tall and high, but it hardly touched the ceiling. If one wished to even touch the ceiling, they would have to build a similar size building and place it on top of the already existing tower.

Although a town underneath a mountain and town was surprising to the group, it didn't seem impossible. There were rumors of such shelters being built on other planets where the temperatures could reach extreme levels at different times of year, underground shelters were the only answer to such uninhabitable places.

But the reason for their shock was not about finding an underground settlement but what the settlement looked like.

One of the main features was the solid black material that it was made from. Instead of brick, cement, or metal, it was a different kind, a special black substance that was more stable and stronger was the primary material of all the buildings.

The substance was said to be just as strong as galthreium. Although the place looked abandoned and was void of people, the buildings were a different matter. The structures themselves looked perfectly fine and hadn't deteriorated a single bit. The only semblance of the passage of time of abandonment was a layer of dust or rock-like substance from the ceiling that coated the top of everything.

"These are Dalki structures," Robert muttered. Robert and Gwen immediately recognized it from their personal experience. Even though the rest of the team have never seen the dalki structure in real life, there were many occasions when it was shown on video.

"Are we planning to attack the dalki here? Is this our training?" Pele trembled at that thought.

"The reaction on your faces tells everything. But you are all wrong about one thing. This is not a dalki structure but a vampire one." Abraham said which only brought their shock to another level. " There is a sort of connection between the dalki and the vampire, but that's for later. Right now all you need to know is that this is an empty settlement that has been occupied by beasts. After clearing the ground of all the beasts, you all will begin training while I will explore the tower in the middle."