Chapter 347: Mysterious Clay Tablet

Descending to about 3 meters, a side cave appeared on the pit wall. Xia Duo cast a 【Light】 to illuminate the inside, and after just one glance, he judged that the space within was truly not small.

Inside was first a relatively large space, with several passages to the side that should lead to other spaces. Xia Duo did not discover any Trolls within the large space; if there had been any, they perhaps should have discovered him when he came down.

However, Xia Duo did not relax his vigilance because of this. Holding his sword and shield, he carefully "floated" into the large space. Under the illumination of 【Light】, dried flesh and blood—either dark green and black or dark red and black—were clearly visible on the surrounding walls and the ground.

In one corner, a pile of rotting meat and bones was stacked, seemingly the leftovers of the two Trolls' dinner, intended to be saved for later consumption. But clearly, they, now turned into a pile of bone ash and remains, no longer had any chance.

Xia Duo floated a circle around this large cave space and even used his sword tip to poke and flip through various suspicious locations, but in the end, he did not discover anything of value.

It made sense; what kind of collecting awareness could such beast-like creatures have?

In all likelihood, it was just some food!

Xia Duo turned his gaze toward the several cave openings around the large space, which connected to several smaller cave spaces. He chose one of the largest among them. On the ground in the innermost part of this cave lay a blue-gray wolf skin, and scattered on the wolf skin were a few Fan Ge Tree Fruit that were clearly still green.

This wolf skin was worth a little bit of money, but for the current Xia Duo, it was not worth mentioning at all. Moreover, one could imagine how heavy the smell of this wolf skin was; he did not want to contaminate his Personal Space.

Afterward, Xia Duo entered another Branching cave to the side, which stored some wild fruits and a large amount of rotting meat. It looked like this was the Trolls' storage space.

Xia Duo once again felt fortunate that his 【Personal Space】 was already isolated from strange odors, otherwise, he would have had a hard time here!

Still using his sword to poke around everywhere—this was just a casual attempt, and he did not expect to really discover any treasures here—but what he did not expect was—

With a "Ding" sound, the sword tip seemed to hit some metal, having a tactile feel clearly different from other materials. Xia Duo immediately became interested.

In this area, almost no civilization had ever emerged, so where would metal come from? Xia Duo thought of the Elf Ruins; could there be one here too?

Once he thought of this possibility, his heart was both joyful and somewhat resistant. Joyful because ruins could bring benefits; resistant because ruins could also bring trouble.

Just like that Mythallar Ruins to the east, the Magic Net there was still in a state of riot even now!

And what was more troublesome than a Magic Net riot was that it might attract the attention of interested parties (Elves), which, for Xia Duo who needed time to develop most of all, was somewhat not worth the loss.

However, having ruins was good after all; it was just that the time for development would need to be reconsidered.

Xia Duo used his sword to pry, pulling a hard object out from under a pile of half-rotted wild fruits. The hard object was a finger thick, the size of two palms, rectangular, and damaged.

"It seems like a metal plate?"

With a sense of inquiry, Xia Duo summoned a stream of water and washed it repeatedly. This metal plate finally revealed its true appearance—

It was not the metal plate he had previously thought. Although the tactile feel and sound of the sword tip touching it were very similar, after cleaning it, Xia Duo discovered it was more like a clay tablet.

Because, while the water was washing it, the originally damaged parts of the edges were disintegrated by the water somewhat. If not for Xia Duo's proper control, perhaps this clay tablet would have been destroyed in the simple cleaning process.

Metal would not be like this!

The clay tablet was yellowish-brown overall, with one side smooth and one side rough. The rough side was not worth mentioning, but the smooth side brought Xia Duo a great shock.

It was actually engraved with Arcane Geometry figures. Although they were only some extremely basic figures that could be called "elements," the fact that these figures appeared on a clay tablet in a Demon Nest was very worthy of deep thought.

Besides the figures, this smooth (as Xia Duo called it) front side of the clay tablet was also engraved with some very strange characters. These characters had complex strokes and bizarre shapes.

This clay tablet was primarily composed of characters; the Arcane Geometry figures were only used as decoration. There were six lines of characters in total, the length of each line was slightly different, and among them, character units—whether they were words or letters, he did not know—had repetitions.

It was also because of this that Xia Duo judged it was very likely a type of writing.

Judging from the writing, even if there were ruins here, it was unlikely to be Elf Ruins, because the writing simply did not match. Xia Duo had a fair understanding of Elf writing, and the writing here had no similarities to Elf writing at all.

Even for someone without the slightest understanding of Elf writing, after seeing these two types of writing, they could easily make such a judgment.

Putting away the stone tablet, Xia Duo finally raised some interest in the subsequent sweep, but it was only some. Ruins were just ruins; he was not lacking in ruins right now.

One must know that over at the Mythallar Ruins, because a large area that had previously been covered up appeared, there were at least some Mithril fragments that could be confirmed to be inside. That was more useful than aimlessly digging holes here.

However, a clay tablet with unknown writing and also Arcane Geometry patterns still made Xia Duo take an interest in the ruins here. Once he had enough manpower in the future, he must come over to excavate.

Next, after Xia Duo checked two Branching caves, he discovered two more mysterious clay tablets similar to the previous one. It was just a pity that these two were more severely damaged, especially the writing on them, which almost disappeared after cleaning.

It looked like the ruins should be in this vicinity.

He did not believe that Trolls would run from far away to some place to dig up a few clay tablets that could neither be eaten nor used, and then carry them back from far away!

……

Very quickly, only the last Branching cave remained here. Among the four or five Branching caves, only this one had the smallest passage connecting to the large cave space.

Xia Duo also left it for last to check. By this time, the 【Flight】 state on his body had long since disappeared. Of course, he would not be stingy with a mere 【Flight】.

However, this time, he did not need to fly inside. Upon reaching the cave entrance, he already understood the situation inside. Behind this smallest passage, there was only a small space of less than one cubic meter.

Of course, the main thing was that the space had a downward passage. When Xia Duo approached here, he clearly heard two low roars coming from below.

As if in fear, and as if in threat.

Xia Duo could not understand the Troll language, but he only needed to know that "only a dead Troll is a good Troll," and that was enough. He first extended his sword tip into that passage entrance inside.

"Pat"

Two tiny bone spurs were thrown up, hitting the sword body. The force was actually not small, but compared to Xia Duo, it was somewhat lacking.

But he also judged that the Trolls below should be small Trolls; their strength was far insufficient compared to large Trolls.

Of course, even small Trolls could not be let off.

Who knew how many Trolls they would give birth to in the future? For Daxia Territory, this was a huge threat!

Following the previous procedure—confinement, piercing, setting fire—a moment later, the two small Trolls had turned into a pile of bone ash and remains. After finishing this, Xia Duo carried the three mysterious stone tablets and flew out from the passage he had originally entered through.

He flew all the way toward Linshui Village.