From the forty-eighth floor to the fifty-fifth floor, there is another long stretch of road where the transfer door cannot be used.
Lisbeth had originally suggested meeting on the main street of the 55th floor, but after hearing that Lin Yuan could only walk, she stared at him for several seconds.
"Did you always travel like this before?"
"Um."
"Then Kirito and I will teleport there first, so we can prepare supplies in advance?"
Just as Kirito was about to nod, Lisbeth had already locked the shop door and hung the hammer on her waist.
"Forget it. If you break the sword completely on the way, I won't even see how it eventually breaks."
The three of them went up together.
Lin Yuan tried to avoid combat, while Kirito was responsible for clearing out the monsters blocking the only way. Lisbeth's level was high enough to move around in the middle levels, but she rarely traversed the maze area continuously. In the first two levels, she could still assess the monster drops while traveling, but by the fifty-fourth level, she no longer wanted to ask Lin Yuan how he usually traveled back and forth.
On the fifth day at noon, they arrived at the fifty-fifth level of the western mountain range.
Snow covered the dark gray rocks, and a cold wind swept through the peaks. The white dragon's lair was not clearly marked on the map, so Lisbeth could only search for remaining claw marks and crystal fragments based on the information she had gathered.
Lin Yuan stopped in front of a snow-covered slope.
"Above."
A huge shadow swept over the three of them.
The white dragon folded its wings and landed on the mountain ridge, its scales resembling metal polished by ice and snow. It did not attack immediately, but instead looked down at the three people who had intruded into its territory, a pale light gradually illuminating its chest.
"Scatter!" Kirito shouted.
A chilling breath struck the spot where the three had been standing. Snow and rock exploded simultaneously. Lisbeth rolled to the right, while Lin Yuan and Kirito rushed to the sides respectively.
Kirito's swordsmanship struck the white dragon's forelimb first, taking away a small amount of its health. The white dragon raised its claws and swept horizontally, but Kirito used the system's acceleration to pass under the claws and slashed at the same spot again.
Lin Yuan did not draw his sword.
They didn't come here to kill the white dragon. According to the information Lisbeth obtained, the rare metals were related to its lair; simply destroying the monster might not yield the materials they actually needed.
He observed where the white dragon landed each time it turned around and quickly discovered a huge depression hidden by snow behind the ridge. It didn't look like an ordinary cave; it looked more like a deep pit left after the entire mountain had been hollowed out.
"The nest is behind us!" Lin Yuan said.
Lisbeth moved up the rock wall, trying to confirm the entrance to the pit. The white dragon seemed to be enraged by this action, suddenly abandoning Kirito and stirring up a storm of snow with its wings.
Lin Yuan stepped forward to meet him, and for the first time, his already deformed longsword left its sheath.
He didn't slash at the white dragon, but only used the spine of his sword to block the rocks swept by the wind. The continuous impacts caused the curved blade to vibrate slightly, and he cleaved the largest rocks to the sides, but the road behind him was completely blocked by the snow.
My vision was momentarily obscured by white.
As the snowstorm subsided, Lisbeth stood at the edge of the pit. The rock beneath her feet had been cracked by the impact of the dragon's wings, and the entire rock was tilting outwards.
" Lisbeth!"
Kirito broke free from the white dragon's claws.
Lisbeth tried to grab the rock face, but her fingers only scraped off a few snowflakes. Losing her balance, she plummeted into the bottomless abyss.
Without pausing, Kirito stepped over the crumbling rocks and leaped down. He caught up with Lisbeth in mid-air, grabbed her with one hand, and drew his sword with the other, stabbing it against the pit wall in an attempt to slow his descent.
The white dragon's tail swept towards the pit opening at the same time.
Lin Yuan held his sword horizontally in front of him. The immense force pressed down along the blade, forcing the already bent sword to straighten again, only to bend in the opposite direction once more.
A crack finally appeared in the center of the sword's spine.
Lin Yuan used the dragon's tail to deflect the force backward, but there was no ground beneath his feet. The rock strata at the pit entrance had completely collapsed, and he slid down along with a large amount of snow.
The white dragon did not chase into the deep pit, but only roared deafeningly from above.
Lin Yuan flipped over, stepping on a fallen rock, and used the momentum to leap towards the pit wall. The tip of his sword pierced the ice, leaving a long mark on the stone wall, which slowed his descent.
Click.
The longsword that had accompanied him through more than fifty floors broke off at the crack.
Half of the sword blade remained on the ice wall as Lin Yuan continued his descent, gripping the remaining hilt. He reached out and grabbed a protruding rock corner, but the corner couldn't withstand the impact and snapped off instantly.
Kirito's voice rang out from the darkness. " Lin Yuan!"
"I'm fine."
Lin Yuan adjusted his posture, his feet stepping across the sloping pit wall in quick succession, turning his straight fall into a slide down the ice slope. A few breaths later, he smashed through a layer of soft snow at the bottom of the pit, tumbling and releasing the last of his momentum.
Not far away, Kirito was helping Lisbeth get up from the snowdrift. Neither of them had fallen into the danger zone.
Lin Yuan released his grip.
Only half of the longsword remained on the snow.
Lisbeth glanced at the broken sword, then looked up at the distant pit, now only a faint white light remaining.
"Now," she murmured, "We have no choice but to find the materials."