Eternal Thief

The new batch of golems quickly close the gap left by the old golems. As for those golems who made that gap; followed a soul golem leader and his group of soul golems closely and leave the dome wall! 

Ace was sweating profoundly while looking at the large army leaving the sphere dome and then looked at the army facing the other side with no gap to escape from anymore. 

He was now really like a rat in a cage, He can't go back now even if he wanted to, those golems would tear him into pieces if they found out an intruder stepping into their sacred land without them noticing it. 

Now, Ace's only option was to move forward without looking back. But after witnessing the appearance of thousands of golems, he was even more fearful of climbing toward the volcano crater. 

What if the entire volcano was filled with golems? There would be no place left for him to cry then, and all of his escape routes were also blocked now.

'There might be some kind of limit this volcano could produce the golems, right? Or why they took two weeks to send reinforcements, right?' 

Ace cheered himself just to calm down and with shaking breath and flickering determined moved toward the steaming volcano mouth! 

On top of the vaporous volcano, on the very edge of the volcano's crater, Ace's leery eyes were trying to pierce through the emerald smoke which was as thick as the clouds. He sensed nothing with his soul sense nor with his heavenly sense. 

But one thing that Ace noticed was that he doesn't feel heat despite standing hundreds of meters away from an active volcano like it was supposed to. Furthermore, the emerald smoke also doesn't emit any kind of heat and just like the emerald mist sea in the earthen mist forest, it felt completely harmless. 

However, Ace would be a fool to move or touch that steam with no worry whatsoever because just moments ago, thousands of golems march right through this volcano's throat! 

Aces glance at the black marker on the corner of his left eye and just as he thought it was pointing right down, which mean right inside the freaking volcano! 

One last time, Ace looked behind him; the large golem army seemed like ants from this height, and he could view the spacious spherical dome completely. 

Suddenly, his lips rose in a faint devious grin, 'The view is fantastic.' 

With no further ado, Ace stepped toward the steaming maw while activating his heavenly sense to the fullest. 

At the very edge of the volcano's mouth, Ace's hand moves right toward the emerald steam. He wanted to make sure his defensive Qi was enough to handle the source of emerald mist or not. 

Just as he touched the cloudy smoke, Ace felt a warm sensation like a summer breeze, he doesn't feel this kind of sensation from emerald mist while traveling all that time. 

But what mattered for Ace was it still didn't harm him, which was a good starting sign. Although this smoke was deemed harmless to him, the real challenge was to climb down the volcano's throat!

Even if Ace's heavenly sense was not enough to help him see the bottom of the volcano's throat, he could still see it was completely flat, and he can't just jump down from this height when he didn't even know what was at the bottom. 

'Wait? How did those golems climb up?' 

Ace quickly moved toward the position where those golems appeared and when he reached there, he was astonished because he 'saw' a three-meter wide slide footing like spiral stairs going right down in the volcano's throat! 

Ace took a deep breath and carefully stepped on the slide footing. His figure was completely submerged in the emerald smoke. 

As he imagined before, the volcano's throat wasn't filled with golems as he goes deeper down, all there was the thick emerald smoke.

Ace was shocked because the spiral slide was much deeper than he thought because he estimated that he had to climb down a kilometer and still extend, but the bottom was still nowhere to be seen. 

This made Ace even more nervous, his soul Qi was limited, and he knew if he found nothing in three hours his soul Qi would be depleted completely and at that time, his presence would be out in the open. 

Once that happen, he would be assaulted by the golem army at the very moment or even more dangerous the Orb Guardian which was probably somewhere inside the volcano! 

'I would leave in one and a half hours if I found nothing!' Ace mused, it was the matter of his life and death after all. 

Ace used the lightning steps since he didn't sense any danger, and it will save him more time. 

With lightning steps, it still took him almost twenty meters to reach something noteworthy. He was probably three or four kilometers deep inside the volcano at this moment!

At the very end of the spiral slid, the bottom of the volcano was filled with emerald liquid, and it was just like the liquid from which the puppet golem was created! 

But Ace didn't even glance at the emerald liquid because his eyes were glued in the very center of this steaming emerald pool. 

In the very center was a two-meter green crystallize altar, there was a transparent octagon crystal layer covering it like some glass case. And hovering peacefully right above the altar was a fist-size crystalloid emerald orb! 

Ace's breath was ragged as he looked at the emerald orb behind the octagon crystal layer with intense and naked desire in his eyes. His heart was threatening to jump out from his chest because of sheer ecstasy while darting at the crystal altar! 

The system's marker was also pointing right on top of that emerald orb and flashing intensely as if it found its designated target, and the system's emotionless voice just confirmed it the very next moment thereafter.

==== 

[Congratulation host on finding the Nature's Earth Elemental Orb!]

=====