The speed at which Halas could assimilate materials was only limited by the speed at which the Taurs could bring them to him. In the beginning, this meant that they could deliver about 5 tons of material per day. Taurs were hard-working creatures, and although they did not have an affinity towards breaking rocks and extracting ore, they did know where to find the most accessible veins.

The Taurs had to go deep into the dungeon for this ore, but under the leadership of Krimor from the Varun tribe, and other heroes from the other tribes, they were unstoppable. A Taur was considered a medium level threat for the Iscar dungeon, when alone, but a unified Taur army could be considered to have an honorary Calamity Rank of at least class B.

Krimor in particular took a party of four, went down into the abyssal depths, and beat a rare Spirit Dragon to within an inch of its life. In fact, Krimor had beat the Dragon so severly and so brutally that the dragon was still in a coma. Had news of this spread outside the dungeon, no one would believe it. In fact, what happened to the dragon would probably happen to the teller of this ludicrous story.

What those outside the dungeon would not understand is that Krimor had not done this because he was being brave or adventurous. He did it out of fear. Pure terror was the driving motivation for Krimor's actions. If he did not bring something back, he would die. In fact, he did not even fear death as much as what he suspected Halas would do to him if he failed that scorpion-like monstrosity. He did not even dare imagine the full extent of it.

As the easily accessible material was extracted, finding more became increasingly difficult. Output dropped from nearly 5 tons per day, to less than 4 within the first few days.

What the Taur did not know however was that Halas was extremely pleased with their performance. Halas went from absorbing several kilograms of material per day, to absorbing tons. There was no reason not to be pleased with their performance. In fact, the expected time to evolve at this rate, even if the output were to fall to within 1 ton per day, was still somewhere around two months.

Although Halas was designed to evolve from Seed Drone to Hunter Killer within a week, it understood that its environment was different from optimal. Two months was acceptable considering the circumstances. The primary reason was the fact that Halas was the only one of its kind. It could not take risks. In a way, its mission was sacred and nothing could stand in the way of its completion. If Halas could not do it, ideally another drone would learn from Halas's mistakes. But in this case, there was no other drone, which meant that Halas could not afford mistakes.

Of course, Halas's mission was sacred, but it wasn't necessary to do it all immediately. There were things to learn. Beautiful vistas to defile. Temples to desecrate.

[Emotion Matrix: Excited.]

Eventually, Halas decided to let the material stockpile while it went to see some of those "vistas" and "temples" deeper in the dungeon. Halas was warned by the shamans of the various tribes that the depths below were extremely dangerous, but the shamans did so in a dispirited and casual way. None of them actually believed that the depths were dangerous to Halas. They merely informed the creature that the depths were dangerous, that's it.

If anything, the depths when Halas was prowling them truly became dangerous. Before then, relatively, they were about as safe as a mother's embrace.

Still, Halas did not go alone. Krimor followed Halas, as did Krimor's hunting party.

Krimor knew the area well and he pointed out the hallways to take for some of the more difficult to reach rooms. The dungeon layout was such that the more powerful monsters did not always exist in the deepest part of the dungeon, vertically speaking, but rather, deepest as in farthest from the entrance to the level.

"Mana very thick there," Krimor said. "Rare place. Good loot for master."

The dungeon was a truly massive structure. Even though Halas was already several hundred meters beneath the surface of the earth, now it was 2 kilometers, point to point, from the entrance to the level. In total, they had walked 7 kilometers, because it was not a straight line to their objective.

Upon entering the room, they found that it was a massive chamber. Halas measured it to be 38 meters tall, and 71 meters long. It was a spherical room, so it was just as wide as long.

A strange snakelike formation of rock occupied most of the volume of the room, and Krimor's eyes glimmered with tears of joy when he saw it.

"Dragonsteel, master!" Krimor excitedly said. "Very good loot. Master live free of financial worry for eternity now... if master choose to leave dungeon and live like king that is..."

It was not a secret that all Taur eagerly anticipated the day when Halas would decide to go haunt another dungeon, or sell the loot they brought to him and buy a country. Even in their wildest dreams, they could not comprehend what Halas truly had in mind for the Taur tribes.

"No known material matches term Dragonsteel," Halas said with a proud, booming tone. "Specifications?"

Krimor was confused by the question. "Uhh, we take Dragon Scale, melt scale, produce steel. Very strong. Very expensive. Master like it, Krimor promise."

The Taur warlord nodded to his companions and they immediately set to work, stabbing into the rocks and dislodging large plates of what looked like stone. Its surface was rough and grainy, similar to stone, but not quite. It was shiny, even though it wasn't smooth. Every now and again, the torch-flames would be caught in the stone and cause it to glimmer.

Then the stone shifted and roared.

One of the hunters jumped away from the stone formation as it began to slither away from him. "What this?"

Krimor glared at the hunter. "What you think Dragon Scale come from, idiot? Stones? Don't embarass warlord. Go beat up stupid snake." A pause. "But don't kill it. Need alive for more Scale in the future."