"Hello there, my name is Eisen. Could my friend and I here maybe go down into the mine for a while? I'm looking to acquire the Mining Skill." Eisen said with a light smile as he looked down at the Miners standing next to the entrance, one of them seems to be the most senior one there experience-wise.
Surprised, the most senior, dwarven, Miner looked at Eisen and Kiron with a deep frown. "A Titan'n'Lizardman? That's a combo ya don't often see, eh?" He laughed out before Eisen smiled back with a nod. He had already heard about titans before when he asked around about Giants out of curiosity.
Titans were a race that was sometimes called 'Lesser Giants' as a derogatory term. They were always quite human-like, and would usually be around three to maybe five meters tall, so Eisen was actually at the short end of that spectrum. It was easier to pretend to be one of them than to explain that he was a half-giant that just recently learned how to change their size, mainly because Giants were technically a race of monsters, despite the fact that they acted just like regular people most of the time, only in a greater dimension of things.
But Titans were a race of people, so it would be easier to act like one. "I guess you don't. Anyway, is it alright if we do so? We're returning to Handor later tonight, so it would only be for a few hours." Eisen explained with a quiet laugh before the Miner nodded his head. "Of course, don't worry about it. Ya can keep the majority of what ya dig up, but it's policy to take a third of what any outsider digs up. But I tell ya what, it ain't often that we see outsiders, 'specially not ones like you two, so ye can keep any rare stuff ya find." The Miner explained, and Eisen swiftly nodded his head.
"I see, that's fine. We only really want to get a bit of hands-on experience to gain the skill. But what do you mean with 'rare stuff'? Isn't this just an Iron mine?" The old man inquired, before the Miner shrugged, surprised for a moment before realizing it wasn't too weird for a person without the Mining skill not to know.
"Of course this be just an iron mine, but sometimes ye can be lucky enough ta find some lowest-grade High-Iron ore." He explained while Eisen, squatting down so that he could adequately speak to the dwarf, listened curiously. "Oh, really? So there is some magic ore in regular veins as well?" The Old man asked, and the Dwarf Miner nodded his head.
"Yup. There's always some mana around, ya see? And sometimes it gathers at a single spot even if it ain't as much as at a mana source, and it's going ta make maybe a nugget worth of magic ore. There ain't much around, but maybe for every 10000 pounds of natural iron ore, ya find one pound of High-Iron ore. And then there's sometimes crystal or gem clusters. Used to be a volcano 'round here, so ya'll probably find some with earth or fire mana."
"I see, thanks for the information. Kiron, we'll head down now." Eisen explained as he looked over at the half-dragon before the Miner spoke up once more as he saw the two of them leave. "If ya find any High-Iron ore, go ahead and bring it to me. I'll give ya a gold coin for every pound of it."
[New Quest – Rare Ore Search]
[Description] A Miner asked you to bring him High-Iron Ore in exchange for money.
[Reward] One Gold Coin per pound of High-Iron Ore
[Failure] Failure not possible
[Time Limit] None
"I see, thanks. If we find any, I'll let you know. Oh, and some others are going to come here later as well, three young boys. Could you send them down to follow me?" Eisen asked, and the Miner nodded his head with a smile, while Eisen and Kiron made their way into the mines, placing a borrowed cart onto the tracks so that they could haul up as much ore as possible.
"M'Lord… Grandfather… M'Grandfather..? Erm, where should we begin our work?" Kiron asked, completely confused before Eisen looked down and closed his eyes for a moment. "Wherever the most mana is." He replied, and when his eye opened again, he already activated his 'truth-seeing eyes.'
"Oh, are you attempting to find those High-Iron ores?" Kiron asked, and Eisen winked at him with a swift nod.
"If the ore can be found at the places where mana gathered the most, it's going to be relatively easy to find it. The biggest problem would be whether we can access that area. If it's too far away from the already-dug tunnels, we won't have any luck today." Eisen explained as he took a look around. After a while, they reached the area of the mines where everyone was already working, and then made their way through the tunnels toward a place where nobody seemed to be, despite there being a high concentration of mana just behind the walls.
A Miner that saw them head that way looked at them and then spoke up. "No need to head that way, you two. There's nothin' there anymore. The vein is headin' south from the intersection here." The Miner explained to them, but Eisen simply smiled at him after he deactivated his 'truth-seeing eyes.' "I see… Thanks for the information!" He exclaimed, right before he went that way anyway.
With a loud sigh, the Miner shook his head slightly annoyed and walked away as well, while Kiron followed Eisen. "Now then, want to get to work?" Eisen asked with a smile, and Kiron swiftly nodded.
"It's about a meter in, maybe, so it might take a while," Eisen said and placed his shovel down on the ground as he grabbed the handle of his pickaxe tightly, Kiron doing the same.
After a little while of simple swinging the pickaxe-head against the dense rock and placing what they crushed up into the cart so that they could get rid of it later. And after about twenty minutes, they managed to remove enough rock to reveal what they were looking for. They could see some of the black-reddish iron ore that this mine existed for extraction. This one, however, was deep red like blood, so it was quite evident that it wasn't natural ore. With a quick inspection, Eisen could then confirm that he found what he was looking for.
[Lowest-Grade High-Iron Ore][Quality - Average][Rank – 1]
"Seems like we found a little something, huh?" The old man laughed before he looked over at Kiron with a grin before he threw his pickaxe against the ore to crush it up. It took a few attempts to break it since the High-Iron was relatively dense, but once it was all crushed up, they managed to pack away two to three pounds of it at once!
"We just made three gold coins. Pretty nice, huh?" Eisen laughed as he put the lumps of ore into a bag to keep it separate from the rock they dug up so that they wouldn't accidentally dispose of it.
For quite a while, Eisen and Kiron continued doing the same thing, mining up some standard iron ore most of the time, while working toward the places where mana seemed to gather up, where they soon found even more High-Iron ore.
It seemed like Mining was a relatively hard skill to get, because Eisen only got it when his apprentices ended up joining him and Kiron in the mine.
[Mining Skill Learned]
"Finally!" Eisen exclaimed as he checked his status as well as his quest progress, before nodding in satisfaction. "You learned it a little while ago already, right?" Eisen asked the Half-Dragon next to him, who swiftly nodded.
"Yes, I did. Although I have done it a few times before, so maybe that is why I learned it earlier than you." Kiron guessed, but Eisen simply shrugged. "Maybe, I'm not sure. It might also be that I needed to mine up more because I'm a lot larger. Anyway, I want those three to learn the skill as well, so we would have to spend a while down here no matter what." Eisen explained as he watched his three apprentices get ready for work, before Eisen sat down next to them, on eye-level due to Eisen's current height, and took a look at the tools each of the boys made.
First, he checked out Koro's. It was of high quality, the balance was perfect, and the style fit him as well, so Eisen nodded at him and told him to start working. Then he began to look at the enchanted tools made by Parc and Rouge.
"Hmm, good job, you two. It doesn't seem like your tools are perfectly balanced for your body types, but you can fix that after a while, once you've used them. The enchantments are also pretty well done. Rouge, what were your images exactly with them?" Eisen asked, and the short boy, who looked incredibly tiny in front of Eisen usually, nodded his head before preparing to explain. "Erm, for the pickaxe, because it's supposed to crush things up, I thought it would be best to fix it onto a small area just immediately surrounding the spot that was hit, so that was my image — basically, the pickaxe crushing it up into small pebbles. For the shovel, my idea was similar. For harder soil, it should be able to somewhat 'soften' the soil up to make it easier to dig through by just splitting it up into tiny chunks." He explained, and Eisen nodded his head in satisfaction.
The images for the enchantments also really fit with Rouge's personality. He was more focused on the little things and the details not only in the carving, even in situations like this. Next, Eisen turned to Parc, who swiftly began to explain his images.
"For the pickaxe, it's obviously best to crush a large area, right? So my image was an earthquake so that the shock can travel far and crush things up easily! And same for the shovel! If it destroys the whole area around it beforehand, it's gonna be super easy to dig, right?" Parc laughed, and Eisen slowly nodded and told him to make his way over to work as well, although the old man gave this particular apprentice a small warning.
"Be careful. Very careful. The way you described your enchantments, that could cause some issues if you're not." Eisen told him, and the tall boy nodded his head.
"Will do!" He yelled out as he joined the other two boys at their work, and Eisen looked over toward Kiron after releasing a loud sigh.
"Come on, Kiron we'll work a little bit more as well. I'm sure they should have the skill in about an hour or so, and then we'll leave and start farming. I hope I'll be able to get the skill by today by doing different tasks related to it, but either way, we'll be making our way back to Handor tonight." Eisen said as he stood up and stretched a bit before he and the half-dragon next to him continued working as well and looked for more High-Iron ore.
That was until Eisen noticed something even more peculiar. Eisen wanted to go a bit deeper into the mine, into the just recently opened-up parts. He didn't notice it before because of all the natural mana that gathered all over the place, but when he took a closer look once he was at the deepest part of the mine, he saw that something was off. That something was missing.
Ignoring everything else, Eisen threw the pickaxe-head against the rock walls in front of him over and over again, even supporting his movement with Transmutation by pushing things away and making the surrounding stone more brittle so that he could get through more efficiently. Of course, he didn't just mindlessly do so, but he swiftly hardened the walls around him enough so that they could never naturally break down.
And all that because of one thing. The random, perfectly spherical area without even the slightest hint of any type of mana.