The cousins exchanged a look and slid silently closer, hiding behind a column.
“…and now with that ruins thing…” they managed to hear Liu. “…as if the hydra wasn’t enough…”
The blue-haired cousin barely contained an exclamation. Her companion covered her mouth with one hand.
Liu continued walking distractedly while muttering to himself until he was far enough away.
“Great,” one of them sighed. “Now what? Without Wei’s class this first hour, we don’t even know where to look for Harold…”
“…should have followed Ren to the caves?” Liu continued mumbling. “But the cultivation class has the hardest exam to memorize…”
The cousins exchanged a meaningful look, their beasts stirring with interest beneath their skin.
“I’m going to the caves,” one of the cousins whispered. “If they’re looking for ruins, we need to know why.”
“And what am I supposed to do without being able to find Harold?”
“You’re right… Without Wei’s class, he won’t show up until later. Follow this boy for now, he’s muttering interesting things so keep track of everything he says.”
The cousin sighed resignedly while watching her companion disappear down the hallway. She turned to follow Liu, who was still muttering to himself as he walked.
But though she followed, he no longer seemed to be saying anything interesting… He appeared to be heading to his cultivation class.
The cousin was considering abandoning the surveillance when Liu, instead of heading to his usual class, took an unexpected detour.
The side hallway was rarely used, mainly for storage. Liu looked nervously both ways before turning another corner.
‘What are you up to?’ the cousin smiled while following cautiously. Maybe this day wouldn’t be so boring after all.
♢♢♢♢
In the caves…
The tunnel grew meter by meter, each section immediately reinforced with living crystal that glowed with a soft, steady light.
“How much further?” Min asked while his snake helped the hydra try to remove another particularly stubborn worm from the ground.
“Not much,” Ren smiled. “I can feel the ruins getting closer.”
CRASH.
“Was that necessary?” Ren looked at Taro, who shrugged sheepishly.
“My beast says it’s more efficient this way.”
Min shook his head while watching the Living Tunnel clean its foot again. “At least it’s quick…”
While Taro’s beast and the hydra continued digging, Ren and Min collected the remains of the lesser worms they’d defeated. The tunnel floor was littered with evidence of their battles.
The cores were incomplete, practically hundred-point crystals so they were good, but the teeth were what really caught Ren’s attention.
“Still thinking about making those strange weapons?” Min asked while storing some crystals.
“Mmm,” Ren examined one of the teeth, remembering his failed attempts of the last few months. “I never managed to get them to fix properly to the wood to make the spiked club I wanted.”
He recalled his visit to Isaac, the craftsman. The cost of the work he’d requested was high compared to the limited utility the weapon would have… buying a complete wooden weapon would be cheaper and the utility would be similar.
“I got to the point where I was thinking of selling them,” he continued while picking up another particularly sharp tooth. “But with only 10, a hundred crystals weren’t very attractive so I decided to just keep them…”
“Ha ha, now we have to hear about the rich hoarder’s problems… Are you planning to keep more to collect?” Min observed the small bag of teeth that Ren was accumulating.
“Now that we have a way to get many…” Ren held a tooth up to his mushrooms’ light. “I was thinking about arrows.”
“Arrows?”
“They’d be easier to make than a weapon designed to be permanent,” Ren explained while carefully storing the teeth. “And cheaper. They could be useful for the final gathering expedition of the semester in five days.”
The tunnel advanced quickly thanks to the combined work of the hydra and Living Tunnel. Living crystal continued flowing, creating resistant walls that no lesser or common worm would try to breach.
Taro broke his silence.
“Ren,” he wiped dirt from his forehead, “how much are you going to need to rank up?”
“Why?” Ren smiled while his hydra helped with the excavation. “Worried about the costs?”
“Well,” Taro made mental calculations, “I went from using one-point crystals to ten-point crystals. So my base cost went from one hundred to a thousand crystals.”
Min shrugged. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“No, that’s the only cheap part,” Taro continued. “The bronze rank deep earth now costs me a hundred points per crystal. That’s another ten thousand…”
“And the defense rune for bronze 2,” he added, “is twenty-four thousand crystals.”
“Thirty-five thousand total,” Ren nodded. “Not bad for a bronze evolution.”
“Exactly, though it’ll take me a bit longer to get them but I have 100 days to complete…” Taro directed his beast to widen a section of the tunnel. “But you already spent fifty thousand just to reach bronze 1. How much will you need now?”
Ren sighed while his mushrooms pulsed softly. “The base crystals have to be hundred points now. So that’ll be ten thousand crystals just for that.”
“Ten times more than me,” Taro nodded.
“The intelligence rune for bronze 2 is twenty thousand so that’s actually cheaper than yours,” Ren continued. “But the expensive part is the special materials. I need bronze 2 beast remains with a specific type of mold. Thousand crystals per unit.”
Min almost choked. “Thousand per unit? And how many do you need?”
“A hundred,” Ren responded casually. “One hundred thousand crystals total…”
“And that’s not all,” he continued while feeling an energy leak and correcting course. “The bronze 2 level fungi to dissolve the materials have to be from Yino. Three hundred thousand more.”
“Four hundred thirty thousand,” Min calculated, his snake coiling nervously. “Just for the mushroom?”
“Well, there’s also the hydra,” Ren smiled. “But it’s more economical because it’s just going from iron to bronze 1 so… Uses a defense rune like Taro’s and some basic light element materials. Only adds about twenty thousand more to the total.”
“Four hundred fifty thousand crystals,” Taro shook his head in amazement. “There goes the magnate’s fortune.”
“But don’t worry, after this we’ll use your tunnel to improve our situation,” Ren touched one of the crystallized walls. “Plus the gathering in five days could help.”
Suddenly, Ren stopped. His mushrooms pulsed briefly.
“What’s wrong?” Taro halted the excavation upon noticing his expression.
“I can feel it more clearly now,” Ren closed his eyes, concentrating. “One of the entrances. It’s close.”