Chapter 6：This Is Elysium 5: Home Sweet Home

*squeak!* *squeak!* *squeak!*

His arms were burning; this was not what he expected, though to be fair nothing that as happened to him so far was what he expected. Now the motion of pumping his arms up and down for the better part of two hours was to say the least, extremely painful. The tracks had led him deeper and deeper into the mine, by this point the lamps that gave light to the tunnels had become less and less until all he had was darkness.

Luckily for him, Stygian ore had a faint silvery glow to it, and the tunnels that he has been sloughing through were filled to the brim with it, though not enough that it could be considered bright enough to play around with a blade. Eventually he got to the end of the track; it opened up into a massive cavern.

The cavern was probably the size of an Olympic stadium, its walls were had hundreds of caves lining them, and the floor of the cavern had what seemed to be a grass field of bioluminescent grass and flowers. This was a place of beauty, at least it could be considered such if it was not a nesting ground for hundreds of different king of monsters.

They were minding their own business, which was probably why Red had sent him here. Not unless he went looking for trouble, the monsters won't bother him, unless of course they were hungry, nor he mined to close to the agro range of a rather ferocious monster. He looked to his left and noticed remains of an old shed, most of the wood had been eaten by termites and what was left standing was just three fifteen centimeter in diameter and two meter long posts.

With no other choice and not to willing to waste his time doing nothing he went to work clearing the shed of rubble. It would be smarter and much more safer to be close to the tunnel and the tracks that led out of the mine, that way if he had to make a quick escape for his life he would be able to do so without any sort of problem.

Rezar was able to clear the shed of any debris, the termites left behind a lot of wooden chips and strips that littered the area, after he gathered it into a pile along with a bunch of wood, Rezar reckoned he could use it to make a good campfire, however that would probably draw attention to him that he wasn't ready for at all. He got the posts up, setting two of them about two meters away from the cavern wall.

There were spiral like ledges at least five meters wide that went round the cavern, it was on this ledge that Rezar fixed two of the posts, before turning the third sideways and nailing it to the wall above a cave entrance after wrapping his tent tarp on it.

For some reason the tent tarp given to him was really large, it was about five meters long and two wide, there was a small cave where the shed was built, so it would serve as an inner room while the tarp sort of made a shed outside and made a curtain that served as a sort of door.

Of course it probably won't be able to keep any of the monsters in this cavern away from him, but at least it gave Rezar a certain sense of safety. The sides were still exposed, but that would be what he would place his focus on next. The cave behind the tarp was five meter long and wide, but its ceiling was bit high going up eight meters before spreading out into what Rezar was sure was another cave above him. He couldn't see that far especially in the dim lighting of the cavern.

He shifted his focus to clearing out the tiny cave; there were broken pieces of pottery on the ground with only one intact copper pot, which Rezar suspected was a chamber pot of some sort. But beyond that was the dried up stains of blood on the ground, it was not hard to imagine what had happened to the last miner who had stayed here.

From what he could see, it would require an extensive force of fighters all of them with multiple classes, basically a full raid group to be able to clear this cavern of the monsters that inhabited it. But that would cost a lot of money, and there was enough stygian ore in other much safer parts of the mines than here.

No one was willing to spend millions if not billions of gold elys to guarantee the safety of a bunch of miners destined to die and reincarnate and continue being slaves. Not even the greediest of nobles were willing to take that much of a loss. Until such a time when the other parts of the mine have run out of ores, this place will continue to be ignored.

After Rezar was done cleaning the cave, he brought in everything he had been given and started arranging them in one corner of the cave before proceeding to properly cataloging them and arranging them.

Amongst the things given there was a bed spread seemed to be made from some sort of poorly treated animal hide. The fur was still there, stiff as bristles and it was incredibly rank. Not to mention the moment he had unfurled the spread, insects of all sorts, the most prevalent being cockroaches and bedbugs fell out of it. Rezar knew sleep would be incredibly difficult for him in the coming weeks.

There was a bag of hay, probably kept there for him to use in making the ground less hard to sleep on. His rations consisted of two massive casks of water; they were both about a meter tall and half a meter wide. With proper rationing this should be enough for a week. There was a bag of incredibly hard bread, seven loaves in all to correspond with the seven days he had to remain here before he could go back to town to restock. There were also strips of dried processed meat, it wasn't much and seemed to be no more that a small luxury afforded to him, but at least he was getting some protein.

Lastly were the potatoes, even in a virtual world like Elysium; potatoes and its many variations were the easiest plants and staple food to grow.

However this was just ordinary potatoes, and not the sweet kind that could relatively be eaten raw, for Rezar if he had to eat this, then he had no choice but to start a fire, and that was just too dangerous a move to make with his current level of strength.

He placed all of his rations in a safe corner and made sure to store them properly. Then he picked up his mining pick, shovel and mining basket. Then he picked up the harpoon that was given to him as he made his way outside of the cave. It was time to go do what he was sent down here for; after all.....what else was there to do?