"What do you mean, sense them?" the hobgoblin replies, picking up the black stone glowing with a faint white light.
As I open my mouth to reply, I witness the entire rock she holds become enveloped in a portion of her green aura. Then, all the Ether within it pulses and is sucked out, disappearing into her hand and settling evenly throughout her being.
The instinctual sensor in the back of my mind registers her body as slightly warmer than before, and the rock she's holding becomes undetectable.
It is lifeless and black when she drops it back onto the ground and speaks again, holding her hammer up, ready to fight.
"Come on, answer me. You're telling me you can see where Ether Stones are? Is that some kind of new feature? Not even the Lords with High-Grade Avatars can do that... Do you have a Premium Avatar or something?"
I don't speak again. Clearly, I'm even more out of my element than I thought.
With my hands raised, I shrug and turn to my left, slowly walking 20 meters from where I started in silence as the hobgoblin's eyes track my every movement.
I'm unable to detect the exact positioning of each Ether Stone, but a strange pull in my mind gets hotter the closer I get to ones nearby. The rough direction of about a dozen stones in a hundred-meter radius floats in my subconscious, directing my footsteps.
I stop in place and dig through the loose black stones again, burrowing about two meters beneath the surface until I grab another black rock glowing with a faint white mist.
Then, I jump out of the pit I've dug and hold it up.
"Like this... they're everywhere. It's not like I tried to rob you of a rare resource."
She looks even more suspicious now, yelling from a distance.
"I don't trust you! That could be a fake so you have time to run away. Throw it here so I can scan it."
I let out a sigh and toss it her way. The stone is clearly glowing bright white, unlike all the others around here. I'm unsure how I'd fake it, but I just do as she says.
Once it tumbles to her feet, she bends down and looks at the stone for a few seconds. Her eyes widen as she picks it up.
The same green divine aura expands around the stone, and in the exact machine-like process, the stone is drained of its Ether, which evenly distributes throughout her body.
She looks up at me with excitement.
"What kind of Premium feature is that? Are there command contracts available to acquire sonar skills now? All my avatar grants me is that high-speed shielding technique—same as yours—and, of course, the Soul Weapon Assimilation to use Ether in my hammer attacks..."
Again, her words make no sense to me, but I begin to piece things together based on what I've seen so far.
Clearly, my ability to sense where Ether Stones are is special.
However, she believes it must be a Premium Avatar feature. I remember, back inside the throne, I was scanned, and it showed my available mana core, demon core, divine core, and Ether Stores. ṟ�
It makes sense that a demon with a Noble Bloodline would get a Premium Avatar, which appears to be top of the line in this realm. But the thing is, I don't even have an Avatar... This is my real body, so all her logical guesses only confuse me more.
I decide to go along with what she already believes. Telling her this is my real body would be even harder to explain.
"Yeah, it's something like that... a Premium Avatar. Like I told you before, I fell down here on my way to the Ellipsia Citadel. I'm not here to steal from your mines. If anything, I'd gladly pay you to help me get back above the clouds to meet back up with my soul-bonded pair, if you know a way."
Her confusion, unease, and shock turn to a smile, and a laugh erupts from her as she puts her hammer down, dropping the offensive stance.
"No way... You're a bonded Co-Lord? That means you must have used one of those ascension thrones..."
Her gaze tightens, but the smile across her face doesn't leave.
"But you're a human... That means you killed a demon to get up here. What Class World are you from?"
"I'm Ava. I guess we have a deal..."
–
Over the next half hour, I walk around the entire bottom of the massive pit we're in, picking out Ether Stones one by one with pinpoint accuracy.
Some are right near ground level, while others are up to five meters deep.
Ava helps me dig through the loose black rock to find each one, and every time I hand them over, she absorbs them in the exact same mechanical way through her palm.
I notice that every time I hand her a stone, it takes her a moment to register that the rock is an Ether Stone. It's as if she's scanning it to confirm it's real.
Considering this, and the fact that the stones are tens of meters apart at varying depths, I can see how it would take someone without Ether Sense a long time to find them.
By the time we hit the tenth stone, Ava is still equally surprised every time I pull one from the ground. She speaks up with an excited tone while pulling the Ether out of it.
"That would have taken my mining squad and me a few days to complete... no, maybe even more. We could catch up to this month's remaining quotas in just a few hours at this rate."
She stares up into the endless green fog above and whispers to herself, "We won't have to keep digging these pointless pits either... surface-spot mining will be even more efficient."
While she murmurs, I find another stone lodged just half a meter into one of the sloped walls of the pit and dig it out with ease.
The glowing stone rests in my hands as she looks my way.
"Go for it. This is an old pit mine anyway. We never would have found any of the stones you just pulled up. This is all undocumented profit."
I nod and close my eyes, feeling the small warmth emanating from the stone.
The imagery of Ava draining the other stones replays in my mind as I try to replicate the process.
An instinctual flow pulls in the silky Ether that permeates through my purple barrier, but it's extremely slow and weak.
Just like when I tried to form a barrier around my arm, this isn't going to be simple.
I feel small warm flows seep into me, dispersing and disappearing into the invisible Ether Stores within my consciousness. However, a large amount of Ether remains, glowing almost as brightly as when I started.
I move the stone around in my hands, trying to cover it with as much physical contact as possible, but the absorption rate remains slow...
It is certainly working, but it's not seamless or machine-like, as Ava's process is. Plus, I can't just eat this rock like I ate that pure Low-Quality Ether pill inside the throne's trials.
I let out a sigh and look up at the confused hobgoblin. "One moment. This is going to take a while..."
I sit down, take a deep breath, and fully concentrate on the stone, allowing slow-moving white energy to trickle out from the rock in my palms.
It doesn't get easier; in fact, it only gets harder as less Ether remains in the stone. The flow slows the longer I work at it.
After 30 minutes, I manage to pull out over two-thirds of the Ether, but the final amount glows so faintly and flows so slowly that it feels like it'll take hours to empty the rest.
On top of that, I don't feel any different. The tiny amount of Ether I managed to absorb is minuscule compared to what's already in my body.
I stand up, toss the used stone to Ava, and speak.
"The rest is yours if you want it. Let's just get to sparring. That's much more important to me than a little extra Ether anyway. I only have three days to master this before the Lord of this mine arrives, right?"