Chapter 221: Cracking Rocks

Chapter 221: Cracking Rocks

The cavern was large but far longer than it was wide, stretching in both directions. Everywhere was evidence of mining. He skirted around large, open pits a hundred feet wide and hundreds of feet deep, stone ladders descending to tunnels that ran horizontally into the rock. He saw a dozen more spiraling stone stairways ascending to crevices in the ceiling and continuing into them. Along the walls were endless tunnels at all levels. Some went only a dozen paces, and others went deep, branching into an endless maze.

Five times he was attacked by Stone Lurkers. They were large ones, ranging from Level 8 to Level 11, but not bosses. The slower-moving creatures were easy for him to spot. He was forced to fight two of them in the tunnels, dodging and hitting them repeatedly with claws, tail, and spikey stick until they crumbled to rubble. The three that attacked him in the open were more fun, allowing him to experiment with spells. He was trying to find combinations of his runes that were effective in combat and didn't send him to the infirmary.

His first spell was a Rune of Force, modified by the dwarven engineering runes that strengthened and defined the flow of fluids. He added the Void Rune, last hearing Kepler's voice in his head describing equal and opposite forces. As the Stone Lurker lumbered towards him, he held the runic formation in his mind and watched as it took form in the air before him, glowing runes connected by circles and spheres. The mana drained from him, and he triggered the formation. The runes were converted to pure force, shooting straight at his foe. The Void Rune drained the equal and opposite force that shot toward Milo. The monster was struck a hard blow as the spell accelerated the air and anything else in front of it into the Stone Lurker's chest, knocking it backward twenty feet and chipping away its armor in a six-inch-wide circle. It was only lightly injured. The original appearance of this chapter can be found at Ñøv€lß1n.

Milo scampered backward 40 feet and began building a modified formation, narrowing the radius to three inches. He double-checked it, then triggered the second formation. This time the spell punched into the monster's chest, creating an explosion of stone chips and dust. It regained its feet and charged at him. Milo repeated, getting the same result, and on the fourth spell, he shattered the creature to rubble.

Working with the formations to cast spells excited him. He had control of the variables and could experiment endlessly. But they came at a cost. He was sweating and felt mentally exhausted. Kepler had warned him several times about the repercussions of a poorly built formation. Milo didn't want to blow one of his arms off. The Star-God had six; he only had two and a tail. And he was so thankful for his tail! He doubted he could have managed these formations with just two hands. (If he sat, could he use his feet? He filed that thought away for later.)

Before moving on, he practiced with a different set of Engineering Runes, narrowing the area of effect to just one inch in diameter. Theoretically, this should focus all of the force of the six-inch version into an area only 1/36th as big, greatly increasing the penetration of the spell. He tried using the formation against a large rock. The first thing he noticed was that it was more difficult to cast the formation, as if narrowing the focus added some pressure on his mind. But the results spoke for themselves. There was a deafening sound, and the rock exploded, falling into two halves. He destroyed two more stones before continuing, confident he could cast this new version of his force spell.

The rock in the center of the pit felt odd to Milo's stone sense. It was dense and hard, trying to Identify finally gave him the name Durumgneiss, a Tier Four material. That explained why the pit mine had stopped here, and the center area was flat. The layer of incredibly hard rock put an end to further mining. All of the broken picks and tools Milo had seen had been rusted iron or steel. The mining technique revolved around finding hidden nuggets of Silverite Ore and digging around them.

Cautiously, he approached the tower. A glint of silver attracted his attention. Weaving its way through the Durumgneiss was a thin line of shiny white metal. The only information that Identify gave him was a name, Durum Argenti. Hard Silver? Paying attention to the rock around him, he saw other small threads. They became thicker as he approached the tower. The doorway was open. The door was made of wooden beams, each a foot square. The door lay flat on the ground, its hinged destroyed by blows from tiny picks.

The large room at the bottom of the tower resembled a dwarven bar after 'free beer night.' Smashed tables and chairs were everywhere. Broken mugs and staved-in kegs littered the floor. But while the dwarven bar would have had a few dozen miners sleeping off their drink and bruises, this room only held the long dead. There were hundreds of small skeletons, many torn apart or with smashed skulls. They were mixed with a much smaller number of large skeletons. Milo recognized humans, orcs, and what he thought was an elf or two. In one corner, surrounded by piles of smaller foes, four dwarven skeletons had been hacked to pieces. Their crude chainmail armor was rusting on their bones.

Nearby was a pile of rusted metal. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of small, broken collars told a story. How many of the miners had it taken to overthrow their masters? And how many had died digging for the mineral wealth in these caverns?

Milo felt tired just thinking about it. The room was open all the way to the top of the tower, with a stone spiral staircase in the center, wrapped around a stone pillar only six inches thick. The stonework amazed Milo. By any calculations he did, the stairway shouldn't support itself, yet it was solid. He started the long walk to the roof; he wanted a safe place to rest and be alone, away from this monument to an old battle. If he had been tired before, he was exhausted by the time he reached the top. It was just what he wanted, a wide, flat expanse of bare stone. A two-foot wall surrounded the edge.

He brought out his tent and bedroll, summoned Georgie to guard, and slept.