Chapter 454: Prospecting

“Remember that time when Bass got her shirt ripped off? Treble was so mad! I swear his whole neck turned as red as a tomato.”

“Haha, that was awesome!”

Two men in leather jackets were sitting on a log inside a trench, laughing and flipping knives in their hands. Then one of them looked around and his voice got serious, “Keep your voice down, Switch. If any of Reverb’s goons hear us we’ll lose our heads.”

The other man didn’t respond.

“Switch? Did you hear me? What’s wrong? Why aren’t you mo…”

The second man’s vision went dark, just in time for the first, Switch, to slump over and fall off the log. The poor fellow had no idea that right when he turned his head a bright flash of light shot through Switch’s head. A thousand yards away, Sage lowered his rifle. The poor fellow lived his last few seconds of life in confusion while the rifle charged up it’s next shot. With the help of Foresight, Sage could easily time his shots when the man wasn’t paying attention.

So far, Sage had brought them past a dozen small teams on patrol. It was pretty impressive how many guards the Flares had. Despite seeming like such savages they must have a meticulous leader.

Unfortunately, these two were within the search area and it would be extremely difficult to do a careful search while avoiding them. Hopefully with only the two of them missing it wouldn’t draw too much attention. The most dangerous moment was actually when he fired. The shot created a bright streak of light and Sage carefully moved into a position where he could fire the shot from a prone position between some low hills. Their position was a few hundred yards outside the quarry, but the Flares were cautious enough to have rings of guards not just inside the quarry, but on the upper edge and expanding outwards for nearly a mile. They’d snuck between a dozen different guard posts, but the last one had to be removed.

Aurora started to walk towards the bodies, but Sage stopped her, “I’ll bury them. I think you all should spread out and search. The area is clear for a few hundred yards, I’ll keep watch for the Flares.”

They nodded, but didn’t stop moving. Cross joined Aurora and Sage could only follow them helplessly. He’d wanted to steal the bodies and see if they had any Psionic Crystals, but he couldn’t if they were watching. Cross pulled out his huge sword and used it like a shovel. With his immense strength it was like the dirt and sand were as light as feathers and there was a deep hole in less than a minute. Aurora walked up close and it was like a thousand invisible hands undressed and searched them, flipping every one of their pockets inside out and stripping off all their clothing. Even the garments weren’t spared. She tore the seams apart and completely disassembled them, just to make sure there weren’t any secret pockets or hidden compartments. The shell on her back seemed to open on its own, the opening expanding and all the spoils from the two men flew into it. Then it closed again and she nodded to Sage.

Do I really look that untrustworthy? No big deal. It was the corpses that I wanted anyway.

Cross kicked the bodies into the hole he’d dug and with just a few sweeps of his weapon, it was filled back up again over the top of them. Sage couldn’t help but admire their efficiency. He joined with the others, starting to search for the location of the ‘Divine Amethyst’ deposit. Funny enough, as scientific as their names for psionic powers sounded, they had a more fantastical name for what Tao Ba simply called a Psionic Crystal. While the others searched he casually dropped a Storage Ring onto the ground. When no one was nearby, the Warp Worm came to the surface and swallowed it up. Then it tunneled over to where the bodies were buried and swallowed them up as well. Inside the Warp Worm they were transferred into the Storage Ring and a few minutes later, Sage picked up the ring from a patch of empty ground.

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With his task complete, he wandered over to where the Warp Worm had discovered an underground tunnel system and then called over the others to join him once he found a surface entrance. He’d already found this spot before firing at the two guards, but he wanted some time to discreetly collect their bodies. Now that he was done, he could point it out and they could start with the real mission.

“Acumen, you stay up here and be our lookout. Spark will back you up, right Sparky?”

Cloud jumped in and remarkably, none of the others disagreed with him. Afterwards, he took the lead and hopped into the hole in the ground. Aurora sent Sage a sympathetic look, while Nova just grinned before the two followed after Cloud. Spring was last and she looked at Sage with a shiver before she too followed them inside. That left just Spark Benjam on the surface with Sage and the man put a hand onto his shoulder.

“Don’t get too upset about it. You’re really good at being a lookout, and even though we all like you, we just met you yesterday. If you’re up here, they will be less worried you’re going to lead us into a trap. Look on the bright side, you have me to keep you company, and I’m the most entertaining member of the team!”

He made sure to show off, snapping his fingers and causing electrical sparks to shoot off of them. Then he held up his hands and shot lightning between his fingers, waving and weaving the arcs into webs and cages between his outstretched hands. Sage nodded and whistled in appreciation of his skill, but he was actually more focused on his Twin Soul and the Warp Worm, which were both now shadowing the rest of the team as they descended into the tunnels. After a few minutes the Warp Worm couldn’t get any closer, there was a thick field of energy that was wearing it down and weakening its abilities. It was no longer able to break down matter and tunnel through the stone so it had to retreat. Sage sent it to patrol the area and look out for Flares.

After climbing into the depths for nearly an hour, the group entered a huge open chamber. The walls of the chamber were completely smooth and perfectly rounded, just like a huge sphere had been carved into the solid rock out of nowhere. In the center of that sphere, there was a huge pile of diamond like crystals with a pink tint and flecked with metallic purple like glitter. The pile was so large that it nearly leveled out the spherical chamber to have a flat floor, but the crystals were also scattered against and embedded in the walls. It looked quite like a larger crystal had exploded, throwing shards everywhere into the room and then the debris was left piled up in the center.

The group of five were amazed and ecstatic, their jaws dropping at the sight in front of them. Cloud Jaro was first in line and kept his guard up, holding his sword at a downward angle, the door-size piece of metal held like a shield in front of him. Nova’s eyes seemed to glitter, “A top-grade deposit! We’re rich!”

Spring seemed a bit fearful, and dampened Nova’s enthusiasm, “It may be a top-grade deposit, but we aren’t top-grade psychics! There’s no way we can withstand the pressure to collect all the Divine Amethysts.”

As she spoke, the other’s excitement died down and they finally felt the intense amount of power radiating from the center of the huge pile. There was a massive chunk of crystal that looked somewhat like a translucent egg shaped rock, except dipped in magma and left to cool. The otherwise pink crystals had turned to a deep purple-like obsidian around that egg shape, and the egg itself had a blood red sphere at its core.

“The Divine Egg!”

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