Chapter 19: Chapter 19: Collection and Excavation

Prim Proper, a halfling crafter who had earlier today believed themselves to have somewhat of a strange build in this game, sat slack-jawed at the cave entrance as she watched a fox girl mage accelerate to almost imperceptible speeds before brutalizing local wildlife to death via sheer blunt force trauma.

Her earlier doubts that she’d actually soloed an entire dungeon herself disappeared almost as fast as the golems had.

“Haaa…. haaa… wow this thing really was worth the skill points after all, huh! Prim, didya see all that? Didya, didya?”

Panting loudly, Monica’s expression had quickly dropped from a that of a crazed, bloodthirsty serial killer to a child searching for praise from their parents.

“I-I would’ve expected something more… magical, from a mage…? Do you always fight like this? I guess it makes sense that you snatched an entire dungeon for yourself if you can move like that…”

“Eh? No, I just got that skill right before we left town.”

“…”

“...what?”

The part of the crafter’s brain that wasn’t a tangled wad of conflicting fear responses was a mixture of being impressed, fascinated, and incredibly thankful she wasn’t fighting her.

Crouching over the piles of debris that had formerly composed the stonehounds, the fox picked out the remaining bits of them all that seemed useful.

“Hey Prim, check if any of this is useful or- ah!”

She stepped over to hand the monster drops to her party member… and sailed right past her, nearly launching herself facefirst into the wall behind her as a single step rocketed her forward.

“R-Right, it’s uh… a little hard to control when there’s nothing to dodge, ehe.”

Very slowly inching her way backwards, she eventually handed the items off, making perfectly sure she was standing completely still as she did so.

The crafter cautiously accepted, making sure not to be get struck by the uncontrollably fast fox as she took the items from her. Her monocle whirred to life once again, studying the minerals scavenged out.

“Mmhmm, mmhmm… high flexibility ore, fairly nice sheen and color as well… possibly good for a light armor, maybe display pieces, something nice for a window item…”

Prim muttered to herself, the new toy already distracting her from the earlier events.

“What is that thing, anyways? Some kinda scanner or something?”

She gestured at her overly ornate jeweler’s monocle, prodding at it extremely rapidly and earning herself an instinctive smack on the wrist.

“C-Careful…! This is a where every cent I scrapped together day one went, nifty little thing that’s been an absolute lifesaver~”

Poking at it gently herself, she flicked a finger towards her party mate, an item window being forced onto her screen.

[Master’s Eye] (Head)

- DEX +15, WIS +20, VIT +10

- Boosts crafting quality/quantity by 25%.

- Unlocks [Study] spell while equipped.

[Study]

- Gained from item (Master’s Eye).

- Displays all relevant information for item/character/location.

- Success rate scales with WIS. Automatic success on non-hostile targets.

“Oooooh… that’s how you were checking all my equipment before then, wasn’t it?”

“Mmhmm! We’re in the same party, so it works all the time. Which reminds me…”

Her gaze shot up from the miscellaneous loot piled into her hands, monocle whirring as it zoomed in directly on the speed demon herself, pages of stats and skills flooding into her menu at once.

[Monica Furdel] Lv. 11 Kitsune Gloom Mage

Status:

HP: 55 MP: 80

STR: 0 DEX: 16

MAG: 273 WIS: 147

VIT: 0 AGI: 62

LUC: 129

Skills:

Active – Shock, Sap, Blowback, Hazard Fumes, (Silkshot)

Passive – Tormentor, Sadist, Gloom Mastery I, Dancer’s Weave, Environmental Mastery, Gathering II, Crafting I, Survivalism, Scrounger, Bind Endurance I, Fire Endurance I, Swimming I

“Mmhmm… Tormentor and Sadist make sense for a status build… the crafting and gathering ones I knew already… the resist skills raise a few questions… mostly a hodgepodge of everything so far. But… your MAG is absurdly high, and you don’t seem to have any attacks that use it?”

“Well, er, I kinda started with no attacks and just… went with it? I’ve found some… workarounds for it.”

Prim’s memory rewound several minutes, replaying the scene of enemies being batted around like a cat with their toys.

“You killed a boss like this?”

“Eventually, sure!”

The crafter marked a few notes for the skills she’d seen in Monica’s status page before closing it out, noting some to try and pick up for herself later.

“What about you, hm? I don’t even know what class you are, little miss nosy.”

“Eh? O-Oh, it’s not really important… I just wanted to craft so I didn’t think about it much, honestly.”

“So you just started with a crafter class then?”

“Err… there weren’t any of those t start with, actually…”

Monica leaned in reeeeeeal close, squinting as she studied her companion intently.

“Let’s see… maybe some kind of mage too? Or, no, crafting probably takes DEX, so you’re a Ranger! No, a Rogue! Merchants are just fancy thieves, so definitely a Rogue! But maybe a mage still, like a buff focused one!”

She rattled off high speed answers, never settling on a single guess, and never getting a single correct answer either.

“N-No no no, none of that! I-I just picked randomly because none of them really seemed interesting, and I got stuck with a dumb one, that’s all!”

“Dumb one, huh? Then… you’re definitely a mage like I am, then!”

“Guh, no! It’s… fine, here!”

Red-faced, the halfling flicked her screen again, throwing her own status page at the curious kitsune as she departed down a tunnel in a rush, trying to ignore the subject as she set off for the actual gathering they’d come for.

[Prim Proper] Lv. 7 Halfling Berserker

Status:

HP: 90 MP: 40

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STR: 105 DEX: 53

MAG: 5 WIS: 46

VIT: 25 AGI: 14

LUC: 32

Skills:

Active – Crush, Rending Blow, Counter, Stoneshatter, Breakthrough, (Study)

Passive – Rage Mastery I, Gathering II, Crafting II, Survivalism, Scrounger

“...Berserker?!”

The dull thud of a distant explosion startled her back to attention, launching off down the hallway after the other half of the party as the echoing explosions continued at a steady rhythm.

“And once more… Stoneshatter!”

It didn’t take long to catch up to her again at her speed, finding her working at mining out a rather rich looking vein of ore in the wall that had been ripped open, loose resources scattered around the tunnel floor.

The source of the noises she’d heard was exceedingly easy to find, as the crafter had finally deigned to take their weapon out of their inventory for the first time since she’d first met her.

Currently hefted over her shoulder was a solid mass of raw iron that could theoretically be referred to as a hammer, an order of magnitude larger than Prim herself was, toting it without any real visible effort on her part.

“Again… Stoneshatter!!”

She swung the hammer down like a kid’s foam sword, slamming the head of it into the wall as the ore vein was blasted open from the sheer force behind the blow.

Monica frantically dodged the launched debris from the excavation as ore peppered the walls around them both.

“C-Careful…!”

“Huh- gah, sorry!!”

Prim immediately went red again, rapidly trying to gather up everything she’d sent flying with her strip mining technique. Monica did her best to help out with the collection process as she sped circles around the other girl.

“Berserker… it, uh, doesn’t really fit you?”

“Don’t remind me… it’s pretty useful at least, I haven’t found a better way to mine resources, and I can handle most monsters without much of a hassle.”

“Being able to actually damage things does sound pretty nice.”

“Don’t act like I’m the one with a weird build here!!”

----------------------------------------

The unusual duo quickly fell into a rhythm on their farming trip after a bit.

Prim advanced down the tunnel unchallenged, establishing a smooth rhythm of obliterating massive chunks of wall as she went, without bothering to even check for any kind of useful resources as they went for quantity over quality.

Monica zipped and zoomed after her through the path of destruction she left in her wake, running double duty as both their designated material collector and crowd control, the occasional groups of stonehounds being reduced to piles of rubble indistinguishable from the rest of the debris they were making.

Had anyone else been here to witness this non-standard resource grinding strategy, they’d likely have thought they were having a particularly confusing nightmare.

They worked like a machine, inventories piling up with thousands upon thousands of the materials they’d come for and plenty more they hadn’t, neither of them very picky about the spoils they gathered as they simply vacuumed it all up.

Before long they strayed far beyond their starting area, excavating the mountain pathways thoroughly as they left the poor land barren and devastated behind them as the unyielding march pressed deeper.

Eventually the pair, failing to realize their method had become too efficient, strayed even deeper still into the tunnel network, neither of them noticing any change at all as they went at it.

As it turned out, a Level 8 enemy dies all the same as a Level 20 enemy when subjected to a literal meat grinder bulldozing through them.

Enemy levels soared higher as their inattentive rampage grew faster, two uninterrupted hours of devastation eventually exhausting itself as they wound to a close at a dead end path.

“Haaaa… did we miss a turn somewhere…?”

“Uuuuhhh… I don’t think we did? I didn’t think we’d hit the end of the path this soon though, feels like we just started.”

“Lemme check, we should have mapped the area we came through.”

Monica flicked her map open, trying to trace the path backwards towards where they had come in from.

The color drained from her face as she zoomed further and further out.

“...How far did we mean to go, exactly?”

“I hadn’t really planned a distance? Just go until we hit either a metaphorical or literal wall.”

“Uh huh. Does roughly 4 miles of underground tunnels sound right then?”

“What? No, that’s not-”

Prim quickly flicked her own map open, and her face rapidly turned the same pale color to match Monica’s.

“-...shit.”

The thoroughly exhausted pair sat down against the back wall of their tunnel, trying to catch their breath. Both of them were almost entirely empty on mana by now, the constant skill use from both sides burning through their reserves slowly but steadily.

“I guess we should, uh… head back the way we came, yeah? It has to be clear still.”

“Good point, we made a pretty clean sweep on the way here.”

“Right, right! Yeah, no problem at all, just a straight shot back from here!”

The fox hopped to her feet, a newfound spring in her step as she tried to psyche both of them up, dragging the pair back down the tunnel. The last intersection wasn’t too far away, both party members opening their maps again to check which tunnel they’d come from once more.

“Let’s see… we came from the west, so it’s should be this w-”

Turning to head them off back down the correct route, Monica was met with an entirely blocked off pathway, rocks stacked together high to cut that route off entirely.

More relevantly, these specific rocks were very much animated, and were barreling towards them both more rapidly than rocks usually did, seemingly very upset with the number of its comrades they had dealt with earlier.

[Deep Mountain Boulderhound] Lv. 27

“Um, Prim?”

“Y-Yeah?”

“I’m out of mana.”

“Ah! Me too.”

They glanced at one another for a moment, then back at the closing-in hulk of an enemy.

Reaching an implicit understanding of their present situation, the duo turned on their heels in perfect sync, and began sprinting for their lives down an unmapped tunnel away as the encroaching stony maw pursued them with a single-minded anger.

Somewhere several miles back, a sunbathing Silk lay sprawled out in a cool forest glade, and felt as if they had missed out on something important.

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