Instead of heading north to the main mine tunnel for the village, Oliver actually brought Jade over to the woods outside his backyard. He wasn’t wearing his mask or helmet yet and didn’t even bring any tools with him. 

“Where are we going?”

“There are hundreds of drifts all across Greenstone Mountain.” Oliver pointed up towards the dozens of visible mine entrances from their current location. Even with a lot of trees in the way, it was still possible to see some of the higher elevation drift mines.

“The tunnels are pretty crazy and chaotic. Nobody really knows how deep they go… I’ve heard stories of entire villages being swallowed up by sinkholes. Fortunately, there aren’t any tunnels directly under Verde. For now.”

“This is kind of exciting…” Jade giggled and followed the boy to a random metal shack in the middle of the woods. She already had her helmet and mask on. There was also a bag full of tools on her back.

“I always wanted to go down into the mines, but Papa wouldn’t let me.”

“He probably saved your life then.” Oliver snickered and shook his head, “The tunnels are dangerous. You’ll understand when we go down there. Come on. This is my own personal drift. I built it over the past few years.”

“By yourself?”

“Bari and Irvi helped, but yeah, mostly by myself.”

Inside of the shack was a simple-looking hole in the ground. Similar to a well, there was a bucket on a rope above it, with a metal hoist over on the side. Oliver turned on some lights and the whole place was brightly illuminated, even down inside the hole in the rocky ground was lit up.

“Be careful on the ladder. I don’t know if it can handle your weight.”

“Hey!” Jade retorted instinctively, but then giggled from embarrassment.

“I’m serious. I made this ladder out of wood and I’ve never tried to climb it with a full load. The bucket and hoist are for that part. If you want, I can hoist you down instead?”

“I’ll take the ladder. I’m not ‘that’ heavy.”

It was actually true. Jade was three times heavier than a normal human her size due to being made mostly out of stone, but she was also relatively skinny for her height. At most, she weighed about 330 pounds or close to 150 kilograms. The wooden ladder creaked and groaned, but still survived under her assault a whole fifteen meters until she reached the bottom.

“I made sure to dig at least two meters high for most of the mine. I reinforced the ceiling and walls as much as I could, but you still need to be careful. You need to hone your instincts if you wanna survive. Because at any moment, for some reason you’ll never know or understand, the spot your standing could collapse on you or even downward.”

Oliver’s mask and helmet appeared on his face. He actually already had a bunch of random equipment stored in this central area of the mine. There was even a toilet and a pantry nearby. Electrical wires ran across the ceiling and little lightbulbs lit up the five branches of the mine. None of those branches ran in the direction of Verde Village, even though there were clearly signs of green and yellow crystals over on the western wall. Even a few streaks of gold and silver.

“The first and probably the most important rule of mining… Don’t get greedy.”

“I’m not… I’m not greedy.” Jade looked away from the shiny wall that was radiating plenty of comfortable green light, “I just felt… It reminded me of sunlight.”

“Just like sunlight, you can get burned if you-uh…” Oliver smiled wryly under his mask and shook his head, “Never mind. You’re probably fine. But I’ve burned my skin plenty of times because I wasn’t careful.”

“I remember burning myself too. When I was younger…”

“Anyway, the eastern drift is the longest. It was the easiest to dig because it’s pretty level.”

Oliver walked ahead and guided the curious girl down the long, relatively straight tunnel. There were some other branches splintering out a few meters from time to time, but everything was still brightly lit and easily visible. The ceiling and walls were always reinforced with thick wooden boards or thin metal pipes. There was also a long, wide pipe along the ceiling, which ran all the way up the shaft to the shack above, which had open windows.

“Did you really build all this yourself? It’s amazing!”

“Actually, a lot of things were just ‘conjured’. Like this little mine cart and the metal rails. Otherwise, it really wouldn’t be worth the cost if I had to buy everything myself. Those bastards in the Greenstone Mining Company usually refuse to even sell anything to us. Instead, they make the miners pay crazy fees to rent equipment, then they deduct lots of gold every time a piece of gear is damaged or broken.”

“That’s horrible. Why don’t people make their own equipment then?”

“It’s not worth it. Like I said. It’s just too expensive.” Oliver shook his head, patting the side of the short silvery minecart that barely reached his knee, “This thing looks simple, but it has a lot of expensive parts. Especially the batteries on the bottom.”

He easily picked the cart up off the track and flipped it over to show the relatively small but powerful black 12 volt battery. There were also some wires and a remote on the side that controlled forward, backward and another button to dump out the materials inside onto the ground.

“Did you have batteries and electricity back when you grew up?”

“I don’t really know.” Jade shook her head, “We used candles for lighting and I don’t remember anything like the refrigerator in your kitchen. But we lived in a small village like yours… Maybe the people in Greenstone Castle had electricity?”

“It’s possible.” The young man nodded seriously, “Even now, I think most things like batteries are just created by Cursed Words. My father taught me how a lot of shit worked. Even if he didn’t know all the fancy technical terms for everything, he could still conjure batteries, lightbulbs and some simple machines easily.”

“My Papa didn’t like to conjure anything.” Jade held the heavy wood and metal cart in her hands, easily placing it gently onto the two rails. Then she played with the buttons, going backwards and forward a few times before she stopped.

“He liked to… Sculpt with his hands. He could sculpt anything. Anything.”

“My Dad only made it to Rank 5.” Oliver sighed, then led her along deeper into the tunnel while dragging the cart forward with a handle on the front end to save the battery a bit of power.

“He was a Dwarf Miner.”

“I’ve heard of the Dwarves before…” She looked at the 170 cm boy and asked, “Are you going to be a Dwar-”

“Hell no! Don’t jinx me with that shit!”

“Okay, sheesh, sorry~! Ehaah-ahaha~!”

“Sorry, I just…” Oliver snickered and looked back at the glowing green eyes behind the gas mask, “It’s not just about height. Even Dwarves aren’t immune to the Greenstone Curse or Plague or whatever you wanna call it. I need to find another way. And I need to find it quickly…”