When Klein returned and heard about Verna’s parents, he felt guilty. However, he knew that there was likely nothing he could have done. Of course, it didn’t stop Verna from tricking him into becoming a free ‘bodyguard’ for her over the next few months. At least whenever she needed to head into Kale Town, she would drag Klein along.

Verna also hired some close and trusted friends for a more long-term employment. She even helped Forest get his ‘Hunting License’, while Irving became an official ‘bodyguard’ in order to support his child. She also hired some actual ‘Guards’, only about Rank 1 or 2 at most. Rufus actually started out working for her parents the same way. Over a decade later, he managed to become a genuine Bodyguard. It was a pretty well-known method of improvement and one which made a lot more money than a ‘Security Guard’.

“I heard that Irving became an actual Guard yesterday!” Jade reached out with her right hand and lifted several tons of broken rock up the long mineshaft, “That poor old man sold his inheritance for only a thousand gold.”

“A thousand gold is a lot!” Oliver retorted as he grabbed the floating balls in the air and tossed them into the heavy-duty metal minecart. He pressed a button on the side and it went up the inclined tunnel very slowly. Then he conjured up a second one with a little bit of effort and continued tossing those rocks into it. They still had lots of metals like gold, silver and iron inside. Not to mention crystals.

“It’s enough to put somebody through four years of College with all expenses paid!”

“Oh! I guess that’s true! Ehaah-aaaheheaah~!”

It was really loud with all the rocks hitting each other, so once the process was over and they all just floated there, there was an eerie silence. Which was broken when Jade started helping to put all the floating orbs into the carts with her glowing red hands.

“When are we going to get our licenses?”

“Ugh…” Oliver’s groan was muffled by his mask, “It’s like half a day’s ride to Kale Town…”

“Ollie, it’s been a year already. If we wait any longer, we’ll be Rank 5! I don’t wanna get in trouble!”

The two of them grew a lot the past year. Not just in physical strength, but also in maturity and height. Oliver stopped growing at about 190 cm, which was fairly tall… However, Jade was still growing and she was already a little bit taller than him. The difference is that he was fairly wide and extremely muscular, while she was very thin.

Since the two of them were so tall, they had to make the mine tunnels that much larger… But with their abilities improving, the difficulty wasn’t that high. Besides, mine tunnels were never really meant to be ‘comfortable’ or particularly spacious.

“Have you ever been to the city before?”

“You know I haven’t, Ollie.”

“Neither have I…” Oliver snickered as he sent another mine cart up the rails. Eventually the tunnel would even out and they would all just line up in a long train, pushing each other forward until they ended up in the central area. Fortunately, they weren’t working alone anymore.

“The city ain’t that bad, Ollie!” A loud, cracking voice came from the top of the steep slope, “I got my Miner’s License ahead of time! It was super easy! Only took a few minutes to register!”

“Yeah, but it’s such a long drive!” Oliver shouted at the gray-eyed boy, then turned to the gray-skinned girl and asked, “What if we… What if we walked instead?”

“Walked?!” Jade glared at him with glowing green eyes, “Oliver! It’s forty kilometers!”

“Exactly! It’s forty kilometers! Have you ever ridden in a carriage for four or five hours?!”

“I’ve never ridden a carriage before!”

“Neither have I!” Oliver cleared his throat, “Umm, at least not for that long. I remember getting really sick the one time I tried though.”

“Hahahahaha~!” Loud laughter came from the end of the tunnel.

“I should be fine…” Jade looked a little nervous, “But we don’t get sick on the mine carts, so why would a carriage make us sick?”

“I don’t know…” Oliver shook his head, “Maybe it’s the smell? Or all the shaking? My carts are usually really steady compared to a carriage through those shitty trails in the woods…”

“I know!” The stone girl patted her glowing orange palm with the bottom of her fist and made a loud noise, “What if we just dig a tunnel and put down rails?! That way, we could come and go from Kale Town whenever we want!”

“Jade, it’s forty freaking kilometers! How many years would that take?!”

“It would be really cool though!”

“It would be amazing! But… Well, now that I think about it, maybe it wouldn’t be that big of a deal…” Oliver snickered and looked toward the ‘southwest’, though he was only staring at a stone wall with a potato engraved on it.

“We don’t have to dig the whole way. There are countless drifts across the mountainside. If we just dug in a straight line, we’d bump into them sooner or later. The only issue is that it takes a lot of time to make rails. And you’d have to reinforce a lot of the way…”

“Ollie, it’d be easier to just walk there!” Barilo shouted from the end of the tunnel, “Just ask Verna for a ginger pill and stop being a baby!”

“Ehah-ehah-ehahahaha~!”

“Alright, alright, don’t worry, we’ll head over to Kale Town soon. Right now, let’s go down and see the situation.”

Oliver looked down into the dark abyss and turned his hard-hat light on, but it still couldn’t reach anywhere near the bottom. He hooked a rope to a metal beam above his head and started rappelling down! The green-robed statue-girl was even more extreme… She just walked off the edge and started free-falling! However, as she got closer to the bottom, her feet started glowing a little red and her speed slowed down dramatically. Eventually she hovered a meter above the jagged rocky surface at the bottom of the shaft.

“Ollie! Ollie! Come quick! It’s so pretty down here!”

“Pretty?!” When he reached the bottom of the vertical tunnel, he was shocked and amazed, “Holy shit! Hahahaha~! We hit the Motherlode!”

They actually only dug down a few dozen meters in a straight line, but they ran into a huge underground cavern! It was a hundred meter wide cavern. All along the floor, the walls and the ceiling were countless giant crystals! Greenstone! Specifically, green crystals attached to brown and gray rocks… Some were also more lime green or yellow. There were also plenty of gold seams mixed in with other minerals and metals that were valuable.

“Is it just me or is it really hot in here? Uh, it’s kinda hard to breathe…”

“Ollie! Go! Get out of here quickly!” It was only at that moment when Jade finally realized the problem! She was totally fine and even felt happy in such an environment, but how could ordinary flesh and blood survive around so much Greenstone?!