“I’m glad you’re back too, but you can’t be seen by anyone else!”

A big black tarp suddenly appeared around the four of them and Verna pushed Oliver’s chest while whispering, “Go! Hurry up and hide! Meet us at your house!”

“Wait, what’s wrong? Are we…”

“Come on, Jade.” Oliver frowned and pulled the confused statue along as the two of them disappeared into the woods in a couple seconds. They ran around quietly behind the houses on the eastern side of the square, basically along the riverbank. It only took less than a minute before they reached the back door of the house. Then he conjured a key according to memory and opened the door.

“What’s wrong, Ollie? Are we in trouble?! Do people know what happened back then?!”

“Shhh~! Don’t say it. Nothing happened.”

“Don’t worry, nobody is listening here. Nobody saw you two idiots either.” A man who was almost as tall as Oliver walked in behind them and closed the door. He took off his black hood and white bird mask, revealing a slightly aged and tired face compared to before.

“It’s been a long time, Oliver. And Jade. I’m glad you two are okay.”

“I’m glad you’re fine too, Klein.” Oliver snickered and hugged the skinny ‘middle-aged’ man, “You finally reached Rank 6 too?”

“Finally?!” Klein rolled his brown eyes and complained, “I’m not a freak like you little bastards, okay?! Wait, you reached Rank 6 already?! You’re only sixteen!”

“Ollie and Jade are already Rank 6?!” Peridot shouted after she crossed the kitchen, pushed Klein out of the way and hugged Oliver again, “Weren’t you both only Rank 4 last year?!”

“We were trapped kilometers underground and completely lost for a whole year.” Jade giggled, “If we didn’t get stronger, we wouldn’t be able to go home.”

“Poor Peri, I’m already Rank 3 and she’s still Wordless, heheh~!” Verna also came over and hugged Oliver, “I gave her a choice to pick from a dozen different Words and she refused them all! I think she secretly has the Word ‘Lazy’ tattooed on her ass!”

“Shut your mouth!”

“Alright, both of you stop yelling, You’re gonna draw attention to us!” Klein shouted angrily and the four of them glared at him, “Umm… So yeah, anyway, what the hell happened back then?”

Oliver walked over to the kitchen table and sat down in a creaking wooden chair that felt a lot smaller than he remembered. Jade also sat next to him, but conjured up a stone chair that could easily withstand her weight. Then Verna and Peridot wrestled over the seat next to Oliver, with the stronger Rank 3 Merchant smirking as she pushed the weak Wordless girl off to the side.

“Bitch!”

“Slut!”

“Both of you, cut that shit out!” Klein sat down across from the four ‘kids’, with one side of the long table to himself.

“We found the Mother Lode!” Jade shouted excitedly, “It was a huge crystal cavern! There was so much! It was amazing!”

“Yeah…” Oliver nodded and sighed, “At least three or four million gold. And that was just what we could see on the surface layer. Shit, it still pisses me off!”

“What?!” Obviously Verna was the most shocked by the news, “Can you still go down and get it?!”

“Uh… Maybe, but it’d take years to dig it all out now. At that time, it was all ‘right there’, ya know?”

“What happened?!”

“Uh, calm down.” Oliver snickered and calmly explained, “Not long after we found the huge lode, three asshole Dwarves from the Greenstone Mining Company blasted their way into ‘our’ mine. Then they threatened us and we fought, in the end, the cavern collapsed.”

“Are they dead?” Klein asked with a serious expression on his face, “Are you sure you’re the only survivors?”

“Definitely dead. Unless someone channels their spirits to testify against us, the two of us are the only ones that know what happened exactly…”

“That’s good.” Verna held his hand and breathed a sigh of relief, “But you two still need to lay low for a while… At least until that shitty company is completely dead.”

“You also need to worry about the cops.” Peridot pouted on the side, “That asshole Sheriff has been back here every few weeks since you guys disappeared.”

“Did he do anything to you?” Oliver frowned and looked over at the cute freckled girl.

“Aside from annoying the shit outta me? Nope.”

“If he did something to you, tell me and I’ll make sure he never hurts anyone again.” Jade’s yellow eyes glowed green for a moment as her emotions got heated, but then settled down shortly afterwards.

“If he really did anything to anyone in the village, he would’ve died from the ‘plague’ by now.” Klein snickered and shook his head, “Anyway, you two really can’t come back from the dead just yet.”

“The three of us can leave Verde together.” Peridot suggested, “How about we buy a boat and hide out on a tropical island?”

“It’s monsoon season.” Verna retorted, “And there are countless pirates all over the oceans around Kresvallia. More importantly, Ollie has motion sickness! How is he going to ride a boat anywhere?”

“I’ve never been on a boat before.” Oliver snickered and shrugged his shoulders, “What about you, Jade. Wanna go be a pirate?”

“Why would I wanna be a pirate? It would be nice to see the ocean though…” The stone-girl giggled, “It’d be cool  to see the coral reefs and pretty fish under the ocean. I don’t really need to breathe, so I’m not afraid of hiding under the water.”

“I can make air tanks for myself, though I’d rather not. Hmmm… I don’t understand why I can conjure a metal tank full of pressurized air, but I can’t just conjure the air directly into my lungs.”

“Oliver, please don’t try to do that shit for real!” Klein face-palmed, “Unless you’re really careful, you might accidentally hurt yourself. Remember, you’re a Miner. Not a freaking Aeromancer.”

“I don’t know what an Arrow Mancer is, but I’m not an ordinary ‘Miner’ anymore.” With a proud smirk, the 16 year old boy pulled down his shirt and revealed the big tattoo across his chest.

“Wow~! Ollie, you’ve gotten so big~!”

“Uh, Verna, my tattoo is up here, where are you looking?”

Unlike the naughty little girls, Klein was more interested in what the tattoo said, “Uranium? What the hell is Uranium?”

“You’ve never heard of Uranium before?” Jade tilted her head in confusion, “That’s really weird. There should be a lot of people with jobs related to Greenstone in Kresvalia, right? Ollie is a Uranium Miner, so if someone sells a bunch of Uranium crystals and ores, shouldn’t they become a Uranium Merchant eventually?”