I returned to the goblin village soon after. Selene was a weird individual but I felt I could eventually win her trust. It would simply take some effort. For now, I had some crystals for Alex.

When I moved down the tunnel, heat and noise greeted me. I found the dwarves had built their workshops not far behind the entrance and were happily starting to work. To the left was a smelter and to the right a small smithy. Goblins were moving around ores and metals under the watchful gazes of Redrick and Smia. It looked like they were mostly working with copper for the time being.

The dwarves nodded a greeting when they noticed me and I continued on my way downwards. In the village, Alex was the first to find me. There was not even a guard anymore, too many people moving through anyway. The golem was enthusiastic about the major vis crystals. She immediately started absorbing their energy after I gave them to her. I knew it would take some time. I had absorbed a full node in one go nearly killing myself in the process and forwarded a warning to my friend. She would be much more careful.

I gave her some space and went to observe the farm. The trees had been growing wonderfully with the first ones already reaching the ceiling. Lothar walked up to me as I was observing the progress.

“Welcome back. Had a nice journey?”

“Thank you. Mostly. There are some issues but nothing of concern right now.”

I barely stopped myself from talking about the hungry node. This group of dwarves would likely see it anyway but I did not need to tell them before we started on our journey back.

“I see. Say, can you give me a hand… wing? I want to extend the ceiling but I don’t know if that would be a problem for the lamps.”

“You could have asked Alex, she knows enough about them. Still, I can help you. All the lamps?”

“I was thinking the places for trees, primarily. If they grow larger we can get better wood for building.”

“That’s fine. I need to get close enough but with how everything’s been growing, I can reach the lamps in those places.”

The dwarf nodded.

“Let’s go then.”

Without waiting any longer, he left to get a pickaxe from nearby while I started taking down the lamps. It took a bit of fiddling to get the vis relays disconnected and safely deconstruct everything but I was done in about thirty minutes with the ten places where trees were growing. Every field had four trees grown from saplings from the white forest. The only exceptions were three places where the goblins had planted the fruit saplings I brought. Those would need a few more trees from the first batch. The apples were still green with the lack of sunlight. It would be another week or so before they could be harvested. Maybe they would not even change colour down here? I only hoped they would still be tasty. The plums at least looked good.

My experiment with growing vis crystals seemed to be working out as well at first glance. Once I took a closer look, I found many of the crystals growing on the modified relays to be very brittle and containing little vis. Even just the contact with my shadows could crack some of them. I spent a few hours observing the flowing energy and found there was just too little to supply all the lamps and relays together. That was easily solved by taking down a few of the latter. I found it to be stable at three relays in addition to the 25 lamps. It might change once the crystals grew to medium size if they even did that with this method but that was a bridge I would cross when I got to it. For now, I had my results. Farming vis crystals would need dedicated nodes to supply a limited number of harvesting relays. That was the name I gave my invention for the time being.

I spent another few days in the village just helping out here and there. The dwarves, especially Lothar, were very interested in my excavation focus. The way I could make very precise cuts and even adjust the range to create perfectly smooth surfaces was something normally reserved for higher levelled Skills. Lothar had something with his [Precision Tunnelling] which was past its second Breakthrough. I had asked him what was needed for that but the answer was rather self-explanatory: Dedication. If I wanted to get a Skill past level seven, I would need to focus on using and applying it. Nothing I did not know about. For some reason, I had hoped for a secret technique.

After seven days, Alex had finally absorbed all the vis crystals. Sadly, it had little effect. She was feeling a little better with her internal energy, having to rely less on the node but that was it. She told me she felt less than halfway there which I did not quite believe. No matter, another method had to be found. An actual major node not too far from here. I had done some more scouting while I was out hunting but to no success. Our only option was to dig for the source of the darkness crystals in the white forest.

I came together with a wonderful group of dwarves, goblins, Alex and myself to discuss the idea. Lothar and Fredreck, the oldest dwarves and best diggers, sat together with Horg and his little brother from the outside goblins. The goblin leaders were also fully convened with Roguk, Ira and Chef. Luk sat a little in the background but close enough to join in on the conversation, unlike all the other goblins that came to watch. I had taken a moment to try and connect everyone to my [Telepathy] but realized it was too much with over forty people and only included the ones I wanted to talk to.

“So, what’s going on?”, Roguk asked, “Those crystals weren’t enough for you, right Alexandra?”

“Correct. I would need five times as many, I think. Or a different source of major vis.”

“What’s the deal with that, anyway?”, Horg asked, “Why doesn’t any vis just work?”

“Vis enrichment fills up the body as well as the soul”, I said, “The more vis the body has absorbed, the harder it is to move it into the soul without turning into flux. That means you need a higher concentration or pressure, meaning higher quality crystals or larger nodes.”

“Huh. Makes sense?”

The way the goblin scratched his nose I believed he had not understood what I explained. Not that he needed to. He only was here because he led the goblin [Digger] team, having taken the Class as the first one.

“Not something we need ta understand”, Lothar said, “We just gotta dig.”

The two shared a grin and bumped their fists.

“We’ll get to that”, Roguk said, “First we need to plan how to proceed.”

“We know there’s a node somewhere below the white forest that is most likely large enough to satisfy my needs”, Alex said, “Do we have any way to pinpoint it?”

“Somewhat”, Fredreck jumped in, “Harra can locate vis crystals but she’s specialized on ores and gems so it’ll be a little fuzzy. We can get a general direction at least.”

“Are there any dangers just digging straight into the node?”, Ira asked.

“Potentially. The node itself isn’t dangerous. There are two possible risks. The first is the vis crystals. If this is really a node larger than major, there’ll be very potent ones close by. If we dig straight into ‘em, our diggers might get covered and get flux poisoning.”

I hissed. That was a bad risk.

“The second is a potential Guardian. Might exist. If it does, it’s likely sapient. Doesn’t mean we can negotiate with it.”

After a moment of everyone thinking, Alex spoke again.

“I don’t think that first one is a risk. Fio and I can take the last few metres of digging. We are much more resilient against flux, me, thanks to my Species and her, thanks to the Beast Core.”

“How many crystals are we talking?”, Roguk asked.

“A lot. Considering the size of the one covering that rift, we should expect most of the node’s cave to be filled with them.”

“Why ain’t we go through that?”, Chef asked.

“There’s a big drop below with low visibility. Bad idea.”

“I can fly”, I reminded him.

“… right. It’s an option. Still, we don’t know what the result of breaking that oversized crystal is. I think we should take the safer option.”

I nodded. I had no intention of throwing my life away. From the investigations I had conducted, the rift served as a sort of conduit for vis. It was a path of least resistance. That was why the crystal had never reached past medium density despite its size. Most of the vis simply passed through into the cavern and white forest.

“I wonder what that cave looks like inside. It’s a darkness and air node so I would expect winds and a lot of shadows.”

“We might have a good chance of learning something from one of the bigger libraries if you want to make the trip, Fio.”, Fredreck said.

“That will be a while. I have a few things to research on my own as well.”

“I don’t mind”, Alex said, “If it’s a month or two doesn’t really matter.”

I had told her about the hungry node and she knew what I wanted to look into. Still, I did not believe to be done within such a short time. I would rather want to finish this first so I could have her help with the research. There was another matter that might hold me up, though.

“Stormbringer might delay my trip… I had planned to research his passing a little more.”

Now that I thought about it, I wondered how close the dragon would pass by the hungry node and if he would react to it. It could not be too close since there was a village there so I quickly discarded the idea.

“As I said, I don’t mind.”

I could feel that she did not really mean those words so I shook my head.

“I don’t think a library trip will be very enlightening regarding oversized nodes. We should focus on what we can do.”

With the conversation back on track, the diggers began discussing the plan. I listened in but had little to add. Eventually, Harra joined the discussion and we settled on locating the node or at least a more easily reached entrance to its cave. Just when we were about to finish for the night, Alex piped up again and turned to me.

“I just had an idea. Can’t we locate vis somehow? That should let us figure out where the node is located, right?”

I quickly ran the idea through my mind before I nodded.

“That might just work. A sinister lodestone can locate specific types of vis. I made one as part of a construct not too long ago. With this node being mainly darkness, we don’t even need to modify it. Most likely.”

“Right? Then let’s get to it!”

“Sounds good”, Harra said, “I kinda wanna focus on finding some gemstones. Have something to bring back home, ya know?”

“That’s settled, then”, Roguk said, “We’re starting as soon as you are ready, Fio, Alex.”

Everyone nodded and we got to work. This would be a very interesting expedition.