A short time later, Sonja's loot was synergized into useful raw materials and stored in their room. Task complete, they headed off to the grassland in search of the mine entrance. A good chunk of the morning had passed, but it was not a great distance and they had the physical capacity to move far faster than a normal person who never ventured out of town.

An iron shod boot slammed down atop the carapace of a grassland scorpion. Its shell crushed beneath her heel, Sonja could not help but note how weak such a creature proved to be. Its venom was more like that of a large wasp's sting to her.

Blackthorne, due to his draconic nature, proved completely immune to their venom. His body regenerated far too swiftly for the weak toxin they tried to inject, even if they managed to strike him hard enough to actually pierce his flesh.

"This was the place that gave you so much trouble?" she asked him incredulously.

He nodded to her. "I was level one or two at the time, and barely knew one end of a sword from another."

"You still don't." Sonja offered him a delighted and coy smile. "Remind me to give you a proper lesson later, one that is more than just footwork and swinging your blade around."

"Will do," he said. Blackthorne immediately wanted to fire off a spell, but the only spells he had that would reach that far were fire-based. The grass was far too thick to risk the flames that he could produce now. In earlier days, the range of his Burn! spell was so short that he could put out any fire before it became an issue. The only time he had risked anything was the time he tried to summon Dread Inferno, but that was a phantasmal flame with no real power to harm the world given the result. Had the conjuration worked to completion, his summoned spirit could have simply willed the fire to die before it spread.

Blackthorne leapt forward then stomped downward with his foot. He did bring a few pickaxes for rock collection, but he was strong enough that he did not need to use anything but his body as a weapon against the scorpions. Swords were not as good, but impact weapons like pickaxes and hammers performed well. His foot counted as the latter.

They swiftly finished off the nearby scorpions then headed to the hole that lead down into the earth. Blackthorne sighed at the steepness of the dirt ramp that lead into the darkness below. It was not a concern for him at all anymore, but it was probably still too steep. He had not come back to finish the job previously because of the scorpions.

Even so, that was their destination. He looked to Sonja. "I'll go in first. Let me scout the area. I have never actually been inside in this direction. For all I know it's a dead drop."

She nodded to him, and he nodded in kind. It did make sense.

Blackthorne shifted into his shadow form then flowed into the hole below. The darkness was not a problem for his senses when in that form and he did not give even the slightest hint of a damn about gravity.

Inside the hole, he discovered that the dirt ramp extended downward briefly then flatted into a short corridor. Scorpions skittered around in a large open area beyond, but there did not seem to be anything particularly daunting at the beginning.

He shifted back into his human form then immediately regretted it. The darkness was omnipresent, even that small distance into the mine. Thinking quickly, he reached into his pouch then pulled out a torch stone. He tapped it to activate its power and the stone began to glow brightly. Its light pushed back the darkness and revealed some of the landscape around him.

"Probably need to tie this thing to a stick or something," he said. Its light was steady, but it only illuminated enough of the area to mimic the radius of a torch's illumination.

Back on the surface he called for Sonja. He spoke at length about what he had seen. She agreed that they should attach the stone to a stick. It looked shoddy, the torch that they made, but it was sturdy enough.

In dragon form, and especially his shadow form, he would not have needed it at all. However, he was in mixed company. Sonja had better eyesight than a normal human being, but she was not able to see in the dark to the extent that he was capable.

They walked along the corridor and stopped now and then only to kill scorpions for their sweet, sweet carapace bits. Whether or not they managed to find treasure, the pieces of carapace would be good for making beast iron weapons and armor. He did have plenty of basic material types to work with now, after all.

The initial areas of the main were fairly straight forward, but they soon came to a fork in the tunnels. Blackthorne set up a few rocks to point toward the way out then they went to the left. There was no method to their choice other than the fact that they had to choose a path.

Onward they went in the dimly lit underground. Several more twists and turns were made, and each time a path was marked with rocks. Eventually, they reached a place where they recognized a recently manufactured rock formation.

"Guess we circled back to the beginning." Blackthorne looked to the way that they had entered originally then back to Sonja. "Good thing we marked this route."

"Yeah. It would be easy to get lost down here," she replied. "Between the darkness, and all of these turn-offs it's hard to navigate."

They headed off down the path that they had just left then made a different turn. Scorpions attacked, and a few times they faced down a random assortment of bats. There was nothing out of the ordinary about either creature, but they did begin to appear more frequently as they moved through the tunnels.

"Wait," said Sonja.

"Something wrong?" asked Blackthorne.

"Hmm? Not sure. Do these tunnel walls seem different to you?" she asked.

Blackthorne inspected the area then tilted his head. "I think there is a bit of iron in the rocks, since it reminds me of what I saw in the raw ore. Not sure if it is enough to worry about, though."

"Worth a try?" Sonja looked from him then back to the wall. "You don't have a mining skill, but you should be able to break off a few pieces of rock..."

He handed the torch to Sonja then pulled a pickaxe from his bag and took a swing. His efforts barely chipped the rock. Annoyed, he swung again, and again. It took several strikes but he slowly cracked the stone and began to knock chunks of ore free.

"How do normal people do it? Mining is tough even for a dragon..." muttered Blackthorne.

"I'd guess the mining skill would help. The rock is probably trying to resist you." She looked down at the small pile of rocks below. "Looks like you did find some ore."

He knelt down then stretched his hand out. Several bits of ore that existed within his synergy range began to light up the darkness. "The ore isn't low quality from what the system tells me."

Sonja tapped him on the shoulder and he looked up. "No way..."

The rock in the wall had begun to glow a little as well. Blackthorne grinned. It was just a small section of the cracked surface rock closest to his head. He stood up and the glowing portion of the wall expanded slightly. Most of the tunnel wall did not respond, but the loose portions of the ore still attached did.

"All I have to do is crack it enough? That's good..." Blackthorne decided to beat the wall for another few minutes in an effort to break off as much of the remaining ore as much as he could.

Sonja fought off a few random bats and scorpions that came to investigate the noise, and light show, while Blackthorne began to combine the materials.

He sighed loudly once he was finished. "Two hundred thirty-six life force... and all I got was this?"

Miniscule Iron Ingot

Class: F

Quality: Low

Material Value:

Acquired through synergy refinement, this material can be used via synergy to upgrade items, or to create new ones. The effects added to an item will be based on the original nature of the material from which the ingot was created.

He looked at the piece of iron and snorted. He'd refined an arm load of raw material, but only received a small egg-shaped bit of metal roughly the size of a pea. The synergy process was certainly wasteful when it came to raw materials, but this was ridiculous!

"That's all you got from that?" asked Sonja.

"I can't be sure, but I think this vein isn't very good. The ore was considered low quality when I looked at it." He held up his little pea-sized bit of metal. "Probably why the miners left it alone. There's iron, but it's all low quality and sparse enough that it would take more effort than it's worth to dig it out."

"So, not worth it?" she asked him curiously.

"I don't know. If I worked all day, I could get far more iron here than I could from combining armor at the graveyard." Blackthorne tucked the little pea of metal into a bag then smiled at her. "Might only be a few normal sized ingots at the end of the day, but the quality would be pretty good after refining them all."

"Ah. So, better to spend all day here mining than to spend all day with the zombies trying to refine the metal?" she asked.

"Nah. It would be better just to buy better ore cheaply, or even finished ingots. Save a lot of time." Blackthorne took the torch back from her then looked back to the wall. "A better vein, though...."

"Maybe we'll find one. This one wasn't that hard to get to, but they couldn't have gotten all of the best ore," she said.

"Sure. There will be some. Even this vein isn't bad for training. It just won't do much for our cash flow," he admitted.