They entered the mine with most of the people from the raft. In total there were seven of them. There were four armed and armored fighters—Gotha included—one mage in light leather, and two miners—himself included. Following behind the group were two pack horses with empty bags ready to be filled

“Wouldn’t it be smarter to guard the mine entrance?” Elrick asked, eyeing all the soldiers.

They walked deeper into the mine. The mage suspended an orb of light in the air above them.

“Some did stay back to guard the entrance,” Jocha said.

Elrick tilted his head at Jocha. “It would be more efficient if we had a strong defense at the entrance. It would deter the Kalhu from attacking in the first place. Or is there another way in here? Is that why we have so many fighters and a mage in here?”

“There’s no other way in,” Jocha said. “That we know of.”

“So all this,” Elrick said, “All this protection for just two miners? Just in case the Kalhu find another way in?”

Jocha laughed. “You complaining that we’re keeping you safe?”

“I can fight,” Elrick said, “but I lost my sword.”

“You died,” Jocha said. “Must not fight so good if you died.”

Elrick wanted to put up a counter-argument, but it’s not like he could claim he got outnumbered or unlucky. He had died in one-on-one combat.

He still wanted to kill Hunter, but he felt so far away from doing that. He’d need to earn some money so he could survive, and once he had money and a way to keep making it, he could start dedicating part of his day to getting stronger—to training the skills he’d actually need to kill Hunter.

The shaft was narrow, and there was only space for two people to walk shoulder to shoulder. Their group of seven stretched into a line, though the mage’s orb of light was bright enough that no one sunk into darkness.

He focused on the mage. She only had 26.3 skill in White Magic. A White Mage with only 26.3 skill seemed pathetically low, but maybe she had ability in another color in addition to White.

The shaft widened out into a space large enough that the orb of light couldn’t reach the furthest walls or even the ceiling. Just from the way the sound of the footsteps changed, it was clearly a huge space rather than just something slightly larger than the shaft they’d come through. The air felt different too, like he’d just crawled out of a pantry and into a huge lobby. The mage pulled the orb back. She put her hands on the orb and channeled more magic into it, revealing a space large enough to hold a huge commercial airplane from Earth. There were several shafts along the walls, each about the size of the one they’d come in from. It seemed that this area acted as a central hub for the mine.

“Each shaft,” Jocha whispered to Elrick, “Has been explored. Some further than others. Most not by us. The easier ore is all mined out.”

Gotha grunted, and Jocha pulled Erick by his arm to catch them up with the others.

Still no one had explained to him why they needed so many armed fighters in the mine shaft rather than guarding the entrance. Everyone joked and laughed as they went deeper into one of the smaller shafts, making all the armor and weapons feel even more out of place.

“Gotha,” Elrick said, raising his voice to cut to the front of the group.

The shaft was much larger than the first narrow one they’d come in from, but the group still moved in a loose line formation. Gotha turned around and furrowed his brow. Everyone stopped behind him.

Elrick had expected Gotha to just slow down so Elrick could catch up and speak to him. He hadn’t expected everyone to be staring at him, waiting for him to ask his question. His mouth went dry.

“I, uh, do I need to know anything…before we get deeper in?”

He should have just asked Jocha. He’d wanted to make sure Jocha didn’t just give him some kind of joke answer—he’d wanted the official rundown from the man responsible for the group.

“You mine,” someone grunted. “We protect you.”

“From what?” Elrick asked. “Is there a special way I need to mine, or—”

Gotha rose a hand, cutting him off. “I was going to tell you all of this deeper in. There’s no danger yet, and there won’t be any danger until you and the other miner sink those pickaxes in.

No one had so much as touched their weapon. No one had seemed worried about keeping their voices down. Elrick had been in this world long enough to know what someone who was ready to fight looked like, and on one here looked ready to right.

“Mining brings them out,” Gotha said, punching the wall with his gloved hand.

A man with a hammer narrowed his eyes at the wall, lips tightening.

Gotha rolled his eyes at him. “A punch won’t bring them out. Come on now.”

Some of them laughed, but only some, and those laughs were nervous.

“Cowards,” Gotha hissed, “The whole lot of ya.”

“Not being careful gets ya,” one of the fighters said.

“Golems,” Jocha said.

“Slippery ones,” the mage said.

“We all have hammers for a reason,” Gotha said. “You don’t cut a rock man that weighs more than a horse with a sword. You crush it.”

“I do what I can outside of its null field,” the mage said. “Once it’s down, they crush it with hammers. You and the other miners get the ore.”

“But when the golem first starts coming out,” Gotha said, “someone calls it. You peel off that wall so Yaraka can work her magic.”

“Get the ore?” Elrick asked. “We mine...the golems?”

Jocha grinned.

The group quieted as they reached the end of the shaft. Basti, the other miner, pulled out his pickaxe and nodded to Elrick.

As the four men pulled out their hammers, Yaraka removed a metal sphere the size of a baseball from one of the packhorse’s bags, and she placed it on the ground in front of her.

“We good?” Gotha asked.

The hammer team grunted. Yaraka bit her lip and nodded. Basti shrugged.

Gotha looked him over. “Elrick?”

“How do I know when one is coming?”

“Basti will call it,” Gotha said.

“You’ll feel the vibrations,” Basti said.

They started mining. Chunks of useless rock chipped and crumbled away, littering the ground around them as they dug deeper in.

“Keep the ceiling low,” Basti said, chipping away above them. “The more room you give a golem, the bigger it can get. We keep it just high enough that our boys can swing their hammers.”

“There’s no copper in any of this rock,” Elrick said.

Basti nodded. “We only mine this rock to bring the golems out. It’s the golems we mine.”

It hadn’t truly been so long since Elrick had worked a pickaxe, and he didn’t even feel rusty, but it felt like it had been a long time. Passing back and forward in time as a ghost had made it hard to feel how much time had really passed in the world of the living.

“Hold!” Basti shouted.

Elrick had just started swinging his pickaxe, and it took a lot of effort to stop it from connecting into the rock.

Basti placed his hand on the rock and narrowed his eyes. “We’ve got vibrations.”

“Clear the wall!” Gotha shouted.

Basti and Elrick cleared back behind the hammer team.

“I can sense the null field,” Yaraka said. “It’s larger than normal. We need more space.”

“I told you we were getting too deep!” Jocha hissed.

“Quiet,” Gotha said. “Stay focused. Back twenty paces. Hold the line!”

Elrick and Basti were already well behind the hammer team, but the hammer team retreated in lockstep, walking backward shoulder-to-shoulder, never taking their eyes off the wall in front of them.

No one had looked ready to fight earlier, but now everyone moved together like a tightly wound and oiled machine, the loosest and squeakiest piece being Elrick.

Yaraka’s metal orb floated up into the air, as if it had a mind of its own, but it moved forward at the same speed as Yaraka. It hovered a few feet in front of her, just at her eye level. The hammer team parted to let her and her orb through.

Elrick checked her skills again. Her skill in Red Magic was 94.9.

She took slow steps forward. The orb floated perfectly steady in front of her, but on the third step, the orb started to vibrate and jostle, like a top about to fall. She backed up until it smoothed out again.

“It’s big,” she said. “I recommend we pull out. Abort and seal this path off entirely. We’ve mined too deep.”

“Your recommendation has been noted,” Gotha said. “But we stay.”

Jocha shot a look back at Elrick. “We’ve got fresh blood with us, boss.”

Elrick’s cheeks burned, and he tried to keep his voice level. “I can handle this.”

He sounded much more confident than he felt.

“We stay!” Gotha said. “Now get your heads in the game.”

What had at first been a vibration so small Basti had to press his hand to the wall just to feel it had grown to something that rumbled beneath their feet from fifty paces back.

Yaraka’s Red Magic skill of 94.9 was incredibly high—she was the highest skilled mage of any color he’d ever seen. How much did that even matter with the huge null field? What was her little orb going to do? As far as he could tell, the null field completely prevented her magic from functioning.

“Take your positions,” Gotha shouted. He had to shout, because the rumbling was becoming so intense it was hard to hear their voices over it.

The hammer team advanced to directly behind Yaraka, hammers hefted and ready.

The wall exploded open as if a bomb had gone off inside it, and a boulder of emerald green rock as tall as a man and as wide as a car rolled forward, stopping just a few feet from where the wall had been. The golem shuddered, and began to unfold. The arms came out first, each the size and thickness of a tree trunk. The fists were larger than Elrick’s head. It pushed itself up on its thick legs. A small head popped up, and two glowing eyes lit up.

“It’s big,” someone in front of Elrick muttered.

A piece of Yaraka’s orb melted off into molten metal, then reformed a few inches from the main body. It hardened into a small sphere the size of a marble, orbiting the larger sphere like a small moon around a planet.

She tilted her head forward, her body trembling.

Nothing happened, but then Elrick looked more closely at the little marble-sized piece of metal, and he realized it was spinning. It started to oscillate ever so slightly compared to the perfect stillness of the main orb. He didn’t think it was the null field, but rather that the spin had become so fast that Yaraka could no longer keep the thing perfectly steady.

The golem took its first step forward.

Yaraka looked up, and the marble disappeared. A piece of the side wall a few feet from the golem exploded as if a grenade had gone off. Chunks of rock and shrapnel hit the golem, but it just took another step forward, its glowing eyes placid and uncaring.

“Stop fucking around, Yaraka,” Gotha said. “What was that?”

“I missed,” Yaraka said. “The null field is too big. I warned you.”

There was a sharp note of “I told you so” in her tone.

Her big orb started to shake as the golem drew nearer.

“Back ten paces!” Gotha shouted. “Hit it this time, Yaraka!”

Everyone backed up until the orb steadied.

She formed another little marble, spun it, and fired.

The golem’s shoulder exploded, and it lumbered down onto one knee. When it stood up, its left arm hung limp, connected to its main body by only a small piece of rock the size of Elrick’s fist.

“I reduced the power,” Yaraka said, pre-empting Gotha’s criticism. “To increase accuracy. That’s why it didn’t do as much damage as usual. I can get one more shot off. Be ready.”

Elrick remembered back to the tutorial sequence, which already felt like a lifetime ago. He’d been able to root the skeletons only twice before the insight of the forest had completely overwhelmed him. Was something similar happening to Yaraka, but with rocks and mountains instead of roots and forest?

“Just hit it hard,” Gotha said, either not understanding her explanation of the trade-off between accuracy and power, or not caring.

They backed up another ten paces as the golem advanced, and Yaraka took her final shot.

The golem’s right foot blew apart, and it toppled over.

“Go!” Gotha roared, running forward. “Go! Go!”

Basti slapped Elrick on the back, and the two of them followed in behind the hammer team, their pickaxes waving in the air as they ran.

Gotha was the first one on the golem. He slammed his hammer down onto the partially severed arm, crushing the connecting piece and knocking the arm away entirely.

“Mine the arm,” Basti shouted to Elrick.

Basti lunged for the arm, hitting his pickaxe into it. “The ore gets reabsorbed,” he shouted between swings. “If we don’t break it down fast enough.”

Elrick swung, focusing on breaking the arm into as many small pieces as he could as fast as he could.

In his peripheral vision he saw the golem swipe at someone, lose its balance on its single leg, and topple over. Four hammers hit into its body in different places, breaking huge chunks of it away.

“Get the other arm!” Jocha shouted.

Basti nodded to Elrick, and Elrick ran toward the other arm, which someone had just crushed off the main body with a chunky swing of his hammer.

Elrick swung his pickaxe right down into the golem’s rocky elbow, cracking it right down the middle, but not all the way through. Just as he went in for another swing, something hit him right in his gut.

The air blasted from his lungs as he fell backward. He hit the ground in a pile of dust, looked up, and saw his arms covered in blood.

Had the golem kicked him?

He couldn’t see a thing beyond his bloodied arms. There was a huge cloud of dust, and it was only just beginning to fade away.

Beyond the dust were shouts, screams, and crushing footfalls that rumbled through the mineshaft.

When the dust finally settled, the second golem unfolding didn’t surprise him, though Elrick was still too caught off guard from being knocked flat on his ass to move, or to do anything useful at all.

He still hadn’t caught his breath, and blood was dripping down his face.

“Yaraka!” Gotha shouted.

Elrick turned around and saw the red mage sitting down on her knees. She was bent forward with her head down, pressed into a small triangle created by her index fingers and thumbs. She didn’t even look up at the golem as it swung its arm.

Elrick checked her skills again. She had 98.7 skill in Meditation. So she was being overwhelmed by some kind of vision or feelings of mountains and rocks and lava, and she had to meditate just like he’d needed to in order to bring herself back into reality and cast more spells.

One of the hammer team was just managing to find his feet—he’d been hit harder in the initial explosion than Elrick—but the Golem’s fist slammed into him. His body contorted and cracked. From the way he bent and twisted, Elrick knew he was dead.

“Fall back!” Gotha ordered.

Jocha was limping, but he grabbed Basti by the arm and tore him away just as his pickaxe sunk into the first golem’s leg.

“I can get a few more swings—” Basti started.

“Fuck it,” Jocha grunted. “We’re pulling out.”

Elrick had already backed up until he was next to Yaraka. It didn’t feel right to back up behind her, to leave her completely exposed to the golem while she meditated, but what was he realistically going to do? Defend her against two golems with just his pickaxe?

The second golem, which was still totally uninjured, took a step forward.

They’d lost only one man, but everyone was injured to some extent. Elrick might have even gotten off the easiest.

“How long is she going to do that?” He asked Basti.

The first golem—the one they’d entirely dismembered—flailed its body, and parts of its severed leg became molten. The molten pieces melted back together, and the golem rolled by leveraging its stumps until the molten leg pressed against its main body.

“I just needed a few more swings,” Basti said. “We didn’t do enough damage to prevent it from reforming.”

“Yaraka…” Gotha said, his voice tight with unease.

She ignored him.

It wasn’t until the second golem took a few more steps that Yaraka snapped back to her feet.

“We’re in its null field,” she said.

“Can you take it down?” Gotha asked.

“Yes,” she said.

The first golem’s arm—the one Basti and Elrick hadn’t mostly pulverized with their pickaxes—melted back onto its body. Its leg was no longer even glowing orange; it had cooled to a dull green copper and was fully functioning. It took a step toward them.

“I can take this one down,” she said. “But not both.”

“Then we kill the shaft,” Gotha said.

Basti sucked air through his teeth.

“Can you?” Gotha asked, standing next to Yaraka.

“Yes,” she said. “Get everyone out.”

They all fell back. Elrick lost sight of Yaraka, and then just as they were nearly back to the nexus of the shafts, everything shook. The sound hit a fraction of a second later in a bone crunching boom that rattled Elrick’s skull.

Jocha spit, scowling backward into the rumbling darkness. He ran his hand across his mostly bald head, along the mohawk of hair leading back to his topknot.

“None of us expected a second one,” Gotha said.

Jocha just looked up at him. He didn’t say anything, or roll his eyes, or even make a face.

“Yaraka told us not to,” Basti said.

Gotha waved a hand. “We’ll res Thios. He’ll be back in no time.”

“I bet you he never forgets that feeling,” Jocha said. “His spine twisting apart like that.”

Elrick felt it deep in his bones that Jocha was right. He’d woken up in the middle of the night six or seven times now expecting his leg to still be smashed, his lower leg connected to his thigh by dangly tendons and shattered bones. Thios was not going to get off easy even with a free resurrection by the guild.

Gotha turned his back and walked off. “I’m in charge!” he said, not looking back at any of them.

“Bastard,” Jocha said, shaking his head.

Jocha’s gloved hand pounded Elrick on the back. “You did alright, kid.”

Basti smiled and nodded. “For what it’s worth, our mining runs don’t usually go like this.”