For the next hour Alder was essentially in charge of the miners, he directed them to where the metal felt most dense and he also began to test some other ideas he had.

For one he quickly discovered that he could send his metal energy through the stone walls of the mine and into the metal hidden behind him. This let him rather easily extract metals by just rotating the metal in such a way that it burrowed its way out of the walls.

He figured that the skill might be useful in the future if he ever gathered metals for blacksmithing.

Something else that Alder quickly noticed it that his metal sense had some differentiation when it came to the metals that he could feel. For example metals like copper and iron, the two most common metals in this mine, had their own distinct ‘resonance’ when they interacted with his sense. This was further confirmed when Alder led the miners to something that felt a bit more powerful to his sense.

The metal that came out of the wall caused the workers to shout out in surprise, then as one they started to congratulate each other with some going as far as telling other workers that it was nice to meet them.

A little bit confused Alder just stood there watching all the commotion. Things got even more confusing when the oldest miner of the group came over and started shaking Alders's hand vigorously and thanking him profusely. Still extremely confused Alder looked over to Hammer, who was placing the off ore into a fancy bag, to get some answers.

Walking over Alder began to speak with Hammer, “why is everyone so excited?”

“You have just done them a great service. While not obvious to an outsider all the workers here are essentially prisoners, well, not exactly, but that’s the gist of the situation. Every one of them has some sort of fineable offense against them, the mine then purchases each prisoner for the cost of their fine from the goverment and has them work it off in the mines. The way it’s calculated is based on the value of the ores they dig up. What you found for them is Mythril, and some rather pure stuff at that. The value of this little bit of Mythril is enough to get them all out of here.” responded Hammer.

Alder took a moment to watch them celebrate before turning back to Hammer, “Is that why you were so excited when I asked if I could help?”

Hammer nodded hesitantly before elaborating, “This group is what the mine operators call the ‘lifetime’ diggers. Almost all of them would have needed to mine iron for the rest of their lives to have any chance of seeing the world again. What’s worse is that the more money someone’s fine is for the higher chance unjustified from what I’ve seen. A good example is the old gentleman that shook your hand, he had a fine levied against him for 30 gold because he allegedly stole a nobleman’s horse. he worked as a stable hand at an inn. His side of the story is that he put the horse away in the stable the guard hired to watch the horses locked the stable behind him and he returned to the inn. When he went to retrieve the horse it was gone. Next thing he knew he was behind bars for theft with the guard saying he never brought in the horse. There’s a good explanation for what happened to the horse though, not even a month later an investigation saw the same guard that claimed he never brought the horse to the stable behind bars for colluding with a local mafia to steal horses from the stable. The problem is there is no system in place to look back on old cases when new information comes to light. Im glad he will go free today.”

As the celebration died down Hammer called out to the now free men.

“Gather in front of my office and ill process your release, make sure to bring any possessions you own with you,” he said.

As the miners all ran off to their quarters to prepare Alder followed Hammer back up the mine elevator to his office. Hammer first started by signing off a bunch of papers before he grabbed a scale off the shelf behind him. Hammer placed the bag of Mythril on one side of a scale before starting to pile up what appeared to be gold coins on the other side of the scale from a safe beneath his desk. As he stacked he started to explain what he was doing to me.

“Mythril is quite literally worth its weight in gold. As part of the agreement we have with our workers anything excess they collect over their fine is given to the overseer to distribute as they like. Some overseers are greedy and pocket the coin but I have more than enough money, so ill divide it equally between them, give them some startup funds.” said Hammer.

After balancing out the scale with gold coins he removed about 3/4s of them from the table and returned them to the safe. Putting in the Mythril along with the coins he began to divide the remaining coins into piles, in the end, it came out to three gold coins per pile with two gold coins left over. Hammer added these coins to a pile on the end before doing something that surprised Alder. Hammer pushed the pile towards Alder and said, “take these”, Alder looked at Hammer confused until he began to explain his choice, “without you none of them would be going free today, you actually deserve a lot more than these five coins, the mine allows free people to enter and mine for a 10% cut of what they pull out. Technically you are owed a ton as you found the ore. This is the least I could do,” accepting his reasoning Alder picked up the coins and stuck them in the raggedy pants that he started the game with.

Alder then followed Hammer who was walking out of his office with a tray of gold coins. He called out to the workers, “Everyone grabs a stack!”

Once everyone had grabbed their coins they lined up against wall and Hammer said his last statement, “you’re free now!”

In Alders mind, the sound of their celebration was drowned out by the screen that had just popped up before him.

Hidden Quest Completed!

Requirements: Free the workers of their debt.

Reward: 500 XP, 5 Gold, {hidden reward}, Hammer now sees you as a friend!

Congratulations! you have leveled up!

Skill points +1

Stat points +11