Waving his stone spear around, Akiel hacks at the tall, dry shrubs around him aimlessly. Sighing, he mutters, “This really is far, I really need a faster method of travel.” Looking around, he could see very little other than the long-dead shrubs. Even his mana sight couldn’t find anything to occupy himself with. With nothing else to do but press onward and play with his spear, he started to practice using a spear. He isn’t good by any standard, but he can now manage to get it to do some damage.

Hours pass as he trudges onward, checking his map he says, “Just a few more minutes, It should have old mining facilities outside.” Slowly and carefully making his way forward, Akiel looks for anything that could have been a mining facility. After just minutes he finds his first sign of inhabitants, bones. Part of a humanoid skeleton was strewn on the ground. Crouching down he examines the bones. Starting from the pelvic area that seems to have been shattered, he finds a Ventral arch, something only human females have. Moving down he finds that the leg had three bones. Tracing the feet, the corpse was three-toed and the feet were easily as long as half the leg. Examining the foot structure closer, it seemed to stand on the tips and not on the whole length. This made it not as suitable for jumping but more likely to accelerate rapidly in linear directions.

Injecting mana into the skeleton, he stores a template of the feet in his guidebook. Satisfied, he inspects the surroundings. With a cursory glance, all we could see is more wasteland. There really wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Whatever killed the female didn’t seem to have stepped in the area. Her corpse was either flung away or dropped from the air.

Scrunching his eyebrow regions up, he checks the sky. Seeing nothing, he uses his mana vision. Trying his best not to run, he finds a massive bird above him. Acting oblivious, he inspects it casually. “It definitely looks like a giant bat with the head of an alligator,” he mutters. Casually shielding his eyes from the sun, he watches as the beast circles around him once before leaving to the west. Continuing to walk forward, he glances to the west. Seeing the silhouette growing smaller, he sighs in relief. “Another benefit to being made of stone, you taste like nothing appetizing ever did.” he laughs. Checking the sky for more predators he starts to job towards his destination when he finds the sky clear.

Finally spotting the ramshackle remains of a building, he passes it find many more. Following the general outline of the buildings, he walks further into the abandoned mining settlement. “I guess that thing scared the miners away,” he muses. Checking the more intact ruins, he finds several more remains as well as broken tools laying around. Grabbing a decent pick left behind, he makes his way to the cave entrance in the far side of the settlement. Stumbling on a wooden plaque, he picks it up and dusts it off. Several numbers were written on it and all of them were crossed out. It started at a number of just over two thousand and rose to about seven thousand before dropping drastically. At first, only a thousand seemed to have been subtracted but the latter numbers progressed much quicker. Five thousand. Three thousand. Seven hundred. Two hundred. Fifty-five. Twenty-nine.

After twenty-nine, the numbers changed to names. One by one, most of them were crossed out. At the very bottom, an intact name is still written, Joy. Smirking, he utters, “Well, I think I found Joy boys! Let’s get to work.” Shaking his head, he throws the plaque away and continues to the cave. Spotting some intact signs next to the cave, he heads over to read them. The first is a plaque detailing the rules of excavation. Skipping it, he reads the next one. It details the dangers inside. Skimming the list, he stops at a creature name, man-eating scorpions. Playing with his stoney lips, he imagines a giant orange scorpion trying to stab him.

Chuckling he strides into the cave with confidence. Passing several areas where the valuable stone seems to have been exhausted, he heads deeper. Holding his spear as a walking stick and his new pick held steadily at waist height he swaggers into the dimly lit cave. Supplying a light rune on his head with mana, he lights up the tunnel. Spotting the corpse of a dog-sized scorpion, he walks closer to examine it. Poking it, he realizes it’s just a shell. Frowning, he continues to look for a suitable mining spot. Finding a different colored streak in the wall, he sets his spear aside and starts swinging his pick. At first, the pick barely seemed to make the rock crumble but after AKiel starts to use mana fortification into it, slag and small amounts of the distinctly different material chip off.

Stopping to examine the new material, he picks a piece up. Pushing his mana into it, he remodels it into a pure marble of the new material. The impurities fall away. Pushing his mana into it once again, this time more carefully. He feels a distinct rejection of his mana. Shaking his head, he throws the marble away. Heading deeper into the cave system he looks around much more urgently. He might not have to run constantly anymore, but he only has a year to show results. A year to just develop his means of destruction. A year to plan the downfall of his first kingdom.

Checking his mana reserves, he finds them at a healthy eighty-nine percent. Ever since he started constantly experimenting with mana according to the book, he found he could accurately tell how much his mana concentration is at. Holding his pick over his shoulder, he continues to explore. Using his spear to poke around rubble as he passes, he catches a hint of green as one of the rocks rolls. Picking it up, he smiles in satisfaction. It’s another completely different material. Testing it with his mana first, he finds it much better. It held twice as much of his mana than stone would.

Looking around excitedly, Akiel finds several small pieces of the material leading further into the cave. Gathering a few small pieces, he remodels them into a sizable marble. Sighing at the truly pitiful amount he has, he ignores the small chunks and follows the increasingly abundant signs of the material.

Just as he turns a corner, he hears a hiss. Reducing the mana supply to the light rune, he slowly peeks around the corner. Not expecting an attack, a stinger suddenly smacks into his face. Reeling back in shock, he watches as a scorpion scuttles around the corner and tries to find him. Noticing the lack of response as his light shines on the scorpion's eyes, he allows his mana to flow into the rune freely. Even with the light shining down in full force, the thing didn’t seem to notice. Grabbing a stone, he drops it an arms distance away. As soon as the rock hits the ground, it’s stinger smashes into the ground next to him. Grabbing the stinger as the scorpion retracts it, he tackles it. Staying away from the pedipalps, Akiel starts to bash his fists on its carapace.

Not finding any purchase, he moves onto the stinger still in his hand. Putting his foot on the base of the stinger, He stands up while on it and pulls. With a sickening crack, the base of the stinger breaks. Still pulling, Akiel stomps down on the scorpion, causing the last pieces of flesh and carapace holding the stinger attached to snap. With the annoying stinger out, Akiel focuses on the scorpion. Although a spear might be helpful if he could hit a soft spot, the scorpion had a very small weak point. ‘I should have made a giant hammer instead, like a maul,” he thinks to himself over the painful screeching of the scorpion. Ignoring the ichor pouring out of its damaged abdomen, Akiel jumps in again. Grappling with one of its Pedipalps, he bites onto another. Remodeling his teeth to better resemble a blunt crushing tool, he infuses mana into his jaw and crunches down. Comparing it to trying to bite into a lobster, he infuses greater amounts of mana. Blinded by pain and rage, the scorpion smashes into walls and struggles to move its other pedipalp. Grinding away, Akiel starts to enjoy himself, It’s not every day you think about how giant man-eating scorpion would taste compared to lobster.

Finally biting one limb off, Akiel straddles the head, holding the remaining claw off with one of his hands. Infusing his fist with mana, He bashes the head over and over. Slipping when he gorges the eyes, he finally cracks the head open. Ending its agony, he scrambles its head. Consuming the mana core, he notices something besides ichor came out of its abdomen side. Picking it up and wiping it off on the ground, he smiles. It’s a significantly larger piece of the green material. “I guess I’m looking for scorpion excrement,” Akiel darkly laughs.

Making his way back to his belongings, he progresses onward, carefully listening for scuttling. Creeping through the tunnels, he encounters two more of the scorpions before entering a much larger chamber. Listening, he could hear several scorpions running around. Not daring to make a sound, he creeps towards the center of the cavern. Looking around, he quietly celebrates. Heaps of the green material were just lying around. “I guess this is their latrine pit,” he muses. Thinking about his next course of action, he spots a scorpion running with a blue crystal between its claws. It single-mindedly moves past him and enters another tunnel. Curious, Akiel couldn’t help but wonder what these scorpions ate to excrete material that is rich in mana capacity.

Following it down another tunnel, he finds himself surrounded by many more scorpions. All of them transporting a blue crystal. Quietly walking among them, he tries to avoid stepping on one of the smaller ones. The last thing he needs is to be chased by several scorpions in the dark and winding underground tunnels. Following the brain dead scorpions down a few more passages and through a couple of rooms he reaches a richly adorned grotto. A small lake dominated the center while hundreds of fist-sized chunks of the blue crystal were stacked along the walls.

The most shocking thing is that scorpions bigger than a bus were spitting over them. Their saliva seemed to melt the crystals and the solution seeped into the aquifer. Following the smaller scorpions closely, I watch them dump their load along the walls and make their way towards the aquifer. Each takes a small drink and returns the way they came from. Deciding to stay, Akiel bends down and also takes a sip of the water. Examining his mana concentration, he finds it completely refilled. Marveling at the aquifer, he turns his mana sight on. Tracing the mana back to the crystals, he concludes that the crystals are the mana source. The question is why melt the mana into the water? What use is the mana infused water? Following the flow of water through the cave system with his sight, he traces it to what seems like a much larger collection of mana. It looked like a wad of glow in the dark bubble wrap.

Not able to resist, Akiel slowly lowers himself into the water. Walking on the bottom of the lake, he finds a passage underwater that leads to the glowing bubble wrap. Cautiously making his way into the passage, he finds a scorpion hidden under a rocky shelf, waiting to ambush him. Hugging the wall, he slowly approaches the scorpion. It’s the same size as the ones he fought before, but none of the ones he fought were under water. Getting just close enough to reach it, He bashes it as best he can into the rock shelf. Pulling it down by its limbs he mashes it again. Over and over, he smashes the scorpion against the rock shelf. Seeing air bubbles as well as the clouds of blood filling the water, he pulls it down and sits on it. Nothing can hold it’s breath with leaking lungs. Waiting for it to stop struggling, he casually sits on it while checking for its friends.

So far, nothing seems to have noticed him, but there is a good chance that it won’t be much longer. Trying to sigh underwater, he panics as water floods his mouth. Calming down after noticing that the water doesn’t seem to enter his body further than his throat. Digging the green material out of the scorpion and consuming its mana core, he moves on.

Emerging in a seemingly endless room, he shines his light around. At first, all he sees is lumps of dirt. Endless amounts of lumps as well as a dark crevice at the far end. Getting closer to the edge of the pool, he scrambles up onto the land. Looking closer at the lumps he claws off a bit of dirt to find a pearly white surface. Shocked, he whispers, “Scorpions don’t come from eggs. Just who’s are these?” Turning his mana sight on he looks into the eggs and finds a fetus, none of its features are developed to the point where he can determine its identity.

Giving up, he turns his attention to the dark crevice. Whatever is hiding in there has the answer to his questions, At worst what could happen? He would be hiding underground for a few days? That's easy with this mana water readily available. Remodeling his stone spear to buckler and a rapier, he climbs on top of the eggs and carefully crawls to the crevice. Shining his light inside he couldn’t help but chuckle at what he saw. Not only is there a large collection of the green material, but there is a significantly smaller amount of a darker green material. Checking the rest of the crevice, he spots something unusual. It looked like a moving wall. Crawling on his knees and elbows, he makes his way closer. Whatever it was, it was blocking part of the crevice. Crawling around it to get a better visual, he finds an opening. Shining his light through the opening, something immediately moves into view. A massive head with opaque white eyes stares back at him. Slowly turning his light off, he backs away. ‘Maybe It’s not a good idea to poke a sleeping bear’ Akiel thinks to himself. Slowly creeping away in a dim light towards the darker green material, he listens for the colossus moving.

Several painful minutes pass when he finally hears something like snoring. Looking back in disbelief, he finds the beast staring at him while heavily breathing. Not sure what to make of it, he stares back at it. Just when he starts to get impatient, the beast moves away in disinterest settling somewhere deeper in the crevice. Not caring about it anymore, Akiel hurriedly claws his way to the dark green material. Tapping it, he hears a metallic ring echo in the crevice. Wincing, he starts to pour his mana in the metal. Filling a fist-sized piece, he remodels it into a sphere and inspects it. Giving it a squeeze, he watches as his hand starts to crack. Letting the sphere go, he inspects it for damage. Surprisingly, it is just as pristine as it was. Next, he tests its mana capacity. Reaching about three times as much as stone, he concludes that the dark green metal must be the green material in a more condensed form.

Satisfied in every way possible, Akiel pours about eighty percent of his mana into the metal and remodels it into a new body.shifting the stone body and detaching it, he tries moving his new body. First a finger. Wiggling it up and down, horrible squeaking tears through the underground room followed by a deafening roar. ‘Why do I sound like a rusty door?’ Akiel asks himself.