Elsewhere...

"Aldren."

Aldren, one of the old men, merely nodded. He too had noticed the disturbance to the mana of the surroundings. The mana was fluctuating wildly, an ominous sign. Many mages might not notice it but these two certainly did.

Bahal wrinkled his eyebrows and spread his senses as wide as he could with the help of his secret art, Soul Gaze. He realised the wild fluctuation of mana seemed to be the strongest where the new mines were.

"Aldren, the Jagspire mines."

Bahal nodded yet again, the two were together long enough to understand each other with a single word or gesture.

The pair of old men activated their arts and flashed off.

*****

As I entered approached the mines, I realised I forgot to bring a lighting source. Dammit! I didn't want to walk all the way back after the long hike to where the mine was though. Hoping to find anything, I tried staring into the first part of the tunnel. It was when I noticed a red glare in the reflection of the sun. The angle of the sun was right at the point where the first part of the tunnel would be properly lit up. There, laid a tantalising chunk of Scathil stuck in the wall of the tunnel, taunting me.

I ran up to it and attempted to strike the rock holding the chunk of Scathil in place with my hoe. It wasn't very effective. Great. Now I knew I really had prepared for nothing, not even mining equipment. In my defence, I was too poor to buy proper equipment even if I remembered to, so stop your mocking right there!

I tried to force the Scathil out with my tool but I had only dislodged a small portion of the rock after a lot of clanking. I hate everything.

"Scrak, scrak, scrak."

All of a sudden, I heard scraping sounds. What was that? A golem? I assumed that a golem was attracted by the noise I had made trying to collect the Scathil and paced out of the tunnel, ready to escape if need be.

In a few seconds after that, I saw a strange misshapen boulder with two arms slowly climb out of the tunnel. It had a huge golden orb the size of a head embedded at the front of the boulder where I assumed a face would normally be. The hands of the golem had thumbs, but only long squarish flabs where the four other fingers would normally be, and was around a third of my height.

The size of a core monster's core often depicts it's strength well. I could tell that this golem was not one to be triffled with, with a head sized golden core instead of a golems usual thumb sized silver core.

"RUUUBBBBBUUURBBB! SHHHINNNNNNNG!"

The core of the golem flashed with strange vibrant lights as it made strange noises. What it was trying to do was beyond me. I knew this golem was very powerful, but golems were only able to use physical attacks and were relatively unintelligent. Tentatively, I moved a little closer to the golem. The golem's core flashed red for a second, then swiped at me with one of it's arms, not at a very quick speed. I dodged the punch easily.

I felt relieved that golems were as "harmless" as the book depicted. However, this was very odd. Golems were known to be peaceful and passive creatures unless attacked. What had angered it?

The punch threw the golem off balance due to it's round body and it tumbled backwards and crashed into the section of the wall with the Scathil, almost touching it.

"REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

The core of the golem suddenly glowed a shade of red the colour of fresh blood as it striked the wall that held the Scathil, probably in anger.

And I was shocked. The punch was so fast, it left a blur in the air and smashed the entire wall to pieces. Was the earlier shot a warning punch? I felt very glad that the golem didn't decide to kill me outright.

After the wall crumbled, many minerals could be dotting the ground. The punch was so strong the golem had been flipped by the recoil, causing it to slam against the ceiling of the tunnel and bounce back to the ground, leaving it momentarily confused.

I took the chance and snatched up all the chunks of Scathil on the ground, a surprisingly large amount as more of it was hidden behind the wall.

As the golem had seen me taking it's food, I prepared to run, but the golem didn't seem angry. It even made a strange noise that was vaguely reminiscent to that of cooing. I decided that this was probably a mutated golem, having higher than normal intellect compared to it's peers, able to remain civilised.

Was it fine with me taking a part of it's food? I tried reaching for a piece of Mithil, a valuable aquamarine metal.

"REEEEEEEEEE!"

Maybe not. I pulled my hand away and the golem hurriedly grabbed chunks of the metals and pressed them straight to it's core, and the metals were absorbed with ease. It was as if it was worried I would steal it's food.

The golem faced me with it's core after it's meal and tapped it's "head", then vaguely pointed further into the tunnel. It might not have been a good idea to follow a suspicious monster into a dark cavern but it was my best bet. Despite that, I didn't feel like it would be a good idea to head into the dark without a proper light source, but I recalled that the Scathil bits seemed to vaguely glow. I looked into my storage bag, ready to pull out a chunk of Scathil when I realised there was a lantern in the bag.

Damn! That bastard Edward forgot to tell me a lantern was provided!

I pulled out the device and took a better look at it. The metal was made of bronze and had a clear crystal stuck at where the wick would normally be. I flipped a switch along the side of the lantern and the light illuminated the entire tunnel clearly.

I cautiously entered the caverns, walking as silently I as could with the strange golem as a guide. The tunnels looked unatural, as if golems had tunneled through them, resulting in uneven jagged walls. Shadows seemed to dance amongst the jagged edges of the tunnels, making the place mildly eerie.

A few piles of rocks were suddenly animated, revealing themselves to be golems along the way, making me jump in fright, but my guide made more odd noises and flashed it's core with colours causing the other golems to settle down.

What interested me was that the looks of the golems were all different, all structured in different ways and had differently size cores. I wondered why this place had unique golems mutations, even giving them the intellect to comunicate.

The golem lightly hit the ground to attract my attention, snapping me out of my thoughts and pointed to a piece of Scathil lying along the ground. I picked it up gingerly. It seemed I got what the golem was conveying. The golem continued further after that. Perhaps the golems had aversion to Scathil somehow and this one was counting on me to remove them?

As we ventured further, the bag filled up with tons of Scathil. It was a good thing the bag had an enchantment such that stored items held no weight. I also found a pendant with a winged design which I put on my neck after feeling abundant mana emanate from it. The feeling was extremely comforting. I knew there was a slight chance it would have a unsafe enchantment but I decided, fuck it.

Trekking further and further, I grew worried. What if I got lost in the tunnels? I took a while to get the attention of my guide, but I managed to get the message to my guide by pointing to myself and back the way we came back.

"Ruuuuuuu... Rurururu!"

The core of the golem flashed with a light blue colour, and it sounded vaguely upset. Upset that the garbage cleaner was going off was he?

After repeating the act of point to myself then to the way back over and over, the golem finally complied.

Traveling upwards for a long period of time, I finally saw daylight again. I was about to sigh in relief when I suddenly heard the sound of combat and shouting.

"Goddammit! Why the fuck is this thing so tough? Forcebolt!"

Blondy! I realised he was flying in a tornado as he fought a golem. It was more humanoid than my golem guide, looking similar to a featureless stone puppet but cruder. It had a core embedded in it's head as well, but only half the size of my guide's core.

The power from the invisible spell hit the golem hard, breaking the top half of it's stone head off and revealing most of it's core. The impact of the attack was enough to leave deep imprint of the golem's shape as well.

"Blondy! Why the fuck are you fighting the golem?"

"Fight? It attacked me first! When the heck did you get here anyway?"

The golem that led me out eyed (orbed?) the scene of the fight and decided "NOPE" then retreated down the tunnels.

"I'll explain later! Yo-"

"REEEEEEEE!"

The golem Blondy had attacked was very angry, judging from the way it's orb was glowing red. A sudden beam of white light shot out at supreme speed and smashed straight into Blondy.

You know, seeing the mutations of the golems, I wasn't even surprised to see them use magic at this point.

"Arggh!"

Blondy's mana shield was broken by the power of the attack but fortunately most of the impact had already worn off. His shoulder was still a bloody mess regardless.

Blondy decided he had enough and prepared to fly away. However, the core of the angry golem glowed red again and I could tell it was about to attack again.

Swiftly snatching a random object from my storage bag, which fortunately was a chunk of Scathil instead of the lantern, I threw the red metal at the exposed half of the golem's core and it begun to be absorbed by the core.

"ARRKKSKREEEEEEEEEEE!"

The monster shrieked in agony and clutched it's head. The core started to glow a crazy kaleidoscope of colours and the golem pointed it's core at me in it's frenzy.

I was unsure of what attack it was about to do but I had already rolled away in fear. The core of the golem exploded at this moment and a huge beam of blood red smashed into the spot I was at, a hundred times thicker than the thin beam of light aimed at Blondy. I was fortunate to have reacted with such speed.

I was about to heave a sigh of relief yet again when the ground started to tremble. A very loud and deep rumbling sound seemed to resonate through the surroundings and I could even feel the vibrations through the body.

Uh oh. It seemed the excessive tunneling of the golems had made the ground unstable, collapsing when hit with such a strong attack.

I tried to run as fast as I could, but it was too late.

The ground beneath me crumbled and I fell down a deep abyss, screaming.