"Nice!"

The voice caught Max by surprise; he wasn't aware that he was being watched. He quickly swiped away the message.

A short way down the tunnel stood a boy, close to Max’s own age. His face was streaked with dirt and sweat (like Max's own, he was sure), and a metal mining cap leaned lopsidedly atop the boy's scrawny head. The young miner's name was Alby, and he was as close a friend Max had in this world.

“I saw that,” Alby said, grinning. “Rank up?”

“Uh, yep,” said Max, though he did not feel proud about it. At this rate, he’d become a Master Miner in what, a hundred years? Usually, skill increases were considered moments of achievement, but to Max, it just felt like a pertinent reminder of his natural lack of ability. “Lucky me, I guess.”

“I keep telling you—” Tink. “Hard work—” Tink. “Pays off!” said Alby in-between pickaxe strikes, as if to prove his point further. “What’s your rank now?”

“Erm…” Max began, feeling sheepish. He and Alby had started in the mines at the same time, but the skinny blond-haired boy’s mining skill was already several levels higher than his own. “Ten,” he lied.

“Really? Dang, you’re catching up quick... Must be those extra strikes you keep getting in, yeah? Remind me to buy you an ale later. One of Rilliard’s finest!”

Max nodded and couldn’t help himself but smile. Though his cheeks still burned with shame about his low mining level, Alby’s genuine positivity helped lighten his mood. The monotonous work of the mines tended to suck the life out of most people, but here was Alby, six months in and still as happy and optimistic as the day he arrived.

“Bell should be ringing any time now…” Alby continued, frowning.

As if on cue, the welcome ringing of the work bell soon echoed past them, signaling the workday’s end. Max wasn't surprised; his friend always had an eerily accurate sense for anything related to time. Up and down the tunnel, the cadence of pickaxes striking stone slowed to a halt as the miners began gathering their things. The sound of rolling wheelbarrows and pickaxes dropped into them mingled with the sharp barking of the guards. More motivational encouragement.

Like most of the other miners who welcomed the bell with relief, Alby wasted no time laying down his own pickaxe and starting towards the surface. “Going to work overtime again?” he asked.

“You know me,” said Max. He always liked to put some extra work into the wall after the bell rang. Rarely did they yield an extra gem for the day, but he figured every hit added up over time—and Max needed every advantage he could get. Besides, by the time he made it to the surface, the wait to pay the proprietor’s fees and exchange gems would be significantly shorter. Only one person could enter the Exchanger’s shack at a time, and after work the line always piled up quickly.

“Well, best of luck. I'll see you out there,” said Alby, rumbling away with his wheelbarrow.

After throwing what remained of his strength into the final few strikes, Max finally allowed himself to stop. Good enough. All the other miners had left already, including most of the guards. It was a long workday for everyone. Max dropped his pickaxe and grabbed the wheelbarrow. However, just when he turned to leave… something in the crevice glinted in the torchlight.

A gem?

Max's heart jumped. His extra work had paid off for once! He forgot all about his low Fatigue and reached into the mining crevice eagerly. When he took hold of the item, however, his eyebrows wrinkled in puzzlement.

“What the…”

When he pulled the item into the flickering light, his confusion only grew. It wasn’t a gem at all! Or, at least not any Max had seen or heard of before. Instead, the object was smooth and black, oval in shape. Not an egg, but flatter, like a large skipping stone. It was larger than his palm, but he could still grasp it comfortably in one hand.

Burning with curiosity, Max tapped it with his finger to bring up the item’s description box. The semi-transparent screen popped into existence:

????? ?????

Hmm.

Finding nameless and description-less items wasn’t all that unusual, especially for someone whose Lore skill was effectively nonexistent, but to find such an item within a mining crevice… now that was something Max had never heard of before.

He turned the strange stone over a few more times. In the shadows, it appeared jet black, but holding it up against torchlight revealed a deep purple translucence. Like trying to peer into a moonlight ocean, the longer Max stared, the more the stone seemed to pull him in.

And was it just his imagination, or did the stone feel warm?

Max’s trance was snapped by the sound of scuffling coming from somewhere much further down the tunnel. He suddenly remembered where he was, alone. If a pack of spiketail rats decided to wander up from the uncharted tunnels again, there were no guards around to beat them back. For someone with zero combat experience, like Max, even low-level beasts like spiketails could kill him with ease. He dropped the stone into his inventory, grabbed the wheelbarrow, and hurried his ass towards the surface as fast as it would carry him.

As interesting as the mysterious stone was, he’d never get to learn anything more about it if he was…

Well, dead.