We moved away from the village. Far enough away for my work to not pose any problems, but just close enough to see it on the horizon.
I chose a relatively flat piece of land to create the mine. As I examined the gravel between my fingers, I realized the surface stuff didn’t contain much of that Dreadstone material. Maybe a few percent of what the Chief showed me.
I tossed the handful of rubble over my shoulders and flew forward just centimeters above ground. As I reached the edge of my designated mining location, I swiped my hand to the side, and a rumble sounded as the upper layer of small rocks and gravel moved itself to the side into large piles.
I moved my other hand the opposite way, forcing larger stones and boulders to shift and get out of the way. Soon, I was left with solid stone, though its structural integrity remained questionable.
The clearing was a few hundred meters across, prepared in mere moments. The action required but a tiny fraction of my power, though without the ability to replenish the lost energy, it would probably be considered wasteful. Overall, however, it wasn’t even a drop in the ocean. My gargantuan stores didn’t move even a single bit.
[Alright, guys! Time to get to work!] I said loudly as I clapped my hands. The golems I created immediately reacted, jumping on the opportunity to be useful to their master.
I stomped on the ground and the bedrock cracked, the little stone workers carrying the pieces off to be processed. I examined a few chunks up close, but the concentration of Dreadstone fragments was still unsatisfactory.
[Still need to go lower I see…]
The richness of the ore increased with depth according to the Chief, as did the density of the rock, that’s why they had their mineshafts so low underground. The general stability of the rock there was much better than the brittle stuff you could find on the surface.
I came to the middle of the open pit mine and slowly dropped down. As my feet touched the stone, I gradually lowered the pull of gravity making me lighter. That magic was always active as I didn’t want to sink to the planet’s core. As soon as a fraction of my real weight was uncovered, the stone beneath my feet cracked, and I sank down between the rocks to my knees.
As more of my mass became unshackled, and gravity pulled down on me, the stone simply parted beneath me, the bedrock swallowing me whole.
While slowly sinking deeper as my weight increased, I examined the stone around me. The concentration of Dreadstone was maybe one in ten billion at the surface, but that quickly changed as I dove deeper, soon reaching a great density of one in ten million. Optimistically.
I was already nearly a kilometer deep, and the rock around me was incredibly dense already, much more than what you would expect out in the real world. There the density of matter remained roughly the same, maybe increasing by a few times.
In the Ashen Wastes, however, the rock so deep was already a hundred times denser than the one on the surface. It was also getting more difficult to use any sort of magic so deep underground with all the surrounding material absorbing any Qi that came into contact with it. Dreadstone had this insatiable property that allowed it to nullify and absorb all magic.
It really was a dreadful kind of stone. Had my raw power and Qi control not been as strong as they were, I could have been trapped in the depths, never to be seen again. All power would slowly drain out of me while I would be unable to use any magic, and I would shrivel up and die like a slug dropped into a pile of salt.
Luckily with enough experience, I could resist the corrosive draining effect of the Dreadstone ore and still use magic, although at a somewhat diminished power level.
Having spent quite some time examining the rock around me, I decided the concentration was sufficient for the first attempts at extraction. My telekinetic powers spread like a giant hand, pushing upon the mass of stone above me.
A rumble spread from the ground and the rocky structure quaked as millions of tons of gray boulders were displaced, forced from the depths of hell and into the light. I rose together with the mountain of stone, carrying it out of the hole and depositing it on the ground not too far away.
I wasn’t completely familiar with refinement techniques for Dreadstone, though the Chief did kind of tell me, but I didn’t like what I heard. There was too much manual work, and it was too slow for my taste. They were just concentrating the ore anyway, and that was something I could do on my own.
I looked at Thalza who was sitting nearby, busy Cultivating with the help of the Soul Stone.
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[You might wanna move further away. It’s going to get dusty around here.]
The Drow slowly opened her eyes, looked at the mountain of stone behind me, and then rose, slowly walking away.
[Great!] I clapped my hands after she was gone and then turned back to the gray mountain. [Let’s see here… This is going to take a while.]
I flew to the top of the ore mound and began releasing my Qi. A good chunk of it was absorbed by the Dredstone ore itself, but even more of it obeyed my orders, and encased the entire place into a giant spherical barrier. As the Qi solidified, the conjured structure became more stable, and I began my work.
The inside of the barrier became a storm of clashing elements, wind and lightning mixed with fire, and the rocks inside were exposed to the power of nature. A hurricane began to howl on the inside, and lightning bolts blasted the boulders apart, with bursts of flames softening the rocks.
Everything popped and cracked, large pieces slamming into each other while my magic crushed everything like giant blender blades. The once large chunks of stone were getting ground down to sand and dust, with the particles swirling in the air.
The noise was deafening. The roar of lightning was like a once-in-a-century thunderstorm. All that energy, just to grind down some rocks.
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Hours passed, and as the dust settled, I was left with approximately a hundred thousand tones of gray sand, the first step to refining this mysterious substance.
I allowed myself to release a sigh. The work was mind-numbingly boring, but it had to be done for what I wanted to succeed.
Once again I used my vast telekinetic powers and flattened a separate space for the storage. Then, with one fell swoop, I lifted the mountain of sand high into the air, and let a fraction of it rain down like a waterfall.
It took some adjustments, but eventually, I managed to tune the power of Telekinesis just enough for it to push the empty grains of sand off course while letting the Dreadstone-rich ore fall straight down as it absorbed the magic.
I was basically just separating the wheat from the chaff, just in a more sophisticated, magical way. The principle was the same.
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Once again, hours passed, and the pile of sand building up beneath me stopped growing. I had run out of the raw material. There were two piles, both of them roughly equal in size, but the one that had no magical properties was slightly bigger. I had managed to concentrate the ore and double the amount of Dreadstone in a given volume.
Of course, I triple-checked that my plan worked, and satisfied with the results, I went to repeat the second and third step of the process a few more times.
I would grind down the pile into increasingly smaller grains, and then use the same process to concentrate the valuable pieces while discarding the rest. I repeated that over and over, eventually turning the original mountain of raw ore into a small pile of mostly Dreadstone dust.
The damn thing was nearly atomized, the individual particulates so incredibly tiny and difficult to control that I had to stop. The problem was that as the purity of Dreadstone increased, so did its intrinsic property of consuming Qi. Even with all my power, I struggled to use magic to manipulate it. It was like a dry sponge drinking the jet of water that tried to move it. It was quite annoying.
Luckily, not all was lost. My experiments showed that Dreadstone was significantly more resistant to heat than the stone around it, so once I had a small enough amount of it, I simply heated up the dust and evaporated the rock.
A few days probably went by before I achieved a satisfactory result. All that work, all that effort, and energy used to achieve it, enough to make old men cry at the wasteful nature of my work… All of that resulted in what I held in my hand. A dark gray brick that for some reason had threads of pulsing red running through it.
A single brick with 99.99% purity. A pure Dreadstone brick.
“You are finally done?”
Thalza stretched as she approached. She had remained motionless the entire time while I was working, Cultivating on her own.
[Yup. Here.] I tossed her the brick and she caught it with ease.
Then her entire body spasmed and twitched as if struck by lightning, and she dropped the brick before stumbling backward, her entire body trembling.
“What… is that… abomination?!” She struggled to say.
I laughed and picked the dark brick bare-handed, tossing it from one hand to the other. [That’s what I’m trying to figure out. You need to be careful when holding it. A few seconds of carelessness and it will suck you dry.]
She glared at me, but I just smiled. It was a harmless prank. At most, it hurt like getting your Soul sucked out when she touched it. Well, to be fair, it did that too. A little bit.
I took the brick and looked at it. Even for me, it was getting hard to hold it. It pinched a corner and broke off a small chunk. The material was surprisingly brittle.
Taking that small chunk, I slit my chest open and stuck the piece of Dreadstone beneath my skin.
[Ough… My god!] I almost immediately doubled over in pain and discomfort and quickly removed the offending pebble. [Man, that stuff stings! Such a nasty sensation.]
Anything that was not purely physical, such as various states of Qi, be it Souls or straight magic spells, was affected by the devouring abilities of Dreadstone. The only way to stop it from devouring Qi was to get it away from it.
I saw Thalza shaking her head at my reckless action. “Planning on making a weapon out of it? Looks painful.”
[Too brittle.] I shook my head and shook the brick. [It’s like a piece of glass. Or maybe a diamond. It is hard, but not worth mentioning when real Cultivators get involved. Although…]
I rubbed my chin and began murmuring to myself. [Maybe an alloy? I could combine it with a metal that has great conductivity… Celestial Metal, perhaps? It is very tough… Hmm…]
“Well, whatever you are doing attracted attention. We got company.”
[Hmm?] I turned to where Thalza was looking and noticed a little kid hiding behind a pile of rubble at the edge of the open pit mine. One quick scan and my eyes shot up. I grinned and decided that the Dreadstone experiments could wait. I tossed the brick to one of my golems who immediately collapsed as its energy was drained, and slowly began my approach.
[Hey there, kid. Curious?] I called to him and waved with a smile. Who knew such a desolate place would be so full of surprises?