The next morning, on the first day after the boon, Tarren left his home tired and sore. Alteriad System Messages blinked in his vision as he moved towards his designated tunnel in a haze. Wearily toggling his messages on, he skimmed their contents.

Alteriad... v31.391.339

> Citizen Record

Name: Tarren Hicyanel

Class: Miner (Level 8, 24%)

Attributes:

> Strength: 8 (41%)

> Coordination: 5 (89%)

> Intelligence: 9 (24%)

> Perception: 5 (36%)

> Endurance: 8 (23%)

> Vitality: 2 (11%)

> Toughness: 2 (8%)

Traits:

> [Greater Endurance] 21.2%

> [Discomfort Tolerance] 58.6%

Skills:

> [Miner > Shear Stone] 62.8%

> [Miner > Basic Pickaxe Proficiency] 100%

> [Miner > Basic Low-light Perception] 100%

> Daily Assignment Release

MDM Requirement: [Up 26.5%]

Daily Quota: [Up 32.3%]

Tunnel Assignment: 62B.323

It took his mind a moment to register the numbers, but as he reached the end of the message, he swore roughly and stopped, ignoring the mutters from the passersby on the busy causeway.

His quota had increased by 32.3% over just one day! Where had that come from?

He was confused for only a minute, though, before realization crashed over him. The Alteriad gave nothing away for free, truly. Even ignoring the cost he was sure was coming, now that his intelligence was higher -- higher by a margin that would normally take a year or more to achieve -- it saw him as more capable of his work, and so required more of him. And all despite the fact that he had no skills, no manner in which to make use of his increased characteristic to improve his mining output! A neater trap he could not have imagined.

Tarren spent that day in a near fugue state, an endless blur of swinging pick and shearing stone. He skipped their daily breaks; only taking the time to gulp down a swallow of water before returning to work, but despite it all, as the day neared its end, he could only gaze in despair at his numbers. Though he had worked as hard and fast as he could, without staying for hours more each night, he’d never meet his new quota.

Tarren had more than half a mind to do just that, the dangers prowling the dark tunnels at night be damned, but Rhys at last pulled him from his mania.

“Tarren!” He nearly yelled, shaking Tarren until he lowered his pick and came back to himself. “You have to stop. Give it up for tonight. Everyone else is gone! The glowstones are nearly out.”

As Tarren’s eyes cleared, traveling around the empty tunnel, the pain in his hands and arms finally registering to his overwrought mind, Rhys’s tone softened.

“Your family can spare a few day’s allotments, until you find your feet with the new quota. Knowing you, you’ll get it in no time.”

But as they hurriedly marched home, out of the fading light of the barren tunnels, Tarren’s mind still whirled on thoughts of the cost yet unpaid for his so-called boon, and visions of his family starving in the street plagued him.

At the Node station, Tarren endured the sense of shame and guilt that rushed through him when it pronounced his output insufficient and granted him nothing. The much stronger shame, of explaining to his family his failure, he avoided, taking only a little tea before crawling to bed, insides already aching from hunger.

The second day after the boon passed much the same for Tarren. He finished his day of work even farther from his quota than before, though he could’ve sworn that, when his mind wasn’t clogged in hunger or tiredness, he had finally begun to notice some benefit of his new characteristic. At times, he felt that he was able to understand the stone around him better. Understand its myriad patterns,, the movement of his mana as his pick connected with the wall, all of it. That if he just had more information, more insight, then maybe his new intelligence could help him mine faster, more efficiently. Fast enough, perhaps, to match his quota.

He described as much to Rhys, to which the other man only frowned thoughtfully, as though contemplating something, but in the end Tarren went home hungry yet again. This time, on insistence from Rhys, and with the heavy knowledge that he would only do worse operating on an even greater deficit of mana, he told his family of his missed quota. Still hesitant to explain about the boon, he merely said that his quota had increased unexpectedly, and he hadn’t yet found a way to meet it. Despite the ensuing shouting match between Albon and their father, centered on whether or not the Alteriad truly did only provide challenges that could be overcome, his confession had the desired effect. His mother tapped an allotment and a half out of their limited stores for his use, filling his tired cells with energy once again.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Don’t hold back on such matters in the future.” She told him, gently, as he slumped in the chair at their table. “It will do us no good if you drop from exhaustion in the tunnels.”

But he didn’t miss the worried way she looked at their dwindling savings of Mana.

The third day after the boon, fresh now on new Mana, Tarren resolved to do better. Somehow.

And as though the Alteriad really were looking out for him, as Albon claimed, soon enough a solution did present itself.

“I’ve got an idea.” Rhys said, as they approached their designated work area that morning. “I think it can solve your problem, and help both of us beyond that to boot.”

Tarren gave him a sidelong glance. “Oh, yeah? How so?”

“So, I know this probably hasn’t been on your mind, since your... boon... and all, but do you recall that new ability I got?” Rhys asked. At Tarren’s guilty look, he hurried on, “No, no--don’t worry about it. There’s been a lot on your mind. But here’s the thing; it really hasn’t been as useful for me as I’d hoped. My speed has only improved marginally. It’s a perception ability, and while I have a bit of lead on most in that regard, my ability to use what the new ability tells me is... lacking.”

Tarren raised an eyebrow at his friend, the admission surprising given the other man’s tendencies. But Rhys continued before he could get a word in.

“See, I was initially hoping it would just sort of... tell me, you know ‘Strike here!’ and ‘Ore there!’, but it doesn’t. It just gives me a sort of passive sense for what the composition of the stone likely is, layers of density and mana flow, projections a few inches deep beyond the wall. Sometimes it's helpful, other times, it's just confusing. I’m sure I’ll get there eventually, but for now...” He shrugged, and trailed off.

“But your boon...” he continued, as they navigated a steep tunnel descent into the final stretch of their area.

“My boon gives me the ability to work with that information!” Tarren finished, catching on, some hope kindling in his chest. “But how does that really help?” He asked, a moment later, his hopes sputtering in his chest. “I can’t see what you see.”

“... I don’t know.” Rhys admitted. “That’s where I got stuck too. But I think it's solvable. Worst case scenario, we could always try to get a loan or save up the mana for a skill transfer crystal--” He began, before Tarren cut him off

“Absolutely not! That’d be incredibly expensive, and I’m not taking your skill besides.”

“Or” Rhys continued, loudly, as though Tarren hadn’t said anything, “we could try to see if we can make something work through more mundane means. Maybe we can find a way for me to look for the right patterns -- patterns you describe for me -- for us to follow to accelerate both of our work. That’s where I think we should start, in any case.”

Their plan had a few false starts. At first, both their speeds suffered greatly, and Tarren worried that this scheme would cost them both their daily allotment, rather than just him. But Rhys insisted they keep at it. He would point at a section of the tunnel wall and describe what his new skill told him. Tarren would point at a few areas he felt they should try, then they would mine furiously for slow moments, then re-assess. At first, Tarren just felt like he was guessing, randomly aligning the slight whispers his heightened intellect fed him to the information Rhys described. But slowly, over the course of the day, their speed improved. They found more and more pockets of high-value ore, and had to cut through less of the surrounding stone. Finally, just as the end of the day approached, they stumbled upon a thick vein of ore, nestled deep behind part of a wall of thicker granite, but accessible off the side of another area they had mined, and Rhys at last met his quota when hollowing it out. Tarren, too, found himself closer than he’d dared hope, but still a painful 11% short of his mark.

His mother’s face as she drained more Mana from their stores cut more deeply than the failure.

The fourth day after the Boon, Tarren and Rhys struck a fortune.

Their day began as normal, rhythm progressing in speed and accuracy as they both learned how to better combine their separate skills. Then, Tarren began to notice a strange pattern. As they carved out more of the tunnel wall, a snaking chasm of stone became more and more defined in his senses. Thin lines where the stone had density and mana conductivity differing sharply from the surrounding rock, subtle, at first, but more and more apparent as Tarren directed their mining ever further from their assigned path.

“Are you sure about this?” Rhys asked, as Tarren again directed his friend to keep mining down. Their slow excavation had diverged from their source tunnel markedly, now, and their ore quotas were painfully low.

Tarren hesitated, glancing at his numbers, but his conviction firmed, new intelligence prickling. “I’m sure. There’s something off about the stone just below us and ahead. If what your skill is telling you is accurate...” He trailed off, not wanting to get his hopes up, instead beginning his own mining opposite Rhys.

Ten minutes later, they struck the first patch of Shard. Tarren didn’t know what the substance was, truly -- the system just called it “Crystalline Essence Precipitate 93A43B” -- but everyone in Miner’s rest called it Shard. The sharp, brittle, obsidian-black crystals were rare, but could only be found in deep Ebonsteel mines like those surrounding Miner’s Rest. They were hard to map out from any significant distance away and were extremely valuable, for reasons nobody seemed to understand, save that the System paid far and above daily rates for their acquisition.

And Tarren and Rhys had just found a patch larger than any that had been seen outside the Pits in over 10 years.

Their first breakthrough into the crystal vein, of course, didn’t reveal the extent of the patch. But it was as though the vein would never end. Every new stone they broke shattered to reveal glittering Shard lining its interior.

They were ecstatic. Even as the system tallied their finds, their quotas both suddenly jumping up to 100%, then 200%, then higher, they kept mining. Mapping out and segmenting the extent of the vein.

When a particularly large patch fell from the wall in front of them, Rhys snagged a broken tip that had shattered from the pick’s strike and thrust it at Tarren.

“Look at it!” He practically yelled, eyes alight and frenzied. “I knew it! I knew we could make it work!” He laughed again as he grabbed a handful of the loose crystal shards that had fallen to the floor.

Tarren could only laugh along with him.

In short order, they had alerted their section supervisor, who had congratulated both for the find before calling in dedicated survey teams to map out the seam. Tarren and Rhys would receive a fraction of the expected value of the entire seam, as it was their discovery, but the whole company would benefit from this find, so it was with light steps that they eventually headed back towards the city that evening, a crowd of pleased miners on their heels.

Even though Tarren knew that their find was still mostly luck -- despite his new intelligence and Rhys’s skill, Shard seams were common only in the depths of the pits -- he couldn’t help but grin anew as he squeezed the small, thumb-sized tip of the Shard crystal Rhys had snagged when they’d first made the find. He had only noticed he had kept it as they were all walking back towards the city, but though the rock was likely worth a good sum, Tarren found he didn’t mind. He could always sell it later, at need, he reasoned, so letting his smile stand he slipped the rock into his belt pouch.

Tarren and Rhys both received infusions of Mana that day that were, to them, small fortunes indeed. Tarren could pay his family’s stores back ten-fold for their loss, and that was after his own core had been stuffed to bursting from the excess Mana beyond his daily allotment. Rhys had received an even greater amount, as his skill was deemed more central to the find.

As Tarren lay in his blankets that night, he smiled to himself. Maybe, he thought, just maybe, everything will be fine after all. Maybe the cost for the boon has been paid, and Albon’s surprise will be a job he can hold, and our stores will grow instead of shrink with the find of Shard. Maybe, for once, it will all work out well.

And with that thought to guide him, he drifted off to sleep with a light heart, for the first time in what felt like ages.

The fifth day after the Boon, Tarren’s brother Albon volunteered to die.