The man-faced spider crawled towards me. I unleashed another Minor Shock spell. A thin bolt of lightning burst from my hand and arched towards the creature’s 8 red eyes. It hit, and the beast flipped over then curled its legs into itself. It looked dead, but it wasn’t. Dead spiders disappeared.

After two days of grinding on my quests and casting magic whenever I could, my Satellite combined with my Core and I gained my 10th mana point!

I self-fist-bumped. I finally had the amount of magic ordinary people started out with. But more importantly, I could finally cast the teleportation spell that I’d been dying to use.

The spider’s leg twitched, it was about to come out of its stun, just as my mana fully replenished. I chose a target three squares to my left where a stone block was and willed myself to be there.

My vision changed. I floated in my new location, but I was also 10 mana points down.

The spider stood back up and continued on its way. I grinned, remembering when those monsters used to scare me. I immediately stopped grinning. Now what scared me were darkness traps and Still Men.

I also needed to get used to using this new spell. I cast Haste on myself and bolted down, within 30 seconds my mana had filled up, and I used Teleport, bringing me close to a mushroom trap. I sidestepped it and continued on. In less than 30 seconds I renewed my Haste and flew. I closed in on a sea of boulders that I’d typically go around. Instead, I teleported and completely bypassed them.

Combining those two spells like made traveling to the fourth floor a breeze.

I missed seeing a slightly dimmer block and flew feet first into a dark trap. I teleported 4 away and stopped. My armor was down to 1 out of 2 charges.

Speed was fun when I could burrow my way down, but the fourth floor, as always, needed speed tempered with finesse. Also, I had to slow down so I could keep Personal Weather up. With 10 Mana points, it only took 15 seconds to regain the 5 points needed to cast personal weather, but that was 15 seconds where I nearly boiled to death, so I decided to avoid that if at all possible.

I slowed my pace, killed a few unlucky slinfi and freed an equal amount of golems.

Near a scuttling scorpion, I saw a box!

Was this finally my 8th emerald? I hoped so. It seemed to take hours just to find one.

I traveled to it, used my bow to swiftly kill the scorpion and gained another ruby. When I was sure I was safe, I knocked the block out from under it. It crashed, and my 8th emerald appeared.

“Yes!” It had taken way too long to get to this point. At this rate, It would take me 3 to 4 more days until I was fully prepared and ready to face Nenvari.

I hunted a few more scorpions, ran into another of those blasted dark traps, taking my last armor charge, when I came across something unusual at the bottom of my mind map. Instead of blocks made from magma, there were blocks made from a beautiful rainbow crystal.

Huh? I swiftly flew to one and placed my hand on its cooling structure. With a thought, I broke through it, and it took 5 durability from my pickaxe.

I remembered these. They were the crystals Matt had fought Nenvari in. That meant I was getting close to the boss room. At 274 durability that meant I could only last 54 blocks against Nenvari before I needed a recharge.

The black dot once again appeared on my mind map.

“Not again.”

I rushed to a nearby recharge bubble, bringing me up to full. Since I was traveling through cool crystal, I decided against keeping Personal Weather up. This time I would attempt to run from the Still Man.

I cast Haste and flew down. Crystal shattered at my touch. After several minutes traveling this way I relaxed. I had to have escaped it by now. A wraith, this one a dwarf, floated nearby. He kicked an obsidian boulder off a cliff and laughed.

With a Still Man in the area, I couldn't risk accidentally running into this ghost, so I turned my bow into the toy scythe and readied myself. In my map, I saw him visibly shudder and turn in my direction. His form blurred and it took moments for him to attack me. I flew back, grabbed one of his attacking arms and yelled, “Sleep!”

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His momentum carried him through and past me, but he eventually crumpled to the ground. I bomped his forehead.

Unsurprisingly a reaper I’d never seen before appeared and placed the ghost in a chokehold just like the previous reapers. He took one look at my toy and doubled over with laughter. It took the wraith waking up and beginning to struggle before he stopped and faded away.

“Yep, that’s right, get a good look at the girl with a toy scythe.”

I waggled it. It made an unpleasant sound like the blade was about to come unattached from the handle, so I stopped and changed it back to my bow.

You are about to die. Want me to save you?

I closed my eyes and groaned. Again?

“No.”

Getting eaten alive was still a horrible experience.

***

I rushed through the rebirth process, barely waving hello and goodbye to Mr. Black before I appeared in the main cave.

With a giant grin on my face, I said, “I did it! I have 10 whole mana points!”

“Congratulations,” Phenic said, “You’re now at the starting point of most other magic users.”

I stuck my tongue out at him.

He smirked. “Kill the Still Man yet?’

“No.”

“Then point your tongue at somebody else.”

“Oh, stop throwing shade and give me my crystals.”

He sighed and gave up the goods in exchange for my bells.

I turned to Korren. “I took a break from jadinfray items, but I have my 8th emerald!”

She sent me a give me motion, and I handed her my inventory and bow.

“With this, you’ll be able to reach 8 blocks away, and you’ll only need to go through 10 to charge your bow.”

I did a little dance. Just a tiny bit closer to my goal! I turned to Engra. “I still don’t have the rubies saved up yet, but I got a few more.”

“Don’t worry about it and —”

The ground rumbled, and everyone froze. The lighting in the main caverned went from blueish to red, and an alarm sounded.

I looked at Meeks whose face had gone pale.

“What’s wrong?”

“The mine’s been infiltrated by the Light Fae. They’re after its heart.”

“Its what?”

“We don’t have time to explain.”

There was a loud pop, and I suddenly knew I could fly within the main cave as I did in my wall-mine. Also, what had once been an empty space was now filled with many motionless spurious bodies and several creatures like goblins or dwarves who were obviously battle miners.

Above me, the dark ceiling cracked and crumbled. Light Fae creatures and beautiful warriors dressed in silver and gold dropped from the ceiling. They floated halfway to the ground.

“This force is just the distraction,” Korren said. “Right now we’re attempting to protect the heart of the mine. If it gets destroyed, it will take the mine and everyone with it. Hopefully, they’re just trying to capture it, which would mean them turning it off. That would still kill the people within who don’t escape to one of the boss rooms, but it will mean only a few years of going through each mine and cleaning it out instead of a completely dead country bubble. We can do that, but let's get to them before that happens.”

“Meeks, Phenic, you know what to do.”

“I’m helping too!” I yelled.

We didn’t have much time. The people Korren called “a distraction” were already shooting down any miner that moved with bows similar to my own, but the blast from the bows was thin and long as opposed to the giant block filled shots I usually gave off. Oddly, those miners would go down, flash for a second and return as if they hadn’t just been killed. Mr. Black must be working overtime. Then I noticed one that died but didn’t come back and a chill ran down my spine. Could he not always get people who died up here? Hadn’t he mentioned something similar at one point?

I swallowed. I just had to hope my crystals worked.

“Ms. Knight. Find someplace safe to hide,” Korren said.

“No! I can fight. I defeated You, Phenic and Meeks. Don’t expect me to act like someone who can’t help just because there’s trouble.”

Phenic laughed and took out a small gun. “You only beat me because I wasn’t allowed to use my weapons.” He flew up and started circling around the enemies, attacking them with the small weapon. It hit them with a direct beam of light. Every person hit dropped like a brick hitting a window.

Meeks smiled at me sheepishly. “To be fair, Miss. I was the one who gave up. You didn’t actually defeat me.”

He pulled out his sword and started to block near every weapon blast that came after him and the people below.

A few were let through, and bodies flew through the air.

I glared at Korren. “I know I couldn’t defeat you without using trickery, but you can use all the help you can get.”

“Alright, but stay close. If you’re about to be attacked, then you hide behind me. And don’t you dare cause friendly fire or I will punish you.”

With a gulp, I nodded.

“Are you ready?”

I quickly reviewed my stats.

Battle Miner Magus Kelly Knight

Ore Worth: 7425

Death Saving Crystals: 1656

Keys: 0

Weapon Charge: 0/10

Weapon Range: 8

Weapon Damage: 4

Weapon Recharge Cubes: 104

Durability: 274/274

Armor Teleport Radius: 4

Armor Charges: 2/2

Mana Points: 10/10

Spells and Techniques known:

Reaper Pen, Death Mind, Spirit Sleep, Candlelight, Minor Telekinesis, Minor Cleanliness, Personal Weather, Flameless Light, Haste, Minor Shock, and Minor Teleport.

Current Tasks and Quests:

Collect 5 sets of 4 Emerald Keys for weapon upgrades: 8/20

Collect 42 Rubies for an Armor and Mind Map upgrade: 23/42

For every 1 Bell exchange for 1 Crystal: 0

Jadinfray cave items to be exchanged for Weapon Recharge Cubes: 0

Collect Ore worth 3600 for 2 durability: x1

Golems rescued: 35/?

Survive Light Fae Attack

I pulled out 8 pre-named weapon recharge cubes. “I’m ready.”