Early the next day, in the mine.

Yorith and the miners had been waiting, all prepared: pickaxes, large empty sacks, lanterns, along with other tools necessary for cave exploration. There were about thirty-five to forty miners gathered here.

As I strode deeper, some of these miners greeted me. As more than a week going in and out of this place was bound to make me a few acquaintances. They had yet to be informed about their employer, however, and all they knew was that this work was arranged by Yorith.

The guy himself, who looked like a Muppet character, was in the midst of checking his men’s attendance as well as their belongings.

“Are all the people here ready?” I went ahead and asked him.

“They are! Now show me the job.” He was eager for this new work that paid twice as much by flexing his muscles at me.

“Whoa, no rush.” I raised my hands to calm him down.

Anyway, I told him to gather his men and gave them a small speech that although there was no life-threatening danger involved in this work, I couldn’t guarantee that no hazardous danger such as earthquake, cave collapse, and what have you wouldn’t appear, but I assured them that I would pay for anyone that was injured.

The three dozen or so miners, large and small, cheered upon hearing this; their faces showed eagerness beyond the chart.

“Ya sure ‘bout this? We are miners; we know what dangers are involved in this work and have prepared ourselves for that,” Yorith explained.

Rather than agreeing with his reasoning, I asserted my claim and added, “It’s fine. I can promise everyone that’s injured one source crystal.”

“One… one source crystal! You know how much that’s worth for us?!”

“Of course I know!” was what I was about to yell back at him, but I relented by saying that such an amount was nothing if this task went well to the end.

“That’s true. I remember seeing you come out with a huge pile of those… Ya know, I think I’ve some suspicions about this job — it must be ‘bout pickin’ up their carcasses, aye?”

“Uh-huh, you’re right on the money. But enough of this, and let’s get this started.”

Without procrastinating further, we pressed onward into the upper layer of the cave where it was formerly the crimson draugrs’ nest. The white mist had mostly dispersed, and all the miners showed a bit of a surprise about this finding. In fact, some of the experienced miners said that the cave might contain precious minerals.

“I expected that this place would have been swept clean of those nasty living corpses, but this is cleaner than expected…” Yorith scratched his hairy large head and looked at me in awe.

“Mm, they are quite a hassle. Say, since these mines are in the possession of all the people living in Aquarine, you can take them freely, yes?”

“Not really. We’ve to give an ‘offering’ to the Divine Mushroom. You can expect about 20 percent taken by them.”

“The Divine Mushroom? You mean the cultists of the Divine Mushroom Cult?” I really can’t imagine the giant mushroom having any interest in minerals…

“Who else?”

Well, what could I expect?

Normally, there would be a government body that collected tax in exchange for protection and many other benefits. The Divine Mushroom Cult was the closest kind to that, as said by Tuilë. After all, a nation was also an organization, but at an extremely huge size.

Soon enough, we reached the narrow path spiraling downward into the mutant ant nest.

“This is the place,” I said slowly.

Now that I had gathered enough source crystals, I didn’t mind that the secret regarding this place spread far and wide. In any case, they would have first possessed the necessary abilities and skills to be able to kill these mutant ants before getting their source crystals — I also needed someone to keep a check on this place.

I spearheaded the group and descended below. All the mutant ants around this area had been killed by me, and I was the strongest here, which was then followed by Yorith.

“Is this… a mutated monster nest?” Yorith flinched and inquired me, “This place’s seriously dangerous, isn’t it?

“It was. I had exterminated all of them around this area, along with their queen. As such, there’s no need to worry.”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“You WHAT?!” He raised his voice on that last word.

I held up my right hand to stop him and explained, “Of course, I have my own way of doing things. Have you ever realized why I carried a cart filled with sacks several times in and out of the mine?”

“Ah.” He thumped his fists at his thighs. “So, it’s something to do with this.”

Yorith was a simple-minded individual. He might have some level of keenness when seeing his level of leadership at leading the miners and was brash at times, but he was quite honest and knew what to ask and not.

Twenty meters advancing into the nest, we discovered our first group of ant carcasses. I told Yorith to leave this group of ants and only gathered them into a pile nearby. I mean, there were easily hundreds of dead ants scattered in its peripheral area alone. Thousands more were waiting deeper inside… We couldn’t bring unnecessary baggage with us.

On second thought, each Tier-1 soldier ant was worth about half a source crystal. As for the worker ants, they should be worth much less; probably less than a fifth source crystal each. Still, fly meat was still meat.

We continued to traverse the cave and found another two groups of ant carcasses deeper inside that we piled up at the side to take later. After finding that each of the miners could only carry about four to five carcasses, I decided to turn back after encountering and piling another two groups. The furthest dead ant group was of course taken by us while returning to the mine.

This process was then repeated a few times before all the carcasses in the peripheral area were collected. Since the ant nest was rather narrow, it took hours just to do this even with so many people.

“Th-There are soooo MANY OF THEM!!”

I gazed upon the huge crimson pile of dead ants that was stacked five meters into the ceiling of the mine with tingling skin and wide eyes. It would be a waste of time to count them individually, but the rough estimate put their total number at around five hundred or so in this pile alone. If I gathered all the dead ants that I’d killed, the total amount of ant carcasses was projected to be above four thousand…

This was insanity!

I had been scavenging for the source crystals inside the soldier ants and above only, so finding about these many ants that had been killed by the poison gathered here shocked me senseless.

The miners were exhausted at this time, and the day had passed noon. Therefore, I gave them a moment of respite and let them have lunch. I felt guilty for not feeding them, so I was thinking of buying them food or something and giving five source crystals to Yorith.

“This is a bit too much for food…” Yorith held the source crystals with both hands.

“At ease. Just buy a lot for them to take home later.”

Five source crystals were nothing to me at this point. Besides, I could earn thousands more by turning all these carcasses to Gekko.

“Many thanks, chap… No, boss!” He slightly bowed at me.

I didn’t know that doing this would garner so much respect from him. It seemed that being rich was indeed the key to solving so many problems, although definitely not all.

After an hour of rest, we continued to dive back into the ant nest and gathered another pile as large as before. I was eager to cash in these carcasses as soon as possible and rake in cash.

***

Three more days passed with the entire time spent inside the mine, going back and forth between the ant nest and the surface.

Moreover, during this span of time, the progress of recovering the ant carcasses quickened with each passing day, even if the distance got longer in return. In fact, this afternoon, we managed to dig the queen ant that was buried deep inside the queen chamber and brought it back to the mine near the surface for the people to see, well, figuratively.

Today was payout day, so all the miners were eager even after a whole day of constant work.

Usually, the miners earned about a fifth source crystal per day, and since I promised to pay twice their usual pay, I would pay half source crystal (just to round this up). Thus, logically speaking, I should pay each of them two source crystals for their hard work these past four days.

However, since I was in support of equity rather than equality, which was the case for the miners as well, I paid the miners based on the contribution. Consequently, it was hard to divide this hard currency, and I didn’t have gold nor silver to be used as change… Talk about being rich.

And so, I dumped all the troubles to Yorith by giving him a hundred source crystals that he would then be divided among all the miners. Among the hundred source crystals, I paid him twenty for all the trouble, of course.

Lastly, I bid him goodbye and went for Gekko to turn in all these carcasses. Although rushing to help Tuilë was equally important, paying off the debt took precedence.

“Mr. Maxim… Aren’t there way, way too many mutant ant carcasses here…?” The usually calm merchant had his voice trembling at this moment, his eyes that always looked like there were closing were now bulging like a pair of peas.

Because it would be easier to make a deal at the location where the ant carcasses were stored, I asked him to follow me into the mine, and here we were…

“You say that as long as they come in batches, you won’t mind the total amount, correct?” I asked in a confident tone; if he was a merchant with a big appetite as I had previously imagined, he wouldn’t renege on his promise.

“Obviously, I don’t intend to sell all these things at once; you can deal with these carcasses as you see fit. Of course, I mind not paying the handling fee.”

I must help Tuilë rebuild the airship as soon as possible. To do that, I wouldn’t be petty over a small amount of source crystals.

“That can work. However, Mr. Maxim, I must first inform you: To sell all these carcasses, my store needs two to three months… Though, we can do it in a month…”

“So fast?”

“Certainly, but that will decrease that total revenue by 20 to 30 percent, if that’s fine by you…” He held his hands together and smiled amicably.

I held my chin. I wasn’t in dire need of source crystals as of right now, so taking the longer one for increased profit was the way to go. And just in case, the ant carcasses might unexpectedly come in handy…

“…Hmm… No, let’s do it the longer way. If you can, process these carcasses before you sell them so we can earn more.”

“As expected of you, Mr. Maxim, to think ahead. Indeed, we will do it just like that. On a side note, I will extract the earning to pay for the materials that you previously purchased along with the handling fee of the carcasses, but you can still expect at least 1,500 source crystals.”

“Okay.” I held out my right hand to sign the deal now that we had reached a conclusion but was instead met by a strange gaze from him.

“Pardon?”

“Ah… I’m asking for a handshake. Is it uncommon to do this?”

“No, of course not.” He took my hand, and we shook hands.

It appeared that although they — the Fogland people — knew about handshakes, it wasn’t part of their custom to do so.