A loud roar came from the path leading deeper into the mines. Something was coming and from the way the ground was shaking, it had to be a shade that had swallowed at least 30 pounds of flamestone. That was the threshold needed for shades to reach their adult stage. Where they were much stronger and developed magical abilities.

“W-What was that?!” Safid asked with a shaky voice.

“Get back,” Cal ordered.

He looked towards the cave leading to the deeper mines with a stern expression. It didn’t take long for the shade to reach their intersection. Unlike young or adolescent shades this shade was at least 5 meters tall. It had the shape of a lion with white holes for eyes and darker than black fur just like its siblings. It looked at the enforcers like they were insects in its path.

Cal didn’t waste a second before slashing with his sword towards the shade. The same light slash that he used on the first shade was sent towards the large shade. But unlike the first shade, the lion was unhindered. The slash and light explosion only left a small superficial wound on its body; however, Cal was not disheartened. This slash wasn’t to kill but to check the lion’s defenses. ‘Tough skin,’ he thought. ‘Should stab rather than slash.’ While he was contemplating his next move, the wound on the lion started to heal rapidly and was gone in the blink of an eye. ‘Fast regenerative ability. Too fast to be normal, must be one of its magical abilities. That’s one,’ he deduced. ‘Since it's just a replica of an ordinary beast rather than a mythical one, it should not have more than three abilities.’

The lion jumped and tried to bat him away with its claws. Rather than trying to parry this humongous shade Cal took a step and lunged with his sword to meet its claws. The moment the sword and claw touched a blinding white light spread out. The lion, the surrounding shades, and the recruits were momentarily blinded. Once they regained their sight, Cal was nowhere to be seen. The lion was enraged and looked around for its prey. A few seconds later something landed on top of its head. Cal held his sword with both hands and stabbed it towards the lion’s head, but the lion reacted faster, its tail extended all the way to Cal and hit his back with a strong force. Cal lost his balance and fell in front of the lion. His sword fell a few feet away from him directly below the lion’s head. The lion had a delighted look on its face as it tried to swallow him whole. Cal looked at the lion with the same listless expression he always had on his face. He pointed his right hand with an open palm towards the lion’s head and his sword shot up and went directly through its jaws before arriving at his hand. The lion roared with an unsteady voice and jumped back. Cal stood up again and swiped his sword to get rid of the blood.

‘Extendable tail. That’s two,’ he thought. ‘One more.’

The lion stepped back and looked at Cal with a more cautious expression. Its prey might not be as weak as it thought. It decided to wait for its jaw to heal before fighting again. Cal was happy to oblige as he looked around to assess the state of the recruits.

Safid had a deep cut on his right shoulder and it was bleeding profusely. ‘That arm’s gone,’ Cal figured. He was struggling with a single shade when he could take care of two easily. Phil and Bryan were in a better state taking care of two shades each. ‘They won’t last more than 5 minutes.’

He stepped forward and took care of the young shades with a few nonexplosive light slashes before turning back to the lion. It had already healed its jaws, but it still did not step forward to attack. ‘Weird,’ he thought. ‘Shades aren’t known to be cowards. What’s it waiting for?’ Before he could think further the lion started to roar with a voice so loud that it hurt his eardrums. Cal was slightly confused at first before he realized what it was doing. He turned back to the recruits and quickly ordered, “Go back up the mines. It’s too dangerous for you over here.”

“What do you mean? I can still fight. Stop treating us like weaklings,” shouted Phil.

Before he could reply they started hearing growling noises coming from the deeper mines and the cavern. The recruits had terrified looks on their faces as they realized what was coming.

“It's summoning others,” Cal explained. “Go back up you are just going to get in my way now. I won’t bother saving you this time,” he said before running back towards the lion without bothering to see if they left or not.

‘Super regeneration, extendable tail, and summoning shades. That should be all three. Time to get serious.’ As he was running, he threw his sword at the lion. Before the lion could bat it away, he zoomed forward with blinding speed towards his sword like it was attracting him. He slid down between its legs and started making a long cut from its stomach all the way to its genitals. Or at least where its genitals should have been since shades don’t have reproductive organs. He stood back up and swiped away the tail that tried to hit him. The lion screamed with a pained roar and tried to face him again. But Cal was too fast, he pointed his sword at the lion’s backside and started to charge up.

His sword started to light up as if it was trying to contain a tremendous amount of energy. When he was done, the light it gave off was enough to brighten up the entire intersection. Cal looked at the lion which had black blood poring out of its stomach and didn’t waste a second more as he released all the energy in his sword into a laser beam. Since it took a while for it to charge up the lion was already turning towards him. The laser went through the left side of its stomach and went out from the right side of its chest before hitting the walls of the mine. The lion lost its strength and fell but before he could deal the finishing blow, the other shade had arrived.

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The young and adolescent shades all started to gather in front of the lion like it was their liege. A lot of them lunged towards Cal to stop him from dealing the finishing blow. Cal grunted and stepped back to reassess his situation. There were at least 50 regular shades surrounding the lion. While it was easy for him to deal with them, it would be a hassle if the lion healed again. “I really hate fighting upfront,” he complained to no one in particular.

He threw his sword away and took a fighting stance with his hands. While his sword had a better reach, what he needed now was to get close and touch the shades. He needed to grab hold of the shades for his power to apply properly.

He punched the shade that was running towards him from the left before grabbing the throat of the one that was to his right. The shade tried to use its claws to tear his arm apart but before it could even move, its body started to shrivel up like something was absorbing all its water content. It started to turn transparent before its body vanished leaving behind an inactive flamestone. He rarely used this ability as he didn’t want others to know about it. Slight contact with his body and most of the adolescent shades with flamestones inside were easily dealt with.

Now there were only 20 more young shades left. He couldn’t deal with them using the same method, but he wasn’t bothered as young shades had no tail swords and their claws couldn’t even scratch his skin. Instead, he picked up his sword and threw it towards the lion once more. The lion had already seen this trick before, so it used its tail to swipe the sword away. But the sword was just a distraction as Cal had also picked up a flamestone from his bag and threw it directly towards the ceiling right above the lion’s head.

“That was decoy idiot,” he said before he zoomed forward past all the young shade and directly above the lion’s head. As he was falling, he took up a punching stance and his fist started to turn darker. Before the lion could do anything else he landed with his fist going right through its head and into its skull. ‘Checkmate,’ he mused. The lion's body started to shrivel up. Even its high regenerative properties couldn’t stop what was happening. Its eyes started to lose their white glow before losing their light altogether. Energy started to fill up Cal’s mana circuits as he absorbed all the mana out of the flamestones inside the lion’s body. Without the flamestones the lion started to disintegrate as it could no longer hold its body together. Its slowly turned transparent before vanishing altogether and leaving behind a whole lot of inactive flamestones.

Cal landed on the ground before glancing towards the other shades. The shades were confused as to what happened, but their instinct took over as they all started to run towards him again. “Never a hint of fear in you,” he grunted before holding his hand forward to pull his sword back to him. He then took care of the shades without wasting any mana.

He took a deep breath and relaxed his muscles before checking if he was injured. ‘A few bruises on the back from the tail hit,’ he checked. ‘Should be healed within a few days.’ He then began collecting all the flamestones in his backpack. After he was done, he decided to go back and check if the recruits made it up. He still had a few hours on his shift but since the lion must have already dealt with the enforcers and miners who were deeper down the path he was guarding, he might as well finish early and report the situation to the captain.

As he made his way, he heard fighting noises up ahead. He increased his pace to see what was going on. When he reached the place, he saw Phil and Bryan fending off three adolescent shades. Behind them, he saw Safid lying down. He had a gaping hole in his stomach which was bleeding way too much. ‘He won’t make it. Shame,’ Cal thought.

Cal stepped forward and quickly took care of the shades. Before he could say anything else, Phil ran to Safid’s side. “Saf!!” he screamed out. “You’re gonna okay buddy it’s just a small wound,” he said as he put his hand on the gaping wound to stop the blood loss. “Cal do something!!” he shouted at Cal.

Cal took another look and remarked, “It’s no use now. He lost too much blood. He’s dead.”

“But aren’t you a goddamn light mage? I thought they could heal people!!” he shouted again.

“Not all light mages are healers. And even those who are, can’t bring back the dead,” he stated without even flinching after seeing the dead body or Phil’s reaction.

“Fuck!!!” Phil shouted.

“Get yourselves together. Your shouting will only bring more shades here. Get ready to move and bring his body along. We can’t leave him here. If a shade consumes the body of an awakened then that would be a disaster,” he commanded.

Phil looked at him with a gaze filled with misplaced hatred but didn’t say anything else.

Bryan stepped forward and held Phil’s shoulder to show his sympathy. Phil swatted his hand away before carrying Safid’s body on his back and started walking again. They made their way to the upper mines without speaking another word. There was a somber mood in the air. When they reached the surface Cal first went to the mine administrator to exchange the heavy flamestones for cash before looking for the captain.

Once they found the captain in his quarters, he explained their situation. The captain frowned and relieved the recruits of their duties and told them to bury the body far away from the mine. Cal was also about to turn away when the captain stopped him.

“I thought I told you to only train the recruits! Who told you to make them go through such life-and-death situations?” Reginald asked with a steely voice.

“Nothing is certain in the deep mines, and you should blame the enforcers who could not stop the adult shade before it reached our location,” Cal replied.

“Still your ineptitude led to the death of one of the best recruits. I wonder what sort of punishment I should use for this. Hmmm,” he said with a predatory smile.

“Well how about this you let me have all your earning for the day and I will just forget this ever happened,” Reginald commented.

“No,” he answered.

“Oh. Someone’s getting a bit ahead of themselves today,” said Reginald with anger.

“I am not a slave anymore, I can always quit,” Cal said.

“Oh, but you won’t I’m sure about that. If you had such plans, then you would have already done so 1 year ago,” Reginald replied with certainty. “Well, I won’t be too hard on you since you also had to fight an adult shade. I’ll lower it to half the earning, and I won’t be too offended by your earlier show of disobedience either. Even if you are no longer a slave you are still under my command. Are you going to disobey my orders?”

Cal realized that there was no point in arguing with the captain. He didn’t really care about the money as he could always fight more shades—he was their natural enemy after all—he took out the money and handed it over.

“That’s what I thought. Now get out of my sight,” Reginald ordered with a hint of derision in his voice.

Cal took his leave without saying another word. He left the mine and arrived in front of the city gates.