The cold splash made Alphine jump, he looked over to Alvar to see if he also notice the water droplet, their face was one of shock mixed in with joy, “We need to get a pickaxe!” He called out looking at his cell-mate.

Alphine nodded before placing his thumb on his chin “But how will we leave to get them? I mean we could try to smuggle them in when the mining period is over but they most likely count them each day.” he pondered, looking over to Alvar “Hey, reckon you could punch the ceiling so hard to make it crack more?” he asked.

Alvar gave his cell-mate the “you ate the mushrooms, didn’t you?” look.

“My sign allows me to make any weapon I wield stronger, however it doesn’t make me any stronger, even if I could, nobody in the cave can use their sign because of a shield that gets recasted every day preventing people from breaking out.” he sighed.

Then it clicked with Alphine “you said recasted right? That means that if we have a weapon we have a very small window of time to break the rock above!” he said grinning however this grin was quickly washed away when Alvar asked “How will we get a weapon?” Alphine flicked his hair “I have no clue.”

Alvar began pacing around the room “Taking a sword from the guards won’t work obviously, we don’t have any sticks to make a spear, we only have stones, what can we make out of fucking stones?!” He said kicking a few pebbles.

Alphine place his closed fist on his open palm before whisper-yelling “We can make a flail we only nee-” he was cut off by Alvar “Don’t we need a stick handle for a flail?” he questioned, “not exactly, you see all we need is something to hold the stones in and then tie it so we can swing it.” Alphine explained looking over to his cell-mate “Any plans for what we can use to hold the stones?” Alvar asked looking over to Alphine who started tearing a part of his shirt off using his teeth “What are you doing!?” Alvar yelled.

“Trying to get some cloth.” Alphine said pointing at the small pile of fabric on the bed, he looked up to his cell mate “Could you look around the room for some more pebbles?” he said while biting away at another piece of cloth. “Uhh sure, man” Alvar said giving his friend a thumbs up.

Alvar bent down looking for some pebbles, after a good bit of searching he walked over to Alphine with his palm closed, when he opened it he revealed around five medium sized pebbles along with seven, small ones and a single tooth “Nice, a tooth, extra damage” Alphine chuckled looking at his cell-mate’s palm.

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“Right, now that we have everything we need, we can start working on the flail, could you place the pebbles on the bed?” he said pointing at the bed before grabbing a rough square piece of cloth. “What we want to do is pour some pebbles into the piece of cloth and then fold it into a pouch shape,” he explained holding the pouch of pebbles up, “Now you want to tie the top of the pouch using the second piece of cloth.” He said tying the pouch, leaving a long strand of cloth to hold onto.

“And there you have it, a primitive flail!” he exclaimed, handing the newly created weapon over to Alvar. “Now all we have to do is wait until the shield gets recast,” Alphine said sitting down on his bed. Alvar looked down at the flail, he closed his fist before laying down on his stone slab.

Alphine look down at the ground “I can’t believe I’m so close to leaving this cave, I just hope everything will go well.” he thought to himself. “So do you know when the shield gets recast?” he asked looking over to Alvar laying down on his bed “No clue, looking back I never stayed up this long.”

Alphine yawned “Yo, man, could you wake me up if you think the shield is being taken down?” he requested, laying down his head on the stone bed. “Sure, man, don’t worry about it” Alvar said giving his now sleeping friend a thumbs up.

Alphine walked into his bosses room where upon opening the door he was met with his boss’s voice “Ah, Alphine welcome I’ve been waiting for you, please take a seat.” They said gesturing Alphine over to sit down. The boss opened their mouth, complaining about Alphines work ethic. With no intention of coming back, Alphine listlessly nodded before standing up and walking out of their office.

Later that day Alphine was sitting on his bed with his hands on his head “Shit, I’ll need to find a new job, I guess I’ll start job searching.” he said looking up at his one and only friend, his computer. He sat down on his chair before pressing the power button on his prehistoric computer, a short jingle played almost as if it knew what happened and tried to cheer Alphine up.

Alphine opened his browser of choice Oggole and began his search at first he looked up “Jobs in my area” however, he slowly began searching for: “Requests for game testing” then after a while of not finding a single game tester job request, his search turned into “top 100 mmos to play this year!” this search resulted in hundreds of mmo list websites.

He clicked on one and began searching for mmos, he saw a lot of titles, one that interested him was called Binary Oppression, however this interest disappeared when he opened the website that looked like it was made by a twelve year old crack head, needless to say he closed the website almost as quickly as he opened it. He scrolled down and saw a mmo that caught his interest, it’s name was Rune-Age.

Alphine clicked on the link to the game’s website. This one looked more professional, with a page for the different races and classes as well as a page leading to the player forums. He read over the games lore and different races and decided that this is the game he’ll play. He hit the download button, once the launcher app got downloaded he booted up the launcher and the actual game's download started, “I guess, I should go to sleep, it should be done by tomorrow” he said laying down on his bed.

“Wake up, Alphine!” Alvar shook his cell-mate. Alphine opened his eyes, he jumped up when he saw the place started glowing green. “GO!” Alphine called out. Alvar held the flail he started swinging it at unreal speeds it looked like it was teleporting in his hand.

He pointed it up at the ceiling before throwing it with ungodly strength. A massive explosion knocked the two back, the amount of light it gave off made Alphine close his eyes. Then after a few seconds he opened them.

For the first time in a while, he was met with a flood of light.