A grunt and a gurgle from a few meters behind me. I turn around, still crawling on the ground, fearing what is coming. If I have to fight here, things will be really bad. The last thing I need is a creature creeping up behind me. I see a patch of blue skin, head with a coarse sparse black hair peeking from a corner of the tunnel. I think what I can do to prepare myself and blocking the tunnel is my first thought. I start to Decompose the silicon to raise a wall but the critter decides to attack.

I was out of time.

The critter is about one meter in height, with lanky long limbs and a slouched stance. It could reach as high as a human if it straightened itself. It is blue, covered in that coarse hair and has claws on its forelimbs. A long tapered snout and a lot of eyes all around its head. It growls and gargles as it runs toward me to attack.

I call my frying pan and dagger to my hands. Some of its eyes swivel to see the light reflected on the dagger. It comes clawing, I block them with the pan. The height limit means both of us can't maneuver well but the critter has the home advantage. I really didn't want to hurt or kill the creature but it is trying to kill me, my empathy perk is not working and there's nobody to save me from the beast. I dismiss the dagger and prepare myself.

It rolls to a side and darts a claw at my now defenseless side. I jump forward, making its raking claw aimed at my shoulder hit my ribcage but it puts me inside my range. I re-summon the dagger and slash the inside of its elbow joint. I feel a sinewy resistance from its tough tendons. The other arm moved to protect its scrawny chest. I bash the back of the claw to move it aside with the frying pan and slash the joint again. This time I manage to sever the biceps tendon, making the arm useless. A flash of pain comes from my flank where it scratched me.

I'm fighting for my life inside a cave. Don't blame me.

The blue thing goes into a frenzy, opening its maw and displaying rows of tiny serrated teeth, reminding me of a shark. it jumps toward me and for the lack of a better tactic, I headbutt its mouth, hoping the titanium helmet can hold. The teeth grind against metal and I see an opening. The critter grabs my neck and keeps gnawing the helmet. It is strong and I know I'll have trouble getting out of its grip.

It is now or never. I won't have another chance against this many-eyed thing. Its other arm flails at its side, the thing too dumb to notice it is incapacitated. I wait for it to rise and stab its armpit. I hope the heart is on the left side.

A sharp shriek with a lot of puke rings on my helmet. I twist and turn the knife, driving it deeper. Its dark red blood spurts from the wound and the claw around my neck weakens. I pull my head out of the helmet and rise to gain some leverage to finish it.

I hit my head on a rock and blood starts to come out.

The critter frenzies when it smells my blood and uses the time I gave it to grab and yank out the dagger, sending it clattering against the tunnel wall. It turns to run away and I see it has a lot of eyes on the back and top of its head too. The monster runs a few paces then falls down.

It screamed its death throes, spasmed and went limp.

And once more, I'm covered in grime and monster puke. Blue troll. Diet: stinky fish.

Eww! Eww!

I store my jacket, shirt, and bra, Decomposing everything organic on or around my upper body, including my own blood from where I hit the rock. After that, I crawl to retrieve my tools. I send the knife and frying pan back to the storage but I need to check the helmet. Some of the teeth managed to pierce through the titanium. Otherwise a lot of dents and scratches. I decompose the filth from it and get more titanium to repair and strengthen it by increasing its thickness. Maybe add a wavy pattern along its top. This way I can increase thickness while saving material.

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After that, I made a path to the hopefully dead monster. I know I should get away but I'm curious. I mean, it is humanoid enough and it is my first real monster in another world. The others were mutated animals. The thing obviously came from the water. Its feet are webbed.

I use my spade to poke it from afar. Now that I think of it, the spade is a much better defensive tool than a frying pan. It is dead. Both the monster and the tactic to defend me with the pan. The thing has a lot of eyes in rows around its head. One right on the crown, then six, then twelve that go all around, and finally three rows of seven that start at the base of its snout and go around the back.

Forty eyes. My first real kill.

It is a common trope that these monsters have useful materials in their bodies. Maybe this one does too. Only one way of knowing. I summoned a plastic trash bag and sent the body to storage. Back to my merry tunnel, to crawl away.

I put my clothes back on, Just cutting off the part of the jacket that got stained by fish-eating monster puke. I resume my crawling-Decomposing routine, moving deeper into the tunnel, following the slope up.

After what felt like several hundred meters, the tunnel starts to widen and opens into a proper mine. I can see timbers bracing the walls and roof but some parts have caved in. But it means I can stand up, finally.

I can see trails where water seeped and pooled at the end of the mine tunnel. This place must be ancient because the tunnel I crawled in from was made by water dissolving a path through the mineral veins. Secondary deposits must've formed inside that pool. The air is very stale, fill with a heavy scent of decay and mold. The timbers are completely rotten, standing up just because there's nothing to knock them down.

I can't have a cave-in close the tunnel behind me, or can I? It will cut the way back and hinder the blue monsters from coming out through the tunnel. I can clear a cave-in with Decompose so to me it is just a minor setback. I Decompose a path through the stone around the timbers and wrap my climbing rope around them.

It also helps that I have to keep Decomposing rocks to oxygenate the air. I leave the rope there and go form a shelter from the cave-in further down the mine tunnel. Decompose the rocks and shape the silicon into an egg-shaped cocoon, open in the front. I go inside, close the egg shut except for a hole and pull the rope. The timbers break in the middle and the roof over the timbers comes down with a mighty rumble. A could of dust rises and I quickly store the rope and shut the hole.

After the rumble settled, I waited for several minutes before I opened a hole in my egg and go outside, forcing all silicon and lead away from my face. I shed light on both sides. The cave-in was bigger than what I thought. A lot of rocks came down, I can see small shards of granite and specks of mica intertwined with quartz embedded in the rocks. Also hematite and magnetite.

Was this an iron mine? Against my fading caution, I go check on the minerals. For a moment I forget I am trapped in a damned abandoned mine. Or just the trapped part. The beautiful dark lines of the magnetite playing with the red hematite, mixed with the quartz formations and the red clay entrance me. I get my portable lab and retrieve the pick and mallet. I know I can use Decompose but nothing beats the thrill of splitting rock with the pick. I spent a lot of time hitting the rocks, breaking samples of the prettiest ores. The quartz too. It would be nice if I could polish the quartz using a tumbler. They seem low-quality though.

I find a piece of green fuchsite. Another positive point of mining on my own and not Decomposing everything is to preserve these rare finds. If I used Decompose on the basic elements, the fuchsite would be destroyed. I keep breaking rock, mining, Decomposing the uninteresting chunks and building quite the pile of silicon pieces and also iron nuggets.

Another vein and I find titanomagnetite. I hum an old tune about a Kentucky miner a friend taught me. I take my iPod and play the song by "Tennesee" Ernie Ford in the deep voice of Johnny Cash.

> I was born one mornin' when the sun didn't shine

> I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine

>

> ...

>

> You load sixteen tons, what do you get?

> Another day older and deeper in debt

I broke one last rock singing the chorus' last line, "I owe my soooul to the company stooooore!"

I wiped the sweat off my brow, tired and happy. I had a pile of iron, lead, aluminum, and some titanium, sulfur and a pile of 'unknown ores, oxides, and salts' I had to identify later. I marked my samples and stored them in the portable lab with the tools. I checked the fruits of my labor and gasped.

You can guess what happened, right?

I cleared the cave-in I caused. And some blue critters came to check on their friend.