Each time anyone struck the crystal walls, they risked serious injury. Certain planes of the crystal were tougher than others, so their pickaxe might bounce off at a dangerous angle, or the area might shatter and send shards of crystal into their legs. Every day there were injuries from just such accidents, and down here without proper medical care, they could lead to losing a limb.
Because there weren't enough tools to go around, and no one trusted him anyway, Kai worked in the partially cleared tunnels and broke apart the fragmented rocks with his bare hands. He was surprised that they could actually cut his skin, despite all his Physique and Behemoth's Heart. The constant minor injuries from qi-bearing stones might explain part of why everyone in the mines was so tough, but it wasn't enough to fully justify it.
Several other workers had told him not to do exactly what he was doing, but Kai's wounds regenerated and it worked as training. After a day, they'd stopped warning him.
The local Krysali had tons of equipment and tools made out of stone, but fibers were at a premium, so he didn't have a basket to gather what he broke. Instead Kai just scooped up an armful and carried it from the spiky side shaft into one of the central chambers of the mine. There he dropped them onto a table that had been carved directly from the floor.
"Will these do?" he asked the woman at the table.
"They'll do." She began whisking them off the table into the large basket by the side, apparently counting them. In the beginning he'd been paranoid about being cheated, but apparently everything worked on the honor system and he'd always been given food in exchange for his work.
It was hard to know what to make of the woman herself. She wouldn't give him a name and he wasn't sure how old she was, because the workers had prematurely aged faces and hands from the mines. Unlike most, she wore her dark hair longer in a loose tail and seemed to keep it glossy. Though a bit unhealthily skinny, she was more muscular than many of the women there, which was borne out by her soul.
<
Name: ???
Total Power: 95
Physique Level: E-2 (86)
Soul Level: 3 (9)
>
She and most of the other strongest miners had E-rank Physique. Kai was absolutely certain they couldn't achieve that from their labor alone, but no one trusted him enough to impart any secrets. A few times he'd noticed groups of younger people training in the side corridors, only to have them stop and glare at him.
"You're doing well," the woman said begrudgingly. "You need to be more careful with the floors when you break off crystals. Don't leave edges."
"Edges?" Kai asked.
"Come on then, crystallier, let me show you." She rose and walked into the corridor.
"Hey, I'm not a crystallier."
She ignored him and crouched down to poke at the floor. "You see this? Somebody broke off crystals and left this edge. If you fall on that, you'll get cut. We don't let kids in here, but something like this could kill somebody."
"Alright, I'll keep it in mind." Kai stomped on the edge and felt the crystal break under his foot. It hurt a little, but he managed to stomp it flat soon enough.
"Don't hurt anyone, crystallier." The woman frowned at him but couldn't find fault with anything else, so she moved back to her post. Soon afterward she hefted the massive basket of crystals over one shoulder and headed toward the higher floors.
As far as Kai understood the system, the workers had almost nothing edible native to the mines. They had to trade crystals with soldiers stationed at the entrance in order to receive food and water, and they didn't always get enough. There was no help if someone became injured or sick and instead they relied on a system of favors, helping out others when things were good in order to have the favor returned later. So long as they kept the mine operating, it seemed to keep them alive.
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He'd asked what happened when they couldn't find enough crystals and got grimaces in response. The gold to crystal ratio might make some crystalliers whine and some merchants fear for their portfolios, but down here it was a matter of life and death.
So far he hadn't tried to venture closer to the entrance. Everyone said that it was dangerous to incite the soldiers, and in his case there was always the chance that Suortril had ordered them to look for him. Besides, he had work to do. Since it seemed clear that Zae Zin Nim didn't know where he was, he needed to learn as much as he could about the mines.
"There's our new guest!" A middle-aged man followed him down the tunnel, waving cheerfully. Kai automatically checked his soul as a precaution.
<
Name: ???
Total Power: 99
Physique Level: E-4 (92)
Soul Level: 3 (9)
>
Like many of the stronger workers, the man had high Physique Levels, but the numbers didn't add up. Kai had been puzzled until he realized that many of the workers must be running up against the 99 Power barrier. Down in the mines there weren't exactly very many opportunities to break through and he suspected that the Krysali were glad to keep it that way.
"I wanted to welcome you with a feast of honey-glazed meat, mulled wine, and jamba dates," the man said, then cracked a smile. "The problem is that we've never had any of those things, and I made up 'jamba dates' just now."
"You just made up a food?" Kai asked.
"Yup. Sounds delicious, doesn't it? By the way, I'm Maggle." The man jerked his head in the nod they did instead of bowing here.
Because he was one of the few who had introduced himself, Kai took a good look at Maggle. He was too skinny, but his ragged shirt revealed that he had some real muscle. His hair had once been dark but was now fleeing back across his scalp. Though he was carrying a pickaxe, Kai wasn't really concerned about him using it as a weapon.
"You already know I'm Kai. What can I do for you, Maggle?"
"Truth be told, I was hoping to mooch off you because you work so hard." Maggle wrapped an arm around his neck cheerfully, then pulled back. "Shit, man, how'd you get so huge? What do they feed you up there?"
"Jamba dates."
Maggle cracked a huge grin, then suddenly sobered. "That doesn't sound like a real thing. Why would you just tell lies like that?"
Despite what he'd said, Maggle worked about as hard as anyone Kai had seen in the mines. They all moved economically, as if they didn't have energy to spare. Even with his old Gomodo's Stamina, much less Behemoth's Heart, Kai could keep working like this almost forever, so he looked frenetic compared to the other workers.
The one part of Maggle that did move quickly was his mouth. He talked about anything and everything while they worked, and Kai absorbed his implications for a while before deciding that he needed more specific information.
"I noticed that all of you have strong Physique," Kai said, "but y-"
"I knew I saw you looking at me! Now, no offense, but I-"
"Would I be the first person to tell you to shut up?"
Once more Maggle grinned. "Alright, what is it?"
"All of you work with these crystals every single day, but I haven't seen a single bit of crystal cultivation since I got here. Even if they don't teach you - obviously they wouldn't - you could have figured some of it out. So what's the situation?"
"You must be new to Krysal, huh? These are crystals in their raw form, you can't cultivate with them." Maggle rapped his knuckles on the wall, then winced and pulled them back. "You try to work with dirty crystals, they'll muck everything up. Besides, even if you did pull it off, if the guards ever noticed, they might execute you for trying to revolt."
Kai glanced at the walls again, slightly surprised. He was fully capable of pulling the minimal qi out of the walls and had been doing so every night as he went to sleep. Then again, he had years of mental training at home and had been personally trained by a cultivator from Cloudspire. These poor souls under threat of starvation and execution had none of those advantages.
A long time ago, he'd whined that Goralia had given him nothing. Now that he saw people who truly had almost nothing, he felt guilty about all the training and support he'd received.
"The way I hear it," Maggle went on, "you have to send the crystals off to some sort of terrible acid mine to get them all shined up. But they don't let us touch that part of the process, because if we got real crystals we'd be a threat to them. Hell, I only know about the acid mines because an old timer from outside told us that's how it works."
"I haven't been near the soldiers," Kai said. "Do people ever try to break out?"
"From time to time, but the tunnels are traps. All kinds of nasty options for them to kill us. And if it really came down to it, they could just block off all the entrances and let us all starve. I don't know if it's ever really happened, but people talk. Everybody has a friend of a cousin who saw it happen, but you should trust them about as much as you trust me, haha!"
"There are no other exits to the mine? We seem to have enough air."
"The way I understand it, the crystals make cracks that get us air." Maggle slouched back against the wall and idly tapped the ceiling with his pickaxe. "Now, you may be thinking, 'Maggle, you handsome devil, why don't we just mine upwards?' Well, it's been tried, but that's a good way to have the mine cave in on ya."
"How far down do the tunnels go?"
"That's a tough one. Definitely several levels from the safe zone, but then eventually you get all sorts of creepy crawlies."
"There are monsters here?" Kai pulled back from his work. He'd been warned many times that it was dangerous to go to the lower levels, but he'd never heard anyone mention monsters.
"Oh, sure. Hell if I know where they come from, they seem to just crawl out of nature's ass. Sometimes they even attack, and that can get bad. The soldiers will come in if enough of us die and they can't get their crystals, but I've only seen them come to help twice in my life."
Kai turned back to his work with a grin on his face. His days as a crystal miner might be behind him, because he knew exactly where he was going next.