Rydr's descent through the mineshaft was hardly the black, terrifying affair that it was last time. Within the first few meters of his drop, the Titan found the shaft lit up around him, even without activating [Aetheric Eye].

Before the giant had the chance to take in the mine's splendor, his avatar approached a series of scaffolds. More goblins loitered around on the rough wooden structures, staring upward, wondering what the disturbance was.

The Titan plummeted to their level in a heartbeat, catching the goblins off guard. With no time to think, Rydr reached out and ripped two goblins off their scaffolds, one in each hand, collapsing the structures as he fell through them.

The giant had an idea as rotten wood, and screaming goblins fell through the brightly lit shaft alongside Rydr's avatar. Instead of staying tucked in, as he did on his first trip down the shaft, the giant extended his arms out to either side.

He proceeded to use his two screaming captives as brake pads against the tunnel's rough interior, slowing his descent. The rest of the wood and goblins fell past him as the Titan slowed almost to a stop, his captives little more than a bloody paste.

The shaft's rough sides bounced Rydr's hands away from the wall, jarring his shoulders every time he lost contact with the walls. Then the two goblins vanished, and Rydr resumed his rapid descent to the bottom of the mine.

Spirals of runes, just like the pattern Rydr saw near the Wellspring, curved around the sides of the shaft. Their pattern made a dizzying light show for the colossus as he looked down. The wind whistled by his face, stinging Rydr's eyes as his avatar continued to speed up.

Cautious after his experience in the Wellspring, the Titan activated his extra-sensory skill to prepare for landing, wondering if any of the other goblins survived their fall. The ground appeared through the haze of mana, roughly ten meters below him.

The ruined scaffolding littered the floor, but no goblins were waiting for the Titan.

At the same time, Rydr witnessed the same strange, purple-black energy bearing down on him. When he focused on it, his lapse in concentration nearly ruined the landing.

Rydr's avatar crossed the distance in an instant. The behemoth bent his knees to absorb the impact of his fall, crushing the ground beneath his feet. As he stood up and looked around, it occurred to the giant that the splintering of stone under his feet felt strange.

No matter how many times he caused it, the stone cracking under him made the giant jumpy. Especially when it happened near his toes, some hindbrain part of him was afraid of getting pinched by the stone.

Rydr shook his head to dispel the random thoughts, using [Aetheric Eye] to check himself out for that strange energy. The Titan examined his hands closely, ignoring the Aether within to study his skin.

The purple-black energy was gone. Actually, Rydr corrected himself. It's not gone, just diminished.

A diaphanous veneer of the energy remained on the giant's skin. Perhaps because of his [Eye's] evolution, the huge diver could barely detect that the energy was still there.

Rydr wondered if it was a facet of the mine because nothing he did seemed to get the stuff off of him. Since it wasn't doing anything to him that Rydr could detect, he chose to ignore it for now and proceed with the mission.

Although the shaman, Lord Garzer, was certain to be a problem, Rydr needed to focus on the bigger picture. Interfering with the goblin's camp would set them back a little.

From what the giant had seen, goblins were by and large a cowardly race. Rydr did not doubt that Lord Garzer would want his camp rebuilt before risking an attack on Grotto.

Which, hopefully, gave the giant a couple of days to begin crafting. If we can get enough vanadium. It's not that using Magi-Steel ore would be a stopgap, but...

Wootz steel seemed to Rydr like the type of edge a small party needed to compete with guilds. Although there weren't any announcements about them yet, the Titan was positive that [Instance-Dungeons] would exist.

[Instance-Dungeons] were a staple of MMO games. If they were anything like previous games, there would be fierce competition to take the top spot on raid leaderboards. Usually, they came in a variety of [Normal], [Hard], and [Kill Yourself] difficulties, selectable before going inside.

Smalls teams seldom got onto those leaderboards. Guilds had the human resources and means to equip themselves and farm for higher levels more easily.

One of Rydr's personal goals was to upset the balance and steal those top spots. He wanted his team to defeat the hardest Dungeons with smaller numbers to rub it in the guild's collective faces.

Surely, the game's systems would acknowledge smaller teams if they accomplished the same feats with half the numbers and levels. At least, Rydr hoped that Eve would pay attention to those little details.

She certainly felt free to screw me with the Legendary feat. Rydr grumbled in his head as he strode down the sloped tunnel.

The damage from his previous visit was still evident. The damaged walls seemed not to affect the runic spirals around Rydr. Instead of a broken line of mana, the runes floated in midair.

The Titan was sad to see that the remains of the death ball were missing. He originally hoped to use his improved strength score to grab more of the ore. Unfortunately, he would have to table getting more resources until later.

Since he was after a specific mineral, and the mana was so thick, Rydr activated [Aetheric Eye] intermittently to peer through the cloud of mana around him.

The deeper Rydr went into the mine, following the same path he took last time, the more he encountered mineral deposits. Before the Titan came to the first branch in the tunnel, he'd found his prize.

A clump of vanadinite, the actual name of the mineral he was searching for, clung to the tunnel wall in a small dip near its base. Despite the lack of true light, Rydr was positive this was the correct mineral.

Before Rydr tried anything, the giant spent a few moments memorizing the mineral's internal Aether pattern. That's when the diver realized that the vanadinite deposit continued into the base of the wall, inside a small pocket.

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Over time, the tiny dip and cave allowed the mineral to form, clueing Rydr in on the type of formations he was looking for in the rock.

The Titan hoped to use [Aetheric Eye] to spy the deposits through the stone walls, but he suspected he needed a higher mastery rank to achieve his goal.

Not everything can have an easy way out. The colossus reminded himself.

Finished memorizing the mineral's Aether, Rydr got down on his knees and activated his buffs. [Berserker's Rage] sent a plume of steam up from Rydr's body, but he ran into a problem with his spells.

No matter how hard Rydr tried, he couldn't leverage the ambient mana. After a few tries, the giant peeked at the glowing runes around him with his [Eye].

A moment later, Rydr sighed in defeat. The runes in the mineshaft, which he believed acted as collectors and transfer wires for the collected "Ether," absorbed the ambient mana at a ferocious pace.

What Rydr assumed was wild mana, visible to the naked eye, was already gathered by the runes. There was nothing left behind for Rydr to absorb or leverage via [Consume].

Despite his interest in the runes, Rydr decided to ask Syrna about them later. He had a few ideas to augment his crafting designs.

The Titan hunkered down and activated his spells using his mana pool, watching a sixth of his resource bar vanish in the corner of his HUD.

Confident in his Strength score, Rydr grabbed the lip of the mineral deposit, digging his fingers in for extra grip. Then the Titan heaved back, flexing his whole body as he pried the first chunk out of the wall.

From an outsider's perspective, the colossus looked like he was taking an enormously difficult bathroom break.

Rydr couldn't care less. He was alone, and it was working. Bit by bit, Rydr ripped chunks of rock and cuboid mineral from the wall, enlarging the hole to access the tiny cave within.

When Rydr got down, pressing his chest to the ground to reach his arm into the cavity, the inside of the space looked remarkably like a pink geode. All the rainbow colors danced inside the cavity from the floating Ether, refracting off the opaque crystals.

The giant admired the wild beauty for a moment before he ruthlessly began ripping chunks of the cavity apart. Blood flowed freely from cuts all over the Titan's hands, but the damage was too small for him to care.

Rydr gleefully ripped up his forearms on the rough stone as he denuded the small divet of its vanadinite. He used his [Eye] to be sure that he'd harvested all of the vanadinite before the giant stood up and resumed his search.

*Acquired "Unkown Mineral": 6 kg.*

The Titan paused long enough to read the notice before he dismissed it. Uknown to this world, maybe. They probably have it and don't know what it's for. If things aren't useful, they often don't get named.

Before the party split up, they agreed to meet up in the center chamber, where the party first encountered the Hobgoblin Warlord. Despite its lack of a floor after Rydr's fight, the chamber was centrally located.

Plus, Hermes was confident he could lead the others there from the alternate entrance.

They agreed to make their way there in five hours unless something came up. If one of the groups failed to show up...

Well, they didn't plan for that. Rydr planned to survive and try to find his way out if the others failed to show.

So, with five hours to kill, the giant took his time exploring the branches in the tunnel he'd ignored last time.

Down at this level, the tunnels seemed to be older. The mine was actually above Rydr and was where the goblin patrols most likely were.

Slowly but surely, the Titan came across other deposits of vanadinite. Usually, the deposits formed within small cavities in the wall, forcing Rydr to dig for a while before the mineral surfaced.

More than once, Rydr wished he still had his pickax. Sadly, the implement was either destroyed or in the Warlord's hands.

I should've bought one from Lynn before we left town. Rydr regretted their haste before he reminded himself that it was nighttime when they left. Lynn was probably at home, wherever that was.

As Rydr proceeded deeper into the tunnel, the small deposits of vanadinite grew more plentiful. At a commensurate rate, the density and size of the cave formations increased.

In case he needed more than Lynn was willing to trade, the giant broke off a couple of limestone formations and stuffed them in his inventory.

Once more, the idea to go diving in the river delta to gather ingredients for borax crossed Rydr's mind. For now, the giant was still willing to experiment with powdered limestone to increase slag flow while smelting and use the material as a flux.

However, Rydr resolved to buy a map when he found one. Sure, his own map would fill itself out as he explored, but the colossus didn't have that kind of time.

He had to choose between two production methods for wootz steel. While neither method was fast, one of them took almost four times longer.

Unfortunately, Rydr planned to use the lengthier method to create a stronger, more flexible metal. This meant that the Titan needed to cut a few corners in his ingredient gathering.

Once the Wellspring was dealt with, Rydr would talk to his team about upgrading their gear one more time before leaving Grotto.

*****

Somehow, all five hours passed without incident. Rydr never encountered goblin patrols or any other threats. The silence was eerie to the giant as he approached the glowing archway in front of him.

The giant suspected that the goblin shaman recalled all of his forces to the surface or just below it. The paranoid little beast that he was, Rydr had no doubt the shaman was shoring up his defenses.

Which suited the Titan just fine. Nearly fifty kilograms of vanadinite sat in his inventory box, waiting to be processed. With any luck, the others are waiting for me near the center chamber with more of the mineral.

Rydr eased his way into the chamber. There was a surprisingly large portion of the floor remaining. Just enough for the Titan to skirt the edge of the chamber, hugging its wall.

For anyone else, the circuitous pathway was wide enough to walk around comfortably.

Deep lines of blue energy ran through the stone around Rydr, bleeding into its structure from the sheer intensity. Hairs all over Rydr's body stood up as if from static electricity.

Even the giant's teeth seemed to buzz inside his skull from the raw power flowing in through the air around him. The same, ever-present suction periodically pulled at the diver where he clung to the wall.

Unlike his first time inside the chamber, Rydr could see the ebb and flow of the Ether getting pulled down into the Wellspring. The strong suction effect on his body seemed to be a side-effect and not part of any traps.

As Rydr made his way gingerly around the glowing pit, a voice shouted at him from behind.

"Hey! What are you doing here?"

The Titan's heart skyrocketed into his throat as he briefly lost his grip on the wall, tipping toward the Wellspring's pit. Rydr flailed his arms, pinwheeling to regain his balance before it was too late.

Rydr fell backward into the pit.

At the last second, Rydr gave up and kicked off against the lip of the pit as hard as he could. Closing his eyes, the Titan relied on [Aetheric Eye] to read his surroundings.

Halfway across the pit, Rydr formed one of his "airballs" to spin himself around. He opened his eyes just before landing in the open archway of another tunnel.

Where the giant promptly fell on his ass, clutching at his chest to slow his heart rate. While the Titan recovered on the ground, a cloud of silvery-blue hair floated into his vision.

"Before you get mad at me, just remember that you lived, alright?" Hermes hovered over his enormous teammate, already defending himself. Behind the teen, the other three members of Rydr's party watched, amused.

Maybe because he was on his own, Rydr managed to reach the center chamber ahead of his team. When Hermes found the giant clinging to the wall, the teen couldn't help himself.

He shouted at the giant, intentionally startling him.

"Fuck you," Rydr groused at the prankster. Hermes offered a hand to help the giant to his feet, but Rydr ignored it. He didn't trust the teen's strength score to lift his bulk.

The Titan stood up and dusted himself off. Flakes of blood came off his arms, seemingly a permanent part of Rydr's ensemble.

Urginok stepped up behind Hermes and queried, "We didn't encounter any goblins. Did you?"

Rydr used the tank's question to distract himself, although he wasn't really angry with Hermes, "I didn't either. How did things go on your end?"

Urginok smirked and sent the giant a trade request.

Rydr blinked at the notice before accepting the trade invite. In short order, the small menu filled with "Unknown Mineral" notices. The tank insisted that the Titan just take the trade, but a memory suddenly surfaced, prompting Rydr to search his inventory.

The colossus added the complete [Ether-Ways Armor] set he picked up from Spectre, Shining Star's guild leader. Then Rydr agreed to the trade before Urginok knew what was happening.

"Check the stats for those, would you? I've been holding onto them for a while."