The mine shaft was cool. Surprisingly cool, in fact -- I knew caves were typically colder than the outside, but this was more than I was expecting. It wasn't cold enough that I expected to find ice types, at least not near the entrance, but it was certainly closer to that than I thought it would be.

Luckily, I was prepared. It was spring, and I was unlikely to need them for the majority of my journey, but I pulled out a jacket, thin pair of gloves, and a warm beanie from my backpack. They weren't enough to completely ward away the chill, but I figured they'd be more than enough as long as I kept moving. Plus, I didn't expect to be down here for more than a few hours.

While I pulled on the heavier clothes, Hobbes transformed into his human (scarecrow?) form, dramatically shivering in mimicry of me. I very intentionally ignored him. As a ghost pokemon, he was in no way immune to the cold, but he didn't feel it in the same way I did -- it would take a full-on ice attack for him to suffer the type of 'chills' he was mimicking. But even if it was only to make fun of me, his transformation was good practice, so I didn't tell him to stop.

Soon enough, though, I was more appropriately dressed, and we resumed our trek down the mineshaft. The tunnel was narrow and vaguely circular, likely carved out by an onix, but smoothed out along the bottom for the two rails to run straight and even; I didn't have to worry about tripping as long as I stayed in the middle. And I was short enough that I didn't have to duck, either.

The uniformness of the tunnel only lasted for another hundred feet, though, in a slightly downward slant below the mountain. The first deviations were smaller shafts branching off of the main shaft. They were much narrower, and I explored the first two with Hobbes, but they only extended twenty feet before they dead-ended in walls of stone. So I chose to ignore the next dozen or so branches, choosing to continue walking down the pain path.

I couldn't remember what they had been mining here. I was sure I'd read what it was at some point in my research on Merraga, but it wasn't something notable enough to stick with me. I was sure, at least, that it wasn't something like gold or evolution stones -- I'd have certainly remembered if that had been the case.

We started to see more leftover evidence of the old mining operation: rags, what might have been old tools, and other pieces of trash that were evidently not worth it to clean up. Most of it was remarkably well preserved after years of sitting abandoned, especially with how damp it was. There weren't any pools of water or stalagmites, but I could feel the humidity in the air, and I had to wipe my hand dry after catching myself once against one of the rock walls.

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But for all that the environment was somewhat interesting, it wasn't what I was looking for. Where were the rare pokemon? The mythical items left behind? I knew it was unlikely that the mining operation would have left anything of true value behind, but I was just a teenager less than a week into their journey, and Silph Co. was a multi-billion pokedollar corporation. I figured there would be at least something interesting they might have left behind for me to scavenge.

But no, all I could find was trash and rocks, stuff that wouldn't even be worth the effort to carry them back out of the mine. Even with my low expectations, it was disappointing. Perhaps, even with my rationalizations, I had still been conditioned by my time playing the games that stumbling upon rare items was simply a matter of course. It was disappointing to see how I, once again, didn't truly take into account the reality of my new world.

We didn't give up immediately, though. We continued to march down the tunnel, progressing ever deeper into the cold underground. It didn't get much colder than it was near the entrance, but even with my warmer clothes and the hike, I couldn't contain the occasional shiver. Every hundred feet or so we passed another off-shoot, each one seeming to just be more of the same after a quick glance inside with my flashlight. The tunnel got rougher and narrower as we progressed, with obviously less effort being made in the deeper areas to cater to 'comfort'. I had to duck for the first time under a protruding section of rock, and then had to do so ten more times in quick succession.

But even with the tunnel getting 'rougher', there was no sign of it ending. The tracks still followed the main tunnel, and I could still feel the cool breeze blowing on my face. There was obviously still a lot of cave left to explore -- but would it be worth it? If we ended up walking through another mile of tunnel without seeing anything new, I'd be extremely disappointed.

"How 'bout we break for a snack?" I called out to Hobbes. He'd been examining the walls and occasionally exploring into the offshoot tunnels as we'd walked, using shadow sneak to catch up whenever he fell behind, but even he seemed to be getting tired of the repetitive monotony. For the last fifteen minutes, he'd simply been walking by my side in his default form.

"Kyu," he nodded, and then climbed up the side of the tunnel to a small perch about a foot above my head while I dug around in my backpack for food.

"Five more minutes," I decided a minute later, speaking around a mouthful of jerky to my pokemon. "We'll keep going for five more minutes down the main tunnel. Maybe explore one of the side tunnels. And then we go back if we don't find anything interesting."

"Di," Hobbes acknowledged. It would be disappointing to have come all this way for nothing, but I supposed that was the nature of adventuring. Not every day would be filled with non-stop excitement. And, honestly, the boring-ness was probably a better outcome than the danger of my first adventure.

Of course, it was exactly as I had this thought when I felt the faint vibration of the rock beneath my feet.