After I ran the program I stepped back from the rock and watched as my dagger spun rapidly while moving forward, carving a nice hole in the rock before abruptly stopping as it no longer had any rock to drill through.

So there is a room there that's great. Also, my improvised drill dagger thing worked rather well. Now I just have to make a hole that's large enough for me to get through which shouldn't be a problem as long as I work fast.

So I grabbed my dagger again and put it next to the first hole before running the program yet again. I then continued doing this over and over until I had a circle almost fully cut out of the rock.

Well, this is it, the final drilling.

I put the dagger back against the rock and ran its program again. A few seconds later it had fully drilled through the rock and the circle I'd cut out fell forward. It ended up almost crushing my feet but I'd been able to move them in time so I still had feet and not two unusable pancakes.

Wow, that was kinda close. I gotta keep an eye out for that next time I intend to drill a circular hole into a rock wall which honestly probably won't be that often.

The piece of rock that I'd cut out was too heavy for me to move on my own so I quickly Programmed it with a Movement Rune and then entered through the hole that I'd cut through the stone wall.

I emerged from the hole and looked around. I was one a cramped room piled with various tools and a bit of gold. I immediately stuffed the gold into my pocket and grinned to myself.

Finally, my money is back up a bit. I was almost out. Although it's not money yet it should be relatively easy to sell. It is gold after all.

After the rush of finding some gold has subsided, I looked around the room more and one of the tools caught my eye.

What the heck is that?

It looked like some sort of digging tool but it wasn't a pickaxe or anything of the sort. It reminded me of one of those giant excavating drills that I'd seen some pictures of.

What's the proper name for them again? Ah yes, a Tunnel Bore. Yeah, it looks like one of those things. Is that what made the tunnels? I should do my scanning thingy.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

I approached the drill, which didn't take long due to the size of the room, and knocked on it.

[Scanned new device | Complex]

[+50 System Experience]

[Experience: 1235/3200]

Wow, a Complex device! Not bad! I didn't get any new Runes from it though. That makes sense though it probably just uses an If Rune or two and some Movement Runes to spin the drill part and to make it move forward and stuff. Oh and some Parameter Runes of course. I wonder why it's so clunky though I mean I could easily just use the drill bit part and get the same effect.

Although if people could do that kind of stuff with Runes I bet the world would be a lot more hectic so either the people on this planet or whatever are really chill which I feel like I've already proved wrong or I can use Runes in some way that other people can't.

For obvious reasons, I feel like it's the latter. I mean I have to be special since I have the System otherwise how would I be different from the other people that work with Runes. It would be interesting to talk with someone that doesn't have a System like me and ask how they work with Runes to see what differs between me and them.

I'll have to do that another time though since well I'm running out of time to get back to the surface before Ben blows up the mine entrance and I can't think of any reason someone who works with Runes or rather anyone at all would be down here except for the reason I'm down here of course.

I figured that the pickaxes that were down here would be somehow better than whatever the miners were currently using so I decided to take one and give it to Keith as a gift for him being so cooperative when I interviewed him about his job and the general state of the mines.

It's probably been at least 15 minutes already max 20 minutes so I need to hustle back to the surface now. So I went through the hole I'd made in the stone wall with the gold still in my pocket and my gift for Keith in my hand. Then I rushed through the tunnels following the marks I'd left, scratching the ground with a rock, while searching around for treasure.

So I have about uhh well definitely at least an hour. I think. Well, no use in speculating I'll just have to go as fast as I can.

I ran towards the room where I'd broken out of the webbing cocoon the late Giant Spiders had left me in and from there I followed my memory of what directions I'd gone and the estimated distance between them.

I made a few wrong turns but they were quickly corrected when I got to a fork that only went forward and left for example. Then I knew I'd taken a wrong turn so I went back and tried again. Thankfully this only happened two or three times and it was never really that hard to get back on track so I quickly arrived at a place I'd recognized, the place where I'd last seen Bob where he'd given me directions to the tunnel where the miners had first seen the Giant Spiders.

By then I was more sure of where to go so I made no more navigational mistakes and in no time at all, I ended up in the mines. The miners and Ben had left the mine as they didn't want to be inside it if they had blown it up. I heard the excited shouts of one of the miners as he saw me and more of them then looked up and started running over to me almost all of them wearing wide smiles.

This reminds me of that celebration in Whitebridge after I killed the Wolf King. It feels good to be good.