Still looking at the walls and Weal-lifes, Agus continues to speak; partly to himself. "So how did you achieve this? What is this extra layer on the stone? Latent Coating? But what manner of liquid infuses mana into a surface? Maybe liquified mana enchanted to diffuse mana into anything it touches… or some kinda mana poison that targets materials? Or a treasure in the form of a liquid that absorbs or alters mana from anything it touches. But that's almost impossible to find, let alone repli---"

"AGUS!!" I've been yelling at him for the last few seconds, but the runerd-enchanter was lost within his own thoughts for a while there.

"What? I'm busy!"

"Hey, you're the one who talked to me first! And to answer your question, those are my Weal-Lifes." I answer quickly before he deep dives his own thoughts, again!

"Mana constructs that are capable of intent and manipulating mana itself…" he begins once again, a sermon by-himself for-himself, maybe along with anyone who cares enough to listen and happens to be talented enough to understand anything. So, we left him to it…

"New feature? A mastery upgrade?" Henry asks.

"Mastery, yep! Pretty expensive mana-wise though, and very eye-catching despite my effort to circumvent that—as you can see. They assimilate into the stone, but I figured it is necessary that a part of them stays outside or we won't be able to keep track of where they are, let alone command them." I reply, "on the bright side, they can kinda double as a source of light!"

At my prompt, one of the Weal-life on the ceiling turns into its lightbulb form and Lights up for a moment before shifting back to its previous form, just a short display as there are already adequate lightings in place. Henry squints at the lame pun and says, "sure~. Good work for finding one way to maintain the tunnel! To think it's from making use of one of your original Spells."

"All in a night's work!" I grin at him. "Speaking of original Spells, how are yours? SmartMines and EnviroShroud, anything new or any new upgrades?"

He scrutinizes me for a moment before answering, emphasizing his tone on the .exe part of their names. "Nothing for EnviroShoud-dot-exe! Not till I experience for myself the different environments throughout the Multiverse. But SmartMines-dot-exe! Is currently at its intermediate mastery!"

He proceeded to briefly explain the newer functions of his 35 mana costing Spell; firstly, by pausing the starting mana flow for a fraction of a second during cast and in specific amounts; for example 1 mana–pause–34 mana. The Spell will always manifest as a landmine, 2-33 and 3-32 creates a motion detector that shoots out an arrow or an electrocuting net respectively, while 4-31 creates a grenade. The next upgrade involves a similar function, but this time, it overwrites the SmartMine’s element; to use, the pause is done during the final process of casting. Where 4-30-1 mana flow always forms a fire grenade, and 4-29-2 changes its element into a lightning grenade; 4-28-3 changes the element into wind, followed by earth, water, and lastly ice—unless he eventually adds more. There is a lot of math involved and a pretty steep demand for your Mana Manipulation to use them during combat, considering every second really matters… Even still, practice always makes perfect, and that can only mean there are infinite possibilities and potentials!

"Zen," Agus suddenly said, interrupting my cast of SmartMines and the conversation with Henry. "I have been thinking about your Artificial Infusion Skill. From what I have observed so far, the spell seems to be Infused into the Mana Core in the forms of a scattered web of mana. Why not try to focus it in the center?"

Huh? "That never occurred to me. But I feel that it is worth a try, thank you Agus!"

"You're welcomed…" he replies. Almost a minute passed and his eyes never left me, despite me, and even Henry, awkwardly staring back at him… "well?"

"Well what?"

"Try it!" Agus said; the ‘duh~’ is implied in silence.

Oh! He was waiting for that…

"Well, that got it to level 15, thank you again Agus!" Earning me a nod from him, a few people listening in on us are giving him incredulous looks. I then thought to ask him, "why don't you buy the Skill for yourself?"

"... No. With my Enchanting, I think I'll skip on just Artificially Infusing an object and save the Creds for something better later in the future instead." His reply may sound condescending, but the tone in which he said it only makes it sound factual, like how I'm good with Spell-related shenanigans—he is good with Enchanting and Magic Crafting.

"Understandable…" then I address the descision makers in general. "So, whats the plan now regarding this miraculous place?"

"I beg to differ, mysterious? sure! But not quite to the level of miracles." Agus uttered, but we all wisely ignored it.

"Words from our ally is that there are open passages within these walls. Large corridors, quite similar in size to the one we are currently making, but it is believed to be naturally formed, so more random turns and curves. But—" Henry said, semi-mysteriously. "—a place ripe with opportunity and danger."

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

"What danger?"

"I was told they are some kinda white colored doppelganger by the name of Quagxyte; they come randomly every once in a while, and always numbering in the hundreds. They would instantly morph to take the shape of a random present creature during combat; in the process mimicking all the physical abilities of their target somehow… Purely, physical abilities!" Henry elaborates.

"So if a party consists of one dragon, one human, one wolf and one slime. We would end up fighting with a few hundreds of each?" I ask him for clarification.

"Yeah, It's something of a dilemma. Bring one strong person along with several weaker lifeforms and the fight would be easy enough; at the cost of these weaker creatures." Henry confirmed. "In this scenario, the dragon replicas would massacre the slime, wolf, and human while the one dragon masacres theirs… until it is in turn besieged on all sides by clones of itself."

"Well, if they're just copying physical abilities, we should gather a bunch of no-brawns, brains-only kinda people." I say.

"Sure, gather a bunch of glass-cannons to fight in a few versus many encounter, what could possibly go wrong?" Billy chipped. He has a good point. But I am sure there is a way!

"Anyhow, I've found the tunnels." I say. Since the moment I was informed of their existence, I had delegated one part of my thought to search with Mana Sense; owing to the Skill's range of 524 meters, and the knowledge that such a thing as a tunnel exists. I managed to differentiate the different ways mana saturates the solid walls and the empty corridors, despite both being similarly dense and Earth attuned… Simply in the way one is stable and practically unmoving, while the other—I assume the tunnels—has a subtle flow that randomly winds and branches along.

"The closest one, which looks like an unremarkable empty dead end, is about 400 meters in the opposite direction of this tunnel… maybe about 5 meters lower?" I tell everyone. While this current tunnel we stand in, is one I made to slope slightly downward, approximately towards the east—as I kinda assumed that we need to reach the center point of this island. And we're on WestHolm, I put two and two together, opting to go east.

"How?" Someone asks about the range of my Mana Sense. Trust me, verified by asking how what.

"DId I never tell you guys about the range of my Mana Sense?" I turn towards the voice and find Atech's twin; Ardi. Then I turn to look at Henry, "Uh, I've told you before, right?"

"Ah~, like a few months ago? When you just got your Devourling Constitution. I think it was definitely below 100 meters?" He replies.

"Right," honestly I myself do not remember telling anyone, it just never came up. "Well, It's currently about 500 meters."

They quietly stare at me, "what about our privacy?" Someone asks. A woman I do not recognize.

"It's Mana Sense, not true sight or X-ray vision or whatever cheat sight ability." Henry explains, "he can probably differentiate between different individuals, locate people or mana rich stuff. But I doubt he can see anything more specific than that."

Little did he know, I can determine shapes. But nobody needs to know that right now. Instead, I say. "Besides, it is something that requires focus. I need to actually invest a large part of my thoughts… So, most of my time, it's just a passive intuition thing that warns me when something comes too close." The relief on their faces are palpable, nobody else said anything regarding the matter and the topic naturally comes to a rest.

"Well, let's fix this shall we." Billy says while rubbing his hands. He had me dismiss the Weal-Lifes on the wrong side of the tunnel. Everyone moves back into the more mundane tunnels to discuss the plan and a bit of a break, while we wait for the walls to heal. About 30 minutes later, we fixed up what little imperfection was left on parts that had been out-range of both the weird earth mana and outside the dimensions of our 4 x 4 meters wide stairs; the stairs itself extend for about 1.2 meters from the outer walls, while the middle 1.6 meter area is left untouched to function as a support pillar. All sides are compressed stone.

"Awesome! Now everyone, let's continue to extend our current stairs downwards please... As planned, maintain its current dimensions and dig down by a further four meters." Billy continues to lead. "Zen! remember to save some mana for Weal."

"You dare underestimate my power!?" I jest in reply… All-in-all, we made good progress. I ended up casting Will-o'-Weal, allowing them to take over as we go and not till' after we managed to liberate every one meter deep, as previously planned. 125 mana for a 4 x 1 meters area, multiple by 4 meters deep and for all 4 sides for a total of; 2000 mana. The work itself was completed a little before lunch, so we were dismissed for an early one.

I almost called for Billy to inquire about the next step of our plan, but promptly decided against it. I figured working together, albeit getting it done a little later will be better for everyone in the long run. After all, sometimes; it's the process that truly matters, not the product. Lunch was a merry occasion, and soon enough, everyone got back to making deeper progress. Literally…

We spent the rest of the day making the tunnel, while anyone not actively involved in the process has gradually left, returning to tend to their own responsibilities. By the end of the work day; 9 pm to be exact. As attributes and the novelty of using Spells and Skills while doing said work greatly boosts people's drive to carry on. By 9 pm; we had extended the tunnel about halfway towards our destination. Everyone had half a mind to continue, but was stopped by the arrival of Billy.

"Let's wrap it up for today everyone, great job getting this far in half a day's work!" He arrived and announced. "There's a bit of a change of plan. Meeting first up tomorrow. We might need to enlarge parts of this tunnel to accommodate adequate defenses."

"Zen," he called to me, and we made eye contact. So I approached and waited with him, making small talks about the day while everyone else packed up, wished us well, and left. Of course, we return their wishes in kind. Not 10 minutes later, it was just the two of us. "What plans do you have for the night?"

"Uh, sorry. I'm not interested in dating guys." I reply jokingly.

"Pfft, even if I do. You wouldn't be him!" He replies, equally in jest. He made to run for the stairs and I followed. "But seriously, we might need you to standby and be ready to defend this tunnel, just in case of an attack from the white doppel-like creatures we were warned about."

"No problem! Should I–like–sit right here on the bottom steps?" I ask him as we make our way up the staircase. A little less than 200 meters are easily traversed in mere seconds with Billy's current physical capabilities, let alone mine.

"Nah, we'll post guards. But be around, yeah?"

"Sure thing."