"You have a horse?" Thomas asks as I dismount, his gaze fixed upon the palomino, with its golden pelt and white star on his forehead. "Since when?"

He's dressed in his hunting garb, complete with his basket pack on his back. He's wearing his hat today, the lamp I made tied around it. There's mild surprised mixed in with his confusion, and a little bit of disappointment touched into the slight attraction he has for me. Was he… hoping I'd be bare-chested as I normally am back at my house?

Huh. Maybe he's warming up to me a little bit faster than I estimated. That, or he just likes the way I look even if his feelings aren't really there. There's a reason for my different outfit, though.

Rather than meeting at my place for today's lessons, we're meeting outside of the mines. It was something I arranged during last night's festivities and had half-expected him to ask for it to be either on a non-lesson day or on a different lesson day due to the late night.

I only had to wait until Robin showed up so to collect the recipe today, then I was able to leave. Rather than teleporting here – getting an estimate for the location wasn't easy and I haven't been here before – I decided to ride Aluci.

"This is Aluci," I inform Thomas as I pat the horse on his snout.

"Aluci?" Thomas frowns. "Ain't that the name of your wolf?"

Aluci shifts to the bird form he showed Thomas previously, then to his wolf form. The first shift has Thomas frozen, the second freezes even the mind of the hunter. He can handle the spirits he's used to just fine, but Aluci's actions go beyond his range of experience and thought.

"The spirits you see normally," I say. "Are mid-level spirits. I'm sure you've noticed that water spirits either have human legs or a fish tail. All mid-level spirits can control what form they take, to a degree.

"Aluci is a spirit of a much higher level," I say. "And those of that level are able to take more corporeal-seeming – solid-seeming – forms. Their forms are also much more flexible. None of what you've seen are his real form."

As I finish that explanation, Thomas comes down from his confusion and he frowns a little.

"So he's not a normal wolf but a spirit," he murmurs. "And you say you're just a normal person spirits sometimes show up for?"

"Spirits can sometimes take a liking to people," I say. "And you know how there were two songs last night?"

"There's normally only one," he says.

"Aluci was the second," I tell him.

"The second?" He frowns a little again. "That means there's a spirit doing the normal one, then?"

"That shimmer and the glow spots," I say. "They're the real form of a spirit on the same level. That particular spirit's real form. They all vary. He talks to you guys when he arrives, that's what the song is. Though he only did it a little last night, then spoke with Aluci for a bit. Seems they're old friends. Aluci told me while I slept last night that he wanted to let you know what he was. Seems you've made quite the impression on him."

The wolf huffs, then curls up on the ground near the entrance to the mines. A ring of rocks appears and some firewood drops into it, then ignites.

"Though he's napping out here instead of going in with us," I add, causing Thomas to snort.

"Why did you want to meet at the mines?" Thomas asks. "Wasn't I going to be bringing you loot?"

"Yeah," I answer. "Except I'm not as patient as I thought I was and there are some materials I want which will probably take you years to be strong enough to reach. I mostly just want someone else to carry the loot. I will compensate you once we return to my camp, based on the goods acquired."

"I need more arrows," he tells me. "The tips of the ones you gave me are starting to break."

"I figured," I say. "That's one of the things, but I'll be able to make ones of a higher quality after this trip. They won't damage as easily, and it's one of the things I'm planning on offering for using you as a pack mule."

"Okay," he says. "So I'm just here to carry loot, not to fight?"

"Correct," I answer. "I can handle the monsters myself. Let's go."

We enter the mines, the temperature dropping a few degrees nearly immediately. After about two minutes, we come to a fork in the tunnel with it continuing straight or branching off to the right. At this point, tiny crystals in the wall begin to appear, those glowing to provide light.

After listening to my instincts, I keep us walking forward until the next intersection, when we turn left instead of taking a right. A bat flies at us as we enter the tunnel, and a shimmering blue bolt of force soars toward it from my outstretched hand, slamming into the creature. The beast bursts into black-and-red mist, a half-inch magic crystal dropping.

The use of a weakened [Magic Missile] was done more for Thomas's sake than anything. If he were to see me simply it burst into mist, it would probably make him nervous. I reached out with my right hand to cast the spell for the same reason – so he doesn't feel more intimidated by my spellcasting.

"Those things are so annoying," Thomas comments as I toss him the crystal, which he puts into his pack. "Their bites make me lose some of my HP over time. A few points every few seconds, I think."

"The bleed status effect," I say. "It shouldn't be too strong or last for too long, but can be a danger if you get several of them stacked up. Though based on what you've told me, you probably have enough HP that a bite or two isn't a problem as long as you don't take a lot of other damage."

"Yeah," he says. "Nearly killed me a few times when I was younger. My aim with a bow is good enough now that I can take them out fine, though."

"That's good," I say. "Let's keep moving. By the way, you said the tunnels sometimes change. Is that right?"

"Yeah."

"What about these?" I rap my knuckles on a large stone which takes up half the width of the path.

"New ones appear from time to time," he says, frowning slightly in confusion, probably at why I stopped against almost immediately. "They can be a pain. Sometimes block up the whole path."

I place a hand on the stone and release a pulse of magical force, shattering the stone. Most of the pieces fade away, but a fist-sized clump of pure tin plops to the ground.

"They're formed from the magic of the mines," I say. "And are like monsters – they disappear and leave items behind once they take enough damage. Don't try that with the walls, though, those are actual stone and you'll probably just kick up dust."

Judging by the amount of surprise in his mind, it's probably something he'd never even considered before. He just thought the magic of the mines was making stones and that was it.

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We continue traveling through the mines, though I don't break any more of the stones. That was just a demonstration so he knows for the future and I don't want to fill the pack up too early. We do collect all of the loot from the bats and large ants I kill, however. The crystals are simply too useful to pass up.

Eventually, we reach a staircase made of stone bricks. These are sort-of considered natural, however – they were created by the magic of the mines. There's enough mana around to cause structures to form in addition to monsters and large boulders. Depending on the specific personality of the mine, we may find entire rooms and even buildings the deeper we travel.

This same magic is what allows multiple levels to exist without cave-ins.

"It's at the end of this next level where we'll start to need the lamp," Thomas tells me as we descend them. "You seem to prefer loot from that point on."

"It's a higher quality than up here," I inform him. "The ones of the first level are Grade 2, while the ones I've been holding a preference for are all Grade 3. What I want is even deeper, if the mine actually has it."

I can find it in lower quality elsewhere, but it's still tough to find. The fact that I can get some of a good quality here for what's effectively free makes it a much better deal.

On this second level, the monsters are still mostly bats and large ants, though giant rats attack from time to time. Just as with the first two monsters, I eliminate them using [Magic Missile]. It's a cheap, simple spell and is useful against a wide variety of monsters.

Not all of them, however, and after about half an hour of walking through the second level, we come across another. This one is an orb of light three inches in diameter, the center part of it more concentrated than the rest. The magic arrows I gave Thomas are fine for killing something like this as it pierces, but concussive force does nothing to them.

So I send a [Shadow Missile] at the spooklight instead. Rather than a missile of shimmering blue force, this one takes the form of darkness. Anything viewed through it looks as if it's been cast in a deep shadow.

The moment it passes through the spooklight, the spooklight turns to black-and-red mist and a light magic crystal and a plain magic crystal drop to the ground.

"What spell was that?" Thomas asks as I collect our loot. "Ain't the same as the others? Just sort of splashed against the wall instead of slamming, and went right through the light. My arrows stop in them."

"[Shadow Missile]," I answer. "It's a non-tangible elemental magic. Non-physical."

It can be hard to determine what words and phrases aren't within the knowledge of someone from the sticks, even with all of my experience interacting with them. "Tangible" is a normal term among mages so I'm used to it, but someone out here might have never even heard the word before. The only reason I realized he didn't know the word was because of the confusion that appeared in his mind at its use.

We continue walking through the second level of the mines, Thomas asking if we can stop to collect some of the mana crystals along the way. They're in small clusters and hold a decent amount of mana, so they'll be able to fuel the chief's truck for awhile.

"Even though I come down here pretty often," he adds. "I ain't good enough to stay too long. You, on the other hand, kill everything with ease. Can stay longer now thanks to the arrows and gloves, but I want to get a good stock of the crystals."

"We're going either as deep as the mines go or to at least the fifth floor if it's that deep or deeper," I tell him. "The crystals further down will have more mana in them. They'll also be more abundant."

"Oh."

I can feel the "duh" in his mind.

Another twenty minutes pass before I feel minds within a cluster of rocks resting against one wall. Thomas seems to be wary of it, having probably felt the pain of getting too close without being aware of its real nature before. Not all rock clusters are monsters but some do imitate them.

A gesture with my right hand sends a [Magic Missile] into the golem, which explodes into black-and-red mist before it can react to the attack. Three items drop from it: a plain magic crystal, a brownish-orange earth magic crystal, and a stone about the size of my fist.

[Sturdy Stone] An extra-sturdy stone resistant to blunt damage, it's heavier than normal and resistant to weathering.

This might seem like an odd thing to drop from a creature as weak to concussive damage as the golem was, but it's not. The monsters in the second level of the mines have around 20 Constitution at the most while I have 50 Magic. I'm extremely strong compared to them and can simply destroy them with a single hit. The cores of golems are also more resilient to damage than the other parts of them.

These stones are even stronger than that.

"We're collecting the stone?" Thomas asks. "I've just been leaving them."

"You can use them for building foundations," I explain. "And for crafting some magic items. We'll find stronger ones further down, but it's not a bad idea to collect them now. Just let me know if the weight of the pack gets too much and we can discard some items. We'll be doing that anyway if it gets too full."

"Okay."

When we finally reach the stairs leading down, Thomas reaches up and twists the crystal orb in his lamp. That causes it to sink down into its socket a little bit more and it starts to glow more brightly. We don't need the light for the full floor, but it's better to have it on at all times than to need to constantly turn it on and off. Since it draws on the ambient mana, we also won't have to worry about wasting fuel.

The monsters on this floor are the same as on the previous, and the quality of the items is firmly Grade 3 with occasional Grade 4. There are a few dark pockets, but not too many to make things dangerous.

The fourth floor is mostly the same, just with more Grade 4 loot drops. I can tell Thomas wants to harvest items from here as well, both ore clumps and crystal clusters, but refrains from doing so since I don't show any concern toward them. I do break a few of the larger boulders touched with magic in a way which suggests they're anomalous ones, collecting the iron ore that drops from each.

"You make it look so easy," Thomas comments as we go down to the fifth floor. "The few times I've tried to do the fourth floor, I've struggled against the monsters and had to turn back."

"I can't go much further, to be fair," I tell him. "The monsters on the sixth floor will be about as powerful as I am now, and those on the seventh will be strong enough that I'll have to actually be careful," concern enters his mind. "But that's not something I'm planning on doing unless necessary, not when accompanied by someone who can't handle it. That would just put you in danger. The hope is that we can find what I'm looking for here on the fifth floor and if not, the sixth if there is one. Something other than that, I mean."

"Other than-" Thomas's eyes widen as he spots the massive crystal a few feet to the right of the bottom of the steps.

It's pale blue with silvery streaks around it and three bands of runes made out of blue light slowly circling it. The crystal is taller than we are and floats about a foot off of the floor of the small cavern we've stepped into. As with the ribbons of light, the crystal itself glows a little, casting a pale blue light around it.

"What in the name of Ulvranik…"

"Technically not his domain," I say. "It was crafted for those delving deeper into places like this, so mainly under the domain of Kielvezit, the God of Journeys. Its presence means someone's been this deep before, and its design indicates it was a long time ago. They stopped that rune sequence in the bands about three centuries ago."

"What is it?" Thomas asks.

"A waystone," I reach past the ribbons and place a hand on the crystal and a pale, silver-and-blue light flows out of it and into my arm, sinking into me.

You have activated the [Mistwood Mines Floor 5 Waystone].

"Useless to us right now, though," I tell him. "I can't make warpstones without the right materials. Waystones allow you to travel between those you've touched before. That's called 'activating' it, though it's already active. They're usually placed every fifth floor, since it's the floor after those where the difficulty spikes. Doing it on every floor is a bit too expensive – it might look like a giant floating crystal, but it's a sophisticated piece of magical engineering and enchanting which requires a lot of certain rare materials to craft."

"If it's useless, then why do you want me to activate it?" Thomas frowns. "Since we're not going deeper."

"If we manage to find what I'm looking for," I tell him. "And in a sufficient quantity, I can craft warpstones. You can tune them to waystones, and that'll allow you to warp directly to the linked one if you're within the Labyrinth. Oh, 'Labyrinth' is the common term for places like these mines. You can also use a warpstone for a waystone within the Labyrinth entrance as well. However, you cannot travel to a waystone you haven't activated, even with a warpstone that's linked to it."

"So if I want to come this deep with you immediately," he says. "And you have warpstones that come to it, I have to touch it as well?"

"Yeah."

"Okay," he nods, then touches the waystone, flinching a little when the light flows onto his arm a little. "That didn't feel like anything yet still felt weird."

"You only have to do it once per waystone," I tell him. "So don't worry about doing it too often. The next one is a fair bit deeper and even if you come in here regularly, it'll take you quite a long time to reach that deep, if you ever do. If there even is a tenth floor and a waystone on it."

The odds of that are rare but not nonexistent.

"Okay," he says. "What's next?"

"We see if I can find what I'm looking for."