Monday, April 8th, 2069

“Brodie, are you absolutely sure you’ve awakened a new ability, after the assault?” Ms. Stovall asked. Through the phone it sounded a hell of a lot like, ‘Are you sure you want to tell me this before your court hearing?’

After my meeting with the Psychiatrist, I’d taken public transportation to the location of my father’s cell phone. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, since the reception went out once inside the portal but once in the general area of a Portal it was easy to find the caution tape, and temporary fences that attempted to keep the general public safe.

It hadn’t even taken long, only about thirty minutes to arrive at the University of Windsor’s campus. It had however taken a few hours of talking to finally convince someone to call Jagger and confirm I worked with the Miner’s. Even then the Mantis Guild had chosen to go inside and radio to the mining team, for further confirmation. Through that radio call, my father had embarrassingly ‘reminded’ me, that I’d promised to talk to Stovall. So, here I was.

“Yes, at this point I’m relatively sure,” I answered, after a loud exhalation.

“Do you know what it does?” Ms. Stovall followed-up.

“Seems to repair equipment from Mana Spillage or something similar. I know that it can repair mining picks as long as they are mining Crystalized Mana.”

“So, it isn’t a combat ability?”

“Definitely not.”

“Have you told anyone else about this?”

“Only my family and my aunt Willa.”

“By you stressing the word aunt, I can assume she isn’t actually of blood relation.”

“You can.”

“Alright, well the therapist did send me her notes, and while a new awakened ability does slightly change the case, I don’t think it will matter. I’m going to go ahead and continue on the current course of getting this dismissed before trial if I can, but if that isn’t possible, we’ll have to get you re-assessed in preparation. Still, I don’t think there’s much to worry about.”

“I’m also supposed to ask you if it’s okay for me to continue Mining with my father for now,” I dead-panned, half expecting the answer I eventually got.

“What did the Psychiatrist say?”

“That it’s my decision.”

“Then what’s your decision?” Ms. Stovall said with a chuckle, probably in large part to the exasperation in my previous answer.

“Thank you for your time, Ms. Stovall. Need anything else from me?”

“Not much right this moment. I’d suggest you stay off SwiftGram. Maybe even make a post about needing some time. Other than that, once we get the pre-trail date, I’ll have you in for some prep work. My suggestion is that you don’t take the stand, but we should likely be ready just in case. Either way, you’ll need to be in the pre-trial meeting thanks to the Hunter laws surrounding Judge’s skills. So, having an idea of how it will go will help you.”

“Okay,” I responded, letting the word carry all the confusion I had with it. The situation regarding what was definitely self defense confused me.

“Not to worry, Brodie. I’ll get it thrown out before trial. Enjoy your mining.”

I was still blinking in confusion when I heard the other side of the line disconnect. That didn’t feel reassuring.

“Why don’t you just start saving enough Mana Coins to buy a truly powerful combat skill. Then they can’t convict you,” Smegma said in answer to my thoughts.

[That is not how our justice system works. They’ve convicted an S-rank of crimes, before.]

“Ahhh, but did they catch him.”

[Husk off, sky-rat,] I mentally answered. Smegma guffawed which at least made me smile. If there was one thing, I was sure of, it was that I should have nothing to worry about in a trial over the death of Morgan Hallsbrad. He’d attacked me—and I’d defended myself. It was the truth, pure and simple.

“Unless someone twists the truth,” Smegma said with a very disturbingly flat tone.

[Again, not how our justice system works.]

“Sure, it isn’t. If there is one universal truth in the world—it’s that power always corrupts. Let me ask you this Mr. Lawyer. Why do you think Ms. Stovall is going to prep you, if there is no chance of this going in a different way than expected?”

I walked to the Hunter who had gone into the portal to radio my father earlier and gave him a quick update. He then made a motion for me to follow him and told me he would guide me to the site. The portal wasn’t visible unless inside the Quad but the glow it gave off was. Deep Ocean blue.

Waiting for Smegma to offer the portal’s destination didn’t yield anything and so I asked, [Where does this one lead?]

“No idea. Despite how intelligent I look, I don’t know everything.”

[Ahhh, so that’s why you don’t know anything?] I countered. I caught the imp flipping me the double three-fingered demon birds from the corner of my eye and smirked.

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

Passing through this portal felt a lot like being suddenly submerged in warm water, unable to breathe. Coming out the other side I started gasping, and my guide did as well. We exchanged a look that conveyed the guide’s dislike of this portal and I suddenly felt bad for making him come in to radio my father.

My first glance away from the guide showed a similar environment to Agora. Simply put it looked like a different rain forest. The ground is where the two differed. Agora had firm ground beneath a layer of moss and dead leaves.

The ground here? My feet squelched as I went to take my first step. I watched as my foot and ankle sunk under the semi-hardening mud. The smell of sulfur as my foot entered intensified, signaling my brain of the putrid odor that this dungeon ‘exuded’. It was so bad that I considered just leaving again.

“It isn’t far from the entrance,” the guide said while tying a bandana around his mouth and nose. That reminded me of my face-shield and I pulled it up. “This way,” the guide continued and began walking.

To my surprise his feet didn’t squelch. I stared after the man as he strode above the mud. I must have made a noise because he turned back and chuckled. “Basic Hydrophobic Enchant—lets you walk on most surfaces that have high enough water content. The whole guild got them done when we heard what type of dungeon this was.”

“Do you have a spare set?”

“Nope. You’ll just have to squelch it out.” The man chuckled again, clearly impressed with his own joke. I shook my head and began to ‘squelch.’

* * *

“You might want to check what this thing is,” Smegma commented, starting me out of toggling on and off heat vision. It didn’t show me anything inside of this Portal, since there were no Mana Leeches.

I turned to look at the hovering imp. He had his eyes closed and didn’t appear to be indicating anything. “In your Mental Universe you dumb-dumb.”

Oh, that made sense. I even likely knew what he was talking about. A quick check showed me that the metal looking moon was growing.

Thanks to the week of mining I was able to keep working even when distracted. I scratched the side of my head but kept up my sharding of low rank crystals. [Okay, so it’s growing from Mining, and Overflow—it’s kind of what I expected, really.]

“I think it’s been growing since you entered the Portal” Smegma answered, and I looked back at him. That didn’t make sense, I just started mining less than an hour ago. Where would the—

My eyes flew wide, and I stared to where my father and Willa were currently talking with another miner. I knew they were discussing which ores to try for, so didn’t bother having Smegma listen in. Could it be?

[Smegma, pull up the mining pick description.]

Miscellaneous Professions Gear

Miner’s Pick (1)

Low-F-Rank

Durability: Unlimited

Damage: 1-3 (x100% to Mineable minerals)

This miner’s pick will use the Mana run off the Crystals to repair and strengthen itself making it unbreakable. It will also Funnel excess Mana to Brodie Flaccarada’s Overdraft skill.

Cost: 10,000 mC

[Did their picks change to Funnel to my Overdraft too?] I thought staring at the picks currently in their hands.

“Only explanation I can think of. Now you just need to figure out what this Skill is,” Smegma said.

Shrugging I finished sharding the Crystal I was on. I was due for a full crystal anyway, and maybe the new skill would be low ranked.

In one strike I managed to ping the next crystal loose. I smiled. I was getting relatively good at this; if I did say so myself. Placing my hand on the crystal I sold the Mana inside and then waved to my father. Once he glanced over I pointed to the cooler, indicating I was going to take a break for a snack.

“You just got here!” Gary shouted across the cavern. A moment later I heard all three of the miners laughing. I was only left confused for a moment, thankfully. “Willa says you only have one way to grow—be careful.”

“You can tell Aunt Willa, I kept that picture she loves from when she was pregnant,” I shouted back.

The laughter of two people grew louder, while Willa made choking sounds. Thanks to no one currently mining in our chamber I heard her response to my father. “He doesn’t actually have that, right?”

This elicited more laughter from the men, while I sat down and pulled out a ham and Swiss sandwich. I placed the spent Mana Crystal strategically behind the cooler from the three and began channeling my Mana. My pool was up to twenty-five points, which meant I was easily a mid-F-grade.

As I waited, I glanced back to my pick which I had traded with the spent Crystal; leaving the former in my mining spot. Depending on what this skill was, couldn’t I supply an entire Mining Crew with picks and just infinitely level it up? I could feel my skin flush with the excitement that particular thought led to.

If Overflow had just created a combat skill—

“Stop daydreaming,” Smegma interjected. “All that line of thinking can do is make you disappointed if it isn’t something good.”

[What’s got your wings twisted?]

“That’s a good saying. I’m going to steal that if I ever see my family again. Still, the reason my ‘wings are twisted,’ is because everything I know says you can only have a certain number of skills. So, if this thing isn’t powerful, and doesn’t have the chance to become powerful—well that’s a waste.”

I supposed it was. With Demonic Vault’s store and my ability to pick skills. Still, I was a minimum of nine-hundred and eighty thousand Mana Coins away from any of the just-above-crap options. So, all I could do was hope. [Is there a way to delete skills once learned?]

“I want to say yes, because it was possible to remove Cards from your heart deck on Crendalar Five but with that Enchant being banned and the strange updates for Demonic Vault; I can’t say for sure.”

That seemed fair—

The Crystal glowed bright and then began shrinking into the stack of cards. I fanned them out hoping for something new. The red Demonic Vault Card was there, as was the green Recovery. And under that was a plain brown card and another pale whitish red one.

I glanced at the whitish red one first. It was plain. Looking like a playing card from a deck of off-brand. A quick flip and a glance reminded me of my heat vision skill. While I still used it frequently, other than the time with the mana leeches it hadn’t proved to be useful.

Heat Sense (Evolvable)

(50)

High-E-Rank

Use one or more of your senses to discover sources of heat in your vicinity. This sense can only spread to a certain distance.

Shrugging I put the red one back in the pile and moved on to studying the earthen brown one. The back also didn’t have a sheen to it or any sort of moving picture. Instead, it just looked like a rock that had been shaped into a card.

I flipped it over and wasn’t sure whether I should throw it away in disgust…another useless skill.

Mining (Evolveable)

(4)

Mid-F-Rank

As you mine you slowly improve your understanding of minerals, ores, and crystals. As this Skill grows this individual will notice improvements to all actions related to Mining.

Smegma started laughing. In between loud inhalations so he could continue, he crowed, “You better hope you can get rid of skills.”