After the meal, Duncan once again took up his sword in his right hand and the torch in his left. He made his way down the hallway. This time less careful as he knew the skeleton tripped every trap but the one.

As he came to that one, he started walking slowly again. Shining the torch low to notice any trip wires or holes in the wall or ground.

Not far from the trap he came upon a big room with an open stone casket. He carefully went inside and checked for any traps around it before looking inside.

It was empty. Duncan felt empty too. His dreams of riches shattered.

As he straightened his back the light of the torch shone higher and he noticed a big red and four shiny transparent crystals on the back wall of the room. They were in the shape of cardinal directions. Like on a compass, with the red one being in the center. He rechecked for any holes in the ground or the wall near them and could not find anything.

“At least there is that. Now how to pry them out,” Duncan mumbled to himself and took a dagger from his inventory.

First, he used it on the lowest one. The rock luckily was not that hard and he could pry the dagger a bit under it. It didn’t want to pop off. He tried using the torch as a pivot but it was uncomfortably close to his face as he did so.

Duncan needed two hands now so he stuck the torch into the casket and used the handle of his short sword next. Using the leverage on it, the crystal popped right off into the unknown. Duncan was not worried since the size was big enough that it would not take long to find it and he knew the general direction from the bouncing noises.

He used the same method on the other three transparent ones and they all flew off.

The red one proved a lot harder. He used enough force that the dagger was starting to bend and he was worried he would break it. Then he switched the dagger and sword at some point when he made the hole big enough for the sword tip to fit underneath.

As he was guiding the sword tip into the hole, he made a critical blunder as he pressed on the red gem and heard a click.

Suddenly, the ground beneath his feet disappeared and he plunged into the darkness. After about two seconds of sparks from his weapons and helmet on the walls of the tunnel he was thrown on the floor back first.

Duncan had the wind knocked out of him as he tried to stay quiet in the new dark place. It took him a while to get his breathing normalized as he frantically listened for any movement. Luckily for him it was all quiet on the western front.

He took out a spare torch from his inventory and lit it up. What he saw was a similarly sized room as the one above with another casket in the middle. This one was also made of stone but it was covered.

Looking around he noticed a bookshelf in a corner with books that didn’t look like they would fall apart if he took them. There was nothing else except a stone door on the backwall with another five gems.

Once again, he checked all the floors and walls for halls and there weren’t any.

Finally, he relaxed and reached for the bookshelf when a bolt of lightning sprung up from it and threw him across the room.

“-BLEEEEEEP-! Arrrgh!”, Duncan yelled as he once again got the wind knocked out.

“Well, at least it didn’t kill me,” he said as he came back to it.

Looking at the bookshelf he could see runes inscribed on it.

“Let’s go for round two!” Duncan said before he put away his sword and left the torch on the ground in the middle of the room. He reached once again for the bookshelf and a predictable result happened.

“Let’s see who is more stubborn,” he said as he wiped the spit from his face.

After a few more repeats the rebounds were significantly weaker, before the whole thing shut down.

He grabbed a book and opened it. The characters were unknown to him and since he didn’t know them, he could not know the language. Identify also proved less than helpful with question marks instead of answers.

Duncan packed all of them in his inventory and hoped the trio might have an answer. Next, he pried the transparent gems from the wall but left the red one alone.

The risk of letting loose something that was behind that door was too great for him. He also had no bloody interest into opening the casket. It looked too heavy to lift anyway.

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He had enough excitement for today and he could always come back when he was stronger. The skeleton showed him how low on the food chain he really was. Had it been a bit smarter and not repeated the same moves over and over, Duncan doubted he could kill it.

He picked up the small transparent crystals and identified them.

[Diamond]

“Thank god it’s not glass after all this,” he thought.

He tried to use Identify on them before but something prevented it while they were embedded in the wall.

Getting back up the smooth incline proved to be difficult. Luckily there were gaps between the boulders where Duncan could stick his dagger in and pull himself up. Then he wedged himself between the walls with his two feet and repeated the process. He had to leave the torch since he had no way to hold it. It made things harder later since he was stumbling around it the darkness as the torchlight no longer reached him. It took him a while but he made it out.

The torch he left in the casket was still merrily burning as he breathed out in relief.

Duncan clicked the red gem again and the floor came back up. He used the same method as he devised before to pry the red gem out. It also flew and joined the diamonds.

He moved away from the trap door and pressed his finger inside the opening. The trap door still worked. He pressed it again and it closed. After that it was just a matter of picking up his loot.

Duncan made his way up the slope and around the hole in the ground and found himself a nice spot to do some mining. The whole rock wall was orange tinted. He stuck the torch in a crack and hammered away with the pickaxe. He left the low-quality ore on the ground as he pried away the top layer and got to the good stuff that was not yet oxidized.

Soon, he was mining good and superior iron ore which he threw in his inventory like there was no tomorrow. After a while he had to drop the good ones to replace them with superior ones as his inventory had gotten full of the stuff.

Blisters on his hands formed again and again. He quickly remedied them with the low-quality healing potion he still had from Bolgar. Time passed quickly for him when doing the fast forward action and the visible progress in the rock wall left him with a feeling of satisfaction.

Also, the levels for the mining skill helped a lot. He went from level 3 to level 10 when he finally had no more space. All his free inventory space was filled with superior iron ore and any attempt to add more just gave him a slight headache that soon passed.

Duncan looked behind and saw a few times bigger pile of good iron ore and shrugged.

“Maybe I come back and take it out later,” he thought and made to leave.

Not long after that he was locking up the entrance to the mine. It was dusk. He decided to stop by Bolgar’s first and dump the iron ore before going to Wazsh’s bar.

As he was closing in, he heard the clanking of the dwarf’s hammer. The door was unlocked and as he came in Bolgar turned around bright eyed.

“You made it back,” Bolgar said happily.

“Yeah. Where can I put the ore?” Duncan said.

Bolgar pointed to an empty stall and Duncan dumped everything he had.

Inspecting some of them the dwarf happily said, “This is good stuff. Are they all superior?”

“Yeah. I left the good ones in the mine.”, Duncan explained.

“Let’s go get a beer and dinner. I will explain everything there,” Duncan replied before walking towards the exit.

Bolgar rushed to the living area and soon joined him outside. Duncan was looking at him.

“What? I needed to make myself presentable,” Bolgar said.

Duncan saw no difference from what he was like before.

“Whatever,” he thought and started walking.

Bolgar locked his shop and followed.

Soon, they entered Wazsh’s bar where Elland was already sitting at the counter.

Wazsh nodded as Elland looked behind.

“Finally, you are here. I can finally stop listening to the elf nagging at me for letting you go to the mine,” Wazsh said visibly relieved as Elland stared daggers at him.

“How was it?” Wazsh continued.

“Get us some beers first,” Duncan replied.

As Wazsh brought out the beers, for himself included. Duncan continued.

“One shade one skeleton guard. And traps.”

“What level were they?” Elland asked.

“13 and 18,” Duncan replied and then told the whole story from beginning to the end of his mine adventure. He included his blunder of finding the hidden space before producing the books on a nearby table.

Elland and Wazsh jumped at them with interest. They opened each one up and looked at the text.

“I think this is proto elven script,” Elland said.

“I have no clue what they are,” Wazsh raised his hands.

“It’s a script used by the elves eons ago. There are still some characters used today but the complexity has gone way down," Elland elaborated.

“I think I may have a dictionary somewhere at home,” he mumbled.

Bolgar meanwhile drank his beer and stayed quiet.

“Wazsh please get me some stew,” Duncan asked.

“Sure!” Wazsh replied before he went to the kitchen and brought out a spoon, a napkin and some bread. He put them on the table and took out the stew from his inventory.

“That really hits the spot,” Duncan said as he merrily ate it and drank beer.

“I think one is a bestiary. The drawings suggest so. There are couple of just text. There are some with runes I recognize. I can’t tell you more before I try to translate them,” Elland replied.

“Take them. I will get them back from you when you are done,” Duncan replied after nodding.

“I got these poison bolts and this sword. Also, two purified shade essence and bone essence,” Duncan said and deposited them on another table.

“Ohh. I can make something from this,” Elland said as he inspected the essences.

Bolgar had his eyes on the sword.

“It has an enchantment for speed. Interesting. Can I hold on to it for a couple of days?” Bolgar asked.

“Sure. I need to get some rest now,” Duncan replied as he yawned.

“I will check out the poison on the bolts,” Elland suggested. Duncan just nodded and went upstairs through the kitchen. His back hurt from the slide and the bookshelf. Also, the heavy pickaxe didn’t help in that regard at all.

He dragged himself to the bathroom and washed his face. Looking in the mirror he grinned at the greasy long brown haired bearded stranger looking back at him.

“I look like a fucking hobo.”

With the last of the energy, he had he took a bath, washed his socks and underwear before crashing into his bed.