“Something’s strange… The amount mined today should be about the same as the past few days, so why does it feel like the mining progress has sped up? Could it be that this area is nearing depletion?”
As today’s work ended and the shift handover began, personnel stationed on the outskirts started transporting the mythril to the surface. It was also time for the daily inventory check. The Royal Knight in charge of tallying was now puzzled, staring at the rapidly diminishing stock of the mythril vein.
Since the discovery of this mythril vein buried 500 meters beneath the surface, to reduce the risk of exposure, only about a hundred people had been secretly mining it. The daily extraction amount remained consistent. Yet today, though the mined quantity hadn’t increased much, the scheduled mining position had advanced significantly.
Hidden nearby, Lu Qiuchen smiled inwardly. She glanced at the piles of associated ore residue stacked high inside her Talent Space, feeling quite pleased with her efficiency.
“There’s still plenty of mythril ahead. This could be a major vein…” Lu Qiuchen observed the scale of the ore and drew her conclusion.
If this mythril vein could be fully mined, with the fully armed Royal Knights and mercenaries from other nations hired using mythril, perhaps the Knight Kingdom could hope to exact revenge against the Empire. Of course, this hopeful vision hinged on one thing: the Knight Kingdom must protect the mythril mine from being plundered or divided by other powers.
Leaning against a rocky wall, Lu Qiuchen glanced around. Noticing that no one was paying attention to her, she secretly broke off a large chunk of ore and hurriedly stuffed it into her mouth.
Just like before, she separated a small piece of mythril and quickly swallowed it. A wave of warmth surged through her body. Her heart suddenly skipped a beat as she noticed the experience bar below her vision flicker slightly!
She shifted her attention to the experience bar, which displayed her level and experience.
LV: 120 (11k/190M EXP)
Lu Qiuchen was momentarily at a loss. She had always thought her level was tied to her real-world strength. She never expected that just by eating a few bites of mythril within the game—amounting to about the size of a pea—she’d gain a full 10,000 experience points.
She cast a buff spell and found her mental control power slightly stronger than before. Her eyes lit up; her strength had indeed improved, albeit just a little!
She pondered again the relationship between the game and reality.
Outside the scope of the South Continent, no intelligent lifeforms could be seen in the game world. Could this be because the game currently only opens the South Continent?
Did this mean only the currently opened game region connected with reality? And could events in the game influence the real world?
This required further verification. Lu Qiuchen saw that all workers had left the mine. She selected a direction and carefully used spatial cutting to carve out a large hole. After entering, she moved the surface rocks back into place to seal it.
She compressed the ordinary rocks and soil she had cut out and pressed them against the tunnel’s sidewalls, somewhat reinforcing the passage. Judging by the space, it was just enough for her real body to fit, so she shifted into her dragon form.
Having realized that mining this mythril could enhance her power, she prepared to dig stealthily. She had to avoid detection for now. Lu Qiuchen decided to dig along the edge of the vein, going deeper to minimize the chance of being discovered.
She removed useless soil and rocks from her Talent Space, compressed them with spatial magic, and stacked them along the sides of the newly dug tunnel.
Turning from below toward the mythril vein, her excavation speed in dragon form was rapid. In about two hours, her Talent Space was filled with raw mythril ore.
Looking at the full Talent Space of ore, Lu Qiuchen stopped digging to process it. She tasted the sweet flavor, spitting out the ore residue repeatedly. Nearly three hours later, the ore in her Talent Space was transformed into a pile of fine mythril fragments.
The amount of mythril extracted looked enough to forge a full suit of mythril armor.
From a full Talent Space of ore, she had only refined this much mythril. Compared with the veins from the memory inheritance, Lu Qiuchen felt a little regret. This mythril vein wasn’t of the highest quality, but at least it was abundant.
She estimated that her roughly four hours of continuous work equaled the output of a hundred people in a whole day. Taking into account the manpower and time required for refining, she alone could keep pace with a thousand miners! And human refining techniques inevitably resulted in some loss of mythril along the way.
Truly worthy of the Silver Dragon’s racial talent!
Lu Qiuchen gathered the fine mythril fragments and kneaded them into a ball about the size of a basketball. Saliva coating it, she swallowed it in one gulp, closing her eyes blissfully.
As the mythril melted down her throat, her experience bar exploded with rapid growth, shooting across to full. A white light enveloped her massive body.
LV: 122 (94.6M/236M EXP)
She had leveled up twice in a row! Surprised but motivated, Lu Qiuchen thought at this rate, just mining a fraction of this vein could bring her to the legendary peak.
Not letting herself get lost in the delicious taste or the thrill of rapid progress, she resumed mining promptly.
After a few more hours, she swallowed another basketball-sized chunk of mythril, only to find the experience gain had seriously diminished.
LV: 123 (88.1M/262M EXP)
Compared to the first time, it had dropped by more than half!
Taking shortcuts really doesn’t work, Lu Qiuchen sighed in her heart, though this was still excellent progress.
Since reaching legend level, her strength had hardly increased. The progress of the past few hours, if achieved by natural aging, would have taken a century.
Every bit counts! Besides, the current gains were more like an elephant’s leg than a mosquito’s leg, Lu Qiuchen cheered herself on and continued digging.
Three days later, after constant work, her front claws ached, and her head felt dizzy.
Unlike in human form, her dragon form couldn’t chew but only slowly crush ore with her teeth. Her teeth were already hurting, saliva was overproduced, leaving her parched. Even water condensed by elemental magic failed to quench her thirst, forcing her to stop.
She glanced at the scattered mythril grains inside her Talent Space, reminding herself these were precious experimental materials, key to confirming information when she returned to reality, and forcibly restrained her desire to consume them.
“So tired, time to rest…” she muttered. But her hoarse voice startled her. Only then did she realize her voice had become hoarse.
‘Beta, check my physical condition!’ she mentally called out to her omnipotent assistant.
No response. Feeling odd, her dizzy mind noticed something else: the game interface before her eyes had vanished without warning!
She initially thought she had accidentally triggered the Dispel Orb. Quickly, she checked her Talent Space, took it out, and was surprised to find no sign of the orb’s use. Its mental power was full, radiating a faint glow.
Startled by this strange development, Lu Qiuchen wanted to verify whether she was still inside the game world!
But wanting to turn back, she found herself stuck. The narrow mine tunnel prevented her from turning; her body was wedged between the rocky walls. She could only stretch her neck and look back.
Through the gap between her body and the rocks, she saw the mining tunnel behind her stretched quite far after three days of digging. The color of the surrounding ore had changed from silvery white to silver-blue.
Unintentionally, she noticed some glittering silver-blue particles mixed among the ore residue she had spit out earlier. Her previously muddled mind cleared significantly.
Silver-blue, hard and slightly grating to bite, shimmering with luster—this was adamantite!
No wonder her teeth had started to ache after only two days.
Turning to look around again, realization dawned and excitement bubbled up. Beneath the mythril vein was an adamantite mine! The Knight Kingdom had a gold mine right under its nose and had been wasting the opportunity, ultimately benefiting her.
Adamantite, though only slightly harder than mythril, possessed magical affinity comparable to mythril. However, due to its extreme weight, it was mainly used for melee weapons, generally forged together with the highly ductile mythril or other metals.
Like mythril, adamantite was extremely rare, usually buried deep underground. Almost all adamantite veins discovered across the two continents were located in mines built by Goblins or Dwarves.
Since humans expelled the Goblins from the South Continent, adamantite and mythril—which weren’t particularly rare in the North Continent—became extremely scarce in the South.
Lu Qiuchen collected the adamantite-laced residue back into her Talent Space. Stimulated by the treasure, the greedy side of her dragon nature was triggered. She wanted to keep mining, but considering the unclear situation and recurring dizziness, she reluctantly gave up for the time being and headed back.
The tunnel was too narrow to turn around. Lu Qiuchen shifted into human form, planning to turn her head and then switch back to dragon form, but found the dizziness worsening and couldn’t concentrate. She had to crawl upward along the slope, half-prone.
Being human-shaped made her feel stifled, and in her weakened state, after a short climb, she collapsed to rest inside the tunnel.
In the quiet, she heard faint sounds in the tunnel, seemingly someone speaking to her. But the more she listened, the weaker and more inaudible the voice became. She thought about it for a while but couldn’t understand what it was.
Sensing no danger, she didn’t pay much attention. Her priority was to return to the surface.
Once her dizziness eased and the path ahead leveled out, she noticed piles of mineral fragments obstructing the way every so often. She decided not to shift into dragon form but stayed human-shaped to continue heading back.
After climbing out of the adamantite ore range, Lu Qiuchen suddenly saw the system interface reappear in her vision. The dizziness was completely gone. Seeing this, she was momentarily speechless.