TWEM Vol. 2 Short Story
Digital Version Short Story – Nighttime Excavations in the Forest!
In a forest located several Kilometols from the Perdis capital, in the middle of the night…
I, Yuki Haruto, an adventurer recently promoted to EX rank, was using Earth magic to dig deep into the ground.
Not because I enjoyed making tunnels, of course: my aim was to gather materials to craft weapons, armor, and magic tools.
Normally, one would go to a mine to gather such minerals.
Thanks to the map function of my God Eye skill, however, I found out that deep underground in this forest lies a rich bed of minerals.
Maybe because it is located quite deep, or maybe because no one thought minerals could be hidden in a place like this, it was still completely untouched.
And so when I found out I immediately started digging, with zest and glee.
God Eye could also tell me what kind of minerals I was going to find, but I didn’t use that function this time. It would be more exciting if it was a surprise, after all.
I eventually arrived at the bottom of a vertical tunnel 100 Metols long and two Metols wide.
I used Light magic to illuminate my surroundings and found a silver mineral, which God Eye revealed to be—
“Oh, it’s Mithril! I never thought I’d find some here!”
The silver mineral was indeed the fabled Mithril, a familiar presence in works of fantasy.
Could it be that the mineral in this area is all Mithril?
I used God Eye to check and discovered that my assumption was correct: I had indeed found a large Mithril vein. There were various other kinds of minerals too, however.
Let’s dig the other metals and find out what they are!
~
I thus continued in my excavation, with the aid of my map and Earth magic.
Other than Mithril, I found common metals, such as iron and copper, and finally reached a mineral vein shining with the colors of a rainbow.
“This is…Orichalcum!”
According to God Eye, Orichalcum was the hardest known material in this world, which also had exceptional magic conduction capabilities.
My EX rank card is made in Orichalcum too, now that I think about it.
The card was black, but Orichalcum itself is a really beautiful mineral…
I gazed at the Orichalcum for a while, then resumed my excavation.
Once dawn broke over the forest, I had dug out most if not all minerals in the area.
I had found another mineral vein, deeper than the area I had first located, so I dug that too: there I found Damascus, Adamantite, Scarletite — all metals often found in fantasy fiction — as well as lots of other gemstones and minerals.
Scarletite is supposed to be a metal from Japanese mythology, but you can find it in this world too…what a mystery.
Anyway, I should be able to create any weapons, armors and tools I want with these.
Satisfied, I looked up at the sky and the sun rising in the east.
I then checked the dimensional storage and saw that my haul had become quite large.
I needed to measure the heap thoroughly to be sure, but it probably weighed more than one ton.
I used Earth magic to create soil and rock to fill the holes created after I dug out the minerals…so hopefully it wasn’t going to sink.
Today I’m going with Finne and Iris to buy furniture, for the residence I received as a reward for the promotion to EX rank, so I should go back soon.
I used Time-Space magic, as I did when I left, to return instantly to my room.
Going out at night would alert the guards, so I’m really glad I can use teleportation.
“I guess I can sleep a couple hours…”
I bet it’ll take a long time to buy the furniture…was what I thought as I drifted off to sleep.