Chapter 337

Jacob is looking at Princess Yekaterina Rafnin, and he wonders what exactly she is looking to get out of him. Clearly, something about Jacob elicits her curiosity — or at the very least, the curiosity of the kingdom of Zamorye.

But so far, the girl has barely interacted with him. And her two bodyguards, Volkov and Gromov, are just minding their own business. Despite the fact that her disguise could have used some work, she is quite good at dissembling.

Jacob tried to use the Grimoire to gather more info about Yekaterina, but it’s mostly biographical facts about her life. It doesn’t seem to say much about her intentions here. So, it appears that even the Grimoire has some limits when it comes to the past of people — especially the very recent past — and interpreting their intentions seems like something it’s not capable of doing.

Jacob gets woken up by the foreman himself.

“Cloud, it’s time to get to work,” Ivan shouts.

Jacob thinks that having the foreman of the entire mine coming to wake him up is one of the weirdest things he’s experienced. Usually, it would be other workers — which the place currently lacks, because there’s only the princess and her two bodyguards here.

So he’s brought — accompanied by the foreman himself, together with the princess and the two bodyguards, whom the foreman shouts at to keep up appearances — into a large tunnel.

The tunnel is well-kept, much better than anything Jacob has ever witnessed in Shit’s Creek. There are metal poles welded together with large platforms extending the surface they hold, both at the base and at the top of them. And they’re placed at equal distance throughout the whole tunnel. Jacob knows he’s never seen something so precise. And there are many reinforcements where the wall is actually at its weakest.

“Do you have your own pickaxe?”

Jacob looks at Foreman Ivan and says, “Of course. How would I not have one, right?”

And he takes out Rafnov’s pickaxe, which immediately gets a reaction from the foreman. Foreman Ivan is not able to contain himself, and his mouth hangs slack for a few seconds before he can catch himself and say, “Interesting pickaxe you have there.”

“I know, right? It’s a bit old, but it does its job,” Jacob says, tapping it against the wall and making the foreman wince when he does that so casually.

Now Jacob turns to look at the princess, who has taken out a much better-looking pickaxe than his, but clearly way less valuable, judging by the way she is looking at his own pickaxe in envy.

“So, is this the crew?” Jacob points at the princess and her two bodyguards.

“This is your crew,” Foreman Ivan nods. “You have five years to earn your hearing for citizenship, Cloud.”

Jacob looks at the foreman and wonders.

They keep saying five years, and this is all a ruse, isn’t it? Five years of what? They want to see something, but I don’t get it.

They arrive at the end of the tunnel, and the foreman says, “This rock is extremely hard. You have to split it and be careful in case any Skill Crystal is behind it. So, shallow blows, and if you see anything or feel anything, stop and use a hammer and a pick.”

Jacob looks at the foreman, confused.

“What? Have you never mined before?”

“Did you just say Skill Crystal?” Jacob repeats slowly.

“Yes.”

“You mean we are mining Skill Crystals?” Jacob says louder, and the foreman frowns.

“Yes. You should know better than anyone.”

Jacob tilts his head and asks, “Why?”

“Aren’t you all intruders after our riches?”

Jacob doesn’t know what to reply, but it appears that these people mine Skill Crystals. In the outside world, you can mine ores, and when you kill some monsters or complete some Dungeons, you get Skill Crystals. Sometimes Skill Crystals form spontaneously in nature in very specific spots and can form again and again. Some, however, can take up to several centuries to form.

And so Jacob is confused.

“I’ve never seen anything like this. I didn’t even know you could mine Skill Crystals.”

That seems to rattle not just the foreman, but also Princess Yekaterina.

Did I say something wrong?

“You have never seen a Skill Crystal in a mine?” The foreman frowns. “What the hell do you mean? What are you using that pickaxe for, then? Ores?”

Jacob shrugs. “Like, you find ore veins inside the mine, and you just mine those? Like… Mithril?”

At the word Mithril, the foreman scoffs.

“You’re using that pickaxe for some simple Mithril?”

“Isn’t Mithril one of the most valuable things you can mine?”

Jacob doesn’t understand what the hell is going on. For once, he’s completely at a loss.

“If I were in charge of a Mithril mine, I would kill myself from the shame,” Foreman Ivan says. “Anyway, show us what you got,” the foreman says, pointing at the wall.

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“Uh, sure.”

Jacob shrugs and raises the pickaxe and gives a glancing blow to the rock. To his surprise, even Rafnov’s pickaxe just bounces back without leaving a scratch on it.

Hmm.

Jacob makes a humming sound, and then looks at the pickaxe’s sharp, pointy end.

“Is this thing sort of ruined?”

“What are you doing?” Foreman Ivan almost screams, beside himself. “Are you making fun of me? Are you trying to waste my time on purpose?”

Jacob turns to the foreman with a frown.

“No, sorry. I was just checking my pickaxe. Let me do it again. I’ll do it for real now. Don’t worry.”

Now, Jacob notices that the guards and the princess all look very interested and hopeful. Clearly expecting something from him. And the same can be said for the foreman, who fails at hiding his interest. It’s like their eyes are all sparkling.

And so Jacob tells himself, Okay, they clearly think I’m very strong. And to be honest, I am. So I’m gonna put all my strength behind this.

Jacob uses the Heartfire to power himself up, letting his body be flooded by Mana and getting ready to start hacking at the wall with all his strength. When he feels his body is completely warmed up and is now wound like a coil, he releases all his strength and brings his pickaxe overhead and slams it against the rock.

Barely a little crumb of rock falls off the wall before the pickaxe bounces back and hits him square in the head, almost killing him on the spot and rendering him completely unconscious.

Princess Yekaterina walks forward and looks between the foreman and Jacob.

“Is he dead?”

The foreman bends down on his knees and puts two fingers on Jacob’s chest.

“No, he’s fine. He just took a lot of damage. He’s gonna be out for a few hours.”

Then the foreman casts a quick Skill that covers Jacob’s eyes and ears.

“Your Highness, are you sure about this? It almost feels like this guy stole this priceless artifact from somewhere and just, well, came here to make a fool of himself.”

“Appearances are not good,” the princess replies slowly. “But you can’t just steal one of my ancestors’ pickaxes. Not one like this. This was not something that was blessed only by Rafnov, like most of our sacred relics, Ivan. This is the genuine article. We’ll have to spend some time with him. I cannot tell why he didn’t use the correct technique, but we should probably follow his moves more closely.”

“Your Highness, the kingdom has much worse enemies to worry about. Are you sure that your presence here is going to be in any way productive?” Volkov, the bodyguard, asks.

Princess Yekaterina nods.

“Apocalypse is trying to swallow Zamorye. We have fought for a long time, and if we don’t find a solution, we will forever succumb to our ancestors’ nemesis. After the stars gave us all these signs, this young man appears out of nowhere and lands in our lap. We would be foolish if we didn’t try and understand him better. And I am not sure you recognized the technique he was using, but that was the royal Heartfire. He has apparently mastered the technique that takes decades for the average member of the royal house to learn, and yet doesn’t know the most basic act of mining for Skill Crystals. So we must make sure to teach him. Perhaps that will awaken something in the pickaxe. And after, if he turns out to be just a messenger, we will just take the pickaxe from him.”

“He looks useless to me,” Volkov comments. “He’s strong, but he’s nothing to your lineage, Your Highness.”

“I agree,” Foreman Ivan comments.

Gromov, the other bodyguard, just watches in stoic contemplation. Then:

“He does look very useless, Your Highness. I cannot say what you see in him.”

Princess Yekaterina looks at Jacob’s sorry figure on the ground and has to admit things are not looking good.

“Well, maybe he will be able to learn the very basics of mining and give us an insight on, at the very least, how to flee our realm and escape Apocalypse. Otherwise, we’ll all be doomed to a terrible, terrible death.”

- - -

When Jacob wakes up, he’s back in the dormitory, alone with the princess.

He hisses and touches his head.

“Ah, man, that really hurt. What the hell is that stone?”

“That is Mana Crystal Stone. It is the substance from which Skill Crystals arise, from the depths of the earth.”

“Um, you know— where I come from, the entirety of the land has nothing like that. We, uh…”

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“Well.” Jacob sits up straight. “We don’t have any Skill Crystals coming out of the ground. You get them from monsters and… sometimes they just naturally appear in some Mana-rich spots. Sometimes they just manifest out of nowhere. But to be honest, I wouldn’t be able to tell you how Mana crystals really work. Maybe the Headmaster of the Academy knows something, but I just know that they come out.”

“So you come from a land where you just pick the crystals that naturally form, or the ones from beasts?”

“Yeah.”

“But how do you form the Skill Crystals that you need?” she asks.

Jacob turns around and says, “Wait, where’s the foreman? Aren’t we forced to keep working?”

“He said I should teach you, since you’re so useless at the moment.”

“Uh, that’s a bit harsh,” Jacob smirks. “And to answer your question, you don’t really get to pick. You find things and you trade things, and sometimes you get the right ones and sometimes you don’t. And you make do. I think that some people spend a lifetime looking for a specific Skill Crystal. Some are held by a family for who knows how long, till a good heir comes about and can learn the best techniques the family has passed down.”

The princess looks surprised by the answer.

“So you have never once formed a Skill Crystal? Fascinating. You let fate dictate your entire life.”

“Who doesn’t?” Jacob smiles. “And what do you mean, form a Skill Crystal?”

“What do you think mining is, Jacob Cloud?”

Jacob raises an eyebrow, feeling that he’s about to learn what these people expected him to do earlier, when he was wielding the pickaxe against the extremely hard stone.

“Mining is the act of extracting ores that are underground,” Jacob says. “Or is there, like, a more esoteric answer? If you wanna be philosophical, you get the materials needed for sustenance and whatnot from the earth…” He trails off.

Suddenly, Princess Yekaterina laughs.

“You’re funny. But no.”

A pickaxe appears in her hand, and suddenly it goes bright with fiery Mana.

“Mining is the act of shaping your future. That is what mining is for. Extracting ores from a mine — that can’t really be called mining. What you really want to extract is your fate — or to bend your fate. Mining is the act of shaping the next Skill that you will learn, or the next Skill someone else will learn.”

Jacob stops rubbing his forehead, which had been hurting, and asks, “You mean you can pick what Skill Crystals you get just by…”

“Once you reach a node full of extremely dense Mana in a Mana Crystal Stone mine, you can learn to shape it, and it will take a very specific form. Of course, it is incredibly difficult. Your technique has to be flawless. Your Mana transference to that node has to be flawless. It involves an array of techniques and Skills and Spells, and all of them are extremely complex, and all of them must be flawless for you to obtain the result you want for yourself or for someone else. There are people specialized in getting specific Skills out of the mine and selling them to others. One might make a living by just specializing in one simple Skill at perhaps Gold or Platinum Rank and just mining for that one for the rest of their life, and still they would be rich beyond belief if they can consistently mine for the same Skill. Otherwise, it’s a process so flawed that it is almost impossible to control. And with the hordes of Nightmares growing stronger each day, and Apocalypse about to overturn our world, everyone is looking for the perfect Skill lately — the one that will save our kingdom.”

Princess Yekaterina has closed her eyes while picturing the atrocity of the war against the monsters of Apocalypse. And when she opens them, she finds Jacob Cloud grinning.

“Why are you grinning? The situation here in Zamorye is extremely dire. We don’t know if it will survive this summer, much less the five years you have on your sentence.”

But Jacob just keeps smiling and says, “You know what? You keep saying that word. It’s a word I really like. That’s why I was smiling.”

“What word?” Princess Yekaterina asks.

“Flaws.”