Chapter 68

Natalie leaned against the wall, panting. Sweat slicked her brow, which she wiped away. She’d set a brutal pace for clearing the last six encounters, and while everyone had held up—and no one was complaining—it’d taken a toll on each of them.

Natalie was in the worst shape. The last fight had degraded the worst out of any, each of them exhausted from the previous five. She had caught a lizard monster’s sharp tail directly into the stomach, and it’d sank a good several inches in, her HP only managing to mitigate rather than stop it.

It was the reason a healer was a core archetype for a team’s composition, but still. It’d been a nasty injury, the worst Natalie had taken today. The kind of hit that could maim or kill a normal person. Gut wounds were no joke.

With a healer, and a health potion, she was as good as new. Still, it’d been a chilling reminder. For all of them, not just Natalie. Though, rather than concerned for her own well being, Natalie found herself more annoyed that it’d made her look bad. With this being the team’s test delve, she’d been hoping for a squeaky clean record. The slip at the end had spoiled that, even if they had made, from Natalie’s perspective, incredible time. The fast pace would have been a great way to end the delve on a high note, if she hadn’t slipped up.

Jordan was mad at her, Natalie could tell. She wasn’t saying it now, but would, later. But what did she want Natalie to do? They’d needed to set a quick pace to have time to explore the resource-rich cavern and make it back before curfew. Though, maybe that brutal of a pace hadn’t been needed. Natalie might have gotten a bit caught up.

Natalie pushed off the wall, her dizziness having steadied. She cleared her throat. “So. We’re good to take a look around, then.”

She received a collection of worried looks—except from Ana—but nobody protested. It hadn’t been deadly close, but a stab into the stomach was a good reminder what profession they’d chosen. Natalie thought the worry somewhat ridiculous. One-hit kills were rare in their business, besides when tackling over-leveled monsters or particularly difficult bosses. Or certain traps. Or ... other exceptions. So maybe not that rare. But not from equal-level, run-of-the-mill monsters.

And honestly, Natalie was just relieved she was the one who got to be hurt, and not her friends. The idea of Jordan being the primary target was significantly more discomforting. As long as she did her job right, her friends would be fine. Natalie had never been especially weak to pain or nauseous at the sight of her own blood, but seeing Jordan battered ... the few times it had happened in the past, Natalie’s composure had been much harder to keep hold of.

With the cavern cleared out, and everyone recovered from the last fight, it was, as Natalie had suggested, time to pick through the cavern for resources.

They split up. As large as a stadium, the cavern would take time to search, even with the effort split five ways. Beyond the raw resource gathering—ores, plants, and whatever else—there might be hidden passageways, rooms, or loot chests. There almost certainly were, in fact. A room this large, that had taken this much effort to clear, would have rewards beyond the superficial.

Natalie beelined to the streaks of rust she’d noted earlier. She scanned the ground and wall for traps—unlikely, but possible—then appraised the ore deposit.

Ore Deposit - Iron

Quantity - F

Yield - F+

Difficulty - F-

Natalie unhooked her folded-up pickaxe, a mundane piece of equipment provided by the mining guild. Though she hadn’t made it a priority to learn the ins and outs of mining, Tenet forced their students to spend two hours after class attending extracurriculars. That meant she’d picked up the basics.

Mining—the dungeoneering sort—wasn’t the same as real mining. Namely, not as difficult. She still needed to break up the rock, extracting the deposit into manageable chunks, but doing so didn’t require as much elbow grease as it would on the surface. Indeed, getting straight to the process, Natalie swung her pickaxe into the wall, the clink and crunch of metal-on-rock echoing through the room, and the wall crumbled easily, the surprisingly delicate vein of iron falling in chunks to the ground.

As Natalie worked at extracting the material, muscles aching from previous adventures, but swinging diligently either way, she mused on the process. Pound for pound, ore extracted from the dungeon was many times more valuable than its mundane counterpart. Even ‘F-’ yield could be refined at drastically more efficient rates.