Tunnel Rat

Chapter 221: Cracking Rocks

The cavern was large but far longer than it was wide, stretching in both directions. Everywhere was evidence of mining. He skirted around large, open pits a hundred feet wide and hundreds of feet deep, stone ladders descending to tunnels that ran horizontally into the rock. He saw a dozen more spiraling stone stairways ascending to crevices in the ceiling and continuing into them. Along the walls were endless tunnels at all levels. Some went only a dozen paces, and others went deep, branching into an endless maze.

Five times he was attacked by Stone Lurkers. They were large ones, ranging from Level 8 to Level 11, but not bosses. The slower-moving creatures were easy for him to spot. He was forced to fight two of them in the tunnels, dodging and hitting them repeatedly with claws, tail, and spikey stick until they crumbled to rubble. The three that attacked him in the open were more fun, allowing him to experiment with spells. He was trying to find combinations of his runes that were effective in combat and didn't send him to the infirmary.

His first spell was a Rune of Force, modified by the dwarven engineering runes that strengthened and defined the flow of fluids. He added the Void Rune, last hearing Kepler's voice in his head describing equal and opposite forces. As the Stone Lurker lumbered towards him, he held the runic formation in his mind and watched as it took form in the air before him, glowing runes connected by circles and spheres. The mana drained from him, and he triggered the formation. The runes were converted to pure force, shooting straight at his foe. The Void Rune drained the equal and opposite force that shot toward Milo. The monster was struck a hard blow as the spell accelerated the air and anything else in front of it into the Stone Lurker's chest, knocking it backward twenty feet and chipping away its armor in a six-inch-wide circle. It was only lightly injured.

Milo scampered backward 40 feet and began building a modified formation, narrowing the radius to three inches. He double-checked it, then triggered the second formation. This time the spell punched into the monster's chest, creating an explosion of stone chips and dust. It regained its feet and charged at him. Milo repeated, getting the same result, and on the fourth spell, he shattered the creature to rubble.

Working with the formations to cast spells excited him. He had control of the variables and could experiment endlessly. But they came at a cost. He was sweating and felt mentally exhausted. Kepler had warned him several times about the repercussions of a poorly built formation. Milo didn't want to blow one of his arms off. The Star-God had six; he only had two and a tail. And he was so thankful for his tail! He doubted he could have managed these formations with just two hands. (If he sat, could he use his feet? He filed that thought away for later.)

Before moving on, he practiced with a different set of Engineering Runes, narrowing the area of effect to just one inch in diameter. Theoretically, this should focus all of the force of the six-inch version into an area only 1/36th as big, greatly increasing the penetration of the spell. He tried using the formation against a large rock. The first thing he noticed was that it was more difficult to cast the formation, as if narrowing the focus added some pressure on his mind. But the results spoke for themselves. There was a deafening sound, and the rock exploded, falling into two halves. He destroyed two more stones before continuing, confident he could cast this new version of his force spell.

It might have been the sound of rocks being destroyed or simply chance, but soon after, he saw two Stone Lurkers lumbering toward him. At 100 feet away, he hit the first with his new formation, destroying much of its chest and arm. The second one continued its charge, gaining speed. Milo reformed the runes and cast again but only managed to clip this creature on the shoulder. Fatigue was interfering with his aim. He concentrated hard, his tail whirling in front of him as it drew the runes, and his hands controlled the two Ancient Runes. The blast hit the Lurker when it was only ten feet before him, blowing its head apart. Milo would take the win, but he'd been aiming for the center of mass and shot high. The last Lurker was still coming. He finished it off with Shadowblight, giving himself a rest.

His head was pounding, and he was down half of his mana. He needed a break, but this wasn't the place for it. He moved away from the area of his battles and skulked through the darkness, passing by another dozen Stone Lurkers. The monsters were oblivious to him as long as he moved slowly and kept his footsteps light. Looking for a place to make a camp and not deal with lurkers was harder the further he went in this direction. He was considering moving into one of the mazes of tunnels to find a place when the next open pit he came to showed something surprising; a village.

From the look of it, he assumed that the ore ran out in this area at some point, the miners moved on, and the pit was chosen as a place to build. Small houses lined the edges of the walls, each ring moving down and forward. Thousands of people could have lived here, assuming they were the size of the ancient miners. Stairs led down in some places, while in others were ladders of stone or hand-holds cut into the rocks. He observed the area for some time but saw nothing moving. There were no awnings or flags, just quiet stone buildings with small doors and sometimes a window. In the center of the pit was a wide flat area. And in the center of that was a tower. The tower's height was equal to the pit's edge, going no taller than the ground Milo was standing on. He wondered about the significance of that. He carefully began to work his way down.

On the second level, he ventured into one of the larger buildings. The rooms were small, but the house dug back into the side of the pit, the way they built in the Hollow. In the last room was a sealed stone door that he suspected would lead to the old mine systems. The house was devoid of anything not made of stone. A small stone stove with a chimney was in a room with flat tables and a large basin that might have been for water. Stone jars, platters, and large spoons were scattered about. The walls were decorated with beautiful geometric designs, unfaded by time. Different minerals had been used to make the colors, mixed in with the more common rock. Fine dust covered everything. He moved on.

Three levels further down, he explored a larger house. This one was decorated on the outside with the intricate patterns he'd seen before, along with bright mosaics showing the moon and sun. Venturing inside, he found large areas with tiled floors, cabinets, and furniture made from different rock types and a kitchen area that far surpassed the other house. Nothing was out of order here. The shelves held beautiful plates, bowls, and glasses made from malachite and lapis lazuli. The bright blue and greens were inset with silvery lines, again creating the geometric designs popular with these people. Gendifur would love a set of these. He brought out his Smugglers Stash and loaded a dozen of each item into his chest, along with some larger platters, pitchers, and one of the large urns. He was glad he didn't actually pack all of this back. After he dismissed the chest, he moved on. He wanted to take a look at the tower in the center.

He saw no sign of monsters around, but that didn't mean there weren't any. Stone Lurkers could blend into the surroundings and stay still for long periods. He avoided skipping across the rooftops and stayed low and in the darkest shadows. The last row of houses before the center was large and impressive, similar to the one he'd just looted for kitchenware. A quick look inside showed a similar opulence. He avoided the urge to explore them and concentrated on the tower. It was made of massive blocks of stone and had been covered with an outer layer of the common rock, but some areas had flaked off, showing the joints of the large stones underneath. He estimated it was fifty feet wide and four hundred feet tall. Narrow windows began after the first hundred feet. Milo worked his way around the perimeter for a hundred yards until he saw the lone door in the tower's base. A wide staircase wrapped around the building, thirty feet wide and leading to a doorway roughly fifty feet above the ground level.

The rock in the center of the pit felt odd to Milo's stone sense. It was dense and hard, trying to Identify finally gave him the name Durumgneiss, a Tier Four material. That explained why the pit mine had stopped here, and the center area was flat. The layer of incredibly hard rock put an end to further mining. All of the broken picks and tools Milo had seen had been rusted iron or steel. The mining technique revolved around finding hidden nuggets of Silverite Ore and digging around them.

Cautiously, he approached the tower. A glint of silver attracted his attention. Weaving its way through the Durumgneiss was a thin line of shiny white metal. The only information that Identify gave him was a name, Durum Argenti. Hard Silver? Paying attention to the rock around him, he saw other small threads. They became thicker as he approached the tower. The doorway was open. The door was made of wooden beams, each a foot square. The door lay flat on the ground, its hinged destroyed by blows from tiny picks.

The large room at the bottom of the tower resembled a dwarven bar after 'free beer night.' Smashed tables and chairs were everywhere. Broken mugs and staved-in kegs littered the floor. But while the dwarven bar would have had a few dozen miners sleeping off their drink and bruises, this room only held the long dead. There were hundreds of small skeletons, many torn apart or with smashed skulls. They were mixed with a much smaller number of large skeletons. Milo recognized humans, orcs, and what he thought was an elf or two. In one corner, surrounded by piles of smaller foes, four dwarven skeletons had been hacked to pieces. Their crude chainmail armor was rusting on their bones.

Nearby was a pile of rusted metal. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of small, broken collars told a story. How many of the miners had it taken to overthrow their masters? And how many had died digging for the mineral wealth in these caverns?

Milo felt tired just thinking about it. The room was open all the way to the top of the tower, with a stone spiral staircase in the center, wrapped around a stone pillar only six inches thick. The stonework amazed Milo. By any calculations he did, the stairway shouldn't support itself, yet it was solid. He started the long walk to the roof; he wanted a safe place to rest and be alone, away from this monument to an old battle. If he had been tired before, he was exhausted by the time he reached the top. It was just what he wanted, a wide, flat expanse of bare stone. A two-foot wall surrounded the edge.

He brought out his tent and bedroll, summoned Georgie to guard, and slept.