With the initial part of the tunnel made and reinforced by Ingredi's magic, I accompanied her in it was a steep descent through the dark tunnel she made a rectangular tunnel that was six feet high and five feet wide. Ingredi really worked hard in this tunnel she took her time to strengthen the tunnel walls when I passed my hand, I noticed that although it looks normal the hardness and density of the wall is really high it is harder than normal boulders and almost as hard as the metal of my sword.
Taking into account the time mana it took Ingredi to harden the tunnel shows that even though this spell is very effective it is not practiced for use in combat, but for setting traps and very useful if Ingredi had mastered this spell before I would have asked when it empty a trench, she could have made some hardened stalagmites to impale anyone who falls into the trench.
But letting my ideas rise to set traps to kill our enemies I used my eyes to the fullest to search for any threat or resource in the land. And unfortunately for me this is not as easy as searching the surface, despite having little elemental energy in normal earth the deeper we go the more the earth becomes charged with elemental energy and this hinders my search.
The more elemental energy around me my search aria decreases. When we reach the end of the tunnel my search aria has already halved and this will make the search more difficult. In my current view I see a mist in my village more towards the emerald village it is stronger and this is the direction Ingredi is digging.
Ingredi uses her magic to push the earth aside and compressing it helps her harden the walls more easily and she doesn't have to worry about getting the earth out of the tunnel.
For the next few hours, we followed a straight line up to where I saw that to the right of our current trajectory, I found a color other than the dark yellow surrounding us. Looks like we're going to pass near an object made up of mana.
"Ingredi, let's make a detour from here four meters so we make a tunnel to the right. I believe there is ore in that direction despite being small it must be valuable so don't worry about strengthening the path. After removing the ore, we will undo the tunnel."
"Okay, but I expected you to give me instructions like that, but I really want to ask you how you manage to track down Ulric minerals and plants?"
One took a few months more. Ingredi finally doesn't warm up anymore and had to ask me this question, I've been thinking of an excuse to prevent attention from being focused on my eyes as trying to pretend I don't have a tracking ability is impossible and that would be a lie too complicated to keep plausible.
"Well, I won't explain it to you in detail because I just don't want to and I believe it can cause problems for me to become popular. So, I have a sensitivity to mana and elemental energies for mine they have a different flavor presence from one to another and so I can identify them every time I approach something that has some energy inside, this applies to ores, plants, animals, people and magic tools anything that contains mana or elemental energy I can feel its existence."
"I hate you Ulric. You know how I envy that and it's a shame that you and a warrior are not a wizard your perception would be very useful for a wizard to have, you can teach me."
"She's already useful to me even though I'm not a wizard and unfortunately it's a natural trait not something I've trained or inherited. If it were possible for me to teach, I would have taught you Ingredi as well as Hilda and would also have taught my mother, but unfortunately that is not possible."
Even though it's dark I can see the frustration and envy on Ingredi's face and really sad that I can't pass my skill maybe in the future I can find a method to pass my skill if I don't get my only hope and my son or daughter can inherit naturally the features of my eyes.
"Well, Ingredi how about we focus on the tunnel and recover the ore we are close to if we can find some more on our way, we can increase our revenue and maybe you can get enough money to order your staff."
Seeing Ingredi's face improve and stay motivated.
"You're right I really have to focus on the now and not be thinking about a skill I can't have and I really want to get my staff before the test."
While we were talking, we had already come close to the ore I found. When Ingredi used her magic to clear the land in front of us she revealed a lump of ore was not very big but weighed several kilos. I picked up the mana laden ore in my moms and noticed it was really dense.
Despite its small size it weighs a few tens of kilos its quality must be quite high to be so heavy. Its weight is basically triple the metal we extract from the woods even with my extensive knowledge of materials I cannot identify exactly which ore we found.
Recalling the descriptions, I've read about metals I have two guesses which metal is this, but unfortunately, I can only find out by taking it to Lofar or Professor Frey, but I hope it's the metal called osmium because of the hardness, weight and color of light reflecting on its surface. If I'm right we're going to get a very large amount for this small piece of osmium has a very high value because osmium has the property of isolating elemental energy.
On second thought I'm really stupid if osmium has the ability to reflect elemental energy, I just have to try to inject my elemental energy into it to find out if I'm right. When I try to inject the fire element into the metal my elemental energy cannot penetrate it and is dispersed into the air.
Now I'm pretty sure I've got several kilos of osmium, Ingredi is watching me play with the ore waiting for me to finish. She's a quiet person, but that's natural if you don't have extraordinary patience, she wouldn't have been able to keep her sanity being Hilda's sister, having to put up with Hilda's craziness for years must have been very difficult for her.
"Sorry Ingredi, I was checking what kind of metal we got and we were lucky is osmium."
"Osmium! Are you sure Ulric? This metal is very difficult to find."
"Yes, I was up to test it, it reflected my elemental energy, want to test it?"
"I believe you, but such a large amount of osmium must be worth more than three thousand gold coins if it is very pure it can even reach five thousand Ulric coins."
"Unfortunately, I can't confirm its purity, but we'd better go back to the main tunnel and go back to digging towards the emerald village."
Unfortunately for the rest of the day, apart from lunch breaks and drinking water, Ingredi concentrated on digging the tunnel, unfortunately I couldn't see anything different on our way. The day ended when I carried Ingredi through the tunnel because she ended up overdoing it a bit and getting very tired.
When we leave the tunnel the only thing Ingredi and I want is to clean up and spend the day under the ground gets a little dirty. Hilda takes Ingredi from my arms and leads her away from the camp when I look at her back, I turn to Raziel.
"Hilda is taking Ingredi to take a shower, while you dig in the mud, we improved the camp."
"Did what besides dig a bathtub?"
"We set up various traps around the camp, prepared wood for the fire, clean water for us to use, and hunted some animals to eat. Basically, we prepare everything we need to camp comfortably for a week."
"I'm glad you guys did something useful while Ingredi and I did the hard work."
"Hard work? As far as I know who was working it was Ingredi not you."
"Details. We found osmium down there and at the rate we're going it should take us a few days to reach the village."
"Osmium? Is it valuable?"
"Quite Raziel with the piece we got we should get thousands of gold coins when selling it." When I explained the value of the osmium, I jockeyed him into Raziel, who nearly dropped the osmium on his foot, but unfortunately, he dodged and prevented his foot from being crushed.
When I was talking to Raziel I started to prepare dinner and wait for Ingredi and Hilda to return. It didn't take long to see them coming back and after I went to clean up in the water tank I Raziel and Hilda rode for the day.
It was a bathtub in the earth full of water and some buckets on the side. They didn't put much effort into it. Over the next six days a routine settled down as Raziel and Hilda rested on the surface, Ingredi and I continued to spend our day underground.
We got some items under the ground they were mostly some small pieces of metal and some clay unfortunately we didn't find a crystal or rough gem. Not one of them was worth as much as the OS, but they were relatively valuable if you add them all up and really profitable to go underground.
But after another week of digging Ingredi the tunnel finally arrived under the emerald village I am sure of this because of the life element energy that is flowing into the earth in front of me.