Every time they stopped and peeked back, Stone copied them, trying to blend into the surroundings. Needless to say that he was very successful at that.
All of them soon arrived at a massive cavern, two balls of white light floated in front of them, sitting on a pedestals before an enormous gate sculpted out of white marble.
The dwarfs came to a stop before the gate, saying something again. They searched around, sometimes outside, sometimes inside Stone's sphere. After a few minutes, they again gathered before the gates.
Meanwhile, Stone ignored them, admiring the beautiful white stone. Yes, he understood it was sculpted; that meant, someone had broken the stone. Nevertheless, the exquisite shapes hypnotized him entirely. It was even more beautiful than his stone tablet. He even forgot the feeling of Partner not answering his calls.
"Maybe not all breakers of stone are bad," Stone uttered with his high-pitched voice.
The dwarfs froze and searched for Stone. While they were searching, one of them went over a tile with a rune on it. He squatted and studied it for a moment. He shouted something and the two dwarfs walked to the remaining runes.
Four runes glowed in four primary elemental colours. Stone was already on the brown earth rune, so the Dwarves, after many loud noises, stood to their own tiles; Breadbeard on red fire rune, Eriv on light blue air, and Dafur on translucent water.
The marble gate began to slowly open.
Stone watched as the rune under him lighted up and the gate opened. He put on a stony face that could mean something like a frown and ordered ants to leave the tile engraved with a rune.
The gate started to close. He ordered the ants to return and the gate opened.
"Hehe," he mischievously chuckled and did it a few times, hypnotized by the moving exquisitely sculpted gate.
However, he noticed something strange; many of the ants suddenly died, collapsing on the ground. Even he himself did not feel too good. He realized, he remembered the sensation. "Lifeforce," he willed it, and with a soft 'thud' the tablet appeared.
[Lifeforce: 53.1 / 115]
It was quite confusing as he did not understand why he was damaged even though there was no battle but decided to stop playing and let the gate fully open.
Something clicked and the runes stopped glowing. The gate opened permanently.
☁☁☁☁☁☁
Embarrassed dwarfs
Dafur was confused at first. He discerned that greed had taken over him. He focused on the innate greed, so common in the dwarven race, and subdued it.
"Why woulda the gate act like that?" Eriv asked, bewildered. Dafur surveyed around and saw the pebble surrounded by ants' corpses.
"Did it move?" Dafur murmured under his beard.
"What was that?" Eriv turned to him.
"Nothin'," he replied, still peering at the pebble. Something was strange, however, he could not say what. He put it behind and instead said, "wait here. I'll check the room for traps."
"Nae! We're goin together this time, assprentice," Breadbeard proclaimed with a greedy shimmer in his eyes.
"Yar funeral," Dafur shrugged but still advanced inside first.
They slowly walked towards the tomb, gold and marble surrounding them. Dafur examined around the black coffin, but there were no writings nor runes. While he wanted to examine the surroundings more in detail to be extra careful, Breadbeard impatiently pushed the lid to the ground.
A heavy thud echoed as it fell to the ground. They slowly gazed at the exposed insides.
It was empty.
"Are ya insane?!" Dafur shouted at him.
"Nothin' inside…" Breadbeard was visibly disappointed. Still, soon enough, his eyes regained the greedy glint as he ogled the 'ornamental' treasure around. "The gems and gold are plenty! Too bad we don't have some bags…" he said pensively. After a moment an idea came to him, "Oh! Eriv, get naked! We'll use dur clothes as bags! Ya too, Dafur!" Breadbeard excitedly undressed first. "Not only have I found a fuckin mana crystals deposit and not caught blight. I even found such a treasure!" He thinks to himself, not grasping how he was acting.
"Breadbeard? Are ya fine?" Eriv glanced at him, eyes filled with worry.
Meanwhile, as Dafur carefully sought traps in the room, he found a stairway leading upward. "Found a way out!" He shouted, but nobody replied to him. He rapidly turned as he heard gasps. Eriv was retreating backwards from the naked Breadbeard. The manic dwarf held a small, glowing-red mana crystal in his hand.
"Oh! Fuck! Eriv run! He's blighted!" Dafur's fears fulfilled. Unfortunately, he did not have time to ponder over it as Eriv dropped to her knees and sobbed while repeatedly muttering, "not again, not again."
"Dornus dammit!" Dafur swore. He attempted to conjure his last rune, constructed for disabling opponents. The mana gathered to the shape of a rune with dust surrounding it, but in the middle of materializing, it fizzled. He quickly glanced at his status screen and saw his mana reserves gone.
"Dornus fuckin' dammit!" He cursed again and leapt towards Breadbeard, who was nearing still sobbing Eriv. However, as an apprentice and town-boy, Breadbeard easily picked him up and threw him away. Dafur flew into the black marble casket and hit his head on the edge, losing consciousness. A pool of blood flowing from the wound slowly gathered under him.
Breadbeard turned to Eriv and said to her with insanity in eyes, "come on, Eriv! We're rich! Get naked! Take everythin!" He tore her clothes off without a speck of resistance and collected every single gem he could find, including the tiles with golden runes.
"Come on! Move yar cute ass!" Breadbeard grabbed Eriv's arm, pulling her up. Eriv looked at him with teary eyes. The trauma from three years ago washed over her again and she meekly listened to the insane Breadbeard.
Eriv glanced over her shoulder at the still Dafur with blood flowing out of his head. "Poor boy. I liked him…", she silently sobbed and followed the erratic Breadbeard.
"I'm rich, rich, rich! Nae more workin'!" He roared and sang the whole way upward some unintelligible melodies.
As Eriv walked behind him with the makeshift bags on her back, she recognized a handful of crystals in his greaves.
☁☁☁☁☁☁
"Loud!" A high-pitched voice echoed. Stone truly did not like 'loud' and this time it was too much.
As the dwarfs walked inside the hall, Stone followed them with his remaining few dozens of ants.
He saw as one of the dwarfs picked up another one and threw him into the strange casket, made from the black marble. He admired the casket for a bit, but one of the dwarfs interrupted him as he did something to the third dwarf's skin. He peeled it off and put the shiny stones from all around on it.
"Stupid dwarfs… Always hurting and taking stone away," he thought to himself. He would love to punish them, but he knew they could easily destroy him. "I will punish them later…" He inwardly nodded.
The dwarfs left while making very loud noises. Stone decided that it's not worth it to follow them and only audibly protested with "Loud!".
He became interested in the last dwarf who stayed behind slumped in the strange casket. He made the ants to push him up but there were not enough of them.
He got a new idea! He felt proud of himself, which was quite a new strange feeling for him and as he revelled in it... He forgot what he wanted to do.
So, he pondered hard for a few minutes again. Soon another idea came to him; he created a pillar of mana under himself. He began materializing it and made the ants to stand near him on the small platform. He pumped mana through [Ambient Mana Refinement] into it and inflated it up until he was on the same level as the casket's edge.
The mana pillar flickered and some ants dropped down. When Stone saw that they could scale it up by themselves, he put on his classical stony face that could mean pouting.
Meanwhile, the pillar slowly cracked. He quickly ordered the ants to push him down the casket. They picked him up again and sat him on the dwarf's chest.
Stone 'saw' blood pouring out of the dwarf's head with his sphere.
"Hmm, that is not right. Blood should stay inside, if I remember Partner's lectures correctly," Stone mumbled and created a thin mana cover over the dwarf's wound.
"Better?" he asked as he watched the blood stop leaking, but the dwarf was still not moving.
"… " Stone patiently waited for a few hours. A day. Two days…