"Get a move on James! I am not paying you to slow me down! I found this place a month ago and if you are the reason that I am not the only one to mine all of these then I am skinning you alive!"
"Yes sir." A young boy replied timidly. He didn't like this man, but he didn't have much of a choice. He was too poor to turn it down and he wasn't strong enough to run away now, even though he was beginning to regret his decision.
"I don't know what type of crystals these are, but based on the color they have to be valuable. If I manage to get them all then not only tugga village, but even all of South Gandi would be mine!"
He didn't know who the man who hired him was, but he called him Pig. He was short, fat, bald, incredibly smelly and worse of all, greedy. He appeared briefly in tugga village about 7 months ago as a refugee, but a month ago came back appearing as a rich merchant.
Not many people noticed this, they had their own things going on, but as a beggar, James developed a habit of remembering the faces, appearance and attitude of all those living and entering tugga village.
This was extremely impressive as even though it was a 'small' village there were millions of people living in tugga village and hundreds of thousands entering and leaving each day, but he found no issue with this.
If he begged from the wrong person at the wrong time then he would die a meaningless death with no one to mourn for him… well there was 'her', but that didn't count. Plus he had his younger brother to care for so he couldn't be careless.
But that changed when Pig appeared and went around the slums looking for help for a high price. Since he refused to elaborate, most people wisely decided that it wasn't worth it, but he was somewhat young and naïve so when he saw the amount that he was offering he took him up on his offer.
If he managed to do his job properly and get paid then he and his brother would be set for a long time to come.
He and Pig were currently making their way down a very steep slope in near darkness. The walls and ground emitted some light, but unless his head was up against the ground he wouldn't be able to see anything.
Even though he was barely able to scale down carefully, he still had his job to do. He was hired as a porter and was carrying a bunch of spatial bags as well as one giant normal bag on his back.
Along with all of that he was still holding a light stick, which was a magic tool that simply absorbs mana and releases light.
All that might be much for a normal 10 year old, but he always had an extremely strong body. At 5 not even his uncles could rival him. Spatial bags were an extremely convenient way to store things, but they had a major drawback.
While the size and weight of the things stored inside it wouldn't affect it, it in itself was extremely heavy. So much so that only when what you wanted to store exceeded 100 pounds would it be effective, plus they had a maximum weight, these being 500 pounds.
And he had 7 of them all over his body. One could see the extent at which his physical body was at such an early age, but compared to cultivators this was nothing. With a basic understanding of mana, one could boost their bodies to the point of lifting about 3 tons even without a mana core.
James carefully scaled down the steep slope as Pig rushed him down all the way, he was even suspecting that James was purposely going slowly to sabotage him.
He had indeed been a refugee from the border town of Gandri on the south border, but after hearing about the great Tugga forest and the rich resources it had, he made the multi year trek.
It should have been only a few months on a fast enough steed, but he was too fat to fit on the only ones that he could afford. Before Gandri got overtaken by the Therulian's forces, he had been an extremely wealthy and lucky man.
Lucky enough to force himself to the very early stages of the apprentice tier with a rare herb he found even with his poor aptitude and wealthy enough to eat himself to such a point even after becoming an apprentice cultivator.
He was so weak that even the few hundred pounds of spatial bags was too much for him, forcing him to find somewhat cheap labor. It was truly an embarrassment to call him an apprentice.
With his weak body and poor health, it took him very long to get to his destination, and when he got there he almost immediately went into the great tugga forest to collect some lower tier herbs so that he could start his snowball.
He may be lazy and greedy, but when it came to money he was a genius. His now dead family wasn't rich in any way, but using his brain and business sense he quickly became one of the richest men in Gandri, rivaling even those minor clans that had been there for thousands of years.
When he entered the forest, he didn't bring anyone with him. He knew that a guide was the safest way to explore this extremely dangerous forest, even the outer layer had ascended ranked beasts, but he had no possessions to higher anyone.
As such he wandered way too deep into the forest, but he couldn't be blamed for this. Because of the very brief clash between Ray and the golden flame war elephant, all of the beasts here went into hiding. They were not very intelligent, but they had the basic drive to preserve their life, so even if they could sense very easy prey practically walking into their mouths, they weren't going to take the risk.
With no opposition, pig entered into the middle layer and he immediately noticed that something was up. All around the outer layer there were numerous medicinal herbs of various qualities, but here, where it should be even richer, there was nothing.
The only things that were spared were the trees.
His first instinct was to run away, whatever it was that did this was certainly much stronger than he was so he would be courting death if he stuck around, but his curiosity got the better of him.
He spent a full 6 months running as fast as he could to the center to see what was going on, and what he saw amazed him.
In the ground there was a massive mana stone mine open for all to see.
As an apprentice he should have been able to determine the elemental composition as well as the purity of these stones with a glance, but his senses were so poor that all he could determine was that these were in fact mana stones with some element in them. This is because normal mana stones don't have any color and these appeared to be fire related.
In fact, because of how clear they were they could be called mana crystals, when over 50% purity they appear less like stones and more like precious gems.
He truly hit it big now! He collected a very small loose piece from the ground, sold his herbs for a strong enough horse-like beast, and went into the next village over to sell the stone. It was unlikely that someone would identify him as previously a refugee and find it strange that he suddenly appeared with such a valuable mana crystal, but he wasn't going to take the chance.
He already determined that all of those stones were going to be his so he wasn't going to leave behind any bread crumbs. If he knew that the only person that he could higher was also the only person who could remember his previous appearance then he might vomit blood.
When he went to the next village and found a mana stone appraiser they gave him what he thought was a very attractive offer. They told him that it was a 55% purity, fire and metal mana crystal and gave him 100,000 gold for it, pitifully little compared to his previous stash but enough to make him cry now.
He knew very well he got scammed, but he didn't know by how much. When the appraiser first saw the stone he was visibly shocked, but he quickly collected himself and made an assessment.
It was just that he assumed that the crystal was maybe at 56% or 57% purity, not that it was at a whopping 60% with 7 more elements than what he stated, 4 of which were the rarest.
This couldn't be helped, he had no way to determine their purity and it even had one more element than what he was expecting, so losing out on a little bit because it was a slightly purer than what the appraiser said could be ignored.
Plus he had millions of them! Well, he would have millions of them in the future if he managed to mine them all. At that time he could sell a few and higher a mage to determine just what was in the stones so he would have a proper baseline to work off of.
With the 100,000 he bought new clothes, a proper mount and a few spatial bags. With that alone he was almost out of money, but he was viewing it as an investment.
He made his way over to tugga village and strutted around to appear like a merchant, and with a few gold coins as payment he highered a strong enough beggar boy and made his way back to the mine.
This time he didn't just stop on the surface and collect a few stones, though he could easily fill up his pockets that way, but he was determined to go all the way to the bottom.
Firstly, if he was going to mine this place out then he needed to know how deep this place was. Secondly he had to figure out what made all of these tunnels, as it would be solid mana stone otherwise. And lastly he had to find a place to deal with the beggar boy.