Divine Apostasy Book 12 - Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Ruwen remained invisible as he peered into the clearing that surrounded the base of the large hill. His Prospecting skill combined with Survey, Stone Echo, and Sixth Sense to bring the entire area into sharp focus.

The mine lay half a mile ahead, a gaping wound in the hillside where men carved out granite and mica. Ruwen strode forward, his movements fluid and silent. He could have yelled and not drawn attention between the cicadas buzzing, the diesel generators, and shouting men. He passed a rusted sign: Black Mountain Mine.

The entrance loomed like an open mouth framed by teeth made of timber beams. Red clay stained the edges like dried blood. The diesel fumes were stronger here and stung his nostrils which reminded him of when he’d collected oil before the war with Naktos.

The rough walled tunnel amplified the miners’ voices which originated much farther into the earth. Ruwen kept to the side and away from the sweat-soaked miners that trudged past, pushing carts of rubble.

Ruwen’s map displayed the network of shafts that branched like roots from a giant tree. The tunnel’s cooler air caused the humidity to condense, and water dripped from the ceiling. The resulting puddles reflected the yellow light of the occasional lanterns.

Prospecting sifted through all the information Sixth Sense and Stone Echo provided. Ruwen used Survey to display his map in three dimensions and four green paths traced through the network of tunnels, leading to the best locations.

The location closest to the surface had a group of workers near it, so Ruwen took a path that led him deeper. His Shade slippers, despite their name, protected his feet as well as boots and ensured his footing remained secure despite the slick stone floor.

After twenty minutes Ruwen’s neared one of the marked spots of high-quality black tourmaline. He stood in a narrow shaft surrounded by sagging beams. At some point in the past the miners had abandoned their digging here, unaware that only thirty feet separated them from a dense cluster of gems.

Ruwen used a combination of Melt and Dig, two old but useful Worker spells to move effortlessly through the solid granite. When he reached the general vicinity of the black tourmaline, he activated Glow and his skin produced a soft light. He carved out a small cavern with Dig, placing all the stone into his Void Band.

The light revealed coarse granite studded with quartz and feldspar. Black prisms sprinkled the surface—black tourmaline.

Ruwen scanned the gems with Harmonic Sight as he hummed the Root chakra’s tone of middle “C.” All of them resonated with the note, but one did more than the others. He crouched, running a finger along a crystal’s edge—smooth, hexagonal, its tip glinting like obsidian.

Ruwen summoned his two hundred twenty-seven Mining skill, which produced a golden glow around his hands when viewed with Harmonic Sight. It also revealed the green tendrils that extended from his hands like the legs of squid. This came from Mining’s five hundred fifty-four percent increase in extraction. When he touched the black crystal a blue light mixed with the gold from his hands, providing the two hundred twenty-seven levels in damage reduction.

Tracing the crystal’s six-inch base Ruwen sensed how tightly the earth held the stone. He channeled Melt through his index finger and carefully separated the crystal from the surrounding stone. Chunks or granite remained on the black tourmaline, but he needed something more precise than Melt to remove it.

Swapping in Scrub for Melt, Ruwen’s index finger vibrated slowly. He slowly increased the level from one to three until the mica in the granite crumbled like dry bread. The feldspar followed, falling away in puffs of dust that coated his hands and arms. The remaining quartz mostly fell away as the granite lost its cohesion.

The small flakes of stubborn quartz that remained needed extreme care to remove. Black tourmaline was only a little harder than quartz and if Ruwen used too much of Scrub’s vibrational force, he could damage crystal.

Patiently Ruwen increased Scrub’s power until Harmonic Sight showed the stone softening. Then he gently brushed the crystal until it was perfectly clean.

Dismissing Scrub, Ruwen Analyzed the crystal.

Target: Black Tourmaline

Type: Resource – Crystal

Quality: 93% Pristine

Components: Boron Silicate, Iron, Aluminum

Health: Energy Resonance

Alchemy: Heat Resistant, Charge (from Thermal, Pressure, Vibration)

Uses: Jewelry, Abrasive Powder, Alternative Healing

Ruwen brightened the Glow from his hand so he could study the crystal’s internal structure. A short hairline crack was visible which explained why it had been seven percent short of pristine. It would satisfy the quest, but he hadn’t come here to complete the quest. He wanted the best gems possible for his chakra training.

The black tourmaline dropped into Ruwen’s Void Band without a sound. He’d keep it but wanted to try and find better.

Ruwen studied the now-empty pocket in the stone where the tourmaline had resided. He used Sixth Sense and Stone Echo to trace the veins of crystal that wound through the rock, but it didn’t look like any high-quality pockets remained near this location. He’d need to go deeper.

The stone below Ruwen vibrated with inaudible tones, and the various minerals created increasing more complex harmonies as the veins stretched deeper into the earth and away from the humans. The rock conducted voices from a nearby mineshaft. He imagined the surprised looks and likely heart attacks of the miners if they chiseled through the solid rock and into his cavern to find him standing there.

The next location marked on Ruwen’s map lay two hundred feet below him. Using Melt again, he carved a narrow passage and strode through the granite, the stone flowing around him.

Ruwen crafted another small chamber, allowing himself enough space to work comfortably. He removed the final bits of stone to expose the cluster of black tourmaline crystals he’d come to mine. These were larger but just as geometrically perfect as the first specimen. One crystal especially caught his attention—a nine-inch black column with flawless hexagonal symmetry.

When Ruwen hummed middle "C," the crystal responded with such resonance that his newly awakened Root chakra reacted.

"This is the one," Ruwen muttered.

Ruwen brushed a finger across the crystal, his touch feather-light as he traced the crystal's boundaries. It resided in a pocket where the surrounding stone had mixed with more impurities, leaving the crystal less embedded than the first. A good sign since it meant less effort to extract which should decrease the chance of damage.

With meticulous precision, Ruwen activated level three Scrub spell, and let the vibrations erode the connections between the crystal and its matrix. The tourmaline shifted slightly, becoming more mobile with each passing second. His anticipation built as the crystal neared freedom.

Ruwen sensed a subtle shift in the stone around him—a tremor. Not from below though, which ruled out an earthquake. Pausing, he focused Stone Echo upward, toward the source of the disturbance.

Another tremor arrived, stronger this time. Dust from Ruwen’s cavern excavation sifted down from the ceiling as tiny cracks appeared in the chamber walls.

Ruwen used Survey to bring up the three-dimensional map in his vision. Pulses of red flashed from the mine entrance. Heavy machinery was being moved farther away from the mine, the vibrations traveling through the stone like ripples across water.

Normally such a thing wouldn’t create issues, but Ruwen’s path through the rock using Melt had changed the stone’s density. Now the vibrations passing through the ground got stuck in this density difference. The two-hundred-foot length acted like a barrel, amplifying whatever it caught.

Extending Sixth Sense to encompass the whole mine, Ruwen noticed something odd. All the miners had exited the mine as well.

Ruwen considered his options. It would only take another minute to finish extracting the crystal, but if the tremors continued it might cause damage to its structure. He could use Harmony to try and snuff out the vibrations as they approached but underground tremors caused incredibly low tones that were difficult to detect and counter. Even if he countered ninety-nine percent of the energy, the remaining one percent could still cause issues.

The other option was to take a few seconds and match the Melt tunnel to the same density as the surrounding stone using Harden. That would stop the energy from making it all the way to this cavern where the vibrations intensified again.

In the seconds Ruwen had taken to consider his options the mine had turned silent. Nothing moved inside and the workers and machinery had moved away from the entrance. Maybe it was lunch time or something. Regardless, it made his decision easy since the source of the problem had disappeared.

Ruwen’s Divine hearing detected the distant sound of a siren or horn but since it didn’t effect the mine, he ignored it and turned his attention back to the black tourmaline.

Five seconds later, an explosion occurred a hundred feet from Ruwen’s location. His Divine reaction speed allowed him to trigger Harmony and saturate the surrounding rock with dense Harmonies. He didn’t have the skill to gracefully nullify the thousands of different harmonies rippling through the stone toward him, so he hoped to reflect most of them away.

Why would anyone set off explosions underground? Ruwen couldn’t think of a more dangerous way to mine. He wondered if this was an example of what things devolved into when magic wasn’t an option.

The tremors that struck now were thousands of times more powerful than the ones caused by the machinery. The waves smashed into Ruwen’s harmonic shield with enough force to create additional ripples that compressed the small amount of air in his cavern. Without his Divine Fortified body his ears, eyes, and likely organs would have turned into mush.