Chapter 11 Instead of Becoming an Adventurer I Chose to Fish

As I woke up, it was still a bit dark, although the sun was creeping over the horizon. It would take a while longer to properly crest the horizon, so perhaps I would be able to make it if I hurried to the carriage that would take me to the mine so I wouldn’t have to walk.

With my usual speed, I managed to go to the bathroom and get dressed in what I’m guessing was five minutes. Not knowing what time it was exactly was still super annoying. Just before I left, from my inventory I took out the bread I had put there yesterday.

As I touched it, smelled it, and then finally tasted it, it seemed as fresh as when I put it in yesterday. That’s so good—not just the taste, but the fact that my inventory was able to store stuff as they were, keeping it fresh. I’m not exactly sure if it will be able to keep something forever, but that seems unlikely.

In the end, it didn’t matter, as this was already well past good enough, and if I understood it correctly, this alone could basically guarantee me a life where I wouldn’t starve, as I would always have some work. Honestly, that took a lot of pressure off my shoulders, so it didn’t matter too much if I didn’t get the looting skill.

I didn’t run, but I did hurry. When I made it outside, I could finally see the large clock on the side of the main building where all the administration stuff happened. It said that I still had about ten minutes before pickup time.

That should be plenty of time, but best to get there a bit early. The pickup place was near the training grounds, which were pretty empty, only a few people seemed to be doing regular exercises.

These people seemed pretty diligent, so just in case it became necessary to find some competent people, I tried to memorize their faces.

Time went by quite fast like that, as some of them were also doing some interesting exercises that seemed pretty effective. In the future, it would probably be a good idea to come work out here at this time.

I was getting a bit worried because I was the only one seemingly waiting here. Did I get the time wrong or the place?

Then I heard the noise of animals. Turning around, I saw something coming down the road that ran parallel to the city wall. That something definitely wasn’t a carriage. It was more of a cart being pulled by two large horses.

It didn’t take long to reach where I was and stop. Now that I got a proper look at the cart—which was a lot longer than I expected, with two axles and what were obviously folded-down sides that could be used as seating—it was quite obvious that this was used for the transportation of materials as well as people.

In fact, it seemed that the transportation of people was not the main function for this cart, rather something added on later. The bed was quite dirty with what looked to be coal dust.

Weren’t we supposed to be mining for copper?

“Excuse me, does this go to the copper mine?” I asked the driver. He did look a bit sleepy, so it took him a moment to figure out that I had actually asked him something before he answered.

“Yeah, that’s why I’m here,” he answered, sounding confused about me even asking about it.

“Oh, that’s good. But why am I the only one here? Is it usually this empty?”

“Oh, that—yeah, I can understand your confusion. Most of you don’t seem to want to get up this early, or just don’t inform yourselves enough. I understand most everyone just walks there. Are you getting on or not? I’m going to be leaving soon,” he finally said after he pulled out what looked like a pocket watch.

“Yeah, of course,” I answered back, climbing on. The seats weren’t the most comfortable, they were quite dirty, and I was guessing, and a moment later confirmed, that the only way to secure myself was to hold on to the side.

“By the way, where did you get the pocket watch?” I asked, as I really wanted one.

“There’s a shop in the town here, but they’re quite expensive. This one was given to me by the Mining Guild I’m a part of, to do my job properly. Everyone hold on!” he said, even though I was the only one here. That was probably something he always said for safety reasons.

“Wait, don’t go yet!” we heard someone yell. Both of us looked toward the gate where three short-looking humans were running, waving, and yelling toward us not to go. They were able to get the attention of not just us but everyone else as well.

The driver indicated that he would wait, but the three running didn’t slow.

“So sorry, we’re new, you know how teleportation lag could be?”

“We aren’t in a big city, we don’t run everything here to second accurate,” the driver answered with an easy smile on his face. The three climbed on board and sat on the other side of me.

“Everyone hold on,” the driver once again said, and with a jolt, we started to move. Those two horses seemed to be able to pull this cart with absolutely no effort. I watched those horses for a bit, amazed at how strong they looked.

Then my eyes drifted toward the dwarves, as I was pretty sure that’s what they were. All of them had extremely different-looking beards, but all of them looked magnificent.

“What are you staring for?” one of the dwarves asked me roughly.

“Sorry, I don’t want to be rude, but are you dwarves?”

“Of course we are! You’ve got eyes, don’t you?” the same one answered back, his words coming out fast and sharp.

“I’ve got eyes, I just haven’t ever met one of your kind, or basically anyone else besides humans. Only seen them walking around the compound.”

All of their eyes briefly glanced toward my right wrist, but it was covered as usual.

“Oh yes, we are,” the same dwarf answered me, this time his voice was softer.

“Are you all related?” I asked, as they all had similar-looking faces.

“What? We look completely different!” This time the shortest of the three asked, completely confused. If I had to guess, he must have been four foot one, but they were truly stocky, with thicker arms than even I had.

For a moment I didn’t know how to answer before the third one, the one with an extremely elaborate wavy mustache, punched the shortest one on the shoulder.

“Don’t you remember? Humans can tell the differences in facial features.”

The others both made comically accurate ‘oh’ faces, like that explanation made perfect sense.

“I think I’m missing a bit of context here,” I said, making all three of them look toward me again. The wavy-mustached one started explaining.

“You probably don’t know this, but us dwarves can’t really distinguish between different faces. That’s why you’ll see every dwarf with a really unique beard, yes, even the females, as that’s always surprising to humans.”

That was really fascinating. “So right now, if a second human was sitting next to me with a really similar build, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between our faces?”

“Yes and no. It would be difficult, but your beard is good enough to distinguish you, even though it’s quite short. That natural double-chin split is quite rare.”

I honestly didn’t know what to say to that. I just didn’t enjoy shaving constantly, so this was what naturally grew. “Thank you,” I answered, unsure if that was appropriate.

All of them chuckled for a moment. Then the wavy-mustached one introduced himself. “I am Aru. These two are my cousins.” He pointed toward the shortest one. “He’s Arlu, and he’s Arul,” he said, pointing toward the dwarf that asked me why I was staring.

That was going to be difficult to remember, as I really didn’t have that good of a memory for names and certainly not for beards like they seemed to have. Wonder if my skill will change that.

“What’s teleportation lag?” I asked, as that was also something I was curious about.

“That’s what happens when the time zones from world to world are a bit too different. Just yesterday for us, right now it would have been early evening.”

“Wait, so you are all really new here?” They all nodded.

“Then why are you going towards the mine?”

“To level our mining, of course. I’ve waited a long 16 years to finally be able to start levelling it,” the short one said. I really wasn’t the best with names, and all of them sounded really similar.

“Wait, have you even gone to the introduction orientation?”

“We went, but all of us wanted to mine,” he quickly answered, quite excitedly.

“You do know that they have a build guide that can give you really good chances at getting inventory if you don’t have any other professions levelled before you started?”

They all froze and then started bombarding me with questions. I answered to the best of my ability, kind of wishing that I had my notes on my person and not in my inventory, as I didn’t want to show that off so easily.

As soon as I thought of my notes, it was like the image of them flashed in my mind as clearly as the moment I last read them.

Wow, was that the Greater Memory skill actively working? That was so nice. Being able to recall something so clearly is going to be so useful, but I’m obviously going to have to practise that.

I explained to them what I learned in some of the lectures and the extra reading I’ve done.

“You have done us a great favour. This will help us so much. We won’t be mining today, but we still want to check out the elemental mine, as we’ve never actually been to one. And we can guide you, teach you to mine, that’s the least we can do,” the tallest of them said, who was named Aru.

I think I will make the effort to properly remember theirs.

Normally, the walk to the mine is about an hour long, but with our transport it only took about 20 minutes. The rest of the time they explained to me about mining, and I also learned quite a lot about the dwarves as a whole. They really were excellent miners and truly enjoyed what they did.

The way they talked about their grand halls carved underneath huge mountains was something that I would really like to see someday.

The mine’s location wasn’t too far away from the dungeon. There were quite a lot of people already around the dungeon, seemingly sleeping in tents, but there were some proper buildings here as well.

As we rode past, the driver asked if anyone wanted to get off here, but none of us did. All of our eyes were glued to the dungeon entrance as it looked so out of place.

From what looked like a regular field, a cave entrance that looked like it should have been attached to a mountainside sprouted out of nowhere, with its entrance looking unnaturally black, like no light could get past it.

“Always spooky, those entrances,” one of the dwarves said, and I agreed.

“What’s even inside there?” I asked no one in particular, not really waiting for an answer, but Aru did answer.

“Dungeons on F-rank worlds aren’t really that dangerous. Inside are simple rooms with a few monsters each. If you’re lucky, perhaps you’ll find some resources you could gather. The higher the world rank, the bigger and more dangerous they get, age also plays a factor in how big they are.”

I was pretty sure I was picking up sadness in his voice. When I turned around, they all looked a bit down. Probably best to change the topic.

“So, are y’all going to pick the mining class as well?”

“Most definitely,” the shortest one answered, Arlu.

“I will probably pick a combat one,” Aru answered, while it seemed Arul hadn’t yet made up his decision.

“So, will you join the Adventurer’s Guild, Aru and you Arlu the Mining Guild?”

All of them immediately shook their heads.

"That was probably what we were going to do before our cousin here," Aru said as he squeezed his cousin's shoulders, "managed to win in a rock-breaking competition for all three of us tickets to this beginner town."

"Yeah, now none of us had to take out loans to get into a good beginner town. This way we have a lot more options."

Our discussion was interrupted as the cart finally stopped moving. We were in front of a large hill with a few rocky areas showing, one of them having multiple entrances and a few buildings built near them.

We hopped off, with the cart once again taking off, but it was not returning. Instead, it headed forward on the road that seemed to curve around the hill. All of us were curious where it was going.

"That explains the coal dust. There must be a coal mine nearby. Not part of the beginner town training," Arul spoke out loud.

Arlu approached me, pointing towards the four entrances. "You don’t know what an elemental mine is, right?"

I shook my head no.

"You see the wooden boards on top of the four entrances? One of them you can see is boarded off. That’s where the copper elemental is right now," he said in a half-whisper.

"The what?" I said, looking shocked, as there was no way.

All of them laughed at me, and we headed towards the mine.

I was still shocked about the fact that there was actually something called an elemental. The lecturer in charge of the mine did confirm it as we approached, and he started explaining to us about the rules.

"This copper elemental is bonded to me, but I cannot stop it from attacking you if you enter the wrong entrance. That’s why we boarded it up, do not go in there."

He didn’t say much more about that, only that we were allowed to enter the entrance that was aptly named 0 to 10 Professional Level. We also had to go to the lesson on how to mine or show proficiency.

The three dwarves talked themselves into being my teachers after they demonstrated their expertise. The lecturer only had to watch each of them make three hits with a pickaxe before he passed them.

It took me about ten minutes to get good enough to be allowed to enter the mine. Before we entered, the lecturer adjusted a giant mirror that made a beam of light enter the main entrance.

As we walked in, the entire place was almost as bright as the outside. The tunnel itself was incredibly smooth, with branching side tunnels going out at a 90° angle. With every intersection having a sunlight splitting mirror array. It all looked so artificial. There were plenty of scars alongside each side tunnel where people had previously mined.

"We will help you make sense of it. We haven’t seen this ourselves, but this looks exactly like it was described to us by our grandfather."

"You see, people come here and mine the pure copper veins. It would be incredibly rare to find veins like this naturally. After everything is mined, earth mages come through and make the walls like they were before, leaving them unnaturally smooth," Arlu said while running his hands over the walls as we were walking deeper.

"Then the copper elemental comes. Its very presence will slowly change some of the rock into pure copper vein. When it’s done, it’s rinse and repeat constantly. It’s low-quality copper, barely F grade, but for early levels there is nothing better."

They then started to show me how to mine and where. It didn’t take me long to get my first level. They continued to speak and teach me more about mining than I ever thought I would need to know, but I soaked in the knowledge.

They also talked about their plans. Turns out that none of them actually wanted to join the Adventurers Guild. It seemed like there was some heavy history there, but they did not seem antagonistic toward the Adventurers Guild, it was something else, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

Originally, they planned on joining an established mining guild to work off their debt if they had to pay for a good beginner town, but now they wanted to make their own mining guild so they didn’t have to work underneath someone.

“Cousins, I can’t take it anymore, we have to leave, or I will start mining!” Arlu basically yelled out.

After a short goodbye, they left to follow my instructions, going to a few lectures and then trying to get the inventory skill.

Now that they weren’t around, the sounds of the mine took over. There were now plenty of other people mining here as well, so there was quite a lot of noise. We didn’t get any other equipment besides the mining pick, which seemed unnaturally good at cutting into this rock.

With its help, I made quick work of the copper veins, leaving pretty clean copper chunks on the ground. We wouldn’t have to carry the chunks back, as we were here to gain levels, and transporting them wouldn’t get us anything.

Later on, someone would come through here and collect them all. It was pretty efficient, in fact, in the booklet it stated quite clearly that mining was one of the fastest to level in this beginner town, at least for the first 10 levels.

Thanks to that, by evening I was pretty sure I was close to getting level 10. After a short break where I held my burning and sore hands against the cold copper junks it was time to grind the last of this level.

When I got out of the mine after reaching level 10, I noticed I still had a few hours of sunlight left. This one really was quite quick to level. It’s going to be quite unfortunate when, in the future, these levels won’t come as easily.

There was no convenient system obelisk to check what choice I had, but the dungeon wasn’t too far away, and they did have a system obelisk. There were quite a lot of people around waiting for their turn to enter the dungeon.

I walked up to the system obelisk, it was bigger than the one they had in the library, but not by much. As I touched it, there was a choice available, and I picked it, seeing the available skills.

Accurate Strike

Low Light Vision I

Looting I

I managed to keep my face neutral, although all I wanted to do was celebrate. All three were actually pretty decent. Some skills from professions could also be used for combat, and those were pretty good overall.

Low Light Vision I was quite good as well, but there were better ones out there. Of course, there wasn’t any question about which one I was going to pick, as I chose Looting I. Barely anyone even paid attention to me as I finished picking the skill, which always felt amazing.

As I walked away toward the town, it was time to make a decision, should I do the rest of the four professions as well? I mean, it couldn’t hurt. Perhaps I could get lucky and upgrade my looting skill. The next one was going to be trapping, that would be an interesting one.