Ethan stopped walking immediately after Alan finished talking. He just laughed to himself, shaking his head in a mixture of frustration and admiration before resuming his quick steps to catch up to Alan, who hadn't bothered to stop.
"You know," Ethan began, "I really don't want to give Sansa the amount of credit I am right now. In fact, it pisses me off even more. But she deserves it. She didn't even tell you that you had an Elemental Body; she used my reaction to get her answer." He laughed at his own expense.
"I couldn't have done it better myself, but dammit, it hurts." He clutched his chest dramatically and placed his left hand on Alan's shoulder, dragging his feet.
"At least put more effort into your acting; it's horrible," Alan deadpanned. "But imagine how I feel. It's my secret that was found out. Yours is still in the vault."
Ethan recovered almost immediately, his expression turning serious as he looked at Alan. "Let's keep it there, alright, my good friend?"
Alan looked at his face for a moment and just clicked his tongue. "Tsk... poor acting. I wouldn't want to be undercover with you."
Ethan was shocked. "Really? That's what bothers you right now? It's my life on the line here!"
"Yeah, yeah, whatever. We're here. I'll grab the pickaxes."
Alan walked to a seemingly solid wall, tapping away at his soulband. Just as he reached it, a human-sized section of the wall shimmered and opened. Henry walked out, wrapped in a thick blanket as if he'd just woken up. With a flip of his wrist, he produced two sleek, black pickaxes that looked deceptively simple and handed them to Alan, who promptly stored them in his spatial ring.
As Alan turned to walk away, Henry's voice, laced with sleep but sharp with intent, stopped him. "Set a five-hour timer for yourselves when you get to that annoying mountain. I'd hate to lose my customers just after I got them."
Alan, shocked by the unsolicited advice, turned to reply, but found the wall had already sealed itself shut. Shrugging, he didn't take the words lightly and set the timer on his soulband right away as he walked back to Ethan.
"So," Alan said, "where to next? How do we get to the mountain?"
Location: The Blue Mountains
Stepping out of the teleportation circle, Alan continued his tirade. "I swear, I don't know if I'm the unserious one or you are! How could you not even know how to get to the mountains, and you stood up ready for a mission? I suddenly don't feel safe anymore."
Ethan, who was shocked by the serene beauty around them, responded with a nonchalant wave of his hand. "Tiny details, tiny details... But look at this place! It's straight out of an anime. Believe it."
Alan turned to the babbling man beside him with a confused look, muttering, "Anim...? Animal?" He couldn't even be bothered to ask for clarification as he finally took in their surroundings.
They stood in what could only be described as a massive cavern, its ceiling so high it was lost in shadow, making them feel incredibly small. The cavern branched off into several dark passages. Despite its emptiness, the place was breathtaking. The walls were embedded with blue stones that emitted a soft, soothing luminescence, casting the entire cave in an ethereal, azure glow.
"Wow! This place is beautiful," Alan finally spoke after a moment of awe.
"Yeah," Ethan replied, his voice dropping. "Beautifully dangerous, you mean. Don't tell me you're ignoring this uncomfortable chill in the air."
"Right?" Alan said immediately, rubbing his arms as if to warm up. "I can't wait to leave. It's beautiful to look at, but the chill and the way it's slowly getting hard to breathe is so uncomfortable. I'm not sure I could even stand three hours here, and he said five."
Ethan stopped. "Who said five hours?"
Alan replied nonchalantly while pulling up his map to confirm their location. "Oh, Henry said it to me after he gave me the pickaxes. By the way, here. Catch." He took a pickaxe from his ring and threw it to Ethan, who caught it deftly and slung it over his shoulder.
Ethan followed behind Alan, both with their maps pulled up, confirming they were moving into the third cave from the left—the indicated safe area for low-rank stones.
"Did he say why?" Ethan asked as they walked, his curiosity piqued by the five-hour limit.
"He only said something about not wanting to lose us as customers, and he was gone before I could ask anything else."
They continued walking for the next twenty minutes, the ambient chill and pressure steadily increasing, before they finally found a large patch of blue stones embedded in the rock wall to their left.
"This is far enough. Let's start with those and work our way in," Ethan suggested. He hefted his pickaxe and began striking the hard rock, the sharp clang echoing unnaturally loudly in the serene, oppressive silence of the mountain.
Three hours later, Ethan was covered in grime and sweat, his shirt long discarded. Alan could swear he heard Ethan complain to himself more than once about not working out, almost making him think his friend was a little crazy.
Alan, focused on accumulating enough stones to sell even after submitting the mission's requirement, was counting his haul when he heard Ethan complain again. "I swear, you'd think with all the work I've been putting in, I'd feel less sleepy. But no! This stupid energy... the more I stay here, the more I just want to lay down for a moment."
Ethan heard this and couldn't help but think, I don't feel anything like that. I mean, I'm tired from the labor, but I don't feel sleepy at all. I remember when we came in, he said it was getting hard to breathe. I brushed it off, but he's complained several times since. I feel nothing. Despite this realization, he didn't say anything to Alan.
He finally voiced something else that had been bothering him for the past hour. "We've been careful not to go too far in case of a surge, right? But what bothers me is that the amount of stones here doesn't match a low-density area. I've gotten 42 low-rank stones and 4 mid-rank stones. We're too far out to find this many, let alone the 10 mid-rank stones we've found combined."
Alan replied, his words slightly slurred from the mountain's oppressive energy. "You're too suspicious. Anyone would be happy to get this much in one go. We've covered the mission, our compression needs, and we still have extra to sell." He stopped mining for a moment and raised his head with a dirt-covered smile, prompting a retching sound from Ethan.
"Bad sight for me... Too bad I can't look at my godly handsome face all the time. A shame to share this prize with the world for free," Ethan began a shameless monologue, leaving Alan speechless as he went back to work.
Thirty Minutes Later
CRASH!
Alan smashed into a huge rock on the side, causing a minor collapse that revealed a narrow, dark passage leading deeper into the mountain.
Ethan stared with a terrified look on his face. "Don't tell me...?"
Alan, already scared, backed away from the hole. "Don't tell me what?"
Ethan turned to look at Alan like he was an idiot. "Don't you know what this is? This is one of those 'main character risk-it-all for massive rewards' moments!" As soon as he finished speaking, he picked up his shirt and pickaxe and began walking back toward the entrance.
"Where are you going?" Alan asked, confused.
"You don't think I'm going to walk into that cave, do you?" Ethan said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "That's where the main character usually gets their first skill, but almost dies for it. We don't even have a recovery potion. It's too much risk. Are you coming?"
Alan was speechless at Ethan's behavior. "Come on, fifty-fifty on anything we find inside!"
Ethan looked at him like he was a fool.
"What's with that look?"
"Did you think I'd go for less if I went in there with you? Only if—"
Seeing Ethan continuously back away, Alan didn't want to leave their discovery unchecked. He immediately ran towards Ethan, grabbing him and dragging him toward the hole's entrance.
"What do you think you're doing?!" Ethan shouted.
"Come on, don't be a baby! There are usually no monsters in this mountain, so what are you scared of?"
Ethan stared into the dark opening of the cave and took a big gulp of courage, thinking to himself, This is just some main character nonsense. Did it have to be us? Today? Here, of all times?