"This is an Infuser," Kyle said as he showed everyone a long needle with a handle.
The ten Fighters in front of him looked at the long needle with interest.
"That's how we harden the walls?" one of them asked.
Kyle nodded. "Correct," he said before putting the needle on one of the walls of the mine. "You put the Infuser onto the wall and push your Ether into it. The Infuser has an internal transformer, which means it also works with Neutral Ether. The Infuser transforms the Neutral Ether into Earth Ether."
"What if we already use Earth Ether?" a Fighter with a heavy brown shield asked.
"In that case, you can directly use Earth Ether. If you can use Earth Ether, you will be twice as efficient," Kyle said.
The Fighters nodded and looked at a couple of people with an Earth Affinity.
Kyle had led the group of Fighters through the entire mine over the past hours, teaching them the basics of how to run a mine.
Naturally, all of these Fighters were from the Stark Brotherhood.
Kyle was the sole owner of the mine, which meant that he could do with it whatever he wanted.
So, he decided to form an agreement with the Stark Brotherhood.
Just like Lily, the Stark Brotherhood was allowed to work in the mine and keep part of what they harvested.
Of course, mining the ore wasn't the only thing that needed to be done.
The walls needed to be scouted for dangers.
The walls needed to be made sturdy so that they wouldn't collapse.
They needed plans on where to dig so that the mine remained stable.
They needed to find the ore.
They needed to get rid of the debris.
They needed to get the chunks of ore out of the walls.
They needed to refine the ore.
There was a lot to do.
Because of that, Kyle opted to hire teams over individuals.
Individuals would only be interested in mining the ore since that would be their payment. Sadly, that would lead to an unstable mine.
Teams that wanted to earn money inside the mine needed two things.
One, someone with an Earth Affinity to strengthen the tunnels.
Two, someone with a Metal Affinity to refine the ore.
In terms of team composition, this was all that was necessary.
Of course, the teams still needed to follow the guidelines and rules of the mine.
If careless digging led to a cave-in, the responsible team would be fined severely.
After Kyle gave his instructions, he told the teams that they could start.
In order to keep responsibilities clear, the teams were assigned different tunnels.
In that case, assuming there was a cave-in, everyone knew who to blame.
As the teams started working, they grew excited.
They got an entire mine!
If they found some rare ore, they would become rich!
Both teams had five members, and they were not weak.
With their powers, they could mine at insane speeds!
They would become rich!
Yet, as more and more time passed, the excitement waned.
Progress had been fast near the beginning, but it had slowed down significantly.
"Can you also carry some of the debris?" one of them asked with annoyance.
"I'm busy fortifying the walls," the guy with the Earth Affinity said.
The first guy furrowed his brows and looked at another guy. "What about you? You've been sitting on your ass this entire time."
"I'm the refiner," the guy said. "It's not my job to carry the debris. If you want me to do two jobs, I want two shares."
"Stop arguing," another guy said as he filled a huge metallic bucket with stones. "Get back to work. You don't see me complaining."
The first guy gritted his teeth.
He had already brought over 20 huge buckets of stones out of the mine.
"Didn't he say there are also Liquefiers that use debris to strengthen the walls?" the guy asked.
"They're expensive," the guy with the bucket said. "I already asked the foreman. One of those is 20 Ether Stones. Also, using a Liquefier takes time. If we want to remain efficient, we need three of them."
"Right now, the best thing to do is just to carry stones by hand."
The first guy groaned again.
"Can't we just have a mine cart?" he asked.
"Do you have the metal? Do you know how to make the rails? Would that even be faster? You can carry just as much with your hands, and you're faster," the leader said with some annoyance. "I've been carrying stones just like you. Stop being a little bitch."
The first guy took a deep breath as he grew angry.
"Fine!" he shouted as he filled his bucket again.
Several more hours passed, and the team grew increasingly frustrated.
After eight hours of working, they got just a couple of pieces of ore, and most of them turned into trash since their refiner still needed to practice.
"Fuck this! This is a scam!" the guy from earlier said as he dropped the bucket. "Look at how much we dug, and look at how much we found! They gave us a shit tunnel!"
The leader furrowed his brows.
It was strange that they barely found anything.
Was ore truly this rare? "I'm going to ask," the leader said before he left.
The other people just waited until the leader came back two minutes later.
He wasn't alone.
One of Lily's golems accompanied him.
"Here it is," the man said, pointing at the tunnel.
The golem walked into the tunnel without a word and looked at the walls.
Some seconds later, it walked to a seemingly random wall and tore the wall open with its pickaxe.
The eyes of everyone opened as they saw a gleaming pile of ore falling to the ground.
This was more than they had harvested over the past eight hours!
The golem wordlessly took the ore and left.
"Hey, that's ours!" the first guy shouted.
"It's not," the leader said with a regretful expression. "I told her that, if she manages to find ore within two minutes, she can keep it."
The others furrowed their brows.
"Why couldn't we find it?" one of them asked.
"According to her, we are near an ore vein. The couple of pieces we dug out are just some scattered bits and pieces of the vein," the leader said. "I thought she just wanted to scam us, which is why I made the bet."
The leader looked down.
"Apparently, she wasn't lying."
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