Year 3, Spring, Third Month, Second Week.
Dianas team returned at the beginning of the second week of the tunnels construction and surprised everyone with 32 MQ crystals. Unfortunately, the team had paid the price for getting those crystals, the four mbers were suffering from advanced magic poisoning. By the ti they arrived, the operator and the archer were losing conscience two to four tis a day, thats why they took an extra week to return.
When Diana learned about the magic tunnel, she was grateful and almost cried, leaving now would be extrely difficult for them, she just hoped three weeks would be enough to recover. Hopefully, with the extra crystals and the tunnel, the rest of their journey would go smoothly.
***
After taking care of her morning training and discussing so ideas with Katlyn, Diana was finally ready to visit the famous magic tunnel. Although she was used to facing tough situations, it took her two weeks to recover from the poisoning, which only showed how her situation was critical. Fortunately, during her rest, nothing out of ordinary happened and now she was free to help.
Locating the cave entrance wasnt difficult, although it looked like a regular cave, the stream of people going in and out of it didnt leave much for wonder. Aside from being illuminated, the first cave room didnt look like anything other than a cave. However, when she walked a few more ters, Diana was shocked by the change of scenery.
The walls were perfectly polished and evened, the ground was flat and she couldnt locate a single stone half-buried. Drawings on both walls stretched through the entire path, adding to the magic atmosphere. Then, she realized another oddity, she was seeing everything so clear, not like the previous cave room where the portable lights hanged on the walls spreading the light unevenly, the light here was distributed perfectly through the tunnel. There wasnt a better word to describe it other than the magic tunnel.
Almost one kiloter later, Diana found a big room connected to the main path, inside, she t a group of people sorting so materials. One of them recognized the prominent figure and quickly greeted her, the man explained they were using this room to store materials used in the tunnels construction. She was amazed when the crafter told her the tunnel had other dozen similar rooms.
After walking for another five kiloters, she finally t a construction team. On the way, she passed for several rooms with crafters, Alchemists and even cooks preparing als for the workers. Alfeur was inspecting the teams work, who were moving soil and stones, probably trying to flat the ground.
Hey, Diana. Good to see that you finally recovered What do you think about the tunnel? You werent here when Karl proposed this and we thought he was crazy I never imagined we could build such a thing, it has been a great experience for everyone.
How could Diana not know what he was talking about? She has been dealing with Karls crazy ideas since ever. She ended up smiling a little more than she intended before answering embarrassed:
Its amazing I walked through a lot of caves when we were searching for the crystals, but this is on another level I imagine the caves werent this wide and had much more turns How far have we reached?
Alfeur smiled awkwardly like he was rembering sothing difficult.
Phew We had to enlarge almost five kiloters of the cave because we need it to be wide enough for carts to pass and we decide to block all big turns We have ten kiloters of excavated and polished tunnel, with nine kiloters already covered by the Arrays. The expedition group should be reaching the exit in a day or two We planned to build the tunnel in a month but it should take one or two extra weeks Actually, the initial estimations were pretty accurate, its just that we overdid it a little
Diana was shocked by the numbers, they had done so much in only three weeks.
Wow Thats, wow! Overdid it a little? Alfeur, if our ho is gonna be anything like this, we gonna live better than the Kingdoms Mages Or probably no. I dont really know how they live Anyway, how did you do it so fast?
Humm The first week was a nightmare, we even lost two hunters. But then things started to get better as we got a handle on the work, the Alchemy Departnt built excavators non-stop until we could excavate one kiloter of walls a day. The number of workers also helped, we have half of our people working here on sothing, a thousand healthy and happy workers can do a lot in three weeks
Alfeur and Diana continue talking while they moved deeper into the tunnel, she noticed the difference as soon as the ground started to beco unleveled, but the tunnel was still magnificent. He told her about other things they discovered along the way, like so water ponds and even a cave with so strange ores, in fact, the day after they discovered the place, Arnold had already moved in and Alfeur lost three workers for the blacksmith.
When Diana learned this, she asked to go there imdiately, she has been waiting for two weeks to show the stones samples to the blacksmith. A week ago, she recovered enough to walk around the camp so she decided to take the stones to man, but he had already moved to the tunnel. Fortunately, she brought the samples and could finally put the matter to rest. One hour later, Diana was entering a cave room filled with excavating noise and dust.
You, girl Please bring that hamr.
Diana didnt mind the blacksmiths manners or that he didnt rember her. She picked the heavy hamr and noticed an Array drawing on it. She wasnt an Alchemist, but it was easy to recognize the Lightness and Toughness Runes. The man looked slightly embarrassed after seeing Diana analyze the drawings.
Hey, dont judge I tried to use my normal hamr but its hard to work on this I even had to ask the Alchemy kid to increase the max temperature of the magic forge
Instead of trying to correct the man, Diana only passed the tool and analyzed curiously the tal he was working with. Unsurprisingly, she couldnt say anything about the slightly red tal. Even though she didnt know about tals other than iron, she couldnt help but ask which tal it was.
Oh This is actually iron, but the ore was fused with sothing else. Either is mixed with another tal that doesnt separate easily or this is so kind of magic enhancent Im trying to understand its potential and properties before trying to separate it
She told him about the crystal cave and gave him samples, which he promised to analyze later, apparently, he couldnt diverge his attention from the discovery right now. Anyway, Dianas job was done, so she left to check the other parts of the tunnel and offer her help to the expedition team, her muscles were aching for a fight and her sword was bagging to kill sothing.
***
Two days before their initial estimation, the expedition team, now led by Diana, finally exited the caves at the other side of the mountains. Her vision was filled with green fields and a lot of different flowers, she traced the beautiful scenery pleased to finally be outside again. However, the smile froze on her face when she saw a river cutting through their path forward. Another day, another obstacle...
Reviews
All reviews (0)