"It should be about 2 more hours?", one man spoke to another, his outfit a glaring yellow colour.
"Mm. The last time, it took around that time to finish."
The two chartered as they patroled the location around one of the routes in the caverns, armed with a pickaxe and a sword.
The caverns were anything but quiet. Occasionally, huge bellows of sounds would resonate throughout the entire cavern, and hot air would blast through what small openings there were, including the small passages opened by the miners.
Cid covered himself with a robe, blending in with the darkness of the mines. There were no lights working down here, and apart from the torches in the hands of the patrolling guards, it was almost pitch black. Deep down here, the torches weren't lit on the walls like they were near the entrance.
Cid's eyes had already adjusted. There were no sources of light here, so Cid couldn't use his normal techniques of amplifying them. Instead, he used a technique similar to echolocation. He sent out tiny amounts of energy equally in all directions, and mapped out where all the obstacles were, pathing his way as he went.
This wouldn't work in a mana sensitive environment in more advanced areas where there were more security measures to safeguard against thefts, but down here, there was no such thing.
Nimbly, he made his way towards the core vault of the forges. This was the place where the blacksmith Kaunga stored the most valuable of his loot. This information was learnt in his last life from somebody close to Lina, before betraying her. It was placed in a location deep down, far away from the workspace of the blacksmiths above.
After a few wrong turns and dead ends, he finally found a small opening made of wood where a man with a spear was standing guard, looking bored out of his mind.
He was probably just at the entry realm, Cid believed. Adept level professionals were rare, and even someone affluent like Kaunga wouldn't waste them by making them guard a place like this all day long. His main task was to sound the alarms in case of any mishaps.
Cid didn't take any chances. With his greatest attribute, agility, he dashed forwards in the darkness towards the guard, who was caught by surprise.
With a clean move, Cid put the guard into a deep sleep by choking him with great strength, and then gagged and bound him with cloth torn from the guards's own clothes.
Cid hurried up, and went inside the passage, where he was greeted by a solid iron door locked by a gigantic lock.
Cid knew there would be no better time to get what he needed from this vault than now, when everyone was busy partaking in the forging.
He hurried up, and taking out a pair of iron wires from his coat, played around with the lock, until it opened with a thud. For Cid, this wasn't a challenge at all, with his centuries of experience doing these things.
He then put down a rock with strange symbols engraved on it, and put some energy into it.
With a small flash of light, a slightly blue outline of a barrier surrounded the vault.
Cid had just used an entry level rune called "Silence" that he bought from the stalls outside. This was quite a simple rune, and enabled silencing of all sounds for a few minutes up to a certain level. It also had the disadvantage of emitting a blue field where it was deployed, a side effect of the rune inscriber's inexperience. This was not a problem for Cid, however, since there was nobody here to see it.
Cid opened the vault's door with his strength that exceeded a tier 1's strength. Even with that, he still strained himself trying to open it. Ordinarily, it would have made a large amount of sound opening this door with so much creaking, but he managed to bypass it with the rune he used.
Finally, he got inside the vault. It was made of pure iron, and had compartments locked with various different types of locks in it. The vault itself was quite tiny, and did not have much room to maneuver.
One by one, Cid opened the locks in record time, not taking more than 10 seconds a lock. To anyone else, this would have taken the best part of an hour.
[You have found a rare material: Adamantian Ore.]
[You have found a rare material: Junso Steel.]
....
...
[You have found a rare item: Strength Potion.]
Cid didn't waste time when he found this inside one of the compartments and drank it. A potion like this was worth more than 10,000 denars, easily.
[You have drunk a strength potion. STR +1.]
Next to the strength compartment, he also found a agility potion, drinking that up as well.
[You have drunk an agility potion. STR +1.]
This was truly the vault of an expert realm blacksmith. If Cid had to put a valuation on everything here, it would be in the excess of at least 700,000 denars. It was only quite regrettable that he did not have the ability to open up a space pocket at this moment, and he did not have a spatial equipment to store most of these items. He had to cut his losses and take what he could.
[Space Pocket - Heaven Level Technique: Made by a King Realm Professional, this special technique allows someone to create a unique space dimension where he can store items and access them. If the user of this unique space dies, then all the items are lost to the void.
Requirements: Master Level Strength.]
He would have to wait until he reached Step 4 level strength to unlock a spatial dimension. His only other option was to obtain a spatial equipment, but those were in hard to reach areas.
Cid looked in one compartment after another, taking his time, and weighing his options.
Then, in the topmost compartment, he found what he had hoped to find.
[Jewel of Rest - High Level Material.]
This was worth a lot more than anyone in the lower realm could realise. It was special for only one reason: It could perfectly encapsulate 100% of energy and runes transferred to it, without any loss. This meant that it could also store runes, spells, and many other things within it, and could be unleashed at will. It wasn't a stretch to say that it was valuable even in the upper realms.
And Cid needed it too. It was one of the few items he needed to restore his supreme artifact. He had a rough idea of where he could find the remaining materials, and he would have to find those.
As exaggeratedly powerful as Cid was right now, he knew that he was not worth much in the higher realms. He was for sure a genius with infinite potential even by his own standards, but there were plenty of those up there. He had to fix this artifact at the earliest to stand any chance of competing with them.
Cid hurried as he gathered the most valuable of the materials in the vault that were light enough not to be a burden, and made his way out of the caverns.