Cthulhu Gonfalon

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Digging underground—it was something easy to talk about, but hard to do.

It was easy to choose a suitable place; you had to avoid soil that was too hard or too soft and have an underground water vein. It was compulsory to dig the tunnel into the right shape to make it convenient to access and transport soil and rock. Moreover, the first priority was to strengthen the tunnel and avoid any collapses while digging.

All of these were things that had to be done, and they had to be done well. Otherwise, it would lead to either failure or accidents while digging.

The most common accident, of course, was collapsing—that was the most common and terrible accident.

The tunnel was buried deep underground. Once it collapsed, almost everyone in the tunnel would die. Even professional adventurers found it difficult to survive in collapsed tunnels because they would die before rescue arrived.

In the past, Pyroxene Town had had several such accidents, and that made miners the most horrible occupation among the people. It was not until the arrival of the mayor, Felix, who led Pyroxene Town into a new era, that digging technology was improved to avoid this danger.

But the price was that the cost of mining had risen dramatically, at least three times as much as that in the past.

There were also veins around Gold-Panning Town, but they were different from that of Pyroxene Town. The veins here were shallowly buried and were usually open cast or semi-open cast. Thus, there were fewer risks and more yields in mining here. That was why Pyroxene Town was slowly declined while Gold-Panning Town was able to maintain development.

But that had both advantages and disadvantages. Since it had been easy to dig a mine, Gold-Panning Town lacked skilled miners, and that made this town a pupil in the mining industry. If it hadn't been for some people having been sent to Pyroxene Town to study digging skills, Gold-Panning Town would not have been able to have a mining industry.

After all, the technology known as the "Pyroxene Digging Skill" was really complicated. It involved not only the judgment of soil quality and the construction of supporting projects but also a set of very detailed inspection techniques to ensure that the tunnel could be firmly supported and not collapse in the future.

The Pyroxene Digging Skill helped make the digging safe but failed to create a high, working efficiency. Over the years, Gold-Panning Town had tried to recruit as many people as possible, but they just managed to dig a small underground farm that could only raise a pond of ice-and-snow fish.

It took three years for this slow-growing fish to grow up to be marketable, and the three years of constant care was costly in manpower. But when the fish came on the market, the price would drop a lot because of the slightly higher production rate. At present, the senior epicures in the Main Plane had experience in eating this kind of fish. They preferred to wait three years to eat the ice-and-snow fish in summer rather than pay a lot for it as they had done before.

In that case, the mayor of Gold-Panning Town had been thinking about digging another underground farm. But he really couldn't deploy more people to do that. At present, there were in total four or five people digging there, and the progress was so slow that it made the mayor desperate.

If he could replace workers with skeletons, these problems would be solved much more easily.

Collapse? It didn't matter because he could summon more skeletons when the original ones died. Besides, the skeletons might survive in the collapse since they didn't need to breathe at all.

Lack of manpower? Well, he didn't have to pay the skeletons. He didn't even need to provide them with food and accommodation.

The only thing to note was that the surrounding of the digging area had to be designated as a restricted area and no one would be allowed to approach it. Only those who hold the breath-shading magic tool made by Tu Ya'an could occasionally come and check the progress of the skeletons' work.

"The skeletons can't work efficiently." Tu Ya'an summoned the skeletons, gave them the order to dig the tunnel. "You can't expect them to dig the tunnels quickly."

"I'm not in a hurry," Mayor Almark laughed and said. "It's always good to try first. It doesn't matter whether it will work or not since it won't cost anything anyway."

Tu Ya'an laughed, too. He thought it was a good thing for Almark to have such a peaceful mind.

He had seen too many people fail in what they could have done because of their anxiety. Let's take one of his seniors as an example. That senior had started earlier than Tu Ya'an, and his achievements were above that of Tu Ya'an as well. However, because of his anxiety, that senior failed when he finally tried to enter the Legendary Realm and even failed to transform into a lich to continue to live. He eventually died.

Tu Ya'an thought about it for a while and reminded Almark. "Be careful. Make sure that no one breaks the "NO APPROACHING" sign around this area, and try to avoid someone going in by mistake."

"Rest assured," Almark replied. "People in the northwest area are quite well disciplined. As long as I tell them about it once, no one will dare to approach it. You know, with skeletons, we are actually very scared of them!"

Although saying something like that, Almark still laughed very heartily.

"If someone deliberately brings these skeletons out…" Tu Ya'an frowned.

"Then just let them come," Almark said carelessly. "There's a Purification Array around the town. The skeletons can't get in."

"But… what if they were led to the constructing farm?"

"There is also Purification Array around there."

Tu Ya'an shook his head. "The Purification Array can be destroyed."

Almark laughed and said, "You're too worried! If there is really someone so powerful, why would he bother to do that? He could directly kill the people one by one, and maybe that would be faster than a bunch of skeletons."

He pointed to the skeletons that were slowly digging with bone tools at the construction site and said, "Look, there are about 200 skeletons here. They seem a lot in number, but they are not powerful at all for they can't walk fast. About ten strong men would be enough to break through their formation. What's so terrible about them?"

Tu Ya'an thought it over carefully and realized that it was quite reasonable. A small number of skeletons was not dangerous to the people.

He had just fallen into a misunderstanding that the Dead Souls were too dangerous for ordinary people. In fact, ordinary people would not be killed by skeletons unless they were caught off-guard or the skeletons attacked on a large scale.

Although the people couldn't defeat the skeletons, couldn't the people run faster than them?

Of course, it would be another thing if the skeletons were upgraded, but with Tu Ya'an here, it was certainly impossible for him to give these skeletons a chance to get upgraded.

If one said that a skeleton could be upgraded to a higher level under the eyes of Tu Ya'an, a legendary necromancer, then this one looked down upon Tu Ya'an's professional abilities!

Not to mention that as long as there were signs upgrades on a skeleton, Tu Ya'an would take the skeleton away and summon another ordinary skeleton to replace it.

The upgraded skeletons were very useful. It would be a pity to use them for mining.

Later, Almark began to talk to Tu Ya'an about his payment. Of course, Tu Ya'an didn't want any payment. For one thing, he felt His Majesty, the Void Mask had paid him enough; for the other, he really didn't care about the payment from Gold-Panning Town. In his opinion, such a small place couldn't afford to pay a legendary mage at all.

But the mayor put an end to that.

"I intend to divide the benefits of this farm into three shares, one for the republic, one for the development of the town, and one for you as a reward. You can take it as a good asset for your offspring, or your relatives, friends, students… Even if you don't need it, they may need it."

After listening to that, Tu Ya'an thought that was a good idea. Of course, he didn't care for the money, but he would definitely have students in the future. When these students graduated, it would be good to give them some property as a gift.

Even if he wouldn't have students in the future, Tessa was now resurrected and would need a dowry when she grew up. It would be great if she had some property as her own!

However, thinking of his sister's future marriage, he couldn't help but frown tightly.