Squeak!
After the team entered the mines, sharp squeaks came from the darkness ahead. What followed was a swarm of bats assaulting them.
Bats were the most common monsters in caves or mines, and their levels varied from the lowest Level 10 to the highest Level 100 and above, depending on the map.
The Ghost wanted to charge forward and explode at the bats to vent its sulkiness, but Mohai stopped him.
“Ghost, don’t move! Wait for my order to self-destruct!”
“Oh…” The Ghost returned to the group helplessly and watched his bandit comrades slash the bats to the ground.
The bats had low HP, so a common player could take one down with few hits. Since Mohai and his bandit leaders had high attack abilities, they could take out a bunch with a single blow.
However, the bats were fast and they came in large numbers while their Attacks were quite high as well. If the players wanted to mine in peace, the party must be well-equipped.
As the bats piled up on the ground, more bats flew over, some of which had tiny red eyes.
Mohai told the Ghost to blast them to hell when they appeared, “Ghost, kill those bats with the red eyes!”
“Yes, Boss!” The Ghost’s spirit was lifted as he flew towards the bats with the red eyes.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
However, before the Ghost could get close enough, the red-eyed bats exploded.
These red-eye bats were Bomber Bats that could self-destruct to inflict damage in a small area. Even though a single explosion would only inflict around 300 damage points, if a swarm of them flew over and self-destructed, Mohai and his bandit leaders would be wiped out.
Even the Ghost lost a thousand HP from the continuous explosions.
The Bomber Bats were the last of the swarm, and Mohai and his team finally got used to the lighting in the mine after clearing the bats.
“There are a lot of ores around!” The Ghost curiously looked around.
The ground ahead of them was blanketed with glitter from the ores.
“Mine the ores on the ground. Skip the copper and iron ores. Other than those two, even if you find something you don’t know, take it.”
Mohai was impressed by the concentrated amount of exposed ores in front of him.
In Origin, there were two methods in mining.
The first one would be normal mining whereby players mined at the wall. The outcome varied depending on the mine, the player’s mining level, and their luck.
The other one was exposed mining. Exposed ores were like mushrooms on the ground, so players knew at first glance what they were and the acquisition rate was 100% as long as they could dig it up.
Exposed ores would only appear in quality mining areas and only a few would spawn every day. Running into some was entirely up to luck.
Players had yet to arrive at this mine, so the exposed ores were all over the place.
However, after a quick glance around, Mohai noticed that all the exposed ores were copper and iron ores of the lowest tier. There were black iron ores and some silver ores around, but the highest tier gold ores were nowhere to be found.
‘I wonder if we can level up the mining skill to Level 3 by mining the exposed ores…” Mohai was not sure.
All the life skills in Origin required players to get relevant XP to level up and that was calculated by the outcome of the process. The higher the level of the outcome, the higher the XP.
Like forging and sewing, forging a piece of high-tier equipment would provide more XP than forging a hundred low-tier gears. If a player was wealthy and could get his hands on all the necessary materials, he would be able to level up the life skill easily.
It was impossible to level up the life skills to a high level at the start of the game though. First of all, low-level life skills could not make high-tier gears. Secondly, even if a player could forge a piece of high-tier equipment due to various reasons, the players who farmed materials in the wild were not powerful enough to get the necessary materials, so it would be useless even if a player was rich.
The same went for mining. The XP was given based on what the players mined, but compared to other life skills, if one was lucky enough, the mining skill could be leveled up quickly.
The reason for this would be these exposed ores. With Level 1 mining skills, players could only mine copper and iron ores whereby mining 10 of whichever would grant 1 XP of the life skill. The player would need 5,000 ores to reach Level 2 which would approximately take a week.
However, if a player ran into a large number of exposed black iron ores, which required the player to have Level 2 mining skills to be able to mine, a single black iron ore would reward the player with 1 XP and the player would only need 500 black iron ores to reach Level 2.
It was also possible to run into silver, gold, and other high-tier ores in exposed states. If a player with Level 1 mining skills was able to mine a gold ore, he would be able to get 100 XP right away. If he was lucky enough, five gold ores would be enough to level up the skill.
If Lady Luck favored the particular player, a single high-tier ore was more than enough to level up the mining skill and there would still be extra XP!
Unfortunately, it was just wishful thinking. Quality mines with exposed ores were limited and exposed ores only spawned for a fixed number of times each day. Other than that, low-level mines mostly produced low-level ores.
Even if there was a large area of exposed ores before Mohai, he was only able to spot several silver ores and not even a single gold ore.
However, Mohai was not here for the exposed ores. If he could level up the skill after mining them, it would be great. He would not lose anything even if he did not.
Under Mohai’s lead, the bandit leaders started to mine the exposed ores on the ground.
Since they were not mining copper and iron ores, the team was able to move relatively fast. They traveled more than 10 meters into the mines after a while and the bats did not follow them.
The Ghost knew that he was unable to mine and soon got bored, so he flew ahead of the team and killed the incoming bats. A single explosion could wipe out a large area, so no amount of bats would be enough to satisfy his blistering desire.
“Huh? A red copper ore? How lucky! This is a good one!”
Mohai found a rather bright ore among the sea of dullness, and upon a closer look, the ore turned out to be red copper.
Although red copper and hardened iron ores were still copper and iron ores, they were much better than their normal counterparts. Players called them variant ores or attribute ores.
Red copper ores were fire-based and hardened iron ores were ice-based. They were used to craft element weapons and had a ridiculously low drop rate.
It required a lot of luck to find red copper ore in such a low-level mine. It was rather unbelievable for Mohai, even when he had still been a player.
“150 XP!” Mohai raised his pickaxe and swung at the ore almost 20 times to dig it up.
A single red copper ore granted him 150 XP. Going from Level 2 to Level 3 required only 1,000 XP.
Unlike the 500 XP pool from Level 1 to Level 2, the 1,000 XP pool was a lot harder to achieve. The black iron ore that would provide 1 XP at Level 1 was reduced to 0.1 XP at Level 2.
If Mohai could find 7 red copper ores, he could reach Level 3, but after over another 10 minutes of searching around, he barely found any silver ores, let alone more red copper ores. Lady Luck must have blessed him when he found the red copper ore.
A while later, the two little lolis came to the mine. They were shocked when they saw the bandit leaders mining.
“Are the monsters…mining?”
“Sis, what should we do now? There’re no monsters around and we are no match for them alone.”
The two of them finally caught up with Mohai, but there were no monsters around, so SummerFruit was quite anxious.
“Let’s just wait.” WinterSnow was patient. She squatted on the ground and propped her chin on her hand while waiting.
“Waiting is boring. Why don’t we mine some stuff as well? We’ll wait for monsters to attack them!” SummerFruit came up with a good idea after looking around.
“Hmm, that’s not a bad idea. There’s an NPC selling pickaxes outside. Let’s go get some and start mining while we wait.” WinterSnow bought the idea. After they decided to become Fallen, they had learned all the life skills, including mining, so they were just a pickaxe away from mining.
After the decision was made, the two lolis ran out of the mine.
Mohai actually noticed the two lolis on his tail, but he did not care. When the two of them left, the Ghost came back from the deeper end in delight. “Boss! Boss! I found that monster that you mentioned!”
“Great! Lead the way! Guys, stop digging. Come along!”
Mohai’s spirits were lifted. He chose this timing to mine because other than Gaven, he was actually after that rare monster that would only spawn in the mines.