Chapter 59 - Mining (1/2)

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.