Chapter 4: The Sound of the Pickaxe
The air in the lower cavern of the Labyrinth was thick with the scent of grass and damp earth. Clink. Clink. Clink. The rhythmic sound of iron hitting rock echoed through the tunnels, a monotonous lullaby for the hopeless.
Vince wiped a mixture of sweat and glowing blue dust from his forehead. His hands, once calloused from sword practice, were now blistered and raw from hours of swinging a heavy pickaxe. A few feet away, Luna sat on a smoothed-out boulder, casually tossing a raw mana stone into a reinforced crate. Thanks to her "stamina" and "build," her job was simply to haul the heavy crates, a task she performed with her signature look of bored indifference.
Three other prisoners—a gaunt man named Kael, a scarred woman named Hana, and a trembling youth called Pip, worked in a tight circle nearby.
Vince leaned closer to Kael, his voice a low, urgent hiss. "Tonight. When the guards change shifts at the secondary junction. We make our move."
Kael didn't even look up from the vein of sapphire-colored ore. "Move where, kid? To the afterlife?"
"We can't stay here!" Vince whispered harshly, his eyes darting toward the mercenary guard, Seven, who was leaning against a stalagmite twenty yards away, picking his teeth with a dagger. "We're being treated like cattle. If we combine our strength, we can overpower the three guards in this sector, grab their keys, and—"
"And then what?" Hana interrupted, her voice raspy from the dust. She paused her swinging, her eyes cold. "We step ten feet out of this torchlight and get shredded by a Level 1 Razor-Bat? Or maybe a Level 1 Stone Golem?"
"We're Level 0, Vince," Pip whimpered, his pickaxe trembling in his hands. "The God's math doesn't lie. A Level 1 monster has the influence of five men. That's not a fair fight; that's a slaughterhouse. At least here, the mercenaries keep the monsters away."
"But the SSS-Rank potential!" Vince argued, his desperation rising. "This place is a gold mine for growth! If we break free, we can find a Mana Stone and evolve!"
"Vince," Luna called out, not looking up from a particularly shiny stone she was examining. "Shut up and dig. You're ruining the vibe."
"The vibe?! Luna, we're in chains!"
"I get fed three times a day and I don't have to listen to my landlord complain about the rent," Luna retorted, leaning back. "Plus, the guard, Four, promised me an extra ration of dried meat if I carried the heavy load today. It's called career advancement."
Vince looked at his friend in horror, then back at the other prisoners. They had all gone back to work, their movements robotic and resigned. To them, the "Slavers" weren't just captors—they were the only thing standing between the prisoners and the terrifying, mathematically superior monsters of the Labyrinth.
"You're all cowards," Vince muttered, though his own heart wasn't in it. He looked into the dark tunnel leading deeper into the floor—the direction the mercenaries avoided.
Down there, in the suffocating dark, something was vibrating. A heavy, metallic thrum that seemed to shake the very marrow of his bones.
"Did you hear that?" Pip whispered, dropping his pickaxe.
The tunnel suddenly went silent. Even the mercenary, Seven, stood up straight, his hand moving to the hilt of his sword. From the darkness came a sound that didn't belong in a cave: the heavy, wet, rhythmic thud-squish of something very dense and very metallic moving toward them.
"Something's coming," Kael breathed, his face turning pale.
The heavy, rhythmic thud-squish grew louder until a shape finally oozed out of the darkness. It wasn't a jagged beast or a towering golem.
It was a puddle. A very shiny, very silver, and very heavy-looking puddle.
Vince leveled his pickaxe like a spear, his breath hitching. "Stay back! I'm warning you, I'm an SSS-rank potential hero!"
The silver blob stopped. It seemed to "stare" at them, despite having no face. Then, it let out a soft, vibrating ripple.
Kael squinted, leaning in. "Wait... is that just a slime? Seven, look at the UI!"
The mercenary, Seven, walked over with a bored expression and squinted at the floating blue text above the vibrating mass.
Name: Rin
Race: Iron Slime
Level: 0
"It's a Level 0," Seven said, his voice dripping with disappointment. "A stray from the river, probably. Just a useless bit of metallic sludge."
"Level 0?" Vince blinked, lowering his pickaxe. "But... it felt so heavy. The vibration was intense."
"It's metal, kid. Metal is heavy. Doesn't mean it's dangerous," Seven retorted. He walked over, reached down, and hoisted the silver blob into the air.
Jiggle. Jiggle. Shhh-luck.
Rin felt himself being shaken like a bottle of heavy cream. He wanted to sprout a tentacle and slap the man, but he remembered Milim's warning about staying under the radar for now.
"Yep, it's a slime," Seven muttered, annoyed that it wasn't a high-value monster. He turned and tossed Rin through the air. Rin hit the inside of a wooden transport crate with a metallic clunk.
"You!" Seven shouted, pointing a finger at Luna. "You've got the 'build' for it. Take this crate of ore and the slime back to camp. The rest of you, drop the tools. It's time for your breaks. Go eat."
"Finally," Luna sighed. She hoisted the heavy crate onto her shoulder as if it weighed nothing, Rin sloshing around inside on top of a pile of glowing blue rocks.
As the group trekked back to the mercenary base camp, they ignored the "Iron Slime" entirely. To them, it was just a strange, low-level curiosity—the lowest rung on the Labyrinth's food chain.
The "camp" was a series of reinforced tents and iron-barred cages set up in a large, dry cavern. Luna dropped the crate in the primary storage area, right next to several larger piles of unrefined mana stones.
"Stay put, puddle," she muttered, patting the top of his cold, silver head before wandering off toward the mess hall to claim her dried meat.
Once the room was silent, Rin's surface began to ripple with predatory intent.
Finally. All-you-can-eat buffet.
He flowed over the side of the crate like spilled mercury, landing on the floor and immediately moving toward the nearest pile of glowing blue stones. Small, thin tentacles extruded from his body, wrapping around the ore.
[Skill: Absorption Activated]
Crunch. Ssssst.
The stones didn't just break; they melted into his mass.
Exp Gained: 1
Exp Gained: 1
Exp Gained: 2
"This is going to take forever," Rin thought, his body vibrating in annoyance. He moved deeper into the storage pile, digging past the common blue rocks until his [Blindsight] picked up a different frequency—a sharp, pulsing heat.
He pulled out a stone that glowed with a fierce, internal golden light.
Item Detected: Tier 1 Evolution Mana Stone
Consuming...
Exp Gained: 50!
Total Exp: 64/100
Rin's silver body shimmered, the metallic luster becoming even more polished. "Oh, now we're talking. If I find one more of these, I can finally hit Level 1 and show that 'Saint of Steel' side of me again."
He dived deeper into the mercenary's stash, a silent, silver vacuum cleaning out their retirement fund one rock at a time.