The remaining two ores proved to be troublesome to locate. No matter where Rino probed in this mine, he could not find where the dwarves found their gold and silver supply. Maybe he was looking at this wrongly. The existing mineshafts might not be everything this mine had to offer.

With only two days or less to locate them, Rino started to go crazy with his graphite pencil. Replacing the crumbly charcoal in his wooden tube with graphite proved to be Rino’s best decision so far as the search for silver and gold proved futile.

After recruiting assistants to help with his mine probing, Rino sat back and waited for the results. Half a day later, Kamiya came back with negative findings of silver and gold. Rino even tried to use divination for silver and gold in the mines, walking around and repeating the spell a few hundred times, but there were no reactions.

Bored, Rino flipped through his tutorial, hoping to learn something new about the ores he had to find. At this moment, Rino realised how dumb he was to assume he knew ores had to be found in the mountains.

.

The first thing he found out was how different the ores looked from their smelted form. Silver was grey, and gold was yellow when smelted and extracted. However, in their natural ore form, they were unrecognisable.

Gold was often white and hidden in quartz that came in surprisingly many colours. Rino knew what quarts were. Some crystals and magic amplifying gadgets were made from that crystal. He just did not know that gold came with quarts in their natural formation.

Silver wasn’t grey or shiny as an ore. In fact, it was completely opposite and extremely dull in colour. The ore could be found as brown or black in some cases as silver is often mixed with other minerals and has to be extracted before it turns grey. When polished, silver can sparkle. However, without coating in oil, silver will turn a dull grey very quickly. No wonder the silver utensils that he ate with had to be galvanised with chrome, and the real silver coins were always murky in colour.

Ignoring their appearance, Rino finally understood why probing the mountain did not work. Silver and gold could not be found in natural mountains. If anything, they could only be found near volcanic activities, much like other priceless gems like diamonds.

The dwarves did not get their silver and gold from this mine. There had to be another way to obtain them, and Rino made it his mission to find out what they were hiding.

Humming an old song he once heard in a tavern, Rino wondered if it was truly possible to make silver threads and golden needles. The fanciful embroidered royal vests were rumoured to be stitched using golden threads and silver needles, but Rino had his doubts. Metal could not bend so easily, and pure gold was dreadfully soft. It would change shape at the slightest force and is highly malleable without alloys mixtures.

Volcanoes were usually easy to spot from above, but Rino did not remember seeing any volcanoes in this mountain range. He remembered the hot spring back in Noir province, which made him wonder where the source was from. The dwarves could not have travelled that far to find gold and silver ores. In fact, they did not look like they left the mines at all for years.

Pond. Water. Entrance.

The memory of the abandoned docks made Rino freeze. He wasn’t able to feel the temperature, but Noir could. Unfortunately, Noir did not swim, so Noir could not tell him if the water was hot or cold. Maybe the water wasn’t actually cold. It might be warm, or at least some parts of it could be warm.

The number of people who could swim and tell him if the water was hot or cold was numbered. None of the undead could tell him that, and Rino wasn’t sure if he should trouble his elderly teacher to take a dip in the water.

“Whatever,” Rino shrugged. He shouldn’t think about that just yet until he exhausted every other option.

At the moment, the lich still had another plan. He might have tested divination magic in the mines, but he did not test divination magic outside of the mining area. If he took the silver and gold ore samples and tried it near the dock, maybe he would find something there. Even if he couldn’t tell if the water was warm or cold, he could still use divination magic to confirm the existence of those elusive ores.

Nobody questioned why Rino brought silver and gold ores with him and enchanting a leather bag to store his divination spell circles. The number of trees killed to make the paper Rino used could only be replenished by using magic. If he were still a court magician, the empire wouldn’t have done anything about the deforested areas and let that accumulate into an environmental problem. At least in this world, Rino felt slightly better about consuming so much paper for the sake of development.

The dock was an area that Rino added barriers to. Not all his subordinates could readily visit the teleportation circle he left here. In fact, Rino wondered if there was a reason why the initial three-layered maze trap existed. Would he find more dwarven secrets if he cleared that, or was it a grand distraction and a dead end?

Regardless, Rino made up his mind. He might not be able to repair the diving suits that the dwarves used, but he could borrow their tube’s path in the water. He did not register it when he came the first few times, but there were tubes laid into the water that Rino did not think too much about. He simply assumed that they were water pipes to bring water into the caves for cooking and washing purposes. Thinking about it now, the dwarves could have gotten water from a better source. The water he swam in to get here was murky, looked stale, and had pieces of debris.

Taking the plunge, Rino dove deeply and followed the water pipe in the water. The more he studied it, the less of a pipe it appeared. This design looked more like a guiding path in the depths of this water for the strange diving machines to follow. The dwarves added glowing crystals along the way, and Rino had a feeling he was on to something.

Deciding that he was deep enough in this water pool, Rino activated a divination spell to look for silver.

This time, he wasn’t disappointed when he received a generic direction of where silver ores were. He did not know if these ores were in abundance or just a tiny speck. However, compared to the failure to detect any silver within the mines, Rino considered this an astounding success.

Paddling over and using the pipes as a rope to pull himself along through the water, Rino cast another divination spell to check if gold was in the same direction, and he wasn’t disappointed. Both ore spots were in the same direction, following these pipes lit by glowing crystals in the water even if silver ores were slightly further than gold.

The current started to pick up, and Rino found himself sticking close to the pipes and glowing crystals, afraid to be swept away by the underwater pull. It was strange how the water was still above in the cave but so violent here. When he swam in from the entrance, the water was so still and stale. There was also only one path, but now, Rino saw many branching paths. If it wasn’t for the glowing crystals and pipes guiding him, Rino would be swimming in here for a long time before he understood where he was going.

It appeared to be a submerged part of the cave beneath the dwarven mines. The underwater cave was full of unique minerals exposed in the walls, but Rino wasn’t here to admire it. The crystals that glowed only showed part of this underwater cavern’s beauty, but with dark vision, Rino could see many priceless gems growing in this cave. He recognised some of them like emerald, amethyst and lapis lazuli.

For some reason, the current was getting stronger and faster as Rino followed the pipe. He could no longer return now that he was here without the aid of magic, so the lich simply floated along like driftwood, with dark visionRino could see getting pushed by the waves to wherever he needed to go.

The water became rougher, and Rino suddenly had a bad feeling about it when he saw the pipe but slipped. The glowing crystals were also getting fewer and further in the distance as the current dragged him under. The lich tried to back pedal, but before he registered what was happening, he was caught in the rapids and sent on a long ride down what felt like a tunnel.

The ground beneath him became closer, but the water speed was much faster than when he first reached the gemstone cavern. As Rino’s head broke through the water’s surface, he finally figured out what was happening, and he shrieked mentally when he was thrown off what looked like a cliff that stood fifty metres tall and into a lagoon that looked like the abyss at the bottom.