Chapter 1014 - 849: One Million Tons of Magic Metal (Part 2)

A few hours later, Duke and the Message Mage arrived at the hilly belt where the mining area lay.

Baroque had long since brought several mining team leaders to wait at the entrance of the ore veins. Seeing Duke’s figure descend from the sky, the stocky old Great Mage strode forward, his rough face twitching with excitement he could barely suppress.

After a few brief courtesies, he couldn’t wait any longer and dragged Duke straight down into the main tunnel at the deepest part of the veins.

The rock wall of the tunnel was riddled with densely packed sampling holes, and in every hole a wooden tag marked with a serial number was inserted. The Magic Metal granules embedded in the bore walls gleamed with a faint blue luster under the headlamps.

At the tunnel’s end, the ore layer had been cut open into a massive cross-section, and on that section the distribution of the Magic Metal ore could be clearly seen.

It was obvious that this was not a scattering of ore pockets, nor a few intermittent branches of ore veins, but an entire, almost continuous, giant ore layer so rich that the whole rock wall shone under the lights.

Dark-silver Magic Metal particles were evenly inlaid in the ore matrix, as if someone had crushed an entire Milky Way and sprinkled it into the fissures of the rock.

Baroque pointed at that exposed section, his voice trembling slightly with excitement as he said that this was only a branch of the main vein; the richer core area lay still deeper and had yet to be fully opened.

Duke pressed his hand against the ore cross-section, sending his Spiritual Power probing deep into the rock wall.

A moment later, he withdrew his hand; in his heart he already had a rough estimate.

The scale of this ore vein was indeed, as Baroque had said, an extremely rare giant ore deposit.

The grade of Magic Metal Ore Veins is measured by the net Magic Metal content that can be extracted per ton of ore. Ordinary veins usually have only tens to hundreds of grams; rich veins can reach several kilograms. Yet this vein in front of them, conservatively estimated, had a grade of more than fifteen kilograms, and the core enrichment zone might even reach twenty kilograms.

Adding the main vein to all its branches, the total ore reserve was enormous—conservatively between sixty million and eighty million tons. Calculated at an overall grade of fifteen kilograms,

the net Magic Metal content contained in this vein was about nine hundred thousand to one million two hundred thousand tons.

Over a million tons.

Duke verified that number in his mind over and over, confirming he had not miscalculated.

The total amount of Metallic Yellow Sand he had accumulated, after multiple battles of consumption and replenishment, was currently only on the order of about two thousand tons.

Yet the Magic Metal this ore vein could provide was several hundred times his existing reserves.

If he absorbed all of this Magic Metal into the Yellow Sand Crystal, his reserve of Metallic Yellow Sand would break through the million-ton level.

With a million tons of Metallic Yellow Sand, he could construct a Demon God body purely from Metallic Yellow Sand.

By then, a Demon God body built from tens of thousands of tons of Magic Metal would wield a power difficult to even imagine.

If he unleashed a move like that, his opponent would probably be dumbstruck.

Whether he could win or not aside, it would be pure extravagance and sheer swagger.

It would be like throwing several mountains of gold straight at the enemy’s face.

Duke had Baroque and the miners withdraw from the main tunnel. Standing alone before the ore cross-section, he reached out and pressed his hand to the icy rock wall.

The Yellow Sand Crystal that had merged into his body since his apprentice days shivered faintly, like a giant beast that had slept for many years suddenly smelling prey and slowly awakening.

The next moment, countless fine dark-golden sand grains surged out of Duke’s palm, clinging to the exposed ore, moving like living things.

The instant the sand came into contact with the Magic Metal ore, the dark-silver metal granules embedded in the ore surface began to lose their sheen at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The metal elements themselves were directly drawn out of the ore matrix under the erosion of the sand, fusing into the interior of the grains.

The emptied ore turned into gray-white powder that rustled off the rock wall, piling up on the tunnel floor into a thick layer of waste slag.

The speed at which the Yellow Sand devoured Magic Metal was far faster than Duke had expected. What had started as only a palm-sized patch, after half an hour had spread to cover the whole exposed section. Another half hour later, the sand had already seeped into the depths of the ore layer, spreading along the natural trend of the veins in all directions.

The dark-silver metallic luster receded from the ore layer like a retreating tide, replaced by gray-white slag. Meanwhile, the Yellow Sand that had devoured massive amounts of Magic Metal kept swelling, splitting, then swelling again in the tunnel; the dark-golden sheen between the grains grew ever more intense, and the sea of sand itself grew larger and larger.

Duke withdrew his hand, and the Yellow Sand, like a beast gorged on food, continued to push forward.

He moved gradually along the course of the main vein; whenever he reached a rich node he released more Yellow Sand, and once it had devoured the ore there, he moved on to the next.

After the main vein was consumed completely, the Yellow Sand, guided by his Spiritual Power, automatically turned toward the branches.

On the northwest side there was a branch vein with slightly lower grade but astonishing thickness; on the northeast, several narrow but extremely high-grade thin veins; and in the southeast, a hidden ore pocket that Baroque’s prospecting team had missed, buried deeper than the main vein but with a grade of up to twenty-five kilograms—making it the richest area in the entire mining zone.

The whole process lasted a full three days.

Three days later, when the last grain of Yellow Sand finally returned to the Yellow Sand Crystal, the underground ore layers of the entire mining zone had been completely hollowed out.

The giant ore pocket that had once held tens of millions of tons of ore now contained only layer upon layer of gray-white slag and empty rock caverns. A sweep of Spiritual Power found nothing but emptiness—not even a single Magic Metal granule remained.

In the Light God Court, Duke waved his hand and Metal Yellow Sand surged forth. The pure dark-golden sea of sand had already expanded to the scale of a true desert.

Over a million tons of Metal Yellow Sand spread out across the wasteland, reflecting a cold, weighty dark-golden luster under the gentle halo of the Divine Court, like a solidified metallic ocean.

Duke made a rough calculation: on this trip, the net Magic Metal he had absorbed was around a million tons.

When Duke walked out of the mine, Baroque was squatting on a big rock at the entrance, puffing on his pipe.

Seeing Duke emerge, the stocky old Great Mage immediately hurried over. Those small eyes hidden beneath his thick brows flashed with a complex light—both expectant and aching.

Duke told him that the Magic Metal in this vein had already been completely extracted by him. If they wished to continue mining later, they could keep digging downward to see whether there were deeper associated veins.

Baroque froze for a moment at these words, then strode into the mine.

Half an hour later he came rushing out again, a look of wanting to cry but finding no tears plastered across his rough face. His two grizzled mustaches twitched and twitched, and after holding it in for quite a while he managed to say, "That was almost a million tons of Magic Metal... and in three days you just... Ah, as long as you find it handy to use."

Duke patted his shoulder and said that when they continued prospecting Magic Metal Ore Veins in the future, he wouldn’t strip them completely bare.

The Metal Yellow Sand he collected would in the end be used to protect the Oracle Plane.

Hearing this, the ache on Baroque’s face eased a little. He grunted a low "That’s good then," and said nothing more, only silently stuffing another pinch of tobacco into his pipe.

At that moment he didn’t look like a Great Mage, but like a farmer guarding his wheat field.

For the first time, Duke felt the benefit of having sole access to the resources of a Plane. Now the Oracle Plane was almost entirely under his control; any resource could be taken at will.

Of course, he couldn’t drain the lake to catch the fish. It still had to be developed sustainably.

Baroque squatted on the boulder at the mine entrance, the embers in his pipe flickering uncertainly in the dusk.

Duke stood beside him, his gaze passing over the low hills surrounding the mining zone, looking to the horizon in the distance, dyed dark-gold by the setting sun.

In this season the sky of the Oracle Plane was especially high and far. Wisps of thin cloud trailed long shadows from behind the western mountain range, like strands of silk stretched out by the wind.

The mining zone beneath their feet had already been stripped clean by the Yellow Sand, but under the mountains farther away, the prospecting teams of the Earth Sect were drilling and sampling at new coordinates. It would not be long before new ore veins were marked on the map.

Duke suddenly remembered a passage he had read in the Six-Ring Tower Library.

It was an old classic whose pages had been turned so often the edges had curled. The author was a Level 5 Mage long since fallen, who had recorded in the book what he had seen and experienced while traveling the Endless Plane.