Exploration

[You have chosen the Normal Difficulty]

Normal difficulty is easy enough and even if I close my eyes. As a person who hunts here almost every day to farm materials during the past timeline, this is just a little cakewalk for me.

The moment we continue to the path of the cave, Cave Spiders and Cave Goblins appeared, snarling at us. They are very many that the cave's ground is covered by them. The good thing is that they have low HP

[Cave Spider]

Lv 50

HP: 3,000/3,000

MP: 100/100

Attributes: Insect, Poison

[Cave Goblin]

Lv 60

HP: 9,000/9,000

MP: 0/0

Attributes: Humanoid

"Use an AOE spell!" I shouted.

"Meteor Strike!"

Meteor Strike is a good choice of AOE magic against enemies. It has no cast time, and it doesn't consume too much mana with the addition of elemental and burn damage making it a good spell for picking small fries with small HP that only relies on numbers.

I do not need to use AOE attacks, normal attacks are enough just for me. One bullet from my Versatile Weapon and it already inflicts 10k damage. I can just do some rapid shooting and I will still be fine.

"Wow, your basic attacks are powerful! I wish a magician's staff can also inflict that much damage..." Dolly pouted.

"Magicians rely more on spells and magic attacks. They have a bigger pool of mana compared to melee units, that is why they have lower physical attacks for that reason."

"I also wanted to be able to use magic and physical attack just like how you are doing it..."

"That is impossible... If your class is Versatile, you might be able to do so, but you have a magician class, you can only rely on magic all the time."

Dolly sighed, "I should have chosen a Berserker class or the Fighter class instead of Magician. It's too late for me to change since I already invested a lot in my Magician class and it is a waste to start over from scratch."

It was a good thing she didn't have any thoughts of changing classes since the class change will be available for free during the release of new classes. If she ever changed class, it will be a disaster for both players and monsters.

We proceed further and before we reached the next area, we found 3 veins of ore. One can produce a raw ingot like the one earlier while the two remaining veins produce an ore that can be processed alongside the ingot to know what it might be as they tend to give out the diamond or raw metals.

Since Dolly did not reject me to mine the veins, I started harvesting them one by one. I was a quick miner and efficient enough that one strike can produce one ingot or ore from the veins. If my mining level is a bit higher, I would have been able to get more of them but I can only level them slowly.

[Your mining level has risen from level 1 to level 2]

Alright, my mining skill has leveled. It might be slow but that is good enough rather than nothing. When the veins of ores and ingots ran out of materials to release, I have already gathered 15 ingots and 19 ores. As expected, they are one of the best sources of raw materials. I just hoped once they are processed they will turn out great instead of turning into scrap metals.

Dolly and I continue to move and reached a certain area where it was a crossroad. One of the roads leads to a treasure room, the other into a boss room and the other is a road where a miniboss will spawn and a unique mini-game will occur where you need to whack the ores around to deal damage to the miniboss. The miniboss cannot be defeated and will flee after a certain amount of damage is dealt with. It is a very generous minigame for ore farmers and ingot farmers.

"It's a crossroad..." Dolly said as she tries to determine which place is better to choose.

"It must be one of those places where it leads to a treasure room or a trap room. We can check it out one by one if you wanted to, there might be goodies at the very end of the tunnels. Shall we?"

"Did you just say treasure?!"

"Uh... yes?"

"Then what are we waiting for? Let's check out the treasures right away! We can't afford to waste our time!" and without waiting for me, she darted straight into the whack-an-ore mini-game room.

"Hey! Wait up!"

I chase Dolly until the end of the room. There should be enemies when I pass by but not a single one is left behind. Looking into the log, she has already defeated the enemies blocking on the road. This is the first time I have seen Dolly been so greedy with treasures. Or she just hid it so well in the past timeline as she is already quite fully equipped that time compared to right now where her gear is not that much as they can all be bought in the blacksmith shop.

Arriving at the mini-boss room, Dolly is already wondering when 8 sets of ore veins appeared in front of her.

"What is going on here, Bladeheart? I can't seem to proceed here since these ore veins are blocking my progress."

"Damn! Get down!"

I rush forward and pull down Dolly into the ground as a laserbeam suddenly emerges from the center of our front. If Dolly did not manage to duck before the laserbeam attacked, her HP might have melted down into butter immediately.

"Wah! That's dangerous!" Dolly hesitated to stand back up after the incident.

"Are you alright?"

"Don't worry, I didn't get hit by the laserbeam however, that was a scary experience! Just what did attack us?"

"Let me see first," I said and peek at the mini-boss.

[Whack-an-Ore Master] [Miniboss]

LV ???

HP: ????/????

MP: 10/100

Attribute: ????

As expected, it has a question mark health, level, and attribute. Only its mana is measurable which is a measly 100. However, that 100 mana is easily charging up, and once it gets back to the full 100, it will immediately release the laser beam.

Not too far from our feet is the hammer which is specifically used for pounding down the ores.

"Are you ready Dolly? We are going to do some whack-a-mole game to defeat an enemy. It's hammer time."