Moneymaker

"So heavy…" Taylor complained as he picked up the backpack he had filled with Ufnir Iron ore.

It was much heavier than he imagined and he broke into a second the moment he tried to find his way back to the surface.

His clothes were already drenched in a cold sweat from mining for half an hour, but Taylor knew that he shouldn't take a rest. The moment he was to rest, he would try to postpone returning to Kial, which would take much longer than he walked to the mine because the backpack's weight would slow him down.

"Maybe, I should hire a carriage for the trip back, but then I have no money to lease a blacksmithing room…" Taylor sighed deeply as he walked through the weakly illuminated mining tunnel.

He returned to the main tunnel that lead to the surface on one side. Not a single soul was near him, which was quite helpful as he didn't want to expose the Ufnir Iron ore deposit to anyone else.

There was still some Ufnir Iron ore left behind and Taylor wanted to mine it later.

He reached the surface in twenty minutes where he was immediately stopped by a Guard.

"If you want to leave the mine, please hand me everything you've collected. I will separate, and weigh it," The young man said with a faint smile on his face.

The young man had short blond, almost golden hair, and he didn't look as bored as the first Guard he encountered. Rather, he looked almost as if he enjoyed his work, being close to nature and breathing fresh air.

"Of course," Taylor said immediately, heaving the backpack to the young man before he lightly added, "That's everything."

The guard didn't expect too much because the backpack was not filled to the brim and Dilan carried it without too many difficulties, but the heavy weight of the backpack pulled him to the ground like a wet sack.

His eyes widened slightly and he had to use every ounce of strength in his body to move Taylor's backpack to the large scale that was located next to a small wooden house.

A tiny wooden counter stood in front of the wooden house that was used for Guards to rest or to proceed with the paperwork.

The guard sweated heavily when he moved the backpack but he didn't stop in his tracks, not until the backpack ended up on the scale.

"163 kilograms…you must have trained your Knight aura quite a bit already. Not bad!" The young guard smiled embarrassedly at Taylor, who could only smile back.

He didn't possess a Knight aura but that was not something he could tell the young guard.

"According to the Fair-profit-Share regulation 50%, 81 kilograms, will go to the government. You can sell the rest for the market price of 1 Copper thaler per kilogram Ufnir Iron ore," the young Guard explained, calmly looking at Taylor.

Taylor knew that the purchasing price for Ufnir Iron ore was around 1.5 Copper thaler. Thus, he expected the price to sell it to be around 1 Copper thaler, which happened to be the case.

"If you sell everything now, you can go back mining and repeat the process until you're tired out. You won't waste your time this way, and you'll earn enough money to hire a carriage that'll bring you back to Kial later," Eris came up with an idea, the same idea that had flashed through Taylor's mind.

He nodded his head and smiled toward the young guard, who returned his stare without hesitation.

"I want to sell everything then," Taylor said and the young guard nodded his head. He went inside the wooden house, and shortly after a young woman appeared with a stash of papers in her hand. She seemed tired out and like a sloth as she moved her glasses back extremely slowly.

"81.5 kilograms…give him 82 Copper thaler," The woman said as slowly as she had moved her hand and the young guard nodded his head as he returned back to the wooden hut.

There was a smaller currency than Copper thaler called 'Copper nuggets'. 10 Copper nuggets were equal to one Copper thaler, but they were rarely used by Awakened.

Everything they needed was usually much more expensive than Copper thaler, to begin with, so Copper nuggets didn't hold any value to them.

Thus, Taylor was a bit confused that the woman didn't say that he should get 81 Copper thaler and 5 Copper nuggets but that she rounded up. It was actually not important if one thought about it for a bit but the government would never voluntarily gift someone anything.

"You don't need to look at me like this. Rounding up is only fair because the demand for Ufnir Iron ore is increasing while the number of regular miners stagnates. You are the first new Awakened, who bothers about mining in the last 10 days," the woman said when she noticed Taylor's gaze as he received a small leather pouch with 82 Copper thaler inside.

Taylor just nodded his head before he picked up his now empty backpack and the mining pickaxe he had put down to attach the pouch to his belt.

"I will come back soon," He said, turning back to the mine where his Ufnir Iron ore deposit was waiting for him.

There should be more than enough left to fill his backpack twice more.

Taylor walked out of the Ufnir Iron ore deposit, mined for half an hour, and returned with a filled backpack, after spending a total of 60 minutes inside the mine.

His backpack nearly tore because the ore's heavy weight wore it out very fast, and both the guard and the woman looked at him slightly baffled. According to their knowledge, there were no ore deposits on the higher floors anymore and the few ore deposits that were left in the middle floor were usually occupied by their regulars.

It shouldn't have been possible for him to walk down to the lower floors, to mine almost 170 kilograms Ufnir Iron ore, and return in an hour.

But Taylor did, and he earned 85 as he sold every single crumb he had collected the hour before.

During his third trip, Taylor cleared out the entire small ore deposit that giving him a total of 140 kilograms.

Half of it was taken by the government and Taylor left the public mine with a bright expression.

"He may look poor but I think that his Knight aura is developed well. His stamina and physical strength are amazing…" the young guard said and the sloth-like woman could only nod her head.

"I hope he will come back in the future," she just said without putting much meaning in her words as she lightly added, "But I didn't sense a Knights aura around him, so you must be wrong."

The woman yawned, unbothered as she returned inside the wooden house, leaving a baffled young guard, who was also a recently awakened Knight Squire.

"But…he could carry everything so easily…"

[Author Note: Please comment how you like/dislike the novel! I accept every type of criticism]