Shop

I arrived at what seemed to be a shop; I could only tell because the doors were made of glass and they were giant, giving me enough visibility into the store.

I entered the building, which was essentially a giant warehouse, and looked around. Hung from the ceilings were big signs that led to different sections of the shop, for example, cold foods, canned foods, bread, games, tools, electronics, and more. The walls were ridged vertically, hence why I said it was a warehouse, and they were made of a matte, grey metal.

I first headed to the section I had deciphered as 'tools' and found several options of what I was looking for. The pickaxes hung from the wall in several sizes, and I carefully went through each to find one that fit me. I settled on one with a handle 3 feet long, made of a sleek black metal. I didn't ponder on what it was made of and moved on. 

As I left the section, I walked past shovels and hammers. I turned, realizing that they could be useful, so I grabbed a shovel and a sledgehammer. I didn't know what was necessary for mining, as I had forgotten to research it, so I prayed that they all had a use.

I moved over to the food section, grabbing dried meats and canned goods. I predicted that I would be in the tunnel for a month or two, so about 200 days. I packed more than that amount of food, however, choosing to grab food for 250 days. I grabbed some multivitamins, I would need them as there would be no sunlight to help me, and I looked at the last thing on my list. Water. Luckily for me, Averia had an abundance of water and sustainable practices, so there was no shortage of it in the store. Had it been an Earthen store, I'm sure that I would have emptied several stores of their stock of water.

The cart I had grabbed near the entrance had been filled, and I realized that what I was transporting would be both too obvious and too heavy, so I bought a blanket to solve the first problem and hoped that the store would let me buy the cart. It was dangerous to leave such supplies in the open without any coverage, after all.

At the checkout, I watched as the man saw me unpack my shopping, and I chuckled as his eyes bulged forward. He was surprised, but that was the least of his worries. He hadn't expected me to put the cart itself onto the machine, causing him to fall off the chair he was leaning on.

He began to scan my items, every one of them, so I knew it would take a while. I opened the mental book inside my head and continued reading until my immersion was broken. 

I had gotten about 300 chapters in, the book was in a Webnovel format, and what I saw there made me want to puke. It was the start of the romance in the story, but that wasn't the bad thing, no, it was who it was with. 

The Goldsmiths were close friends with another business family, the Vanderharts, and that family had only 3 kids in their generation, so it was much laxer than mine. There were two boys and 1 girl, but she was the focus.

Her name was Amanda Vanderhart, and she was an absolute bitch. She joined in on abusing me and ordering me around, and since Alexander had killed the Goldsmiths, he hadn't learned what she had done to me. I wasn't sure if he would ever find out, but from the way they were acting, it was obvious she was the main heroine if not the only heroine.

'Oh, you have terrible taste, terrible taste I tell you.' 

I was disrupted from my rant as the man who was scanning my food tried to catch my attention. 

"ຮ𝑖ꞃ, Ỿ𝜎ปꞃ ȶ𝜎ȶลℓ 𝑖ຮ ᧒ᗱᒣ,ᔰƼᦲ ป𝓒."

I paid for the bill with my bracelet, tapping the hologram to send the money to him.

"ȶჩลກҡ Ỿ𝜎ป." We both said.

I spent the next 10 minutes packing what I had bought back onto the cart, and then laying the blanket on top. Thankfully, I was allowed to buy the cart. I would have struggled otherwise.

I pushed the cart out of the story, which was really hard to do, considering it weighed several ten valrices, one valrix weighing 5 pounds. I moved to the side of the door and then sat on top of my cart. I had to rescan the book to find the location of the mine. 

In the story, Alexander had been chasing a bounty who led him into the mine. They had tussled, and the altercation led to him being blasted through the wall. He crashed against a wall that his sturdy body couldn't break, and in that process, flew through the cheat. 

Since he interacted with it, the cheat activated. At that moment, Alexander's mind had been filled with 3 thoughts, 'Murder', 'Pain' and 'Living'. This caused the cheat to form itself as a tattoo of the heart symbol, in tatters, with a sword sticking through it. It was placed just over his chest too, and it looked pretty cool.

I assumed that the cheat would form itself as a tattoo of whatever the user was thinking of, so I planned to get a badass one.

'Ahh, here it is.' I swiftly found the location of the mine and skimmed through its backstory.

- The bounty led me into one of the mines that had been abandoned. I remember researching it since it had been one of the possible hideouts of my bounty. The mine was located just south of the city center, and it was an abandoned mine because, for 3 whole metrix, it hadn't produced a single ore. 

"Alright, I'll chase you!" I screamed, following after the fool who had run into a dead end.

The book had mentioned metrix before, it was a type of measurement used universally. 1 metrix, plural metrix, was about 5 miles.

"Oh, damn. That's a long distance. Oh well." I realized that the distance didn't matter, this was something I had to do, so I shoved my complaints down, forcing them into a ball and then throwing it to the corner of my mind.

I hopped off the cart, got behind it, and started to push. It was going to be a long night.

---

"Uuh, how I wish I could just buy an Element Crystal. The abilities don't matter, I just want the strength increase, please." By now, I had been pushing the cart for 19 hours, taking short breaks every couple of hours. My work at the gym for a week had only been ever so slightly worth it, it seemed. 

The possibility of buying a Crystal crossed my mind more than once, but I physically couldn't afford it. After my little shopping spree, I only had 54,550 UC, and an Element Crystal cost a lot more than that.

Anyway, I was close to my destination. South of the city center was the Industrial District, which I should have expected, and since the city of Aver was built on flat ground, I hadn't struggled too much.

"Just a little further." I said to myself. I could see the mine ahead, a fenced-off area with no one working in it, with signs mentioning private property.

Once I reached within 5 feet of the fence, I pushed the cart the last bit, giving my arms a needed break. 

I jogged to the fence, looking for a way to enter. Alexander and his bounty had jumped over the fence, but I couldn't. It was maybe 10 feet tall, just under double my height, and I could jump a third of the distance. Not only was that not enough but there was a high chance that the fence was enchanted to damage you badly if you touched it.

I scoured the fence from left to right, and finally noticed a partition between the metal, on the far right side. I moved my cart over there and found the door. It was locked with chains, a rather Earth thing to do, and not secure at all. It seemed the owner had little care for if it was broken into.

'Better for me, I guess.' I thought as I lifted the blanket and reached for the pickaxe. I deemed it the most effective tool to break the chains, and using the wide flat side, I hammered it against the chain.

CLANK!

With a loud, clanking sound, the chains fell apart. 'Damn, this is a nice tool.' I thought.

I pulled them out from round the door, and pushed it open.

CREAK-

The door was rusted, making an eerie sound that matched well with the time. It was the final quarter of the day, so night had descended upon that half of the world.

'Crap, it's like a horror.' I realized. Horror and I didn't have the best history, on the occasions I saw it, I almost pissed myself in fright. 'Ah, fuck.'

I steeled my resolve and dragged the cart into the grounds of the mine. The entrance to the mineshaft was up ahead, so I made my way to it. 

I peered inside, only to find a steep decline, which meant I had to move backward, pushing up on the cart so it didn't roll to the bottom and crash.

"Once more, you're almost there, me." I psyched myself up, before stepping into the mine and pulling the cart. 

Once I was inside, I quickly shifted my weight, pressing down on my feet and pushing against the cart, because I expected it to roll downward. I was right, but my quick thinking had stopped the weight from becoming my demise.

"One step at a time."

---

I lay on the floor panting for the thin amount of air that I could receive. I had reached the bottom, a day later, and all that was left was the length to the end of the mine.

"My god, never again."

I forcibly sat up, and then put my hands on my knees to push myself into a standing position.

There was only a little bit to go.