After a thorough purge of the Dwarven Kingdom, the Hero League, led by Ethan, gained complete control over the kingdom's ruling power.
The first thing the Heroes did after officially founding the nation was to mine the Mana Crystal Vein located underground.
There's no such thing as a secret in this world, and they planned to mine as much as possible before the news leaked.
With the high value of Mana Crystals, each day of mining brought incalculable potential wealth.
The major guilds, after much heated debate, tentatively determined the personnel for mining the underground vein.
It would be entirely composed of Heroes, numbering around five hundred.
When it came to getting rich, the major guilds exhibited tremendous efficiency.
Five hundred Heroes were quickly recruited, all core members of the major guilds.
The teleportation gate's light slowly brightened, and the Heroes of the major guilds flooded into the underground city.
After cleaning up the castle's ruins, a group of Heroes began to mine the Mana Crystal Vein.
This was an extraordinarily rich vein. Not long after the mining began, cries of astonishment rang out from the crowd.
"Holy crap, look at the size of this one... How much is this damn thing worth?"
"Isn't mining Mana Crystals supposed to be hard? Why's it like picking cabbages here?"
"Is this a Magic Crystal too? My God... how rich is this vein?"
"I originally refused to be a miner... but now all I can say is, 'This is fantastic!'"
A group of Heroes, who initially showed little interest in mining, suddenly became enthusiastic.
No one needed to whip them into action; they were all hands on deck.
When subordinates are lazy or lack enthusiasm, it usually boils down to one problem: not enough money.
Now, with a vast Mana Crystal Vein in front of them, each swing of a pickaxe was like digging up a bag of gold.
This was much more satisfying than killing monsters and leveling up.
Ethan had recently reviewed many documents about this world.
Mana Crystals were not rare; they were found all over the continent.
But the problem was that most of the veins yielded very little.
Some Mana Crystal Veins, even if completely mined out, would yield only a few pounds of Mana Crystals.
A vein yielding over a hundred pounds of Mana Crystals could be called rich.
And the vein under Blackstone Volcano, in just the first three days of mining, had already produced over a hundred pounds of Mana Crystals.
Even Ethan, whose fortune was now considerable, found his hands trembling at such terrifying wealth.
A week into the large-scale mining of the Mana Crystal Vein, the teleportation array in the palace suddenly shook violently.
A group of Heroes stumbled out, looking utterly disheveled.
Thinking it was an enemy attack, Ethan rushed over with a group of high-ranking Heroes, only to find no enemies, just a bunch of terrified Heroes lying on the ground, panting heavily.
"What happened?" Henry was the first to ask.
It took the group a while to recover, and finally, one of the Heroes, looking pale, said, "Dead... they're all damn dead..."
"Ghosts, there are ghosts down in the mine!"
After the Hero finished speaking, he screamed hysterically, constantly yelling about ghosts, as if he had lost his mind.
Henry knocked him out with a slap, and only then did he quiet down.
"Someone sane tell me what the hell happened down there?" Henry roared.
A slightly less pale Hero managed to recover a bit, then got up from the ground and said, "He's not wrong... Something really eerie happened down there... It's too damn weird."
"We were mining just fine at first, and then suddenly one guy stiffened and fell to the ground, foaming at the mouth. We thought he'd been poisoned. Then the few Heroes around him fell down without warning..."
"Then ghostly white shadows began to appear in the mine, and a lot of people died suddenly. We tried to fight back, but our skills had no effect on those creatures..."
"The ghostly figures kept multiplying, so we had to flee. Even after we escaped, people kept dying, so we had to run back here."
As the Hero spoke, his face turned deathly pale, as if recalling something terrifying.
Several visibly shaken Heroes raised their hands, saying, "We can't keep mining there... I've made enough money these past few days, can I quit?"
"Yeah, money's not as important as life."
"I want out too!" A group of Heroes chimed in.
Ethan glanced at the crowd and didn't rush to reply.
After exchanging glances with Jonathan and others, he said, "We understand the situation below, and no one wants to gamble with their lives, so we won't force any of you."
"But you all know the value of the Mana Crystal Vein. We'll settle your pay for the past few days, but there's one condition: you must stay in the royal city for a while, and not leave."
A few Heroes seemed dissatisfied with Ethan's decision, but under the stares of a group of high-level Heroes, they didn't dare to openly resist and had to bear with it.
Jonathan arranged for a group of Heroes to take the survivors away, and the high-level Heroes gathered to discuss.
"What do you make of the situation in the mine?"
"I don't know if it's true or false. Let's go down and see first."
A group of high-level Heroes formed a ten-person squad, activated the teleportation circle, and once again arrived at the underground dwarf city.
In front of the mine where the accident occurred, there lay sixty-seven corpses on the ground, all with dull skin and wide, terrified eyes filled with blood, as if they had seen something extremely horrifying.
From within the mine, strands of black and white mist wafted out.
Even from a distance, they could feel a powerful sense of oppression...
"This fog... Are there really ghosts?" Henry looked at the white fog drifting out of the hole, his eyes full of doubt and uncertainty.
They had encountered this fog on their first exploration underground, and after killing the Mutant Elemental Lord, they thought they had dealt with the source of the fog.
Could it be that the Mutant Elemental Lord had somehow come back to life?
"There are supernatural forces in this world, but I don't believe in any ghosts or goblins," Jonathan said with conviction, starting to examine the bodies on the ground.
A few accompanying Heroes moved one of the corpses on the ground, their faces changing, and said in a low voice, "Timothy is dead..."
Henry and Jonathan moved closer upon hearing the name, approaching the corpse.
Timothy was also a Rank A Hero, assigned to oversee the mining Heroes.
He had not even entered the vein and had died so inexplicably.
"What was the cause of death?"
"It seems to be... suffocation."
Hearing the word "suffocation," everyone suddenly fell silent, remembering their previous suffocating experience all too vividly.
A sense of foreboding arose in many of their hearts...
"Find someone to ask how Timothy died," commanded one Hero. Soon, there was a report.
"After the incident underground, Timothy was the first to rush down... but how he died, why he died here, no one knows the reason."
"A Rank A Hero, dead just like that, without any explanation?" Henry furrowed his brows.
Ethan also felt that something was off. Even for him, killing Timothy with all his might would not be difficult, but killing him without leaving any injuries was something he couldn't do.
"What do we do? Temporarily close the mine? Or..." Jonathan asked, looking toward Ethan.
In this situation, only Ethan could make the decision.
"Everyone knows how much Mana Crystal this vein can produce in a day. If we close it, the gold coins we'll lose will be astronomical."
"Let's first find a solution, see if we can handle the source of this strange incident, and discuss other matters later."
"We've encountered this mist before; logically, it shouldn't have any real killing power..."
Ethan stepped forward, not approaching the mine rashly. He stood at a distance, pulled out an iron sword, and tossed it toward the fog.
Sizzling...
As soon as the iron sword touched the mist, it made a strange noise, and large patches of rust appeared on the blade before it fell to the ground.
Without Ethan speaking, everyone realized that something was wrong.
This fog was clearly different from what they had encountered before, as it could corrode metal.
This was dreadful news for most Heroes.
Their weapons and armor were made of metal, and without these items, they'd be as good as unarmed on the battlefield, greatly reducing their combat effectiveness.
"Bring some live creatures," Ethan commanded.
Soon, several Heroes came over with cages of chickens.
Ethan casually threw one into the black fog.
A rooster's crowing was heard, and they could even see the chicken flapping its wings and jumping around in the fog.
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