A Single Mother's Farm of the Gods
Chapter 364: Gemstone Mining [I]

Chapter 364: Gemstone Mining [I]

With the witch agreeing to help, Elaina immediately grabbed her pickaxe and ready herself to take the necessary materials for the ritual. If she can get the materials as soon as she can, they can end this problem they are facing before it gets worse. No need to make it the same as the Endless Winter debacle they had before. If there is a solution ready to be done, then Elaina will do it for the sake of the farm.

After preparing to gear for the mines, Julia came to her room carrying a small piece of paper.

"Sis, here are the necessary materials you need to get so we can begin with what we need to do."

Elaina accepted the paper and looked at the necessary materials. She frowned, seeing that most of them were gemstones, and she needed to mine them as is, not process them.

"I know what you are thinking and I already asked her about it. She said these gemstones hold the latent power of the land which allowed the gemstones to form, to begin with. Using the latent power to its potential, extracting it on raw materials instead of processed ones would allow for greater results."

"So that is the case. But isn’t this quite a lot?" Elaina scratches her head. The list goes back to back on the paper.

"Considering what we are going to do, it will require tremendous energy to take which is why there are a lot of materials to be used. If we wanted to remove the reason for this rain, then we would have to do something to do it."

After the short talk, Julia left to start her own preparation and help the witch with the ritual while Elaina was finishing her gearing. Since she will be quite a while there on the mines, she will need food to energize herself and a few things to keep herself going. Some of the materials on the lists are something she has yet to encounter before and are more likely present deep into the mines.

Not only that, but she will also have to fight her way from floor to floor as she mines her way down. Time won’t be a problem though with the anomaly that the mines have, but she will still spend a lot longer on the mines than she estimated.

With her preparations done, she immediately headed out to the mines and ready herself for some extensive mining trips.

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The mines remain to be the same as ever. The elevator remains the same as ever as well but she will not be using it this time around. She will need to begin at the very beginning to mine the starter minerals on the list and get them as she progresses through the mines. First on the list, are raw copper, raw iron, and two kinds of quartz variants; amethyst and aventurine. She found a few back then when she was mining back then so she knew that she could easily find them in the first layers of the mine.

"Let’s get this started."

Descending to the first floor, a few slimes appeared before her. They are weak so she easily disposed of them without any problems. She didn’t forget to grab their loot before she started looking for veins to mine what she needed. On the first try, she immediately found two veins of iron that she quickly mined, securing the iron from her checklist. She looked around for a bit and found a small ore of copper. It wasn’t much but she still needed more. She needed a lot of copper ore after all.

Once she mined all the available nodes she could mine, she descended to the next level of the mines. This time around, there were no monsters to beat on that floor which was nice. But there are also fewer resources she can mine on that floor as well. Luckily, it was one of the ores she needed to find, the Amethyst. It’s not much but it adds to the necessary amount she needed to haul back. She made sure to carefully mine it as Amethyst can break pretty quick if she hits the wrong place. It’s not as brittle as glass, but it can be pretty fragile if one wrong move is all it takes to break it into pieces.

With the amethyst mined on that floor, she descended to the next floor and this time around, there are plenty of monsters present though the place is also littered with nodes and veins that she can mine. She quickly dispatches all the slimes in the area before they can melt and destroy her minerals. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t hard either.

"Agh, damn, there’s too many slimes to kill..." Elaina laments after she finishes dispatching the group of slimes after seeing the end result. Although she destroyed all of the slimes, a few of them dissolved a few of the necessary minerals she needed, namely, the single Aventurine node she was trying to protect ended up dissolving, leaving her with nothing but scrap. Some aventurine were like regular rock nodes so when she noticed it was an aventurine node, she was too late.

"If only it was that easy," Elaina sighed as she gathered the rest of the minerals she needed.

After descending five floors, she completed her first objective to gather the aforementioned materials...except for the Aventurine. Because the aventurine only exists on the first five floors, seeing as she is lacking them right now, she has to go back to the first floor and do it all over again. Thankfully, the mines change their structure every time she goes in and out of the mines, allowing her to regenerate the nodes she needs and see for herself that she gets them. Of course, the monsters also respawn but that was the less problematic thing.

With the Aventurine done after retrying all five floors again, it is time to find the actual gemstones this time around. The 6th floor to the 10th floor is the home of rubies and sapphire gemstone nodes. They are not too numerous but they are relatively common to find. The only problem is that on these floors, she will be in competition with a few monsters. The slimes are the usual culprits but this time, goblins are now present. They are less intelligent compared to the Civilized monsters on the surface, and only act by instinct. And their first instinct is to mine every single shiny thing they see.

Elaina has no problem with them on her first descent to the mines as she was not specifically looking for these gemstones before but now that she is looking for them, she will have to try hard to ensure that she got these gemstones first before those monsters do so.

And so, Elaina started to begin her first struggle. At first, she had some luck at dealing with the monsters before they could even try to get to the minerals, allowing her to safely collect the materials. Of course, it wasn’t enough so she had to go to the next floor to mine the next floor. However, the next floor was an infested area, and since it was infested, the nodes in this place were mostly empty.

Elaina can only continue clearing all the monsters until she has cleared all of them. Of course, she ended up losing more time than necessary. It seems she got so unlucky as she has mostly dealt with infested areas from the 6th floor to the 10th floor. It was an annoying experience and she ended up climbing and descending the same floors again and again just to finish her collection job. If not for the time freeze anomaly of the mine, she might have already spent at least 4 hours doing the same thing over and over just to fully complete all the necessary ruby and sapphire mining she needed.

She was too tired to go on for the rest of the floor and decided to rest on the 10th floor of the mines. Since it was a hot spring area, it was also a good place for her to rest her aching muscles as a result of continuous mining. Knowing this, she prepared it in advance and brought spare clothes and a few items that she would need for taking a bath.

Undressing her clothes and taking the items she needed, she washed her body first and rinsed it from all the dirt and grime that had accumulated during her battles earlier before she went to the hot spring and soaked in her weary body.

"Aaahh...I can keep on doing this."

The heat of the hot spring is so relaxing that her tense body feels like all the fatigue seems to melt away. If only the hot spring was located on her farm, she would keep on soaking her body in the hot spring every day just to reduce the fatigue of the day.

"It’s a bit sad that the gods are too busy right now to make a good chat but it is nice to have some peace and quiet for once, just forgetting all the troubles I have."

However, as much as she wanted to continue relaxing in the heat of the hot spring, she couldn’t afford to keep on relaxing. Once she feels good again, Elaina is ready to continue her task. She still long way to go in finishing all of the necessary gemstones and minerals she needs, but if she continues with this pace, it won’t be long before she will be done and ready to begin the ritual.