Galen was the richest man in the town. The reason was simple. His father was the mayor of the town, and he owned a mine. Although the annual profit from the ores was not much, it couldn't be easier for him to live a carefree life.
Garen eyed Roland up and down. In the end, for Falken's sake, he could only say, "Alright, since you've spoken, I'll take this nephew. However, I'm a fair man. I'll pay him as much as he can dig. How does that sound?"
Falken chuckled. "That's not a problem."
Then, he patted Roland's shoulder and left slowly. Galen opened the door of the big stone house, and the smell of rocks rushed out. This was a big warehouse, and there were a lot of colorful ores in it. They were all sorted and piled up.
Galen took out a hoe and a basket. He tossed them to Roland and said, "These are your tools. Go ahead and dig … Right, what's your name? I need to remember it."
Galen picked up the quill and took out a pen from the drawer. He opened it carefully and said, "Tell me your age."
"Roland, seventeen."
Roland was already twenty-two in reality, but his character in the game was set to be seventeen, between a teenager and a young man. So, he could only say that. After all, he was too young to be believed even if he said that he was twenty-two.
Galen wrote down his name in the notebook. Roland peeked at it, only to discover that the characters in this world were hieroglyphics. There was no telling whether it was because of the characters themselves or because of Galen's personal writing style.
Then, Galen waved at Roland, and the latter walked into the cave with the hoe and the basket.
The entrance of the cave was quite wide. After all, it was normal for a cave to be ventilated. On the wall of the cave, an oil lamp was hanging every dozen meters. The wall was so wet that one's hand would be wet after touching it.
Roland dragged the basket and walked forward. The ground was full of holes and gravel. After walking for several minutes, he finally heard the sound of knocking ahead. After a while, he saw the end of the cave. Almost ten people were scattered in different directions of the cave, sweating profusely.
This was the real mining area. The space inside was quite spacious. Above them was a rock ceiling that was more than ten meters high. The distance between the left and right sides was about thirty meters. The visibility was very dim. Although there were oil lamps hanging on the surrounding rock walls, it was still very difficult to see far away.
Roland jumped off the high platform and made a noise. Someone noticed him, but they soon continued with their mining. For miners, time was money. There was no mistake about this.
After carefully observing the surrounding environment, Roland walked to a place where there was no one around and put down the basket. He observed the other miners' swinging postures and began to imitate them.
Mining at noon, sweat dripping from the soil of the cave. It was all copper, and the purity was five.
Amidst the clanking sounds, Roland somehow remembered the poem. When online games were popular, he was still a child less than ten years old. He lived frugally and skipped breakfast for a month to save up the monthly card for the first month of a certain X game. Then, he spent two hours mining in the cave every day and exchanged the game coins for the monthly card. Only then did he manage to play the game.
What left the deepest impression on him in his first online game was mining. Now, he was mining again in the world's first virtual online game. He didn't know whether he should describe it as reincarnation or fate.
Mining was hard work … It was tiring, but the players had class templates, and even Roland, a spellcaster, had a much higher physical quality than regular people. When he swung the hoe at the beginning, it always hit the surface of the hard rocks, or the tip of the hoe would get stuck in the cracks of the rocks. But practice always made perfect. Half an hour later, Roland felt that his strength and timing of swinging the hoe seemed to have improved.
A yellow-and-white stone was dug out. Roland picked it up and observed it. Then, he shook his head and threw it aside, before he resumed his work. When Galen opened the warehouse earlier, he had taken pictures of the ores in the warehouse with the system's photo function. So, he could check if what he dug out was ores with the system's photo in his head.
Of course, it wasn't very accurate, but it was much better than guessing on his own.
Another half an hour later, the other miners had all sat down to rest, but Roland was still mining. The other miners gathered together and pointed at him from behind. Faint laughter could be heard. Judging from the sound, they were probably laughing at Roland for using so much strength and for his tender skin, he would definitely not be able to hold on for long.
Roland ignored them and kept working. After all, he wasn't tired yet, so he might as well keep working.
The miners laughed for a while and went back to digging. An hour later, they were so tired that they gathered to rest again, but Roland was still working. This time, they stopped talking about Roland and simply watched him in silence.
After a while, they continued mining. But an hour later, they were so tired that they gathered to rest again, and Roland was still working.
The group of miners looked at the thin young man in front of them with disbelief in their eyes. One of them couldn't help but walk to Roland's side and look at the stones in Roland's basket. Then, he looked at the small hole in the rock wall that Roland had dug out with a complicated expression.
Roland pried off another stone from the rock wall, glanced at it, and then threw it into the basket. He smiled at the miner who came to check on him, then dragged the heavy basket and left the mining area with his pickaxe.
At this moment, Language Proficiency was gone, and Roland was too lazy to communicate with other people.
The group of miners watched him leave, then looked at their baskets, which were only half-filled with ores, and suddenly felt bored.
Dragging the basket out of the mine, Roland's eyes couldn't adjust to the dazzling sunlight outside. Then, he dragged the basket over to Galen and slammed it down heavily on Galen's table.
The basket was so heavy that it almost collapsed the table. Galen was so shocked that he woke up from his sleep. He looked at the basket that blocked his view and turned around to see that it was Lauren. He exclaimed in surprise.
However, Roland couldn't understand him anymore. He could only shrug helplessly after hearing Galen's gibberish. "Sorry, Language Proficiency's effect is over."
Galen was briefly stunned. He didn't understand what Roland was talking about, but as a traveling merchant, he knew what was going on.
He still wanted to say something, but he could only helplessly move the basket down and start sorting the stones in the basket. The useless ones were thrown aside, and then he divided them into three piles according to their quality. Finally, he counted them and took out twenty-eight copper coins from his waist pouch and placed them on the table.
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