Chameleon: My True Face 8 Ethernum

Wuxing bitterly shook his head as he picked up his equipment which consisted of old-school mining tools—a pickaxe, a shovel and many other small ones like a chisel and a hammer.

Together with the equipment for actual mining which looked to be a little bit old and heavily worn out, there was a modern addition to this job that would help him a lot.

"This is an Ethernum Scanner, as how we like to call it, but it's actually just an ordinary energy detector. We use it to detect dense energy which was behind these rocks to determine possible positions of Ethernum crystals. You should always use it before you start digging deeper. Be careful because Ethernum easily breaks."

The professional miner then gave him a small hand scanner and introduced his workplace.

"This is your spot. It is your own 10 square meters and no one can mine at your spot. You also can't move towards other prisoners' areas unless you both agreed to switch."

There were few tens of such areas on the basic level where prisoners who just arrived recently were learning how to mine. The mining on the other levels was much more complicated and only prisoners with experience were sent there. They had to dig to the side which involved a different process of mining.

The professional miner continued, "The rock in the basic is solid but it is relatively easy to crack with just a bit of force. The crystals have a shiny, purple hue which make them easy to see in contrast to the black rocks."

As Wuxing looked around, he could see everyone busying themselves with a smile on their faces. They looked quite happy that they could actually cut their sentences shorter and leave this prison earlier than scheduled, but only later would they realize how hard this task was.

Wuxing himself had never held an Ethernum crystal in his hands before but from what he had heard, these purple crystals were extremely light, unlike most ores and precious metals. It would take a person an accumulation of many crystals and an investment a lot of effort to actually gather the 1 kilogram required to lower your sentence by one day.

Of course, Wuxing didn't even think of wholeheartedly mining. His goal here was to observe and find opportunities to escape, and for that he had to keep up appearances and pretend cooperation.

Wuxing turned towards the professional miner and asked curiously as he pointed towards his personally-assigned area, "What is the average daily output from such an area?"

The professional miner smiled wryly as he scratched himself on the head. He replied not-so-reassuringly, "Oh, don't worry about it. If you work hard, you can even get a few kilograms of Ethernum crystals every day. At the start, you might find it hard as you are still learning, so you might get less, but with each day you should be improving."

'Heh, I knew it.' Wuxing smirked, confirming his thoughts, before asking one last question, "There are no minimum requirements, right?"

"There are no special requirements about the minimum quota, but it is commonly accepted that it's at least around one kilogram a day. Of course, if one is unlucky then he might not even collect one but that is fine as long as one does not repeat every day—or else, that person is actually simply slacking," the professional miner answered before he held up a pickaxe and motioned for Wuxing to pay attention. "Let me teach you how to mine…"

The ones in charge couldn't just let a prisoner who knew nothing about mining do whatever he or she wanted. They had to be properly taught as the prisoner could potentially damage the valuable fragile crystals and that would cost them to lose a lot of money.

For the first hour, the professional miner would watch Wuxing from the side, giving him hints and correcting him if needed. It took this young man more than an hour of hammering and shovelling before he finally noticed some reaction from the Ethernum Scanner. The scanner signalled that there were some signs of dense energy about half a meter below the ground.

"Lucky bastard! First day and he got a second-ranked reading just one hour after he started. If only I have chosen that area when it was free earlier..." one of the prisoners next to him commented enviously when he heard the double beeping of the hand scanner.

Many prisoners were already super sensitive over the sound alarms of the Ethernum Scanner as that only meant one of them finally found something. Even the professional miner teaching Wuxing was excited to hear the beeping. The professional miner even picked up his own equipment and started to help out.

"What does this beeping mean?" Wuxing asked curiously. He would be staying here for some time, so he might as well learn more about it. He believed that every detail, whether big or small, was useful no matter what subject or knowledge area.

"Oh, a single beeping at most cases means that you found some Ethernum crystal fragments rather than whole pieces. The second-ranked reading is when there is a double beeping. If you happen to have one, it means that you have most likely found a lot of crystal fragments banded together or a large nugget of crystal, with the latter being more likely," the professional miner answered. As he spoke, he continued cracking the ground apart with a pickaxe.

"Okay, thanks for helping me." Wuxing smiled and also tried to get to work but he was stopped by the professional miner.

"Don't worry about it. I will handle it this time. You should just watch and learn."

"Oh, okay. Why not." Wuxing shrugged casually. Who wouldn't agree if someone else wanted to do the hard work for free? However, from the miner's sketchy smile, Wuxing instantly thought that something was quite suspicious.

Wuxing looked around and seeing the others' sneers, he became sure that the miner who taught him the ropes wanted to do something greedy and unfair. In this situation, it was not hard to guess what.

"He he… I guess he was not lucky, after all." Watching the situation, the prisoner who earlier complained giggled, muttering to himself.

Many others who saw the miner in-charge working enthusiastically couldn't help but shake their heads. For them, it was not important that their outputs were doing badly as long as others were doing worse. They came from the latest batch of criminals who had just arrived a few days prior, and some of them already got scammed by the scheming miner before. They were looking forward to Wuxing tasting the same bitter medicine.

'He he, what an idiot. If it's a nugget like the last time, I would get a nice bonus this month,' the professional miner thought as he shovelled out the broken rocks away quite happily. From time to time, he glanced at Wuxing to check if he was even a bit suspicious. He felt even more confident seeing Wuxing yawning and looking idly around.

The miner checked again and the reading said that the Ethernum crystals were about half a metre below the surface, just as the scanner showed before. It took the miner only two to three minutes to reach the level of the crystals. Of course, he skillfully covered them with bits of dirt before the purple colour could be seen by Wuxing.

Changing to the hammer and a chisel, the miner kneeled next to the hole he created and started extracting the purple crystals while covering his work with his body. He could see various small purple fragments, but that was not what he was after. He wanted the big one.

'Here you are! Ha ha ha ha ha! I hit the jackpot! It's almost as big as a fist!'

The miner laughed maniacally in his mind as he finally pulled out the huge purple crystal. He quickly slipped it into the pocket of his pants as he bent over into the hole before he started the collection of all the other fragments. All the while, he was trying to hide his big smile.

"Ayy, I guess we are not lucky today. A false alarm. There were only small fragments stuck together. You will do better next time, don't worry." The miner put on a warm but encouraging smile and handed Wuxing a few tens of fingernail-sized purple crystals. "Here, take a look."

"Only this? You sure there is nothing else?" Wuxing looked surprised. He stared at the small purple crystals before he let out a disappointed sigh.

"Yeah, it happens sometimes. Okay, I hope you can work on your own now. If you need anything else, just call for me." The miner patted Wuxing on the shoulder before he quickly decided to leave.

"Take care. Thanks for teaching me," Wuxing thanked with a smile and waved as a goodbye.

As the miner walked away, he could see many prisoners looking at him weirdly but he didn't mind as he got what he wanted. With his back towards Wuxing, he reached out to pat his pocket, only to have his soul slip out of his body when he felt nothing inside. He dramatically searched every pocket but couldn't find his Ethernum crystal anywhere.

"Ha ha ha, I can't believe it! He was tricked like a kid!"

Suddenly, the miner heard loud laughter behind him and turned around. What he saw made his blood boil. Wuxing was holding his fist-sized Ethernum crystal while looking at it curiously from all sides.

...

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