Beginner's Luck: Growth 5

The Librarian walked away without another word to Fluke or Q or the Derboul. The tension driving a wedge between the apprentice and master. Fluke didn't call after him, instead he too walked in the opposite direction. He quickly grabbed his bag of supplies and then gave Q a command to watch over their prisoner. Fuming as he marched away, his mind raced with thoughts, questions, and frustrations.

The hell is his problem?! It's not like he took any risks! Every time I use my Insight- the ability grows and so do I. Why is he acting like he knows me? We met not even 2 days ago!

Fluke walked away from what he knew, the forest and hunting lodge now behind him, and ahead of him was a desert area with towering rocks. Winding between the large stones, the sand gave way to soil and pebbles and a series of larger boulders and stone pillars. Occasionally on the pillars, there were metal spikes driven on the right side of the simple foot path that Fluke now followed. It appeared that the non-sentients had begun mining and gathering other minerals in this area, which Fluke was thankful they had left some way to find his way back. Taking a moment to look around and get his bearings, he realized just how much of a labyrinth the tall stones around him truly were.

After walking for a few minutes more, a rhythmic sound of metal meeting rock could be heard ahead of Fluke. Following the sound, Fluke eventually found himself at the entrance to a mineshaft. The shaft was about 3 meters wide and 1 and half meters tall. The sound continued to grow louder, and Fluke shrugged and bent his head slightly before going down into the dark maw before him. The darkness consumed his senses, so Fluke put on his mask and activated his Insight in hopes it might illuminate his path. To his surprise, it outlined the edges of things in the dark but didn't necessarily reveal everything with an artificial light. What he did see was periodic crystals that lined the right side of the mineshaft. Touching one as he inspected it, he felt a low tingle of energy leave his body, and the line of crystals began to emit a low light down into the darkness. The soft white light allowed for his Insight to see much more allowing support beams, stone ledges, and other crystals to be outlined in before him.

Fluke continued to follow the sound of metal on rock that emanated from below him somewhere in the mine. After a minute of walking the white light faded again, leaving Fluke in darkness but with the path and object outlined with Insight. He could feel that using the Insight was causing his resonance to be consumed, just as touching the crystal on the wall had sapped some of his energy. Instead of feeling alarmed, Fluke took it as a challenge or as another form of training. Descending down the mineshaft deeper, Fluke pushed his resonance to the crystals on the wall instead of reaching out physically. To his delight, the crystals lit up revealing his path and what looked like a T junction ahead. Fluke noticed that after using his resonance in battle, even that short exchange of deflecting a killing blow, using resonance while walking and manipulating the energy was not the struggle it had been.

This world truly favors violence.

When he reached the junction, the light threatened to fade, so a push of his resonance lit the paths in either direction. To the left 50 meters ahead, was a dead end, but something about the end drew his attention: An outline of a perfect sphere shown in his Insight. To his right 100 meters away, he saw shadows move, and the ringing of metal on rock grew clearer and louder. Fluke looked between his two options and decided to head to the signs of life first but vowed to return to inspect the sphere soon.

At the end of the tunnel to the right, Fluke found a non-sentient he did not recognize. There at the end of a large room easily 20 square meters, stood a man diligently mining stone. The man wasn't tall, but he was muscular and wearing leather pants, boots, gloves with no shirt. He swung a heavy pickaxe into the stone wall, cutting out slabs of stone with each swing. When Fluke stepped into the room the man stopped and turned around with a wide grin.

"So, you were the bastard making the lights flicker! I don't get visitors down here, and I don't want to be bothered. If you are going to stay, you had better make yourself useful." He motioned with his hand to a pair of metal pickaxes against the wall near three large wooden crates.

"Who are you?" Fluke asked the man, as he walked and picked up a pickaxe.

"I am Mason. I work with the villages for all their mineral needs. I got orders to provide stone for a new construction in the village." He picked up a slab of stone that must have weighed a hundred kilograms, walked over to the first large crate and set the stone inside it. Within a few moments, a slight pop could be heard and the stone disappeared. The two other large crates each were full of stone slabs, but they didn't disappear.

"Help me collect ten more slabs and I'll give you something as a reward."

Inside Fluke's mask, words appeared on the top left portion of his vision:

NEW QUEST

Focusing on the words more information populated.

NEW QUEST: Collect 10 Slabs for Mason- 0/10

Fluke suddenly thought of all the non-sentients in the village. A series of questions raced through his mind:

Could each of them give him jobs or quests to do?

And if so, did each of them give rewards?

Did the Librarian know about this?

Or was this because of Insight?

Mason stood there with an expectant but vacant look on his face. Fluke had cleared his head on the walk over here, but he felt he still needed to work off some frustration. Plus, the allure of getting a reward was tantalizing. Hefting the pickaxe, Fluke used his divine blessing on both the handle and the metal head. Inspecting the tool, it now was:

Lucky Pickaxe +

This pickaxe increases your successful harvest of stone +10%

Increased chance of finding Resonant Structures +50%

Fluke smiled at himself and looked at the walls around him. If this was anything like chopping down trees, this was going to be fun. Quickly, he double checked where he had been wounded on his neck, it had fully healed at some point on his walk. And with that, he found an outcropping and focused his resonance taking a swing at the task before him.