Chương 162: Chapter 158

Copper lootboxes secured with the rest of Wade's current haul, they all got to work in different directions. Leon went to secure and prep the Arcanaut suits. Eri had no need for a suit, and instead crawled under the mithril links in the bell's airlock, heading for fresh air outside. On a mission to cause chaos and sightsee. Wade went back to the captain's quarters to check for any last hints at what might be out there.

\Play just complained the whole time there wasn't enough leveling going on and Wade should be going out there to start getting quests lined up. There were still questions Wade had about this merry pirate crew, including 'Did they get loot?'

'How much loot did they loot if they managed to loot?' and 'Can we loot their loot?' Instead, he got boring details. As it so happened, the lack of personnel in the base here was more logistics. If you were a pirate, and had come with limited amounts of crew, then when attacking another mining expedition, it wasn't just important to bring as many hands as possible. It became critical. They had a whole mission planned out, which included multiple different stakes to raid at different times.

And given they hadn't recovered a travel bone among the dead they met, it's more probable the captain decided running away was the real valor all along, and either jumped back home right when the fight turned on them all, or raced back to the base here. And then jumped back home. If they went outside and found the warehouse here empty, then that meant the captain had taken the loot and ran off. Either way, Play and Wade were both in agreement leaving the base behind was inevitable.

They would be expecting it to be tracked back by the expeditions here.

"So why hasn't it been wiped off the map?" Wade muttered, putting the last piece of paper down. Wondering what the heck was going on. These pirates pissed off a lot of rich assholes out there, and those rich assholes would be well incentivized to go looking for their property.

"Shit. We're going to have to be extra careful when we get out of here." Wade hissed, considering all the lovely reasons.

"What are you talking about?" Play asked, still munching on her snack as she hovered over him.

"It's great news IMO, basically quest bait right here. We'll be rolling in the XP and lootboxes real soon if you run over some of the traps left for the pirates here. Assuming they're still around to work, if you're lucky." Wade rolled his eyes.

"If I'm lucky. Har, fucking, har." Arcanaut suits looked exactly like the ones those skeletons had worn. A mix between astronaut fabric suits, with occasional bits of metal and gauges held by either rope or chains. These ones looked perfectly white too.

"Skeletons are generally bleached white by mana." Medy said.

"So creatures are used to seeing skeletons of dead creatures or people move around both smelling like nothing, and all white. You see where this is going, right?"

"It's camouflage?"

"Yeah! You're walking around with skeletons generally already. If it makes a critter out here rethink attacking for even a few seconds, it's worth it. They're still animals, not that smart you know?" There were nine suits left in the armory. Ten technically, but Leon was mostly certain the tenth had a few broken parts. Fortunately, it seemed the System decided to grace both leon and himself with a thumbs up they were on the right direction.

New Fleeting Quest: Suit up - Equip an Arcanaut suit and defeat three enemies your level or higher with it correctly equipped. Rewards: Copper Lootbox. Wade looked at Leon. And the Russian looked back with a shrug.

"One coin for you too, da?"

"Uh, Only says copper lootbox for me." Wade felt a bead of suspicion. Not at the different loot rewards, he could tell now that the System was trying to plow him with lootboxes until he rolled a lucky find with the player-selection choice. But there being a reward to it meant there had to be some difficulty to it. Putting the suits on was just a checklist to keep in mind, which he had Medy and Bael for. So, he had a strong suspicion it was all about killing things while in the suit. Which meant: "Medy…

how hard is it to fight in these suits?" The System would not offer a goddamn coin for a simple task they were already going to do. Sure the outside was supposed to be impossible difficulty, but something was off with this.

"Fight in them?" Medy asked, "Uh, you really don't want to if you can. Mostly you set traps to hold the wildlife down and run away. Animals fighting attract more animals, so there's no reason to stick around and hold a stake, just come back a few hours later when they're gone. The more mana you burn through on a ward the less you got left to control your skeleton with. And that means less mining done. Which is a bad thing and gets you in trouble."

"That shouldn't be that bad, we got weapons and boons to… oh." Wade looked down at the thick gloves. And then to his glock.

"Shit." Trying to shoot or reload in these things is going to be a bit of a journey. Leon realized the same thing too. Buckshot reloading and shotguns would also be hard. That demonic longsword of high quality Not-Leon had so generously brought to them both for free might actually be more useful in hand out here than held next to the copper lootboxes for selling.

"Just get Eri to do the reloading for you." Play said, floating behind them, "Duh. He doesn't need gloves out there." Wade wanted to argue with her on principle, but that was a good workaround.

"How flexible is suit?" Leon asked, testing how the fabric moved. More worried there might be very specific ways to move in this thing that weren't natural.

"Oh, no, you don't need to worry about that." Medy said from the phone.

"They use adamantite oil, so they can move like regular clothing. Just a little bit thicker, you know?"

"Adamantite… oil?" Wade asked.

"Yeah, oil."

"… How do you mix metal and oil together?" That took Medy into a whole other tangent. Turns out, the fabled Adamantite was not a metal at all, but instead a mineral. Like salt. And mined out of the ground the same way. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. So alchemists would dissolve it in a sticky tar-like wet glue that would be flattened inside one of the layers of the Arcanaut suit, and that was that. Putting it on was also a cakewalk.

They only had two sections. Legs and chestplate. Wade followed each step. First, making sure he had their looted demonic plate armor on, and any bit of enchanted gear he was planning for this run, before he put on the suit properly. Free magic and spells weren't mana. They were the product of spent mana. They'd go right through the suits without issue. But not actual mana. Which meant Arcanauts down here needed to wear all their enchanted gear inside their suits.

The arcane wards on the demonic armor would cover the outside of the suit, but keeping the thing powered could only be done with it right here in the suit. With his gear properly secured, Wade reached up and pulled out a drawer. It slid, revealing a bunch of glass tubes, most of them filled and ready to go. He felt an instinctive fear in his stomach at the sight. For good reasons.

"Identify." Miner's Mana Potion (High Quality) The next step after getting the gear inside, was getting the mana needed to power all that stuff inside with him too. And since the helmet didn't let him eat or throw up things on demand outside, Azdrians had to get creative on how to keep mana ready to use for several hours straight without dying.

"You also can't scratch anything either once you're inside." Medy said.

"So make sure you have a little scratching pad or three stuck in the right places. It's a rookie mistake to just climb into the upper part after you drink your potion. Speaking of, hop to it. What's taking you so long?"

"They look a little different than the ones in the mage kit." Wade muttered, looking over the row. Trying to convince himself it wasn't that potion. Because it really wasn't. This was an indigestible variant of the original mana potion. It could sit in his stomach for hours on end and not leak a single drop of mana into his system unless he pulled it out by force. Very stable thing. And that's the only safety he'd get.

"You cannot bring mithril inside the suit." Bael had said on that topic.

"A leak will turn your anchors into melting metal wherever they are. Including your stomach. The potion won't require anchors. Unless you make a mistake yourself. Do not make a mistake." The original mana potions were the training wheel version. The miner's version were the full mountain bike that expected their user to know what the fuck they were doing and how to properly change gears without any hand holding. Both he and Leon grabbed a potion each, and stared down at them.

Leon shrugged, not having gone through the trauma of the training potion himself. His only experience had been the small crystal he'd smuggled in with the food boon. So he uncorked the potion with little issue, and then downed the entire thing in one gulp. Wade nearly gagged watching. But the Russian smacked his lips a few times a moment after and shrugged.

"No worries, it tasting like… rocky water?"

"There is no need for safety." Bael said with a roll of his eyes.

"There are no children in the arcane realm to worry for. Stupidity is quickly rectified in this realm." Wade was apprehensive about drinking the stupid thing given his prior experience with mana potions, but he did know he needed to cast spells - specifically on his own body like strengthening. And his helmet wouldn't just open up so he could eat a crystal and pick his nose clean. So this little glass bottle was it. The most mana he'd get to work with each time he suited up out here.

Wade took a deep breath, and downed it all at once with his eyes closed. It went down rather smoothly into his gullet. More like thin yogurt. The taste was like licking a washed rock. Leagues better than the original potions. Wade took another breath and followed his instincts. He'd put some points into intellect, he was going to goddamn use all of those points this round. Deep within his core, it bloomed in his awareness as he searched. Mana. All bunched up in a loose liquid somewhat staying together.

And not defusing outwards. There was a whole lot more than the cube of mana potion, a whole lot less than the massive amount he was using last round.

"Hmm, feeling much less than crystal. Is normal?" Leon asked, looking over to the phone screen.

"You get what you paid for." Zin said off camera.

"You want easy safe mana you can pull on whenever you ring a dinner bell for twelve hours or more? Comes at a cost cupcake, just like anything else out here. It's enough to get you a few hours of good skeletal mining." Wade figured that'd be the case. He turned, and got to work adjusting his suit to his size. It included a lot of tightening up parts, but didn't need all too much work. Demons were mostly humanoid in shape, Satyrs like Bael were more the exception to the rules.

For a civilization that had actual magic to use, they had oddly mechanical means of handling everything. Once it was adjusted, Wade pulled the suit holder handles down, putting the entire chestplate above him, and then wiggled upwards into the whole thing, arms first until they caught into the right channels. It was slightly claustrophobic, until he got his head through into the helmet properly. The slightly silver-grey glass dome gave the world a mildly dimmer look, but otherwise he could see just fine.

"Woah." Wade said, hearing his voice echo in a closed environment.

"You can still hear us, right?" Medy's voice came from where he'd stuck and tightened the phone outside the suit near the chestplate.

"I hearing you okey." Leon said from his own suit.

"Yeah, same here." Wade added.

"Although if there's a lot of noise, it's going to be a little tougher." The pair then took turns tightening the mid section torso to the lower legs after they got those up to their belt. It was a slight twist of the legs, and after that they had to use a lever to tighten a few parts. That would keep the glorified pants from dropping down. But it certainly didn't feel like an airtight seal. And that's because the seal the Azdrians used was just straight up real sticky glue mixed with Adamantite.

Highly scientific and foolproof method, yes. But Wade had been warned, repeatedly, that the suit was not rated to be submerged. Walking around in the air was fine, the pools out here were skeletons only. Technically, he could probably submerge his legs and be fine, but once it hit the connection point here, there'd be a leak. If he got further under and the liquid mana didn't somehow leak inside, the air filter system would absolutely get ruined the moment the water levels reached the intake valve.

He had to manually crank the air in every half hour. Both to stay warm and to keep breathing. If the backpack filter got busted for any reason, he had a half hour till suffocation. Now fully suited up, Wade started the first quick check that everything worked internally. He drew out a small cloud of mana from his stomach, cycled it through his skin-level planned out circuit a single time, until he had full control of the mana, and then pushed it out past his skin. It was odd. The suit really was a massive barrier.

He couldn't push his little cloud of attuned mana further past. It was as if he was stuck in a giant balloon. But he could cycle it through some of the pre-made metal plates with runes inside the suit. Two lights aimed outwards just under his chin lit to life, and gave him a good spotlight out of the helmet.

"Neat." He thought, then turned to Leon who was also fully equipped, but struggling with the light in his helmet. It sputtered out.

"Eh, having trouble holding onto the cloud." He said.

"I get concept with circuit, only… blyat, is difficult to do. It really needing to move through whole body?"

"Just on the surface of your skin, yeah." Wade said.

"And make sure you always use the same path you pick." The enchanted aspects of the Arcanaut suit were pretty easy for Wade at this point, and he could see his own mana stats was currently sitting at a cool six whole points. And as he watched, it went down a point to five as his body's natural resistance was already outhealing the small bits of mana he had moved through his basic mana circuit. He would run out of juice long before he got poisoning with these potions. Unless he went ham on the draw all at once.

"You got to practice how to cast stuff at some point." Wade said, pointing his headlights right to Leon.

"It's a perfect place to do that here, since you can go way further than your max mana. We wake up with full health each time."

"Should have put a few points in intellect." Play helpfully said, floating above. She'd moved onto the next snack.

"Tut tut mortal~" Wade turned around to their supply wagon, fishing inside with his thick gloves getting in the way. But he finally pulled out a flashlight, and they affixed it to his suit outer chestplate. Wade gave it a pat, good enough. The pair then moved onto the next phase of the operation, which was getting out of the airlock and into the world properly. The suits did move somewhat good enough, so the pair didn't have too much trouble walking through the bell to the exit.

Leon looked over to the sealed doorway at the very end, past the massive mithril chains. The actual airlock.

"First, we look for the mithril lootbox." Wade muttered under his breath, checking all his gear was on his back. They had a small trolley on wheels with the larger supply items, like rope, grenades, magazines, and other goodies. The handle was currently hooked to his back belt. The large rubber wheels would be easy to move the wagon over the terrain here. Most of it was flattened bone, and occasional clumps of flesh they'd just roll the whole thing over.

The chains rattled over them, as the pair walked to the airlock proper.

"After the mithril lootbox, we get the gold chests." Wade continued, "And then we start killing everything on sight." They stepped through, sealing the door behind them, ready to now open the final doorway that led out of the arcane bell. A quick notification popped up. Suit up - Enemies Defeated 1/3"What?" Wade looked it over.

"How?" And then remembered they had sent Eri out there. Who had decided to get a head start on the killing-everything part.