Chapter 2
I said I was sorry, okay, kid brother?
...
You're at fault too, you know. You charged in even though you knew I was in there.
That's because you were taking so long to come back, Lark!
Oh, yeah, my bad. I got a little mesmerized by the Skill Orb.
On our way back from the Badger Hole, we headed through the tunnels toward the exit.
Lark was walking beside me, a head taller than I was. She loosely tied her long blond hair behind her, and her mischievous eyes were purple. Beneath her pert nose were thin lips, from which an endless stream of aimless chatter flowed.
She was probably the type of girl who would grow into a beauty. Whenever we encountered adventurers, they looked at Lark with an impressed "Oh?" expression—which I couldn't say I knew much about, since contract magic apparently cut off the sex drives of mining slaves like us, leaving us "castrated (in the magical sense)."
——Hey, little brother, you know some difficult words for some reason, don't you? Where'd you hear them?
Lark had said something like that to me once, but all I could say was that I didn't know. It wasn't that I was lying about my age, either—I was genuinely ten years old.
The tunnels branched like the limbs of a great tree. The walls were knobby, but their surfaces were wet and slick. Here and there, Skill Orbs grew from them in bulges, like knots or blisters.
Since they branched like tree limbs, the reverse was also true: if you kept choosing the wider passage, you'd eventually reach the entrance. That said, we were only in what was called the "upper layer," merely the uppermost part. The "middle layer" and "lower layer" were apparently completely different. Monstrous creatures appeared there, so that was where adventurers and former adventurers working as miners came in. And, of course, better-quality Skill Orbs grew in the middle and lower layers.
Mesmerized? Sure, they're pretty, but you've seen them plenty of times before.
The backpack I was carrying held nine Skill Orbs. They came in all sorts of colors—red, blue, yellow, and so on. Each was about two sizes larger than my clenched fist.
I thought of the Skill Orb I'd mined today.
It was a faint red, glowing from within, with letters floating inside.
【Leg Strength Enhancement★】
There were even rare ones that appeared only once every few days—like this blue one:
【Fire Magic★★】
I even managed to find one like that today.
Seen them before? That's my little brother for you.
Stop dragging it out and show me already. What, did you find a three-star one?
Apparently, the more stars an orb had, the rarer it was. In my experience, a two-star orb appeared once in a hundred one-star orbs, and a three-star orb once in a thousand. Though apparently, the middle and lower layers were different.
I'd seen a three-star orb only once before. It shone so brightly that the one-star variety looked like a joke by comparison. Apparently, three-star Skill Orbs sold for a pretty high price, but as a slave, there was no way I could know their sale value.
It's not just three stars, I tell you. Oh, well, I guess I'll show you, little brother~
...No, you'll have to show the inspector everything at the exit anyway.
Any Skill Orbs mined by slaves were confiscated, of course. The inspection also checked whether we had met the day's quota.
You're no fun! Boring!
I mean, sticking your lips out that obviously isn't going to help.
You don't want to see it? You don't want to?
Okay, okay, I get it! I want to see it, I want to see it, so stop pressing your fist against my temple. Don't grind it around. Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!?
Hehe, honesty is best, little brother.
Lark pulled it—from the pouch hanging at her waist.
Until that moment, I'd assumed what Lark had brought was, at most, something incredibly rare—maybe a four-star orb.
So I'd let my guard down completely.
Gah.
I instinctively turned my face away. Why? Because the light was too bright.
The light was rainbow-colored.
This was on an entirely different level from three stars.
Four stars...? It's too bright.
What's more, the light it emitted was... rainbow-colored.
It was a Skill Orb with a "Unique Trait" that belonged to no particular category.
Idiot. Little brother, do you really think this is the light of a four-star orb? This is...
Lark whispered in my ear.
as though she couldn't contain her delight.
as though savoring her excitement.
as though she had remembered the desire that contract magic was supposed to have castrated out of her.
——Six stars,
she said.
At the center of that dazzling radiance, the words
【Shadow King Swordsmanship★★★★★★】
floated.