Calamity Upon This World

~Crack~

~Crack~

~Crack

The sound of pickaxes colliding with rocks resounded throughout the small dungeon.

It had now been a whole hour since the miners and cleansers had entered the dungeon, and despite their initial excitement, Williams reminded them of the potential dangers lurking around.

Even now, after one whole hour, the party had yet to encounter even a single monster; they hadn't yet ventured that deep yet, but it was still weird how empty the whole dungeon was.

'I have a bad feeling about this,' William thought.

He didn't know why he felt this way, but he knew that something was amiss here.

'Screw it; whatever the reason behind this feeling is, I don't care; let's get this mission over with'

"Enough dilly-dallying guys, let's pick up the pace," William encouraged the miners to hasten the mining process.

They had barely harvested 8 ores in the past hour, and judging by their current pace, their progress will only slow down the longer it goes on.

While the miners were excited when they first saw the jackpot, they had accidentally hit it, but in their excitement, they forgot about one thing.

Before entering, both his party and the miners had signed a contract to not steal any of the ores or beast cores.

Meaning even if just a single piece of rock around them could change the lives of most of them, they couldn't take it.

The morale of everyone was at an all-time low, thanks to this, meaning the excursion would take longer than normal.

And William had no intention of spending extra time in this dangerous place, which had been giving him a bad feeling for a while now.

William was quite well aware of human nature and their innate greed. He knew that at least a few of the miners here would try to steal the rocks despite knowing the risks, or maybe even sabotage the whole operation, just so they could get a piece of the wealth around them.

Thankfully, Lark had prepared for situations like this and gave William the perfect artifact as well left him in charge of the mission.

William wasn't sure why Lark had so much faith in him, but he wasn't complaining.

With a single thought, a thin piece of paper manifested out of his shadow.

A mana contract is a very useful artifact that allows people to sign permanent, non-breakable contracts with their mana.

Even non-awakened people can sign a mana contract as long as the other party is supplying mana.

"Alright, everyone, line up; I have something to say."

Hearing his voice, the miners stopped what they were doing previously and, despite being confused, decided to see what Edge Lord wanted to say.

~Swish~

A contract appeared in front of the miners and even the cleaners.

"I know all of you guys have your own situation at home and probably want to steal one or two pieces of the ore you're mining."

"But I would advise against that because, in case you have forgotten, you have already signed a contract with Lark before coming inside."

"So instead of stealing, I'll give everyone here 1 whole luminous blue stone; that's basically 100 gold coins. I highly doubt you'll need any more money."

The miners and even the cleansers were shocked at his words as they exclaimed.

"He can't be serious!!! "

"This is insane."

"I can finally repay my family debts.

"My daughter can finally get a proper education."

"I can finally leave this shitty job."

"I can propose to my girlfriend now."

Reading the contract he had been offered, Max was a bit shocked, as unlike what Edge Lord had said earlier in his contract, he was being offered three stones instead of one.

But before he could raise his voice, a text appeared on his, Raya and Jasmine's contract.

'Stay quiet; they don't need to know that I'm giving you guys a bigger share than them.

It seems the man they had chosen to lead their team was looking out for them and giving them preferential treatment even in this situation.

And they most certainly had no problems about receiving extra cash.

Once everyone had signed the contract, William announced.

"Can you really just give away such precious ores to us?"

"Yes, I can. Lark put me in charge, and I won't be taking any of the ores for myself, so it's fine."

The miners and even his own team were shocked by his declaration, thinking that he was sacrifing his own portion just so they could get a bit higher portion of money.

But what they didn't know was that William was unfazed by the value of the ores around him, as his father earned more than the total value of all the ores inside this cave in a month.

So to him, he was just doing some petty charity work by giving away to the less fortunate.

"Now then, I hope this is enough to satisfy you guys. Now don't do anything stupid and get to mining. We're still inside a dungeon, and your newly acquired wealth would be useless if you couldn't make it out alive."

Hearing his words, the miners shouted in agreement, and now, with renewed morale, the pace of the excursion hastened.

**

'I can finally cure my mother with just 2 or 3 of these rocks,' Jasmine thought as she stood in a daze, trying to wrap her head around the sheer wealth she was surrounded by.

As long as she just made it out of this dungeon alive with the newly promised money that John had offered the cleansers.

'I can't let anything go wrong now; this is the perfect opportunity. It may have arrived sooner than expected, but I'm not complaining.

Her mother only had two months left to live. She was honestly just desperate before and wasn't sure how she was going to gather enough money for the treatment, but now things were different.

She had joined Max and Raya on a whim, not expecting much.

The person she was interested in was already gone, and she had expected that he was probably already on another team.

But due to her team taking on a mission they were ill prepared for and her own carelessness, she almost got critically injured.

But like a knight in shining armour, he appeared out of nowhere to save her and even joined their team.

And on their first mission together, she ended up accomplishing her goal of gathering enough money to cure her mother.

At this point, he was basically her lucky charm.

He was extremely handsome, powerful, smart, and talented.

As if that alone wasn't enough, he was even kind and benevolent, giving away roughly 20 luminous blue stones, and he had given up his own portion so that they could have more ores.

He truly was the perfect man, and while Jasmine could see that Raya was interested in him, Jasmine wanted to try her luck.

She was aware of the age difference, but it was at least worth a shot, or else she could do nothing but give up and let Raya have him.

However, before Jasmine could let her imagination run any wilder, 'her lucky charm' shouted.

"Miners to the back, cleansers to the front, we've got monsters approaching our location."