"What the heck? Are we really supposed to take care of so many people with just the two of us?" Lith couldn't believe his own eyes. There were already ten people and more kept stepping out of the dimensional Gate.
"Of course not." Morok replied.
"Each one of these bastards would gladly cut their best friend's throat if it meant getting more funds and recognition. I'm here to guide them to destination and you are here as a contingency measure. For everything else, there's the army." Morok's words garnered him a lot of attention.
Mostly of the bad kind. What he had said was true yet incredibly rude. He was speaking of esteemed Mage Professors and Researchers as they were just common thugs.
Lith recognized the uniforms from the Black, White, Lightning, and Fire Griffon, whereas it was his first time seeing people from the Crystal and Earth Griffon.
"Ranger Verhen!" A young woman greeted Lith by giving him a big hug.
"Dad really has done it. He made you come here with the excuse of the evaluation!"
"What the heck do you mean with that, Quylla?" Lith's paranoia had made him see countless shadows and conspiracies on his path, yet the truth had turned out to be beyond his wildest expectation.
"I told you that there's no one I trust enough to watch my back while on the field. Since you never got the time to accompany me, I had no qualms exploiting my family's influence to get you assigned here."
"Don't worry, miss. Us Rangers are always glad to help hot women." Morok said with his arms open, expecting to receive the same treatment.
"I'm sorry, I don't hug unknown creeps." Quylla replied with a straight face, before letting Lith go. The scene was drawing too many gazes.
Lith went to greet the White Griffon Professor who had brought Quylla along as her Assistant when the real bodyguards stepped through the Gate. It was a five men unit, donning deep green uniforms that identified them as members of an elite troop.
Their clothes granted them protection on par with that of a Ranger, but they also wore enchanted arm, legs, and shoulder guards that increased their defense to the level of a Professor's uniform.
Each one of them had at least a cyan core and excellent physical condition. Their weapons were nothing much, though. They all held the same pseudo cores, giving them several versatile abilities rather than few but powerful ones.
The only exception was their Captain. All of her equipment was custom made and on par with Lith's Gatekeeper, if not even better.
"Lith, what are you doing in the Hessar region?" Phloria asked. She now had very short hair that resembled a pixie cut. It made her look even more tomboyish than usual.
"It's nice to meet you too, Phloria. How are you doing?" Lith was happy not being the rude one for once.
"Pretty well, thanks. I volunteered for this mission to make sure that nothing bad happens to her. I was expecting to meet another Ranger, so you'll excuse my surprise." She said while pointing at Quylla.
"I'm your man, man." Morok offered his hand to her.
"Ranger Eari, at your service. Now that we are all here, let's not waste any more time. We need to fly to the mines and then it takes a long walk to reach our destination.
"Since we're babysitting academics, it might take us days to get to the ruins."
Phloria's soldiers repressed a chuckle, while the Professors and their Assistants threw at the Ranger more gazes filled with contempt. Morok collected the wooden bars forming the temporary gate before leading the group to the mines.
"Is it really necessary to have a guide? We could've found the ruins on our own." A middle aged Professor from the Crystal Griffon asked to Phloria after they landed. He had blue eyes, white hair, and a beard.
"Good luck with that." Morok chimed in.
"I closed the passages as fast as I created them to make it harder for the goblins to follow us. The only traces left are those of the tunnels opened by the goblins, but most of them have collapsed during the chase or shortly after.
"The little bastards only cared about catching us and they made quite a few crystals explode in the process. I'm the only one who can find the way, so shut up and follow me."
After checking their identities, the guards residing inside the fort let the expedition team in. Despite the incident with the monsters, the mines were already fully operational. Carts full of crystals were being unloaded near the entrance before being sent back.
Lith's group was comprised of twelve experts, one Professor and one Assistant from each academy, Phloria's five men unit, and Morok.
The mines had ample corridors, but not big enough to accommodate 19 people while workers and Crystalsmiths did their job. Even though they moved slowly, by the time the group reached the lowest levels, the people from the academy were exhausted.
The Professors were all experts in their fields with decades of experience, which meant they were quite old and more used to sit behind a desk rather than walk on rough terrain.
Their assistants were younger than them, but equally out of shape. None of them was warrior material.
"Girl, you may be pretty, but if you start getting a fat ass at your age, it will be hard keeping your boyfriend. You need to exercise a little." Morok said to Quylla. He had yet to break a sweat and had only compassion for a young woman who wheezed like one of the old fossils.
"Lith is not my boyfriend." She angrily replied.
"I know. I'm talking about the Captain guy. He clearly fancies you if he's risking his ass for your safety, you could at least…"
"Phloria is my sister." Her voice became stone-cold, her eyes brimming with rage and fatigue.
"Oh. Sorry, I just heard a noise coming from that way." Morok said pointing his finger in a random direction.
"We'll resume this conversation never." Morok moved quickly and silently like the wind, reaching the position of the make-believe threat under the baffled gazes of the soldiers he met along the way.
"Did you hear that too?" Lith emerged from a shadow, pointing at the only tunnel that despite the many mana crystals coming out of its walls and the artificial lights was poorly lit.
"I sure did. I mean, that thing is a woman?" Morok's voice was still shaken by the revelation.
"Not that. That." A small clunk made the hair on both Rangers' necks stand up. They waited in silence, ignoring the noises coming from the distant miners and the nearby academics.
A clunk, followed by another. Lith used Life Vision but the mana crystals inside and outside the walls messed up his perception. He could have sworn there were life signatures among the crystals.
Solus's mana sense didn't fare much better, so she stopped focusing on the details and looked at the corridor's bigger picture.
'There's a distortion in the mana along the right wall.' She said.
The moment Lith's gaze followed her directions, he could notice that the distortion had a humanoid form.
"It seems that hiding any further is pointless." A raspy, feminine voice said. A snap of her fingers made the tunnel they had come from be sealed by a stone wall while the entire zone was silenced.
Not even the guards near the collapsing tunnel noticed that something was wrong until a volley of Chaos arrows came flying their way.
