Oliver spent the rest of the day carefully removing dozens of statues, statuettes, busts and figurines out of the basement. Along with a big yellow crystal, which was the most challenging to remove. It looked like hundreds of random rectangular, cubic and cylindrical shapes fused into a singular crystalline structure. At the core, there was a reddish-brown stone. It weighed hundreds of kilos and burned his skin even through the leather gloves.
“Ow… Damn it. Mmmmn…”
After dissipating his gloves, he blew on his scalded hands a few times, but it really didn’t make much of a difference. Grun came back with a large wheelbarrow shortly after Denver was turned into charcoal and buried by Klein nearby. He didn’t stick around to help haul Oliver’s ‘treasures’ though. So the short boy was once again alone in the wilderness.
“Hot… So hot…”
“Hmmm?”
Oliver looked around cautiously. He ignored the pain in his right hand and pulled out a short single-sided pick from thin air. He crouched down and listened closely.
“It burns… I’m sorry… Please… No…”
He could hear a faint voice coming from underground. It sounded like a young girl, but it was muffled. Hesitating for a few seconds, he breathed out a long sigh and released the pick. Summoning a big shovel instead and gritting his teeth in pain. His tongue and throat were sore. He also coughed a few times, but in the end he still started digging into the dirt.
“Sorry about this…”
The position he found was between two old trees, so there were actually a few big, thick roots in the way. He had to pull out another pickaxe in order to cut through the roots and reach the sound of that mysterious voice. In the mines, he would never take this kind of risk, but he figured he was relatively safe just digging into the ground outside.
“Mama, I’m sorry, forgive me… I didn’t-”
*Ding~!*
He quickly stopped digging with the shovel when he heard that familiar sound of metal hitting rock. The big shovel was dissipated, but he still didn’t want to dig with his hands, so he created a smaller one. A few minutes later, he finally found another treasure buried in this spooky ruin.
“Angry woman, sad little girl?”
Instead of a ghost or a coffin, what he found was an exquisitely crafted gray stone statue of a young teenage girl, about the same age as Oliver. Not to mention clothes, she didn’t even have hair or eyebrows. Both of her arms were above her head and her wrists were stuck together. The ankles were also fused. With her toes pointing down, as if she was originally dangling in the air.
“Who would design a statue like this anyway?”
Oliver couldn’t help complaining after he pulled the sculpture out of the ground and tried to get it to ‘stand’ upright. However, it just kept slipping and couldn’t be balanced on the toes unless he literally jammed the feet into the dirt. He was afraid he might break or damage it though, so he just picked the girl up and laid her face down on the bed of the large wheelbarrow.
“There’s no way I can do this in a single trip…”
He frowned and regretted taking everything out of the basement first. Now there were just a bunch of expensive sculptures laying around in front of the house and not to mention people stealing, just a random animal might come by and wreck something. Making him lose hundreds of gold!
*Squeak~! Crack~!*
The familiar sound of footsteps, squeaky wheels and twigs breaking came from the woods nearby again. Oliver was nervous at first, but then sighed in relief when he saw those familiar faces and figures.
“I knew you’d never ask us for help, so I did it for you.” Forest came over pushing a wheelbarrow with Barilo and some of the other little kids in the village. The six of them were all about 8 to 11 years old. Too young to start working officially, so they had a lot of free time and energy.
“Thanks… I'll make sure to pay you each-”
“We ain’t helpin’ ya fer yer money, dammit!” An 11 year old, black-haired, brown-eyed boy with dark-tan skin shouted angrily and pushed his cart over to start loading up some of the heavy sculptures. However… He couldn’t even lift them at all.
“Don’t hurt yourself. Uncle Klein can’t fix a hernia…”
“I ain’t an idiot! Barry! Help me out!”
“Don’t tell me what to do, Bastard!”
The two kids worked together to lift a light-green jade tiger sculpture up onto the flat-bed cart. Not quite a wheelbarrow, but much smaller than an actual wagon. After all, there wasn’t much of a trail leading through the woods back to the village. Horses could barely walk on their own and large vehicles definitely wouldn’t be able to pass through.
“Peridot and Myrtle, can you two stay behind and keep watch? Even with all of us together, we’re still going to need to make a few trips.”
“Why do we have to stay behind? Do you think we’re weak just because we’re girls?!” The blonde-haired, green-eyed girl named Peridot was actually a whole head taller than Oliver. Though her body was so skinny that she struggled pushing her wheelbarrow empty, not to mention with a bunch of heavy sculptures weighing it down.
“Umm, I don’t wanna stay in these creepy ruins…” The other girl was much shorter and slightly chubby, with brown hair, gray irises and light-brown skin.
“You can all stay here together. I’ll just push the carts back and forth by myself.”
“Oliver, we’re here to help you. I’ll stay here and the rest of you can go. I’m not afraid of any ghosts.” Forest smiled and lifted the crossbow out of his own small cart, “If any beasts come by to make trouble, they’ll just become our dinner, heheheh~!”
“I’ll stay too!” Peridot looked over at the little boy, crossed her arms in front of her chest and pouted, “I’m not afraid of any ghosts either!”
Oliver rolled his bright green eyes, “Whatever makes you happy. Let’s hurry up though. I don’t wanna stay the night in this haunted ruin in the middle of the woods.”
The little kids started shivering and looking around anxiously when he said that. Then the little boy started laughing and made most of them start cursing angrily.
