Inside the house with the angry woman sculpture, there were quite a few other statues. Mostly animals like wolves, lions and eagles. None of them were life-sized, but more than one was actually made out of green jade. Oliver recognized it as one of the more valuable gemstones that could be found in the mines. Of course, there were also very stark differences in value depending on the appearance and quality of the jade.

“This has to be worth a fortune, right?!”

He held a tiny dark-green, slightly translucent elephant in his hands and grinned happily. After getting excited, he quickly calmed down as his stomach rumbled again. Oliver was exhausted, starving and still technically lost in the woods. Fortunately he had plenty of experience having to survive in the wilderness. Mining isn’t all about tunnels after all. Although it wasn’t as profitable, panning for gold in the rivers and streams was relatively much safer, so most of the kids on Greenstone Mountain have done it at one point or another.

The boy stored most of his stuff in the ruined stone house next to the angry woman, then went over to the nearest stream to go hand-fishing. He took off his dusty shirt, pants, boots and socks, wading into the knee-high water with only his black boxers. Then he washed his head and face off… It took a long time to get the gunk out of his ears in particular. 

“I should really start wearing earmuffs or at least earplugs… But then I might not be able to hear my parents anymore.”

Mining was actually extremely loud. If he didn’t have that big green ‘Miner II’ tattoo across his muscular chest, the boy would probably be deaf by now. Aside from the Cursed Word though, there were also a few red lesions on his back. His neck was also a little swollen, with some rashes here and there. There was even a bloody wound on his right shin…

“Ow… Ugh… Ah-hah! Gotcha! Hahahah~!”

He reached quickly and pulled the huge green fish out of the water with a bright smile on his face. It was nearly as long as his entire arm! Oliver quickly brought the struggling fish over to the shore and placed it onto a large metal pan. Then he took a small pocket knife from his pants nearby… Of course, it was covered in dust, so he had to rinse it off first.

Oliver easily sliced off the head, gutted the body, peeled off the pretty green scales and turned the light-blue meat into slices of sashimi. He ate nearly a kilo of meat and still felt pretty hungry, so he quickly caught a second fish after chumming the water with the remains of the last one. This fish was even bigger than the first, but instead of eating it raw, he decided to use the pan as a skillet and fry the whole thing over a campfire.

“Oliver?!”

A deep masculine voice startled the boy. He grabbed his pick ax and jumped up off the stone ground. When he looked over and saw the person who called out his name, the boy got even more nervous. It was a tall and skinny ‘man’, wearing a black hooded robe and… A creepy white ‘bird mask’. There were two tinted goggles for eyes and a long white beak that curved downwards. He was also carrying along a giant backpack that had to weigh a few hundred kilos, completely filled with various items, including some glass vials that were visible on the outside.

“Who the hell are you?! Some kinda bird bandit?!”

“Oliver, it’s me. Damn it, I delivered you as a baby!”

The man reached up with his black gloves and pulled down the scary mask. Revealing a handsome but extremely pale face. His eyes were dark brown, just like his long hair that was pulled back into a ponytail after taking down the hood.

“Uncle Klein?! You can’t just sneak up on someone dressed like a murder-chicken! I almost put a pick through your stupid mask!”

“Pft-hahaha~! It’s a Plague Doctor outfit! Only an ignorant brat like you wouldn’t recognize it!” Then he held up the mask and complained, “What kind of chickens have you seen that look like this?! Hahaha~!”

“That’s why I said it was a murder-chicken! Not a regular chicken!” The boy sneered and then sniffed a few times, “Damn it! You made me burn my fish!”

“How is that my fault? It’s your own damn fault for using too much heat!”

“How can I control how much heat I use for a campfire?!”

“Just put it higher! Are you an idiot?!”

“Screw you! Ow!”

“Hahaha! Alright, stop, you’re going to burn yourself more seriously… And those sores, hold still and let me treat you!”

“I’m fine! It’s just acne! It’s normal, lots of people have acne…”

The tall man sat down on a rock behind the boy and looked at those lesions with a serious expression on his handsome face. He put down his backpack with a loud ‘thud’ and took out a scalpel, a small syringe and some ointment. 

Some of the deeper cysts were injected with a mysterious solution and immediately shrunk down to nothing. While the lesions and boils on the surface were sliced off, before being covered with that strange cream that acted to heal the wound within a few seconds. Finally, he took out a different ointment and rubbed it on the various rashes across Oliver’s body. He also seemed to conjure up a simple adhesive bandage from thin air and placed it onto the bleeding sore on the kid’s leg. The bleeding stopped immediately and within half a minute, the bandage fell off and turned into ashes that drifted away in the wind. 

The whole treatment was finished by the time Oliver was done cooking the other side of the fish on the layered pan for gold panning. 

“Thanks… Do you want some?”

“I don’t want to get food poisoning, so thanks but no thanks.”

“Weak.”

“Yes, I’m too weak to survive your nasty cooking.”

After bickering back and forth for a while, Oliver turned around and sat on the ground facing Klein. He looked up at the tall man and asked, “You became a Plague Doctor now… Does that mean you’re strong enough to save us?”

“I… I don’t know.” Klein gritted his teeth and clenched his fists, looking down at the crackling fire between the two of them. Then he looked into those green eyes and answered, “But I’m not leaving again unless I do!”

There was an awkward silence for a while, before Oliver started laughing. Then he picked up his pan-fried fish and started eating it with a smile on his face. The whole time he ‘hissed’ and groaned in pain because he burnt his fingers on the sizzling-hot fish meat.

“What’re you laughing about?”

“Nothing. Hah~!”

Klein looked over and saw a big black chicken with a white beak glaring at him with its bright green eyes, “What the hell is that?!”

“A Murder-Chicken, hahahaha~!”

“Buckaaaaw~! Caaaw~!”