“Hah~! Hahahah~! Yes! I win!”

When Oliver woke up the next day, he turned over and found that Marble Mother was nowhere to be found! Even Stone Sister was still laying face-down and in the same exact position as before. Except for the slightly longer little black hairs, it was just a normal statue.

“Don’t worry, Sis. That crazy woman is gone now. You’re safe.” He patted the ‘girl’ on her cold hard back and got out of bed. Rested and excited to go work in the mines again!

“Verna’s parents won’t make another trip back to Kale Town until next week though. We’ll probably never see your Marble Mommy again. By the way, why was that specific statue so damn haunted? All the others didn’t move around nearly as much.”

Because of the way the statue was shaped, he had to lay her down onto something. As for why he picked his own bed and not the guest room downstairs?

“Maybe I should’ve kept a puppy or kitten sculpture…” Oliver sighed, then pulled the covers back over the face-down gray statue, “I feel bad leaving you alone, but I can’t take you with me into the mines. I know it’s scary being alone. Maybe I’ll pick up stone-carving myself sometime? Anyway, be good and don’t wander off. I’ll be back tonight.”

A few hours later, after Oliver was already deep underground, the stone body trembled slightly. Those stiff and hard muscles moved ever so slightly. Just enough for the statue to turn over onto its left side, facing the sunny window with its eyelids sealed shut.

“Don’t… Leave… Please…”

A faint voice came from her slightly parted lips.

“Ma-ma…”

***

“Mom, Dad, that’s all for today… I’ll see you again soon. Love you.”

After a long day of prospecting, Oliver only found a small batch of valuable ore in the end. The rest just had trace amounts of gold or silver and would need to be crushed down, then panned. He normally didn’t bother doing that work himself though. Either he would give the rocks to the kids in the village to ‘play with’ or he would sell them for gold pennies on the gold dollar to the Greenstone Mining Company directly. They would bring everything back to town and use big machines to do the same work in a few minutes that would take all day for a small village like Verde to accomplish.

“Mmmn~! Hmmmmmn~! Mmm-nnnnmmm~!”

Oliver hummed a somber song as he made his way to the exit to the north of Verde Village. Which was just outside the town’s short green walls. The gate was wide open, with a few people loitering around, smoking cigarettes and chatting. A man and two women. They had graying hair, wrinkles on their dirty faces and wore mining overalls. Their helmets and masks were sitting on a big wooden bench nearby, with the rest of their equipment and hauls.

“Hey, Ollie!”

“Nice haul Oliver!”

“Glad you made it back safely, Sweetie! *Cough~! Haack~!*”

Their voices were very hoarse and they could barely speak without coughing. In order to avoid the smell, Oliver just nodded to them politely and hurried back home. There were only a few guards in the whole town and they took shifts. With only two entrances in and out of the town, they usually stayed around the southern gate, since only locals generally used the back entrance. To be fair though, there really weren’t many bandits or criminals on Greenstone Mountain. In the 12 years that the boy has been alive, he’s never actually seen a real bandit.

He walked over to the big community warehouse for the Greenstone Mining Company near the northern entrance, inside the walls. It wasn’t very tall, only two stories, but it was totally open inside. Big wagons and carriages could pull right up inside to pick up or drop off materials. There were also stables nearby for the horses, so it smelled like manure, which was almost strong enough to overpower the cigarettes the guards were smoking.

“Oliver~! Keep up the good work, little guy!”

“Ollie, glad to see you’re back at work again. Without you, Verde would never meet the weekly quota.”

“Jessie, what happened to Todd?” Oliver looked around and noticed that the normal middle-aged, 30 year old manager was replaced by a 16 year old ‘woman’. She had rough tan skin, some scars on her face and neck, along with some large pimples and cysts.

“He got a promotion. I’m in charge of Verde now. Bastard took all the credit for that Glowy you found. Probably got a huge bonus too!”

“Well, he is getting kinda old now. I hope he can go home and retire while he still has some time left to be with his family. Roger wasn’t so lucky.”

“True, true… Phew~!”

*Cough* Oliver glared at the giggling woman that just blew a smoke ring in his face and complained, “Can you hurry up? I wanna go home and take a shower. I’m afraid I’ll get another rash if I don’t wash this dust off soon…”

“Heheh~!” Jessie held the cigarette in the corner of her mouth and put on some gloves slowly. Then she took her sweet old time looking through the different ores and rocks.

“Mmmn~! Here you go~!”

“One dollar?” The boy looked at the single coin in his hand and then at the small pile of valuable ores, “It’s at least worth five!”

“Take it or leave it. The market changes, Kid. Get used to it.”

“Are you seriously going to do this, Jessie? Is it really worth it?”

“I’m just doing my job.” She shrugged her wide shoulders and started moving the rocks around the warehouse, sorting them depending on their actual value.

“What’re you still doing here? Go home and take a shower, hehe~! Make sure to wake up early and get back to work!”

“Screw you!” Oliver wanted to punch her in the face, but he just clenched his fists and turned around, “You’re gonna regret this, Jessie!”

“Is that a threat, Brat?”

“Are you threatening the Manager?”

The two lazy guards stopped smoking and stood up off their uncomfortable wooden chairs. Each of them was nearly two meters tall and had extremely muscular arms, though their hairy beer bellies were bulging. In particular, the man on the left with lighter skin, bright-blue eyes and a shiny bald head actually started to unsheath the shortsword on his left hip. Their outfits were basically just white tank tops and green shorts though. The most protective gear they wore were steel toe boots in case someone dropped a rock on their feet.

“Are you serious?!” A vein started bulging on Oliver’s forehead as he looked up at the two ‘giants’. A long wooden-handed single-sided mining pick appeared in his right hand and similarly long sledge hammer materialized in the left. His head was also covered by a hard-hat and a gas mask. While his body was still covered in dusty overalls.

“I hope that gold you stole from me can cover their medical bills!”

Both the guards took a step back and the unarmed one raised his hands, “Haha~! Umm, Ollie, I’m just doing my job, okay?! I wasn’t serious!”

“Yeah, yeah, eh-hem, sorry Oliver, I just reacted instinctively, ya know?”