Everybody Gangsta Until Science Meets Magic

32 - Their Own Exploration

"Mana battery?" Eara raised an eyebrow, curious about the new term.

"Basically, it stores mana." He explained, grunting as he stood back up, "You can't use it to replenish someone's mana reserves though. But, if you hook them into trinkets, you can give them their own power source. That's the ore we're using to power the system trinkets."

"So you need it for the crafting function?" Eara asked as she watched Aiden start walking towards the center of the pit, deciding to stand up to catch up to him.

"A whole clump of it."

"Is that a lot?"

"Theoretically, it's more than enough for two crafting function trinkets."

Eara nodded, finally catching up to Aiden.

The two walked silently towards the center of the pit, until they were a few meters away from the gigantic hole. Howling winds could be heard as they stood at the edge, with the layers above and below them completely concealed by the darkness.

"So anyway, I'm going to make a quick trip to the lower layers of the pit." Aiden pursed his lips into a straight line and looked at Eara beside him.

Eara's expression stayed indifferent for a while, before her eyebrows started furrowing slowly, "You're not . . . going to jump in there, right?"

Aiden chuckled, ". . . Yeah. That's what I'm gonna do."

Eara just gave him an unbelieving look, before walking forward to get even closer to the edge of the pit's center.

"Woah, woah, woah." Aiden tried to grab her by her shoulders, but her cloak prevented it from doing so. Still, Eara felt his touch, so she stopped walking and looked at Aiden with an eyebrow raised.

"Don't get too close to the pit you have no plans to jump." Aiden continued, "Still though, that cloak can be troublesome. If you fell or something it's gonna be really hard to catch you."

"Right. The cloak." Eara brought her hands up to the button of her cloak and unlatched it, before it vanished as she stashed it into her inventory. She was still wearing the shadowskin suit that she bought, so she retrieved a normal cloak and wore it.

Aiden just smiled and shrugged, before saying, "Anyway, I might be away for about a whole day. I just wanna make sure-- Einhar plans to start returning after three more days, right?"

"Yeah."

"Nice." Aiden nodded, pursing his lips into a thin line, "If something changes, just message me."

"Alright."

"Also, Eara," Aiden's gaze turned serious as he muttered her name, "I really want to bring you with me down there, but . . . uh, nevermind. I guess I'll just do a pit exploration of my own some other time." He then shrugged and turned around, walking away from the pit.

"I thought you're going?"

"Changed my mind. It's hard to relax when I don't know if you're safe or not." Aiden was being more careful ever since the playhouse incident.

Eara frowned as he looked at Aiden's back. It certainly did feel nice to be cared for, but she felt like Aiden was being overprotective for a friend.

She clicked her tongue and retrieved a piece of paper and a quillhorn. Aiden heard her tongue-click and found her crouched down, writing something on a piece of paper on her lap. He just watched her silently in curiosity, before she stood up and folded the paper into a long strip.